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MOTU Digital Performer

Astonished by the speed of software development, Martin Russ wonders where it's all leading...

When I reviewed Mark Of The Unicorn's Digital Performer v1.7 MIDI + Audio sequencer earlier this year [SOS September '96], I commented that the rather coarse track overview window was due for an imminent update. So I'm delighted to be able to report that the first sighting of the new window has been made...

Performer v5.5 adds a substantial number of major enhancements, which might well have prompted a designation of v6.0 had this been a Microsoft product! For someone like me, who uses the track overview as my prime way of 'seeing' what is happening in my music, Performer v5.5's new window is a refreshing advance: gone are the boxes which darken as the density of MIDI data increases (remember: Performer is a MIDI‑only sequencer; Digital Performer is the MIDI + Audio version). In their place are tiny graphical representations of the track contents, piano‑roll style. Not very original, perhaps, but adopting the best ideas from other software can lead to a pleasing convergence.

Less obviously innovative, but actually probably more clever, is the use of windows instead of modal dialogue boxes for many of the common manipulations that you need to carry out on musical information: Transpose, Quantise, Split Notes, etc. This means that instead of having to reselect a menu option to re‑open a dialogue box every time you need to do a transpose, you can now leave the window on the screen and use it whenever necessary. Performer's specialised window‑control tools now begin to look like a very shrewd investment, as the number of open windows grows. The downside is that you may need to consider buying a larger monitor — but even here, the 'you need a large screen' emphasis of Windows 95 and NT are driving down the prices of larger monitors anyhow, so you may be pleasantly surprised when you do start to price them.

The fascinating thing about these developments is the pace at which they happen. It's not that long ago that new versions of the major music software programs took years in their gestation. But a gradual acceleration has resulted in the current situation, where the transition from one release to the next can be less than a year, with several incremental bug‑fixes in between. In some cases, it seems extra features are added for no better reason than the manufacturer needed new bullet points in his advertising! With Performer v5.5, however, the changes make sense and actually enhance the operation of the program.

Even so, for Christmas, I've still asked Santa if he can persuade all software writers to spend a year sorting out the bugs in the current versions of their music software, ignoring the temptation to add new features. No bloat in 1997, please!

X2 Modems

The cunningly named X2 technology offers something which appears almost too good to be true. Fifty‑six Kbits per second is twice the baud rate of the popular 28.8Kbit/s modems, and almost twice as fast as the 33.6Kbit/s leading edge models. But a combination of special network configurations and a one‑way 'asymmetric' transmission mode (instead of the two‑way approach of traditional modems) allows file downloading at unprecedented rates.

Currently, the X2 technology is restricted to US Robotics modems (via a software upgrade) and a service provider with the right hardware — plus it is not due until January 1997. As always with computer‑based developments, the technology may be rapidly taken up by other manufacturers. All of which has an interesting side‑effect: although MIDI's 31.25Kbit/s baud rate does not always comfortably fit into a 28.8Kbit/s bandwidth, a 56Kbit/s link may be much more accommodating...

Hot Sauce On The Net

Apple's latest innovation used to be called Project X when it was under wraps at their research labs, but has now been released into the daylight as Hot Sauce. If you were wondering about their naming conventions, you need look no further than their search engine, called V‑Twin, to be thoroughly confused.

Hot Sauce is an attempt to present information in a way which is similar to how people actually store things — untidily! Show me a studio, office, bedroom or garage that is actually like a furniture advert, and I can point to a frantic half‑hour spent tidying it before I arrived. From considerable experience (MIDI consultants often see studios in the raw!) I can almost guarantee that the natural state of any working environment is chaotic. And yet most people can put their hands on any piece of paper, floppy disk, CD‑ROM, sheet music, notepad, book, within a couple of minutes — because they 'know' where it is. Convert this spatial 'map' of where things are to a computer, and allow people to fly through it, and you have Hot Sauce.

Technically speaking, Hot Sauce allows you to navigate through a 3D space containing objects which represent content. The content can be almost anything: web pages, files, email, pictures, MIDI files, databases and more — all represented in a format called the Meta Content Format (MCF). In effect, Hot Sauce is a browser that allows you to move around within the content objects. As you might expect with a browser‑type application these days, there's a plug‑in for Netscape's Navigator — but for Mac users, there's a stand‑alone application too, which allows additional customisation and is geared more towards authoring. (Windows users only get to fly around!). The plug‑ins are less than 200 Kbytes, and so are worth attempting to download even with 14.4 Kbaud modems. The application is considerably bigger (6Mb for the largest version) and requires an FPU if you are running a 68K MacOS machine.

mcf.research.apple.com/

mcf.research.apple.com/hs/download.htm

Tip Of The Month: Font Minimisation

Last month's Apple Notes looked at rationalising the Apple Menu Items folder, plus some pointers on how to keep things tidy. This month the spotlight falls on the Fonts folder.

Surprisingly, quite a lot of software now automatically installs fonts into your system as a so‑called bonus freebie. Word processors, graphics programs, and even music software can all add fonts — sometimes without even telling you. The simplest way to check what happens during an install is to use the Mac's 'Labels' control panel, something that has long been one of the almost‑forgotten features of System 7.

When you first install a new Mac Operating System (7.5.5 should be available about now), you should go into the System Folder and select all the files and then colour them by selecting the required option from the Label menu. When you subsequently install any additional software, you can see which files have been added because they will not be coloured! Simple.

Font‑wise, you can probably get away with a very simple set of basic fonts when you are exclusively music‑making — although you may need to make sure that you leave any fonts which are used for on‑screen notation displays! Usually, fonts used for music software have hints in their names: eg. 'SonataOpcode' or 'MOTUFonts'... Extras like ATM, Postscript and bitmap fonts are all superfluous to the basic operation of the Mac — just having a few TrueType fonts installed will suffice if you need extra fonts.

Before System 7, it was possible to see all of the fonts that were installed in the system, including the Geneva 9, Monaco 9 and Chicago 12 bitmap fonts which are used by the Mac Finder for filenames and menus. System 7 hides the essential system fonts away (inside the System File itself) and so you can empty the Fonts folder entirely by moving the contents to the Fonts (Disabled) folder to give you the bare minimum of fonts, and you will still be able to read your Mac's screen when it reboots.

In System 6 and before, the Mac would complain that you were trying to get rid of essential fonts and would not let you move them at all, but hiding them is a much better idea since no‑one can even try to remove them. If there are any fonts you require for music notation, you can always move them back into the Fonts folder from the Fonts (Disabled) folder. This is a good time to find out what you actually do need font‑wise! Depending on the number of fonts you remove, you may well free up extra RAM and gain a faster boot‑up time.

Apple News In Brief

  • BETTER THAN REPORTS
    November's Apple Notes contained another of those typographical blunders that can result from using email. The third quarter loss by Apple was 21 million dollars, not 321 million! Oops... And in fact, the fourth quarter results included a 25 million dollar profit! Apple Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Gil Amelio, said that the question now was not 'will Apple survive?', but 'how will Apple establish leadership in the emerging digital era?'
  • EPIC RELEASE
    After a long wait, Apple have finally launched the 1400 (codenamed 'Epic') series of PowerBooks, their first with built‑in CD‑ROM drives. (It also marks the end of the line for the PowerBook Duo desktop plug‑in range.) The (allegedly three) 1400 series models should finally put Apple back in the front‑running of portable Macs; after all, many of the standard features that you find on portable laptop computers were first introduced by Apple: trackballs at the front/keyboards at the back; feet to angle the keyboard; glidepads to replace trackballs; and more. As an added bonus, comparing the price of the 1400 with equivalents in the PC world, the new PowerBook looks considerably cheaper.
  • PRO TOOLS 4.0
    Digidesign's forthcoming Pro Tools 4.0 includes support for both the PCI‑based and NuBus‑based Pro Tools III hardware and native PowerPC software. Upgrades from existing Pro Tools software, plus NuBus‑to‑PCI hardware exchanges are available. For more info, check out www.digidesign.com/