Soundcards & Multimedia

If you thought you had hassles finding a CD‑ROM drive to work with your PC, you haven't entered the soundcard zone. Brian Heywood offers a cautionary tale...

I had a bit of an odd problem last month. I was setting up a multimedia development system on a 486DX4/100 PC, and needed a soundcard for capturing and testing audio files. I also found that I could get quite good results dropping AVI files down to video tape using a Creative Labs TVCoder External. The problem was that although the PC's main circuit board had six or seven 'full length' expansion slots, not all of them could be used for full‑length cards. Since the machine was fitted with a clock 'tripled' processor (x4 in Intel‑speak), it needed to have a fan to keep the CPU chip cool enough to operate. Unfortunately, this fan is tall enough to interfere with all but three of the expansion slots, all of which were taken up by a video capture card (VideoBlaster RT300), an accelerated graphics card and a high‑speed VL bus disk controller.

The problem, then, was to get a soundcard that had a high enough performance to give a decent sound quality on both recording and playback, but was short enough to fit into one of the remaining 'short' slots. As most soundcards tend to come with bundled CD‑ROM interfaces, they tend to be full‑length, and the built‑in interface tends to be an unnecessary complication when setting up the machine. In fact, I always install SCSI CD‑ROM drives in my PCs, as they give you the option of adding on additional SCSI devices — such as SyQuest removable cartridges and scanners — at a later date.

After checking out various alternatives, I settled on a Turtle Beach TBS2000 soundcard. Not only does it fit in the restricted space, but it has decent digital audio converters — by Crystal — and has been designed by a company that has a reputation for audio quality to protect. There are a few additional extras which could be quite useful as well. For instance, it has both a Wavetable and a FM synthesizer section, allowing you to test any MPC MIDI files against both a decent quality soundcard and the lowest common denominator (ie. SoundBlaster‑compatible FM). It can even simultaneously record and play back digital audio, should I ever need the facility.

It does have a IDE CD‑ROM interface, but this doesn't seem to have caused any of the complications common to the other types of interface. The card is not even terribly expensive, costing less than £150, so I'm rather chuffed with the choice. It's even compatible with SoundBlaster games, should I ever find the time to try one out! The card is available from Et Cetera Distribution, who can be contacted on 01706 228039.

Loopisms And Twiddly Bits

While I'm on the subject of multimedia development, it can be quite time‑consuming to put together a soundtrack that captures the mood required, especially if you need a piece of music that is not your usual style. Two audio products that can help you out — in different ways — are the Loopisms and Workstation sample CD‑ROMs from D‑Zone, and Twiddly Bits MIDI files from Keyfax software. D‑Zone's sample and loop CDs have recently been re‑released in CD‑ROM and WAV format, and a number are also available in AWE32.

D‑Zone audio files can be used in two ways; the drum 'loops' can be used on an audio track of a digital audio sequencer (eg. Cubasis Audio, Procyon Audio), or downloaded to a soundcard's sample RAM to be triggered by MIDI, and used as the basis of a rhythm track. Or, you could use the instrument samples — recorded from popular synthesizers — with a RAM wavetable (eg. AWE32, Gravis Ultrasound) card to create a musical instrument. Obviously, in both these cases you would need to 'master' your multimedia sound files to WAV file somehow — perhaps by mixing down to a decent tape format (DAT or DCC) and recording the material back onto your hard disk. Or, if your PC is powerful enough, by using the simultaneous record and playback facilities on your soundcard to mix the music straight down onto your hard disk.

The D‑Zone CD‑ROMs also have demo versions of various music applications such as sample editors and MIDI/audio sequencers, so you can try before you buy. Most of CD‑ROMs in the series also contain at least one playable demo version of a popular computer game — Doom, for instance — for those with plenty of free time on their hands. Prices start from around £13, so they're very good value for money. To find out more, call D‑Zone on 0181 651 2222, or email solo@diverse‑media.co.uk.

Keyfax's 'Twiddly Bits' MIDI files take a different approach: rather than providing the raw sounds, their disks contain MIDI performances from top session musicians, which you can include in your own sequences. It's like getting a virtual session musician to play on your songs. The disks are made up of MIDI files with various short sections of music, categorised by type. So for instance, there will be a file of funk bass riffs, or conga patterns and so on, with each file containing 16 examples, ie. one on each MIDI channel.

There are 25 different style disks in the range, with such luminaries as Bill Bruford and Steve Hackett showing off their chops. Since the files are MIDI data, they don't take up much space and are supplied on 3.5‑inch floppy disks, with comprehensive sleeve notes describing the contents. The range is quite large and the prices pretty reasonable — check them out by contacting Keyfax on 01734 471382.