John is a graphic artist, designer, and programmer living in St. Louis. His entertainment products include 688 Attack Sub and Seawolf from Electronic Arts and KaleidoSonics from Masque publishing. He can be contacted at 747 Napa Lane, St. Charles, MO 63303.
If any single segment of the multimedia-hardware market has boom-ed over the last two years, it's sound. Spurred on by the success of Creative Labs' SoundBlaster and Windows 3.1, most vendors (hardware and software) are supporting multimedia sound in one way or another. From Turtle Beach's Multisound and Roland's Sound Canvas at the high-end, to the SoundBlaster and MediaVision's Thunderboard at the low-end, users can take their pick, depending on price, features, and performance.
What does all of this activity mean? For the user it means chaos and confusion; for the hardware vendors, bitter rivalries and vicious competition. Still, at the center of this is a fascination with producing music and sound effects inside software, a captivation that goes beyond that of even hardcore audiophiles. People are passionate about music, and thus the intense interest in this burgeoning technology.
The sound industry is currently in a great state of flux. While most of the two million or so installed sound cards use reliable, albeit basic, digital sound and the familiar FM (kazoo-like) synthesis, the current debate involves the type of audio device yet to come. What are the features of the next-generation sound system? Who is going to provide these systems, in what package, with what features, and at what price point? And the $64,000 question is, "Who needs next-generation sound and why?"
As a longtime observer of and participant in this industry, I'll address some of the questions about where we're heading. As for the "why" we're heading in this direction, I'm not entirely clear. Multimedia technology is, to a great extent, a solution without a problem. It's a collection of gee-whiz toys that are fun, but not yet particularly useful. Certainly many aspects of multimedia greatly enhance the enjoyment and appeal of applications software. Maybe that's enough.
What most people accept as a definition of multimedia is what computer-game developers have been trying to provide since Space War first popped up on a university mainframe. Computer games are pushing the envelope and defining the nature of how sound and music are used in an interactive environment. This is evidenced by products such as Virgin/Trilobyte's The 7th Guest. This interactive film on CD-ROM has an original score by the Fat Man (aka George Sanger, an Austin, Texas-based composer of music for computer games like The 7th Guest and Wing Commander; for more on the Fat Man, see my article, "Examining PC Audio," Dr. Dobb's Journal, March 1993) and a fully orchestrated "Red Book," or CD-DA, audio sound track featuring vocals and music by three Grammy winners. Another example is LucasArts' X-Wing, which uses the John Williams score from the Star Wars film as arranged for general MIDI and adapted for interactivity by Michael Land, Peter McConnel, and Clint Bajakian. In addition to The Fat Man, other interactive music composers include Rob Wallace of Wallace Music and Sound (Glendale, Arizona) Donald Griffin of Computer Music Consulting (San Francisco, California) and Bobby Prince (Venice, Florida).
The way in which sound and music are used in an interactive environment is critical to the success of multimedia. As the Fat Man said in the March 1993 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal:
Sound and music can increase throughput, enhance the pleasantness of computer experience, and increase entertainment value of a program.
When should music and sound be used? Not just in games.
Although computers and film are very different media, the relative maturity of the latter makes it useful for developers to look at film as a model for the future of some aspects of computer software. Especially with the importance of multimedia, we can look for examples not only in feature films, but all kinds of video applications: educational and industrial films, training, advertising, and news programs--anything that's been on a film or videotape.
When do they use music and sound? To enhance emotion where it already exists. Some folks like happy faces or other graphics when their computers start up--a happy tune can triple the happy effect.
Sound also manipulates or changes an emotion that might already exist. A child safety multimedia presentation might show a picture of a cute baby near a swimming pool, something like the Jaws theme might keep the user from focusing on the cuteness of the baby. A short, simple title tune might make a database program seem less complex and frightening. In the case of the "bad news" dialog box, consider how much more palatable a warning a pleasant "ping" is than an explosive sound (or a picture of a bomb, for that matter.) With audio, the developer, like a film director is able to control the degree of emotion the user feels.
How should music and sound be used in computer programs? Like graphics, they have to be done right. Simply filling up space with spectacular graphics done by an "artist friend" (everybody's got one) is simply not the way to create an effective program, and the same applies to music. There's as much an art to using music and sound in software as there is in film. And of course it's too big a subject to address here.
Regardless of the extent to which music and sound will be used in multimedia applications, it's the computer-game industry that's on the leading edge, helping define standards and pushing the limits of the technology. I've worked with more than a hundred game publishers to incorporate music and sound in over 200 commercial products. From this vantage point, it seems that "general MIDI" is the best way to deal with interactive music in applications software.
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (or "MIDI") specification is an internationally supported de facto standard that defines a serial interface for connections between music synthesizers, musical instruments, and computers. MIDI, which is maintained by the MIDI Manufacturers Association (Los Angeles, California), is based both on hardware (I/O channels, cables, and the like) and software (encoded messages defining device, pitch, volume, and so forth). According to the specification, the receiving device in a MIDI system interprets the musical data even though the sending device has no way of knowing what the receiver can do. But this can be a problem if the receiving device doesn't have the capability to interpret the data correctly. General MIDI addresses this problem by identifying hardware capabilities in advance.
All general-MIDI devices have 128 sound effects as well as musical instrument and percussion sounds. General-MIDI systems support simultaneous use of 16 MIDI channels with a minimum of 24 notes each, and they have a specified set of musical controllers. This means that with general MIDI, the sender knows what to expect of the receiver. Consequently, a file created with one general-MIDI device is recognizable when played on any other--without losing notes or changing instrumental balance.
General MIDI, a platform-independent subset of MIDI that's being supported by a wide-range of hardware and software vendors, has been endorsed by more than 100 companies, including Microsoft, Apple, IBM, WordPerfect, and the like. The specification is supported on Windows, DOS, Macintosh, Atari, and Amiga. In fact, general MIDI is the authoring format for MIDI required by Windows and MPC. Currently, the MIDI Manufacturers Association is defining general-MIDI file-format standards.
Sound boards that provide general-MIDI support include the MediaVision's Pro AudioStudio 16 and Creative Labs' SoundBlaster 16 with general MIDI wave-sample synthesis daughterboard. Furthermore, general-MIDI chipsets are being developed by a number of companies. I'll touch on some of these boards and chipsets later in this article.
From a practical viewpoint, general MIDI is widely acknowledged as being defined by Roland Corporation's SoundCanvas (SCC55 and SCC1). The Roland SoundCanvas is a wave-table synthesis MIDI device that supports the general-MIDI specification and implements chorus and reverb effects that give the music a rich timbre. (Unlike FM synthesis, which begins with a generic sound wave, wave-table synthesis uses recordings of actual instruments to generate music.) The result is that when a user plays X-Wing with a Roland SoundCanvas, and the familiar John Williams score kicks in, the music is comparable to the actual film score. The Roland SoundCanvas and the general-MIDI specification both support rich symphonic sound. Using wave-table synthesis that incorporates extremely high-resolution, digitally sampled instruments gives you rich string sections, unbelievable piano, and percussion that rocks your socks off.
Another recent development that's bridged the conversion to general MIDI is Yamaha's license of the Fat Man's general-MIDI patch set for the OPL2 and OPL3 FM synthesizers--the same FM synthesizers found in sound cards from Adlib, Creative Labs, MediaVision, and Microsoft. The Fat Man developed a set of tones that allow fully orchestrated general-MIDI music to be played on sound cards such as the SoundBlaster. These tones, available to all developers, are being incorporated into computer games and Windows drivers. Though FM synthesis chips like the OPL2 or OPL3 can never play music that sounds like a wave-table device, their tones convey a general-MIDI score with a high level of musicality.
While it's beyond the scope of this article to go into any detail about the myriad of general-MIDI sound cards crowding the multimedia market, I'll nonetheless briefly mention each. Table 1(a) provides further details. The cream of the crop is the Roland SoundCanvas (SC55 and SCC1). Roland is now shipping the RAP-10, a lower-cost version with digital sound support. Turtle Beach has one of the most advanced multimedia sound cards, Multisound, which not only supports general MIDI, but features a full Proteus 1XR and the highest quality digital sound support. Turtle Beach has a new low-cost general-MIDI synthesizer in development called the "Maui" card. Creative Labs' entry into the general-MIDI market is their WaveBlaster card, a daughterboard for the already-popular SoundBlaster 16.
Sierra Semiconductor has developed a general-MIDI hardware specification called "Aria" which provides general MIDI, digital audio, and SoundBlaster compatibility in a low-cost package. Sierra has also licensed Archer Communications' QSound Virtual Audio tech-
nology for integration into the DSP-based Aria chipsets. QSound Virtual Audio is a multidimensional sound-localization technology that allows sounds to appear to be coming from locations unreferenced to the speakers. Programmers can use QSound to generate "soundscapes" that exceed the physical bounds of stereo-speaker geometry. The Aria chipset consists of a controller, DSP, and memory. It has been adopted by a number of vendors and is used in MidiMaestro from Computer Peripheral and SonicSound from Diamond Computer Systems.
Ensoniq's entry into the general-MIDI market is their SQ1000 card, which also features SoundBlaster-compatibility. The Media FX sound card from Video Seven, also based on Ensoniq's Soundscape chipset, provides 32 voices in four Mbytes of ROM. It records and plays back at 44.1 kHz. Advanced Gravis has added general-MIDI support to their popular Gravis Ultrasound card. Yamaha is developing a chipset called the "OPL4" that's likely to be adopted by a number of vendors soon. The OPL4 features full general-MIDI support, as well as backward compatibility with OPL2 and OPL3 FM synthesis. Yamaha has also released its own sound card, the Hello!Music!, that's based on the chipset. At the heart of the board, which is fully MIDI compatible, is the CBX-T3 Tone Generator that provides 192 instrument sounds, 10 drum kits, and digital reverb. The CBX-T3 can also accept audio input from audio devices such as tape/radio players, CD players, or microphones. Logitech's SoundMan 16, which uses MediaVision's Spectrum chipset, is a latecomer to the 16-bit sound-board arena. The SoundBlaster-compatible card uses the Yamaha OPL-3 synthesizer chip to provide 20-voice MIDI support. As you can see, there are a lot of vendors fighting over a market that has yet to even be defined.
How do you provide general-MIDI support on such a wide array of hardware platforms? Under Windows, the multimedia interface will do a lot of the work, but it's an incomplete solution. With Windows, you can ask to play a MIDI file from disk, with no interactive control and the accompanying disk thrashing, or you can feed it MIDI by hand. In other words, there's a high-level and low-level interface, but no medium-level interface. And that's a problem.
Under DOS there's currently only one complete MIDI solution--the Audio Interface Library from Miles Design. This is a set of medium-level interface libraries for DOS real mode, DOS protected mode, and Windows. These drivers are currently used by about 70 percent of the DOS-based game-development community. Miles Design licenses these MIDI drivers to professional developers and publishers with full source code disclosure and unlimited distribution rights with a license fee. The VESA committee is currently working on a standardized interface specification for wave audio and MIDI music. (For more information, see "The VESA BIOS Extension/Audio Interface" on page 58 of this issue.) Though VESA's efforts are noble, it will be sometime before all of the various vendors agree to and implement the new standard. Once this is achieved, things will definitely improve. For the moment, however, there appear to be just two de facto standards: SoundBlaster compatibility (available through a license from Creative Labs) and general MIDI utilizing the MPU401 uart in "dumb" mode ( la Roland MT32, LAPC, SCC55, RAP-10, and so on).
Adding music and sound to your application software can be both fun and rewarding. It can also be the most frustrating. To make it more rewarding, here's my advice: Make the investment in general MIDI and find a good professional source for sound and music, either from an experienced interactive-media composer, or from quality off-the-shelf music and sound clips.
Activision
P.O. Box 67001
11440 San Vincent Blvd., #310
Los Angeles, CA 90049
310-207-4500
Adlib Corp.
20020 Grande Allee East, #850
Quebec City, PQ
Canada G1R 2J1
418-529-9676
Advanced Gravis
101-3750 N. Fraser Way
Burnaby, BC
Canada V5J 5E9
604-431-5020
Advanced Strategis Corp.
60 Cutter Mill Road, #502
Great Neck, NY 11021
516-482-0088
Artisoft Inc.
691 East River Rd.
Tucson, AZ 85704
800-846-9726
ASC Computer Systems
P.O. Box 566
26401 Harper Ave.
St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
313-882-1133
ATI Technologies Inc.
33 Commerce Valley Dr. East
Thornhill, ON
Canada L3T 7N6
416-882-2600
Covox Inc.
675 Conger St.
Eugene, OR 97402
503-342-1271
Creative Labs Inc.
1901 McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
408-426-6600
Computer Peripherals Inc.
67 Rancho Conejo
Newbury Park, CA 91320
800-854-7600
Diamond Computer Systems
1130 E. Arques Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
408-736-2000
DSP Solutions
2464 Embarcadero Way
Palo Alto, CA 94303
415-494-8086
Ensoniq
155 Great Valley Parkway
Malvern, PA 19355
215-647-3930
The Fat Man
7611 Shoal Creek Blvd.
Austin, TX 78757
512-454-5775
Logitech
6505 Kaiser Dr.
Fremont, CA 94555
510-795-8500
MediaVision
47300 Bayside Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
510-770-8600
Miles Design Inc.
10926 Jollyville, #308
Austin, TX 78759
512-345-2642
Bobby Prince
P.O. Box 1436
Venice, FL 34284
813-484-4969
Roland Corp.
7200 Dominion Circle
Los Angeles, CA 90040-3647
213-685-5141
Computer Music Consulting
Donald S. Griffin
239 Richland Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-285-3852
Sequoia Systems Inc.
400 Nickarson Rd.
Marlboro, MA 01752
800-562-4593
Echo Speech Corp.
6460 Via Real
Carpinteria, CA 93013
805-684-4593
The Audio Solution
P.O. Box 11688
Clayton, MO 63105
314-567-0267
Turtle Beach Systems
52 Grumbacher Road, #6
York, PA 17402
717-767-0200
Voyetra Technologies
333 Fifth Ave.
Pelham, NY 10803
914-738-4500
Wallace Music & Sound Inc.
Rob Wallace, Executive Producer
6210 West Pershing Avenue
Glendale, Arizona 85304-1141
602-979-6201
Walt Disney Software
P.O. Box 290
Buffalo, NY 14207-0290
818-841-3326
Yamaha Corp. of America
Consumer Products Division
P.O. Box 6600
Buena Park, CA 90622-6600
714-522-9240.
Copyright © 1994, Dr. Dobb's Journal