#53

My other piece of CD glitching received wisdom is that the very earliest CD players would doggedly try to play pretty much ANYTHING

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#54

They need to be used as plugins in the SoundEffects / SoundMaker software. I forget which is which but one was shareware the other a paid version. If these links don’t work try the Macintosh Garden or Repository.

http://www.riccisoft.com/soundeffects/

Something else I just remembered, Marcohack:

Using a SoundHack-style interface, sound files may be processed in a number of ways:
• The main feature of the program is a technique for separating an audio signal into something which is called a source or excitation signal and a resonance characteristic or filter. The excitation signal and resonance characteristic are saved to separate files; the excitation signal is saved as a normal audio file (AIFF) and the resonance characteristic is saved as a file format which can only be used by the program itself.
Within the program it is possible to recombine an excitation signal with any resonance characteristic of your choice in order to create ‘hybrid’ sounds which combine distinct properties of two different sounds into one. These ‘hybrid’ like sounds can have a very strong quality of their own.
Furthermore, the program features a series of techniques for processing the resonance characteristic itself, for example a technique which creates a crossfade between two resonance charcateristics.
• An improved technique for convolution which results in a better sound quality in comparison to normal straightforward convolution techniques.
• A technique for stretching sounds in an unfamiliar way which is described by Trevor Wishart in his book Audible Design (Orpheus the Pantomime 1994).
• Several techniques for altering the harmonics of a sound which are also described by Wishart, like stretching the spectrum in an unfamiliar way or thinning the number of harmonics in the spectrum.

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#55

Thank you. Got SoundMaker working and got a hold of Michael Norris, who will kindly provide me with a license for the shareware effects.

MarcoHack sounds very interesting. Developed at the Institute of Sonology in the Hague as well, which is where I currently am.

1 Like
#56

Well, SoundMaker/Effects works, but after opening a 44.1khz 16bit sample of only 2-4 mbs, there’s not enough memory to do any processing at all. It just refuses. I have no other software running during this, so maybe I need to soup up the Powerbook. I can only imagine getting the parts for that must be a pain in the ass these days.

And MarcoHack just hangs at the start up screen and won’t progress beyond that, menus being greyed out and everything.

Edit: MarcoHack opened after a reboot. Stil runs out of memory in no time.

#57

Been messing with Metasynth since the Classic days, I think i used a demo back in the day. I remember finding some instant Aphex Twin sounds in the presets :smiley: In more recent years I actually bought the full software and have basically never used it :frowning: And now am waiting for an update so it works on the latest OSX

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#58

It certainly looks cumbersome, but I wonder if it makes any sense to go down the [OS9 on Raspberry Pi] (https://www.novaspirit.com/2017/04/13/running-mac-os-9-x-raspberry-pi/) route (via Sheepshaver) to get something somehow less bulky but not sure about the processing power.
Edit: comments on that link above are full with troubleshooting requests, so uh, no.

This is also why I think if apps were less GUI driven it would be great to get some elements into Norns.
I really love playing with @speakerdamage’s Uhf (norns).

3 Likes
#59

Re: Michael Norris’ SoundMagic FX and Alberto Ricci’s SoundMaker/Effects software:

Okay. So I heard back from Norris regarding the password-locked shareware effects folder, but he couldn’t remember the password. I tried to put nothing in there, it give me an error, but still unzipped the folder. Not sure if the files are then corrupted or not. Added them to the SoundEffects folder does nothing, unfortunately. So I tried getting SoundMaker instead, but that requires, as pointed out earlier, a serial. Trying to get a serial for that right now, but I can only find an old email address pointing to Ricci, will try it out, but I doubt it’s still in use. The person seems to work for Apple now and is on Twitter, but does not allow messages.

If anyone has a serial for that, please let me know, I’d love to try it out.

#60
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#61

iirc that has always been a problem, even under macos8

#62

I did the same. Got the demo, blew my young mind, but couldn’t afford it back then. By the time I had the means, there were already a host of plugins and other software to keep me distracted. My nostalgia is pulling me back towards it though.

The little you did use it, would you say it was worthwhile? I’m mostly thinking how would it compare to say something like Iris 2 or something similar.

#63

Nice! From Mr. Handmade Electronics. Love that book. Thanks!

#64

The little you did use it, would you say it was worthwhile? I’m mostly thinking how would it compare to say something like Iris 2 or something similar.

I don’t know what Iris 2 even is and basically never use desktop software for music by and large, so I don’t have much to advise sorry. Last time I had a proper go with it, I remember observing that it would be much better for loop-based music + weird techno etc than for the freeform noise I’m generally going for :slight_smile: But now I have more ‘music’ centric sideprojects, and hardware like Norns and DS + ipad apps to mess with sampled/loop material, I think it will be of more use to me when I get it up and running again

1 Like
#65

Iris 2 is purely for sound design. It’s meant to be played with a keyboard. Meta synth can do that but it can also be used to arrange entire songs, so in that way it bears more of a resemblance to Xenakis’s UPIC. A cross platform version of this type synaesthetic synth is ANS.

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#66

Much obliged!

The synaesthetic interface and tools for Iris and Metasynth is something I gel with a lot better than most hardware riffing interfaces. For whatever reason, I work faster in it. I’ve heard of the legendary ANS and that’s a fantastic introduction.

1 Like
#67

Jumping in this thread cause no one has mentioned Nobuyasu Sakonda’ classic granular 2.5 Max patch

Still available for download!

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#68

and it works fine in Max 8. Lovely.

#69

I don’t know the programs in question, and you probably already know this stuff, but I just wanted to make sure that anyone else who might be new to OS9 (or who’ve moved on and are now using those parts of their brain for something more useful) that you have to manually tell a programme how much memory it can use. Select it in the Finder, use Get Info from the file menu (cmd+I) and set the number as high as you can. That might help.

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#70

Yeah! All vanilla objects :fist:

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#71

I certainly didn’t know this. Very helpful.

Re: the Nobuyasu Sakonda patch: My laptop froze when trying to preview the sine audio file in the folder. All this old gear is fun and all, but my main laptop is from 2012, so I’m starting to get anxious.

#72

Today in the OS9 dungeon:
I got SoundMaker to work, nice little software. Emailed Markus Popp about the password for the SoundMagicFX shareware folder, he says he definitely has it somewhere, but of course it’ll take time to rummage through old machines.

4 Likes