Attention - Now Hear This !
Tony Sparks
It's all too easy to make do. Have you, like me, only ever listen to your computer through it's internal speaker ? If so, as one who has realised the folly of their ways, I hope to convince you in this article that you are missing out. Having proper sound is a big part of the computing experience.
A month ago I found myself with time to kill in the city. I decided to wander into the nearby Maplin electronics store. Whatever subliminal advertising they were using worked a treat on me that day. On impulse, I bought a £60 Microlab M-880 Multimedia Speaker System.
Once home, I immediately went to Iain McLeod's site to download the latest version of his classic game "Spheres Of Chaos" for my StrongARM. The Microlab amplifier and speakers were simplicity to set up and plug into the Audio Out socket of the back of the RISC PC. I had a great time pulverising spheres. And my neighbours ears !
The sound on Iain's game is intentionally distorted. In order to hear how good the speakers really were I needed something with higher quality sound. In Archive Magazine I had just read about a new RISC OS animation player, with sound, called Flicker. I sent Martin Hansen, the developer, an email. I also gave R-Comp a call and ordered their CD audio and MP3 software, MusicMan.
Flicker arrived on a CD the next day. It came with several sample animated films. I liked one, "Advertising RISC OS", in particular. The soundtrack to this had a wonderful dynamic range. The bass pumped, the treble clear on top.
I could also simply drag and drop various tracker files onto Flicker to play them as a replacement soundtrack.
Flicker is scheduled for release in the next issue of RISCOScode and has been shown off at the recent RISC OS shows in Weston-Super-Mare and Wakefield.
In my correspondance with Martin, I was told that the software I really ought to get for playing music files was André Timmermans Digital CD. "If it's a music file of any sort, André's software will play it". I expected to have to pay for DigitalCD but it's free to download from André's website.
MusicMan arrived by email. I wanted to use this on my Iyonix, so I disconnected the speakers from the RISC PC and plugged them into the better machine. Installing MusicMan was effortless. Next, I slipped a music-CD into the CD drive. Then I ran the MusicMan software for the first time.
Pleasingly, the main MusicMan window opened with the tracks numbered and listed along with their running times. I clicked on the top track and the CD played. The quality of the sound impressed. The Microlab unit has bass and treble controls which I adjusted to get the sound as I prefered.
All of MusicMan's functionality is accessed from its main desktop window. As the music played I rather absent mindedly clicked on a button marked "Make MP3s". The music stopped and the software started doing just that; making an MP3 file of the track that had been playing. A minute or so it was done and it parked the resulting file in the "!MyMusic" folder. I know this because it opened it automatically to show me what it had done. This is software that is intelligent.
I wasn't quite sure what to do with the MP3 file so I drag and dropped it back into MusicMan. No, that wasn't right - MusicMan didn't seem to know how to play it. Then it occurred to me what to do: Drag and drop it into DigitalCD. Sure enough, that worked a treat. To be honest, I can't tell the difference between the MP3 file and the CD. The nine minute MP3 is 8GB, the raw CD data for the track is 95GB. I'd sampled at the default rate of 128 Kbit a second. It was all so very quick and easy.
I'm very pleased with the Microlab speakers. In trying them out, I've checked out some excellent items of free RISC OS software. MusicMan cost me £23. It's worth every penny.
MUSIC MAN REVIEW
Further to Tony's comments on MusicMan, you may like to read my review of this software from R-Comp. Keep in mind that it was written in 2004 which makes the general comments about MP3s and the "Apple v Microsoft" battle at that time interesting from a historical point of view. Apple's iTunes have, of course, long since won that fight. Although the review is of an earlier version of MusicMan, it remains relevant. There are some nice screen shots of MusicMan being used. I've provided a link via the graphic below...
Like Tony, I'd give MusicMan, in 2009, a big thumbs up.
You'll be able to buy Flicker on CD-ROM from the MathMagical website shortly for £5 or you can wait for it to become a free download on RISCOScode. Note that you will NOT get the seven sample animations in the RISCOScode download as they are too big for this site's bandwidth limit. For those you'll still have to buy the CD.
