MacWorld 1998 February/Macworld (1998-02).dmg/Inside Macworld/Mentioned Shareware/SoundApp 2.4.4/SoundApp Fat/SoundApp Fat.rsrc/TEXT_1006_History.txt

Text File | 1997-12-16 | 14KB | 184 lines

Version History

2.0, April 1, 1996.
• Completely rewritten in C++ using Metrowerks CodeWarrior and PowerPlant as a fat binary for native PowerPC performance,
• Support for multiple Play Lists with full drag and drop support, including drag conversion to the Finder,
• Improved Status window that contains more information and a progress indicator,
• Added support for the following formats:
 ◊ IMA 4:1 and µ-law in AIFF/AIFC, 'snd ' resources and QuickTime movies,
 ◊ IMA 4:1, µ-law and a-law in WAVE files,
 ◊ IRCAM,
 ◊ MPEG audio layers I and II on PowerPC computers, and
 ◊ ScreamTracker 3 (S3M) files using the ZSS driver.
• Conversion of QuickTime movies without an intermediate file,
• Conversion options to force mono/stereo and 8-/16-bit output and to “DOSify” output filenames,
• Revamped Preferences dialog,
• Enhanced AppleScript support for playback and conversion,
• Rewrote the Help text, and
• Created a better-looking application icon.
2.0.1, April 26, 1996.
• Fixed a problem with the playback of mono IMA WAVE files,
• Fixed a problem which may crash due to a bug in the Apple’s Sound Manager header,
• Fixed a problem playing very short files using double buffering.
2.0.2, April 29, 1996.
• Corrected build problem which caused 2.0.1 to crash frequently.
2.0.3, June 11, 1996.
• Corrected a length problem with some odd WAVE files,
• Uses the “applFont” instead of “geneva” to permit localization,
• Dragging a file onto the SoundApp icon with a Play List open no longer adds the file to the list,
• SoundApp now maintains looping and base note information when converting between AIFF and 'snd ' resources, including System 7 sound files,
• MPEG playback now no longer causes jerky mouse movement,
• Mono MPEG files now play at the proper speed,
• Closing the Status window via AppleScript no longer crashes.
2.1, July 10, 1996.
• Added support for the following formats:
 ◊ MIDI (type 0, 1 and karaoke) files using the AMP drivers and
 ◊ GSM-compressed WAVEs and raw GSM (“.au.gsm”) files.
• Incorporated new ZSS drivers,
• Files passed to open/play/convert via AppleScript can now be specified as strings,
• Added Name/Type column headers to Play List windows, implemented title click sorting like the Finder and added Sort sub-menu (sorting method is saved in Play List files and dragging items into a sorted list maintains sort order),
• Can now pause playback using the spacebar,
• Added “;”-key for stopping after the file that is currently being processed,
• Added floating button bar and a menu item to show and hide it,
• Play Lists now support continuous shift-selection with scrolling,
• The DOSify preference now allows underscores in the converted filenames,
• Fixed a bug which crashed after sending an quit AppleEvent while playing,
• Fixed a bug which would insert a very short click at the beginning of a WAVE output file,
• Fixed a bug while converting MPEG files with an internal CRC check which caused the conversion to fail,
• No longer write non-standard AIFF headers when converting,
• Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when two MOD files are played one after the other using the ZSS drivers,
• Removed some math calls which would prevent SoundApp from running with some old versions of MathLib on Power Macs.
2.1.1, July 12, 1996.
• Corrected playback problem on 68K Macs.
2.2, December 3, 1996.
• Added a new Convert menu to group all the convert output options, added the capability to save conversion preferences as a named configuration, added an editor for saved sets, and removed all output format related options from the Convert preferences pane,
• Added Sound Designer and direct QuickTime output formats,
• Added support for MACE-3 and MACE-6 compression in SoundEdit files,
• Added support for AIFF and 'snd ' files explicitly encoded with the 'twos' and 'raw ' codecs,
• Re-wrote the MIDI code from scratch and added OMS support and a new MIDI Preferences pane,
• Included new ZSS drivers with MTM support,
• Added Script menu which lists the scripts in a “Script Menu Items” folder,
• The volume preference is now relative to the system volume, thus will have no effect on other applications’ volume, and can now go from 10% to 150%,
• Fixed sample rate specification with AIFF files due to an incompatibility with CodeWarrior and extended floating point numbers,
• Fixed a bug which could cause a hang while playing MED/OctaMED files with the ZSS driver set as preferred,
• Fixed a problem which caused some files to be left open when dragged to the Play List,
• Now properly calculates the length of MPEG Layer I files,
• Removed two-byte click at the beginning of converted System 7 sound files,
• Added Info window to provide more information on a sound file,
• Added extensive AppleScript support,
• Added a “SoundApp Home Page” to the Help menu if Internet Config is installed,
• Conversion of suitcases or MOD files now places the sounds in a sub-folder,
• ADPCM file playback is now no longer affected by the “Play a/µ-law as 8-Bit” or the “Convert a/µ-law as 8-Bit” preference,
• Upgraded to CodeWarrior 10.
2.2.1, December 5, 1996.
• Corrected a problem upgrading the preferences file from 2.1.1 to 2.2, which would result in a corrupted file.  If you used version 2.2, you’ll need to reset your preferences.
2.2.2, December 12, 1996.
• Conversion downsampling from 44.1 or 48 kHz to a lower rate (e.g., 32 kHz) no longer produces slight clicks,
• Playback of MIDI files using OMS now uses the proper selected device,
• Work around a bug in QuickTime 2.1 which prevented many MIDI files from playing,
• Fixed a bug which prevented MOD conversion on 680x0 Macs,
• Fixed a bug which caused random shuffling of Play Lists to not be very random.
2.2.3, February 26, 1997.
• SoundApp no longer gets confused if the Controls Palette is closed while playing a file from a Play List,
• Made another attempt to allow SoundApp to work without a PowerPC-native AppleScript,
• Corrected two AppleScript dictionary problems (one which prevented conversion to a specific format type and another which prevented saving a Play List to a specified file),
• If SoundApp is in the midst of playing some sounds and a folder is dropped onto SoundApp, the sound files contained therein will now be added to the playback queue,
• Cleaned up internal memory management and fixed some issues with drag and drop in Play Lists,
• Significantly speeded up the sorting of Play Lists.
2.3, April 26, 1997.
• Added support for the following formats:
  ◊ MPEG audio layer III (for computers with a PowerPC processor),
  ◊ uncompressed stereo Amiga IFF/8SVX files.
• Partially corrupt MPEG files will now skip over the corrupt frames,
• Added new preferences to copy files when dragged from a Play List and to append the “.type”  suffix to output filenames,
• Fixed a bug which would cause a crash when using AppleScript to get info on an invalid file,
• Fixed a bug in the conversion to WAVE and AIFF files,
• Using the space bar to pause play back now updates the Controls Palette,
• Added AppleScript commands to get and set the playback volume,
• Fixed a minor Play List button highlight problem,
• QuickTime soundtracks with non-standard time bases are now dealt with properly,
• Closing an empty Play List will not ask whether to save,
• Fixed a bug which could crash while attempting to drag an item from a sorted Play List to itself,
• Now better deals with file systems which are too slow to keep up with playback,
• Added Q&A topic to the Help window to address some frequently asked questions concerning SoundApp.
2.3.1, May 7, 1997.
• Fixed a small preference problem which prevented conversion from working unless a version 2.2.3 preferences file existed,
• Improved MPEG playback stability and made decompression more responsive,
• Converting to AIFF, System 7 or QuickTime IMA now no longer introduces a low frequency buzz.
2.4, August 11, 1997.
• Added support for the following formats:
  ◊ stereo Fibonacci-delta compressed Amiga IFF files,
  ◊ original Sound Designer files,
  ◊ SoundEdit 16 SWE/Shockwave MPEG Layer III files with their weird, non-standard headers,
  ◊ MPEG-2 Layer III files,
  ◊ 24- and 32-bit PCM-encoded Sun Audio, NeXT and AIFF files,
  ◊ 32- and 64-bit floating point-encoded Sun Audio and NeXT files,
  ◊ 32-bit PCM-encoded WAVE files, and
  ◊ 32-bit floating point-encoded IRCAM files.
• Added support for conversion to:
  ◊ MACE-3 and MACE-6 encodings in AIFF, System 7 sound files and QuickTime files,
  ◊ PSION sound files, and
  ◊ a-law in WAVE and AU files.
• Incorporated the new Amp MPEG Layer III playback code for increased performance and support for MPEG-2 Layer III files,
• QuickTime files with multiple sound tracks are now converted properly,
• Enhanced SoundApp’s AppleScript support:
  ◊ Added a current file AppleScript property to the application,
  ◊ Added a fetch information verb to return information about a sound file on disk and renamed the get information verb to display information for clarity,
  ◊ Added a send oms data AppleEvent to send MIDI data to an OMS synthesizer, and
  ◊ Added start at and stop at parameters to play and convert to process portions of a sound file.
• Completely re-did the Preferences dialog, removed “Fast Macintosh” and “Process Files in Directories” and added “Use Playback Volume” in the MIDI pane,
• Using the “Repeat” playback option on a single file now loops extremely smoothly,
• First pass at random access playback by clicking in the progress bar,
• Suffixes will only be removed from file names when converting if they are a valid sound file suffix,
• Added time elapsed and remaining displays to the Status window,
• Get Info on a MOD file while playing a MOD file will now work correctly,
• Calculated play times for music files using the ZSS drivers are now correct,
• Now sends tone bank control (32) to MIDI synthesizers if OMS MIDI driver is selected,
• Fixed a problem which created incorrect WAVE headers for µ-law and IMA output data and in general when converting 8-bit sounds to µ-Law,
• Also corrected a problem which created a slightly non-standard AIFF header,
• Re-did the document icons and the buttons in the Controls Palette,
• Better support for playback using virtual memory or RAM Doubler,
• Enabled drag-and-drop and active scrolling in the Help window and active scrolling in Play Lists,
• Upgraded to CodeWarrior Professional 1.
2.4.1, August 21, 1997.
• Fixed a problem with the OMS output device getting corrupted in the Preferences dialog and changing the output device no longer requires quitting SoundApp to take effect,
• SoundApp now recognizes two more file types as MP3 files: Shockwave’s and MacAmp’s,
• Incorporated new MacAmp MPEG playback code which now handles MPEG Layer II,
• Slipping around in an MPEG Layer III file now no longer resets the volume to 100%, removed a slight glitch with some low bit-rate MPEG Layer III files and improved disk reading for smoother playback,
• Fixed a glitch when jumping around in a MPEG Layer I file which would result in some odd noise,
• Fixed a problem playing sounds that are less than 100 ms long and MPEG Layer I files less than 64K.
2.4.2, November 23, 1997.
• Added a sound volume slider to the Controls palette,
• Added Export From QuickTime menu option,
• Added a play position AppleScript parameter,
• The Add… menu option now presents a new multiple get files dialog to add files to a Play List,
• The send oms data AppleScript command now uses the selected device,
• The Get Info and Status windows now display the stereo mode for MPEG files,
• Added a new Auto Play option which will automatically play a Play List when it is opened,
• Added a new icon to trick Netscape into selecting a semi-valid file type as its default,
• Now supports playback of some partially corrupt MIDI files,
• DOSifying file names is now a little smarter with file names with non-standard suffixes,
• Fixed an initialization problem when playing MIDI files via QuickTime,
• Get Info on MPEG files now works properly while playing MPEG files,
• Converting MPEG Layer III files no longer ignores the last little bit,
• Enabled conversion of MPEG Layer II and Layer III sounds on a 680x0 Macintosh with an FPU,
• Fixed a problem converting short MPEG Layer II and Layer III files,
• Added limited parsing of the id3 text information standard for MP3 files to display the song name,
• The default base note for System 7 sound files is now 60 (middle C) which may fix problems using SoundApp-generated sounds in HyperCard,
• Fixed a problem sending SysEx messages when playing MIDI files via OMS,
• Fixed a problem playing truncated AIFF files,
• Fixed a problem with getting a “File Not Found” error while converting files,
• Fixed a problem playing stereo 8SVX files using the AppleScript start at parameter,
• Fixed a problem deleting files from a sorted Play List,
• Better compatibility with SWA files, especially version 6.0 files,
• Enabled drag-scrolling in the Help window,
• Upgraded Amp MP2 and MP3 engine to 0.7.6.
2.4.3, December 15, 1997.
• MPEG Layer I and Layer II decoding has been rewritten for better compatibility with joint stereo files, although MPEG-2 Layer II is not supported at this time,
• MPEG conversion on 680x0 Macs now works without FPUs and can convert all layers,
• Fixed a cosmetic problem while changing the selection in a Play List via AppleScript with SoundApp in the background,
• Playing MOD files using the ZSS driver will now obey the “Stereo Mode” preference,
• Enabled playback of MPEG audio QuickTime files,
• Upgraded to CodeWarrior Professional 2.
2.4.4, December 16, 1997.
• Oops, fixed the volume slider which wouldn’t move due to changes in the control class of PowerPlant in CW Pro 2.