A Freeware MacOS sound player and batch conversion utility.
Release Notes
November 13, 2000
What Is It?
Ever download a sound file from the Internet and not know what to do with it? Want to create a sound file for your WWW site or to give to your PC friend? SoundApp is the solution you have been looking for!
SoundApp can play and convert sound files from a variety of computer platforms and in many different formats. It can be used with WWW browsers to play sounds as SoundApp supports many more formats than any browser or other sound players.
SoundApp can play and convert from the following sound formats:
Ñ SoundCap (including Huffman-compressed) and Studio Session Instruments
Ñ SoundEdit (including stereo, MACE-3 and MACE-6),
Ñ AIFF and AIFF-C (8-, 16-, 24- and 32-bit, MACE-3, MACE-6, IMA 4:1, ╡-law and QuickTime codecs),
Ñ System 7 sound and 'snd ' resource (including MACE-3, MACE-6, IMA 4:1 and ╡-law),
Ñ QuickTime MooV (soundtracks only, including MIDI movies),
Ñ Sun Audio .au and NeXT .snd (including ╡-law, a-law, 8-, 16-, 24- and 32-bit linear, 32- and 64-bit floating point, G.721 ADPCM and G.723 ADPCM),
Ñ Windows WAVE (including GSM-, IMA- and MS ADPCM-compressed, ╡-law and a-law, 8-, 16- and 32-bit linear),
Ñ MPEG audio (layers I, II and III, requires a PowerPC processor for playback),
Ñ Iomega RecordIt,
Ñ CD audio,
Ñ Sound Blaster VOC,
Ñ Atari AVR (including stereo and 8- and 16-bit),
Ñ Many varieties of MODs, ScreamTracker 3 (S3M), Multitracker (MTM),
Ñ Impulse Tracker (IT) (requires a PowerPC processor),
Ñ MIDI (type 0, 1 and 2, including GS and XG; playback only),
Ñ Amiga IFF/8SVX (including stereo and compressed),
Ñ Sound Designer and Sound Designer II (including split stereo),
Ñ IRCAM (8- and 16-bit linear and 32-bit floating point), and
Ñ Ensoniq PARIS,
Ñ Psion Series 3 and EPOC 32 (Psion Series 5) sounds.
Don╒t know what those are? SoundApp does and will play them without you having to know!
What Does It Need?
SoundApp requires at least System 7.0 and Sound Manager 3.1 or greater (part of System 7.5.3). In addition, QuickTime features require QuickTime 2.0 or greater; however, QuickTime 4.0 or greater is recommended. Playback of MIDI files using GS instruments with QuickTime requires QuickTime 3.0 or later. If you wish to play MIDI files using an external MIDI synthesizer, then Opcode Systems╒ Open Music System (OMS) MIDI driver version 2.1 or greater is required.
What Else Does It Do?
In addition to playing, it can convert sound files to the following formats:
Ñ System 7 sound and sound suitcase (linear, ╡-law, MACE-3, MACE-6 and IMA encodings),
Ñ AIFF (linear, ╡-law, MACE-3, MACE-6 and IMA encodings including split stereo),
Ñ WAVE (linear, ╡-law, a-law and IMA encodings),
Ñ Sun Audio and NeXT (linear, ╡-law and a-law encodings),
Ñ Sound Designer II (including split stereo),
Ñ QuickTime (linear, ╡-law, MACE-3, MACE-6 and IMA encodings),
Ñ Psion Series 3,
Ñ EPOC 32 (Psion Series 5) and
Ñ PARIS formats.
It also allows sample rate conversion, translation between mono and stereo and changing the bit-depth of samples. You can also group a set of conversion parameters and select them all at once from a menu. SoundApp comes with a setting to convert to the popular ╥.au╙ format used on the WWW.
SoundApp offers Play Lists which allow you to group a set of sounds together for playback or batch processing. Play Lists can be played in random order using the shuffle mode and/or can be set to repeat. Using the Get Info window, you can learn lots of technical information about a sound file.
SoundApp has extensive AppleScript support to allow you to use SoundApp as part of a custom solution. A feature only available to AppleScripters is the ability to play or convert portions of a sound file by defining start and end points. For more information on SoundApp╒s AppleScript support, see the AppleScript topic in the Help window.
Playback is done smoothly in the background and you can pause and stop playback. By clicking in or dragging the progress bar, you can jump around in a sound file to skip over boring parts or listen to a portion again. SoundApp can also play MIDI files to your external OMS-compatible synthesizer or via QuickTime╒s Musical Instrument facility.
How Do I Use It?
Launch SoundApp by double-clicking on it in the Finder. Then, select the SoundApp Help menu item from the Help menu and read the documentation that is displayed. The Help window has multiple topics which you can view by selecting them from the pop-up menu. You will also find extensive balloon help available throughout the application.
What╒s It Cost To Use It?
Nothing! See below for distribution restrictions.
Translations
SoundApp is now available in the following translated versions:
Ñ Japanese translation by Naotaka Morimoto at <http://www.naotaka.com/SoundApp/>,
Ñ French translation by Philippe Bonnaure at <http://www.bonnaure.com/>,
Ñ Dutch (Nederlands) translation by Roan Vercammen at <http://www.soundappnl.cjb.net/>,
Ñ Italian translation by Michele Zangrossi at <http://audiotime.com/soundapp/>, and
Ñ German translation by Shane Weber at <http://www.GeoCities.com/xhelmboyx/soundapp/>.
What╒s New?
The following is a list of changes for this version:
2.7.3, November 13, 2000.
Ñ Released both PPC and 68K versions,
Ñ Fixed a problem converting MP3s to QuickTime movies,
Ñ Fixed a problem that would cause SoundApp to crash when closing the parent play list of a QuickTime file currently being played.
2.7.2, August 15, 2000.
Ñ Forgot to remove a bit of testing code that disabled the CDDB preferences,
Ñ Increased the memory allocated to SoundApp to allow it to handle very large play lists.
2.7.1, August 14, 2000.
Ñ Fixed another problem with very long ID3 tags (e.g., pictures) and added support for Unicode ID3 tags,
Ñ Fixed an elusive bug that could cause a crash when stopping playback,
Ñ Fixed a problem with the CDDB host selector dialog not displaying any hosts,
Ñ Fixed a slight rounding error when calculating the volume at 100% that could result in some clipping,
Ñ Fixed a crash when selecting Cancel from the CDDB host selector,
Ñ SoundApp can now be used without Open Transport (though CDDB features will be disabled),
Ñ The progress bar will now reset when looping a single MOD file using the ZSS driver,
Ñ Fixed a bug that caused SoundApp to hang when stopping or jumping around while playing files due to a compiler bug,
Ñ Fixed a problem that produced corrupted WAVE files due to another compiler bug.
2.7, May 24, 2000.
Ñ Added conversion options to extract the left or right channels only,
Ñ Added split-stereo output for conversion,
Ñ Added audio CD playback and conversion (audio track importing),
Ñ Added preliminary support for Nomad II voice files with random access capability,
Ñ Added support for the rest of the RecordIt file formats,
Ñ Added support for stereo and 16-bit VOC files and removed clicking between chunks,
Ñ Added support for 12-bit samples in AIFF files,
Ñ Added a ╥Sort by Path╙ option for Play Lists,
Ñ Added a ╥Show Status Window╙ menu item and added a close box to the Status Window,
Ñ Added an ╥Auto Play Drag-Created Play Lists╙ option to the General preferences pane,
Ñ Added a ╥Use Large Buffers╙ option to the Convert preferences pane,
Ñ Added ╥Pause After Current File╙ to the Controls palette,
Ñ Changed the format of Play Lists to allow missing files to still be displayed in the list and then later re-linked to a different file,
Ñ The name of an item in a Play List can be changed via the Info window,
Ñ Canceling a server mount operation when loading a Play List will now stop loading the remainder of the list,
Ñ Changed the playback volume to be non-linear and increased maximum value to 200%,
Ñ Added the ╥looping╙ parameter to the ╥play╙ AppleScript verb,
Ñ Added ╥filename╙ and ╥pathname╙ to the AppleScript ╥information record╙,
Ñ Added ╥time╙, ╥elapsed time╙, and ╥remaining time╙ to the AppleScript ╥current file record╙,
Ñ Dragging a group of files into a Play List or onto SoundApp╒s icon will now just add one of the files in a split stereo-pair,
Ñ Added support for looping information in Akai WAVE files and fixed a problem looping a single file with the loop point in the middle,
Ñ Improved playback performance under Mac OS 8.x during periods of high disk activity (e.g., launching applications),
Ñ Playback of G.72x files now have a slider in the Status window,
Ñ Fixed a problem converting some QDesign audio movies that would result in a periodic stutter,
Ñ Fixed a problem calculating the temporal length of and doing random access in VBR MP3 files encoded by LAME and N2MP3,
Ñ Fixed a problem converting from an AIFF file using a QuickTime codec to IMA or ╡-law,
Ñ Fixed another problem with MPEG playback under high CPU/disk activity conditions,
Ñ Fixed some conversion problems with some System sound files,
Ñ Fixed a problem that prevented random access jumping in QDesign AIFF files,
Ñ Converted files will now be placed in the correct directory if using the ╥Prompt For Existing Folder╙ option and Navigation Services,
Ñ Script file names with characters normally interpreted as meta-characters by the Menu Manager will now no longer be interpreted when adding items to the Script menu,
Ñ The Conversion Parameters dialog will only appear once when dragging a folder onto SoundApp╒s icon,
Ñ Fixed a small audible glitch when converting to IMA on 680x0 Macs,
Ñ Improved ID3 tag recognition and fixed a crashing problem reading some files with ID3v2 tags.
Legalese
SoundApp is Freeware. You may use it at no cost. However, SoundApp is still Copyright ⌐ 1993-2000 by Norman Franke. All rights reserved. SoundApp may not be included in any for-profit software compilation or bundled with any other for-profit package, except with prior written consent from the author, Norman Franke. SoundApp may be distributed freely on on-line services and by users groups, except where noted above, provided it is distributed unmodified.
You expressly acknowledge and agree that use of SoundApp is at your exclusive risk. SoundApp, any related files and documentation are provided ╥AS IS╙ and without any warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
If you wish to include SoundApp on a CD-ROM as part of a freeware/shareware collection, Web browser or book, I ask that you send me a complimentary copy of the product to the address in the Notes topic of this window. Also, if you are interested in licensing all or part of the SoundApp playback and conversion routines see the ╥Licensing╙ section of the Notes topic.
