Sound Samples

This item consists of two sound samples produced by the Oak Recorder 3 sound sampler reviewed in this month's RISC user magazine (page 59). The samples are among those supplied with the Oak Recorder, and are reproduced here with the kind permission of Solent Computer Products, who retain the copyright. The samples are provided in the form of voice modules, which enables you to use them on any RISC OS computer without any additional software or hardware.

Running the Samples item from the RISC User menu, or double-clicking on its icon in a directory viewer, opens a directory containing two voice modules entitled Bong and Squeeks. To install the voices, double-click on their icons in the directory viewer. If you now press F12 to get to the command line and type Modules, you should see the names of the voices you have installed at the bottom of the list, i.e. Bong and Squeeks if you have installed them both. Now you must follow a different procedure depending on the version of RISC OS in your machine. For RISC OS 2, stay with the command line and type Voices. Among the voices listed should be the ones you have installed. To allocate one of the voices to a channel number so that it can be heard, you must now type:
  ChannelVoice <channel> <voicename>
where channel is the required sound channel and voicename is the name of the chosen voice. The default channel, as used by the computer's beep for example, is 1, so if you want to use the Bong sound for the beep you should type:
  ChannelVoice 1 Bong
If you now press the Copy key, you should hear the sound.

For RISC OS 3 you can use the Configure application (for RISC OS 3.1 run it from the Resources:Apps directory, and for RISC OS 3.5 double-click on !Boot). Choose Sound from the Configuration window, and you can then cycle through all the available sounds including the ones you have installed.

If you are accessing the sounds from Basic, you can allocate different voices to different channels. The default number of sound channels used by Basic is 1, but you can change this by using the VOICES keyword (which must not be confused with the operating system's Voices command mentioned above). For example:
  VOICES 2
will enable you to use two sound channels. You can now use the ChannelVoice command to allocate sounds to channels as described above (if you're issuing the command from Basic, don't forget that you must prefix it with the operating system's star character, i.e. *ChannelVoice.

As an example, the following process will enable you to hear both the Bong and Squeeks sounds while retaining your normal beep sound. First install the modules as described. Now if you type the following lines into Basic you should hear both sounds:
  VOICES 3
  *ChannelVoice 2 Bong
  *ChannelVoice 3 Squeeks
  SOUND 2,-15,0,5
  SOUND 3,-15,0,5
Note that we have specified the third parameter (pitch) as zero. This is because these particular sounds have only one inherent pitch, and so the pitch parameter has no relevance.

Copyright  RISC User 1994
