CD sampler - Wave & Armadeus Generator

by Mathew Stone

CD Sampler is a utility which allows you to record audio data directly from audio CDs to your hard drive. You could use it to record sound samples of your favourite pop idols which could then be attached to different Desktop events using NoiseBox, published on the RISC User 7:7 Magazine disc. Or you could use it to record entire tracks, provided you've got enough hard drive space - 10Mb or more per minute. Remember that if you do record anything from CD, copyright laws apply.
      
To run CD Sampler, click on its icon in the RISC User Master menu system or double-click in its icon in the Filer window.

The CD Sampler window contains the following controls:
  
A slider control which allows you to select a track to record or play.

A Play track button which you can select to play the current track or selection.

A Stop button which will stop the CD playing.

Beneath these buttons is a display which shows which sample format is currently selected. CD Sampler allows you to record to disc in either Acorn Armadeus or Microsoft WAV formats. The WAV format is the recommended format to record in as it supports 16-bit stereo sampling. To change the format, click on the Menu button to the right of the format display and select the format.

In the lower half of the CD Sampler window is a group of radio buttons which allow you to specify the quality of the recording. You can choose to record in 8 or 16-bit mono or stereo, at 11025Hz, 22050Hz or 44100Hz. 

To record a track to disc, click on the Save track button at the bottom of the CD Sampler window. A Save as window will open and you should drag the icon to the directory in which you want the recording to be saved. Remember that you will need a lot of free hard drive space for recording samples.

While the sample is being recorded, a window called Sampling... will show the progress of the recording. To abandon the recording, click on the Stop button in the Sampling window. Note that the recording takes place in the background appears to show you how much of the sample is left to save.

If you only want to record part of a track, click Menu over the CD Sampler window. The CD Sampler window contains the following items: Info, Selection..., New CD and Quit. Info and Quit perform their usual functions. New CD should be selected if you change CDs. To record part of a track, click on Selection....

The Set selection window has two sliders in it called Start and End. You can drag these bars to set the start and end recording 'times'. A value of 75 in the Set selection window is equal to 1 second, so if you wanted to record the first second of track five on a CD, you would select track 5 in the CD Sampler window, open the Set selection window, and increment the End value by 75.

CDtoWAV

This command-line program can be used on its own to read audio data from an audio CD. This is for experienced users only, so the following instructions are very brief.

Its command line format is:

CDtoWAV <drive> <track> <outfile> [-bits <8|16>] 
        [-mono] [-stereo] [-rate <1|2|4>] 
        [-armadeus] [-wav] [-selection <start> <end>]

where drive is the CDFS drive number of the CD drive, track is the audio track's index number, and outfile is the name of the file in which the sample will be stored. The optional parameters are:

bits: Allows you to specify whether the sample is saved in 8 or 16 bit format.

mono/stereo: Allows you to choose whether or not a stereo sample is created.

rate: Sets the frequency of sample data to be 44100/rate_val Hz, (1=44100, 2=22050, 4=11025Hz).

armadeus/wav: Selects the file format of the output file.

selection: Allows you to specify the start and end frames for sampling. You must still specify the track number, but this will be ignored.

 Copyright RISC User Magazine 1996
