Click Record. In the next dialog box, type a number for the duration of the sound you want, in seconds. Click Record, and play, speak, or sing away! Click OK when you’re done recording.
To highlight only a portion of the new sound (for cutting, copying, or playing, for example), drag across its graph.
Two useful tricks: To hear your sound from anyplace other than the beginning, Option-click in the display. And to hear multiple channels simultaneously (sing duets with yourself!), Shift-click the Play button.
To save your finished sound as a double-clickable System 7 sound, just choose the Save command. Drop the resulting sound icon onto your System folder to make it available as an “error beep” in your Sound control panel.
Hints
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- See the file SoundBuilder Changes for a list of enhancements made to version 2.0.3
- If for some reason you are prompted for a serial number, enter the string "none required". This string is the default used for new preference files. Serial numbers assigned for version 1.0 are also recognized as valid numbers and it is recommended that you retain those numbers as future versions of SoundBuilder, if any, are not guaranteed to recognize the "none required" string as valid. No new serial numbers will be given out at this time.
- All sounds and buffers are stored in RAM. Therefore, the more memory allocated to SoundBuilder, the better. If you run low on memory when trying to save a file (error number -108), try saving the file uncompressed in a format other than SND. This will require the least amount of RAM.
- The open command only displays SND and SoundBuilder files by default. Shift-open (holding the shift button down while choosing open) will cause all files to be displayed. SoundBuilder uses the following file types. The application specific types are NOT registered with Apple. This has the potential to confuse the operating system.
Files not of type KASF, KAWV, KAVC, snd , aiff, or aifc will be opened as resource files when opened via the shift-open command.
- Files can also be opened via drag and drop.
- Use the Import command to open a wave, voc, aiff, or aifc file that is not of the corresponding file type listed above.
- The Import => Any File command will read a file's data fork as a sampled sound. Holding the shift button down while choosing this command will read the resource fork. The sample rate may need adjusting.
- SoundBuilder automatically chooses whether a file is of type aiff or aifc when the Export => AIFF command has been chosen. This is based on the type of sound and compression method.
- Export => AIFF will compress sounds as indicated in the editing window. All other export options ignore the compression setting. Similarly, no Import options except for AIFF files will recognize compressed formats.
- Stereo VOC files can be imported, but not exported. SoundBuilder will generate a file for stereo VOC files, but the file won't play on an IBM-PC VOC player. This file can be successfully imported back into SoundBuilder, however. I don't currently have enough information on the VOC format to fix this bug.
- Use the Prev and Next commands to move among sounds within a file. If you have the last sound loaded and the Next command is chosen, a blank window will be opened. This will allow the addition of more sounds to the file.
- Hold the option button down while clicking on a sound-editing window to set a marker at the designated position.
- Hold the option button down while clicking on the clipboard window to play the contents of the clipboard.
- The play command will only play the active channel for a stereo sound (i.e. the channel which was last clicked on). Hold the shift button down while choosing the play command to play both channels as a stereo sound.
- The Add Channel command will add a right channel to a mono sound. The Remove Channel command will delete the channel which is currently active.
- An option to "Filter Start of Recording" can be turned on through the Preferences dialog box. If turned on, the first 10 bytes and any succeeding silence is deleted from new recordings. A very strict definition of silence is used so this may not have much affect. This feature was mainly implemented to automatically remove some garbage that was being inserted by the Mac OS at the begining of recordings. This garbage may produce an annoying "clicking" sound.
File Format
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You probably won't ever need it, but here is SoundBuilder's native file format.
