Redwood City, CA Ð NeXT has again taken a leadership role in digital audio with the release of the NeXTSTEP 3.0 version of the Sound Kit. Among the highlights of the new release is a new sound-compression format and on-the-fly mixing of multiple sounds.
"You could be playing some music and have your printer 'out-of-paper' message come through," said Mike Minnick, a NeXT software engineer. Other possible applications include audio teleconferencing and games.
On-the-fly mixing will also allow sound-editing packages like Metaresearch's SoundWorks 3.0 to become more interactive. "You can hear the results of your changes to the mix in real time," said Andy Laird, author of the program.
Audio Transform Coding, or ATC, allows for compression ratios up to 8-to-1, with some loss of information. It works by stripping out frequencies that humans can't hear, either because they are masked by neighboring frequencies or lie below a certain noise threshold. The so-called "lossy" compression formula is similar in concept to that being used for new recording technologies such as DCC and mini-disk, which have received mixed reviews from audio purists because they don't reproduce the entire audio spectrum, as a CD does.
"It's not quite hi-fi but the benefit is you can compress or expand the duration of a track without affecting the pitch," said Gordon Van Huizen of Metrosoft, author of the multitrack audio recorder, MetroTracks.
According to Laird, ATC allows you to work with sound in its compressed state, speeding up the editing process.
The new Sound Kit offers improved compatibility with the Music Kit, allowing users the chance to play sound files and perform DSP synthesis at the same time, something that wasn't possible with previous versions. A more efficient MIDI driver with support for MIDI Time Code, an industry-standard method of synchronizing musical performances with video, is also included.