You are here

Apple Shareware & Freeware

Why is no‑one giving Mac sequencers away for nothing? Martin Russ dives into the sobering world of shareware and freeware.

It all began with an email from a reader. They asked if I knew of any freeware or shareware MIDI sequencers for the Mac, because they had searched around and found only one, which seems to be less than perfect...

I know exactly what they mean. In 10 years we've gone from simple intuitive tape recorder emulations to extremely sophisticated Digital Audio and MIDI sequencers which are so complex that they can require days of learning before you become competent at using them. And unlike the Atari ST, the Mac has never had much MIDI freeware and shareware written for it. Perhaps some of the problem lies in the way that the Mac does MIDI. On an Atari ST, you wrote bytes to a location and they appeared at the MIDI Out; you read bytes from another location and they were received at the MIDI In. You needed to change a few variables here and there to alter buffer sizes, but it wasn't difficult at all. And as a result, lots of people, myself included, wrote lots of MIDI software for the Atari ST.

On the Mac, things are slightly different. Persuading MIDI bytes to appear at a standard Mac MIDI interface requires a little bit more programming, and in a Mac there's always a set way of doing things through an Apple‑defined interface. Things get more complicated if you want to use the Apple MIDI Manager, and even more taxing if you want to use Opcode's OMS or MOTU's FreeMIDI. Instead of simple reads and writes, there are complete protocols to be negotiated. This tends to put amateur programmers like myself off a little bit, because it requires a large investment of time to get to grips with. As a result, Mac MIDI software is rare, especially freeware or shareware.

But it does exist. A few years ago, the logical place to look for it would have been a Mac shareware disk supplier, but these have been largely replaced by two modern phenomena: the cover‑disk CD and the Internet. Music magazines, which have to fill up 650Mb of CD every month, don't take long to run through just about every decent bit of MIDI, music and audio related freeware or shareware — although there are always lots of commercial demonstrations. There are also some specialist suppliers of collections of shareware and freeware on CD‑ROMs. And on the Internet, it only takes a few minutes to find almost anything using a search engine — although downloading a couple of Mb can take a little longer with a modem connection. A bit of searching on the Internet, or failing that, buying up some cover disks at a car‑boot sale, should provide plenty of stuff to investigate.

I've assembled a table showing some of the sorts of things that you may well find, and a few of the columns need some explanation. The 'size' is the size of the main application itself, which often gives a guide to the sort of complexity you can expect. The PPC/68K column shows if I was able to discover anything about its PowerPC compatibility — I'll soon be able to test this myself. The OMS, QuickTime column shows possible interfaces rather than required ones.

For more details on Mac shareware, see page 6 of Crosstalk in our October '96 issue, and Mark Tinley's article on sample RAM in September '96.

Power!

It had to happen. After resisting the inexorable advance of the PowerPC chip, my humble Centris 610 is beginning to look distinctly old‑fashioned and a little bit tired, and (the final straw this) was recently described as 'quaint'! Hi‑tech music magazine columnists have their limits, but when my Mac is put down like that, then I see red — and my favourite Mac dealer sees money!

So, I started the usual preparation for a major purchase. Did I have the money? Hmm — it looks as though more people will have to buy my book on Sound Synthesis and Sampling... Could I justify it? Perhaps. Would it look underpowered alongside a dual Pentium II MMX tower with a 17‑inch monitor? Definitely not. What should I buy? Ah, the $64,000 question.

What you require of a MacOS computer for use in music is rather different from what most other computer power users want. Graphics accelerators and millions of colours don't matter much when you only need 256 colours at most but as large a screen as possible. Networking gossip about Ethernet and 10‑baseT is much less important than decent serial ports. RAM Doubler isn't quite such a useful accessory when timing is critical. Hard drive performance is probably considerably more important than the price, and a CD‑R drive is arguably more attractive than a plain CD‑ROM reader. Fancy user interfaces are almost unimportant when you spend almost 100% of your time in one or two big applications, and so having a multi‑threaded Finder is much less important than the consistency of real‑time operation. Processing power and stability are vital, since no‑one likes waiting or losing hours of work in an instant.

So what did I go for? Well, despite the ongoing Apple saga, I decided to stay with my first love and scanned the Mac magazines' in‑depth reports, looking for those critical words: 'expandability' and 'better performance than expected for the price'. I also applied the old computer maxim of 'buy the best you can afford — now!'. Taking into account all the price reductions in the pre‑Apple Expo/November new releases period, I went for a PowerMac 7300, which met all of my requirements with one hugely embarrassing exception: it comes bundled with Microsoft Office! If it wasn't for the fact that some aspects of its performance are on a par with, or better than the 8600 which costs almost twice as much, then the 7300 would have been rejected. As it is, I'm tempted to try and remove the infection so that I can retain my '100% Microsoft‑free site' status.

The next few Apple Notes will almost certainly document the transition from 68K to PowerPC, and perhaps even to MacOS 8 when the upgrade arrives. Some of my best‑loved utilities and gadgets may well not survive... I'll keep you posted.

Apple News In Brief

  • QUICKTIME 3.0

Apple's forthcoming new version 3.0 of QuickTime is already winning awards in the television, media and computing worlds. Whereas many other developers are concentrating on one platform and a single operating system (Microsoft perhaps?), QuickTime continues to improve its cross‑platform capabilities and support for a wide variety of digital media file formats. So QuickTime 3.0 is claimed to support all the major video and audio file formats, platforms and operating systems — including WAV, AIFF, Sound Designer II, AU, MPEG Layer 2, MPEG, AVI, OMF, DV, OpenDML files, many still image file formats, many animation file formats, and MIDI files, and runs on Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Mac System 7.x, MacOS 7.6, and MacOS 8. (Hmm, no UNIX though!)

QuickTime forms the basis of the QuickTime Media Layer, which includes QuickTime VR and QuickDraw 3D. Used for both professional video editing and the creation of many CD‑ROMs, QuickTime is believed to comprise more than half of the video content found on the Internet.

The 'QuickTime Gazette' is a newly launched bi‑weekly Internet‑based newsletter which concentrates on QuickTime and its related technologies. It aims to provide an up‑to‑date look at the happenings around the world related to Apple's QuickTime and the QuickTime Media Layer.

  • D‑SOUNDPRO 3

The latest update to this shareware sample editor is now available on the net. The shareware registration fee is $39 (or only $10 for registered users of version 2.x — including me!).

New features from 2.5.2 include:

  • WAV file format support (including loop points).
  • Support for Emu, Kurzweil, Roland and SMDI samplers.
  • Digital oscillators for mono/stereo wave generation.
  • DSP‑style effects.
  • New Virtual Keyboard.
  • AmpENV ADSRs.
  • Mac keyboard can play sounds.
  • Link D‑SoundPRO samples to a sequencer.
  • Zoom In function on the Loop Floating window.
  • Moving cursor in the sample window.
  • Info Window, with real‑time loop and position markers.
  • Wave x‑axis units can be in msec.

And, of course, more bugs have been found and fixed.

  • APPLE EXPO

5‑8 November will see the annual Apple Expo in the Grand Hall, Olympia, London. You can expect new Macs, controversy over cloning, lots of bargains if you scout about, and very little music or MIDI software. As usual, I'll wander about on one of the days to see if there's anything that catches my eye — so say hello if you see me. £15 on the day, but free if you pre‑register: 0181 240 5055 or via the web site.

Apple Shareware & Freeware

NAMESIZENOTESTYPEPROCESSORSYSTEMINPUT & OUTPUTWARE
All MIDI 1.1.238KDrag & Drop File Type & Creator changerFile‑type UtilityPPC 68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+QT 2.1+ 
Arnolds MIDI Player 2.8b283KSimple MIDI File playerMIDI File Player68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+MIDI Mngr QT 2.1+ 
Beyond Demo V2.3450KBefore Metro was BeyondSequencer 68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+Snd Mngr 3.1+Demonstration
Bol Processor 2.6.1588KAlgorithmic music generatorGenerator68KPPC 7.1+ 7.5+ Shareware
Convert Machine 1.1.1252KAudio file converterAudio Processor68KPPC 7.5+Snd Mngr 3.1+ QT 2.0+Shareware $10
CSound  Synthesis & audio processingSynthesizerPPC 68K6 7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+ Freeware
CyberMozart 2.7.51600KMozart's Dice on a computer (uses SuperCard)Generator 68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+OMS QT 2.0+ MIDI MngrShareware $30
Cybernetic Composer 1.0366KJazz, Rock & Ragtime generatorGenerator68K7.5+ Freeware
D‑SoundPRO 3.02900K Sample EditorPPC 68K OMSShareware $39
Hyper‑Music‑Writer 2228KEditing environment for HyperCard music (uses HyperCard 2.2)NotationPPC 68K6 7.0+ 7.1+ Shareware $5
Lemur Pro 4.01618KAnalysis & Synthesis engineSynthesizerPPC 68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+ Shareware $20
MetroDemo 3.1654K Beyond became MetroSequencer68K PPC7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+OMS MIDI Mngr QT 2.0+ Snd Mngr 3.1+Demonstration
Midi2Tex 1.181KMusicTex (uses MusicTex) preprocessorNotation68K   
MidiFile Converter 1.0225KFile Type & Creator changerFile‑type Utility68K6 7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+  
MIDIGraphy 1.2.5330KComprehensive multitrack graphical‑based sequencerSequencerPPC 68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+MIDI Mngr OMS QT 2.1+Shareware $20
Midi It! 1.2.6222KNeat GUI File Type & Creator changerFile‑type Utility68K PPC7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+ Freeware
Midi Jukebox 2.3191K Simple MIDI File player with animated accompanimentMIDI File Player     
MidiKit 2.3234KBatch MIDI File processorFile‑type UtilityPPC 68K6 7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+ Shareware $12
MidiTyper 1.0449KDrag & Drop File Type & Creator changer File‑type Utility68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+  
MidPlay 1.0.4E110KChainable MIDI File playerMIDI File Player  MIDI Mngr 
MiniTrax 1.54132KVery early MIDI sequencerSequencer68K6 Freeware
MusicWorks 1.1 MIDI54KA never commercially released version of the classic early Mac music programSequencer68K7.5+ 7.1+ 7.0+ 6 Freeware
Out of Phase 1.3786KSoftware wavetable/wavecycle synthesizerSynthesizerPPC 68K7.5+ 7.1+ 7.0+ 6 Freeware
Player Pro 4.5.11200KActually a MIDI & MOD file playerMIDI File PlayerPPC 68K7.0+MIDI MngrShareware $99
PushBtnBach 1.5.12300KBach minuets on demand (uses SuperCard)Generator 68K7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+MIDI Mngr QT 2.0+ OMSShareware $30
RICE 1.0 beta402KChamber music generatorGenerator68K PPC7.5+ Freeware
SMF Type Caster 1.0b342KDrag & Drop File Type & Creator changerFile‑type Utility    
SMF Utilities 1.0b875KFile Type & Creator changer and resource mapperFile‑type Utility    
SndSampler 3.4540K8 and 16‑bit Mac sound editorSample Player68K7.0+Snd Mngr 3.1+Shareware $20
SoundHack 0.888348KSophisticated and powerfulAudio Processor   Shareware $30
SoundTrecker 2.01240KActually a MOD player/editor Sample PlayerPPC 68K7.0+ Shareware $30
Sound Sculptor II 2.2612K Tape‑metaphor playback & toolsAudio Processor68K PPC7.0+ 7.1+ 7.5+Snd Mngr 3.1+Shareware $30
TrackPac‑Lite 1248KSDII file compressor/expanderAudio ProcessorPPC 68K7.0+ Freeware
TrackStar Z*2E960KA MIDI Tracker: MOD‑like edit & control (uses MaxPlay)MIDI File Player  OMS MIDI MngrShareware $79
Vamp 1.01150KPlays MPEG layer 3 audio filesSample PlayerPPC7.0+ Shareware $10