SPUTTER Sound System v1.10 changes: SPUT Player Utility changes: . Added support for the Sound Blaster DAC port in both direct and DMA modes. This means you can play ANY file format that SPUT supports on a Sound Blaster card in either direct or DMA mode. It also means that SPUT can now handle all the Creative Labs VOC file formats. . Added /SH switch to shell to DOS while playing files on the Sound Blaster in DMA mode. . Added optional SPUTARG environment variable to setup permanent switches for SPUT. Particularily useful for specifying Sound Blaster port and interrupt number (ie: SPUTARG=/p220s/ir7). . Changed /D switch (dedicated) to /DE. . Changed /Sn switch to /Dn (driver number). . Changed /U switch to /RE (resampling rate). . Fixed sometimes hanging while waiting for screen display to complete before starting playback. SPUTEM Event Monitor changes: . Added type T timer events. You can specify a date/time for the alarm and a repeat, along with an incremental date/time so SPUTEM will compute the next alarm setting. . Added ability to playback .ROL files to the Sound Blaster FM port and AdLib music card when an event occurs. ** Currently, you must have an ROL file player named PLAYROL.EXE in order to use this feature. Support for the .ROL file format will be incorporated into a future release of the SPUT Player Utility. . Added ability to play text to speech synthesis when an event occurs. ** Currently, you must have a text to speech conversion program named TRAN.EXE to use this feature. Support for text to speech synthesis will be incorporated into the next release of the SPUT Player Utility. ** Smooth Talker software by First Byte is also supported. . Added ability to run ANY program or batch file when an event occurs. . Added ability to perform playback in a separate DESQview window, and the /W switch to enable & disable this feature. . Added ability to start the DESQview player window in the background or foreground, and the /G switch to control this feature. . Added ability to initiate playback from the DOS prompt when an event occurs, and /C switch to enable & disable the feature. . Added use of custom fluttering bells to indicate error & retry conditions instead of using the dull old system beep. . Added optional number value to /B switch to set the frequency for playing bells on retries, or disable bells all together. . Added ability to enter multiple switches on the command line. . Added /M switch to allow events to trigger multiple playbacks. . Fixed problem where ansi escape sequence for clear screen was printed on the screen when ANSI.SYS wasn't loaded. . Fixed just about every possible way of crashing the system that existed. . And a bunch of other minor enhancements. SPUTTER File Manager changes: . Added ability to differentiate between digitized sound files for SPUT, text files for TRAN.EXE, and ROL files for PLAYROL, and invoke the correct player program automatically. . Added SPUTTRN environment variable to setup permanent switches for TRAN.EXE. . Changed the way the player tasks are started so it will work in a networking environment. . Setup screen colors instead of just using default colors, which is just white on black if ANSI.SYS not loaded. . Fixed wiping out menu & loosing startup directory on first PLAY command. . Fixed multiple PLAY commands with ARGUMENTS scrolling to the end of the file list and hanging the system. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER Sound System v1.09 changes: SPUT Player Utility changes: . Added /U switch to indicate new playback rate to use while rewriting the file with the /W switch. I'm really excited about this new feature. Now virtually ANY sound file can be played on ANY speed machine. If a file plays too slowly, it means that the playback rate is too high for the machine to handle. Resampling the file with the /U switch will allow you to lower the playback rate to something that your machine can handle more easily. . Added support for Sound Blaster .VOC 8-bit PCM format files. . Added optional values 1 and 2 to /Q switch, to set desired level of quiet. /Q or /Q1 disables all output, /Q2 will print error messages only. . Fixed incorrect time calculation for non 8-bit file formats. . Added trouble shooting section to documentation for SPUT. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER Sound System v1.08 changes: Also, read CUSTOM.TXT for new reduced rates on custom digitized sound files. SPUT Player Utility changes: . Added code to adjust system time of day after playback completed. . Added format 21 for Digicorder 1-bit reverse CVSD format. . Added format 31 for Voice Toolkit .VOI 1-bit format. . Added /A switch to apply amplitude variations to sound files. This actually increases the volume of sound files. . Added /D switch for dedicated sound in a DESQview window. By default, background tasks will now continue to run. . Added /S switch to select an internal speaker driver. Four different methods of driving the internal speaker are available. Each is appropriate in a different situation. . Changed abort key from any key to the ESCAPE key only. This allows aborting playback without disturbing type-ahead. . Removed /X switch. This has functionally been replaced by the /S4 switch which uses the 8255 chip to drive the speaker. . Numbered all error messages so that an error-number can be returned to SPUTTER File Manager and SPUTEM Event Monitor. . Changed all SPUT console output from INT21 to INT10 calls. This prevents console output from crashing the system when called from the Event Monitor SPUTEM with /Q disabled. . Fixed crashing system when file was truncated because of insufficient memory. Too much of the file was being read. . Fixed playback to internal speaker causing DESQview to crash. This was caused by the interrupt method speaker driver (/S3). Three more speaker drivers are now available when in DESQview. . Fixed playback to internal speaker crashing slow systems. This was caused by the interrupt method speaker driver. Three other speaker drivers are now available for slower systems. . Fixed "divide overflow" when rates >238 were selected. Now all rates 1-255 are handled correctly. SPUTEM Event Monitor changes: . Added more specific error messages for definition file errors. . Added trigger & error counter fields to event table. . Added /S switch to display event table summary. . Added /I switch to reinitialize event table & counters. . Added /R switch to enable event playback retry. . Added code to catch remaining bell events via INT10 & INT29. . There were many different causes of system crashes in v1.07, that either hung the system or printed "divide overflow". Changes made to eliminate these problems were as follows: - Added code to check available memory before asking DOS to run the Player Utility SPUT. There appears to be a bug in the way DOS handles the case of insufficient memory. The first failed attempt returns an error code properly, but the second attempt hangs the system. - Rewrote the INT08 and INT21 interrupt handlers. - Added check for disk-I/O active before attempting playback. - Added check for when called from DOS so we don't reenter. - Switch to our own internal stack instead of using callers. - Save & restore DOS extended error information. - Save & restore PSP & DTA for current task before playback. - Changed all SPUTEM console output from INT21 to INT10 calls. SPUTTER File Manager changes: . Fixed DELETE prompt overwriting marked file count & menu box. . Added code to display error code from executed programs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- SPUTTER Sound System v1.07 changes: . It's here!! A new memory resident utility called SPUTEM (SPUT Event Monitor) to allow you to attach sound files to events on your PC. You can define which events you want to attach sound files to and what sound files should be played when the event occurs. The definitions are made in an ascii file. Events supported in this release are Program-execute, File Open (read-only), File Create, File Rename, File Delete, Beep, and a special event type to attach sound files to any INT13 or INT21 function. SPUT Playback UTility Changes: . Added /C switch for continous play. Most useful when trying to hear the sound quality of short sound clips. . Fixed incorrect upper case hexadecimal command line parsing. SPUTTER File Manager Changes: . Added VIEW function to view files in ascii hex mode. . Added display of Bytes-used at bottom of screen. . Changed MARK-ALL function from ^A key to ^K key. . Added ^A key for PLAY-ARGS function. . Added ^Z key for SORT-SIZE function. . Rearranged menu to group all sound related functions together. . Fixed GREY+ and GREY- keys not working properly. . Fixed file information messed up on screen after renaming a file. . Fixed wiping out menu & exiting to root instead of starting directory, the first time it was run. . Fixed ^P prompting for arguments when it shouldn't. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER v1.06 changes: . Added a new Point-and-Play full-screen interface with complete file management capabillities. From the File Manager, files can be played, viewed in waveform, copied, renamed, moved and deleted. The directory can be viewed in name, extension, size or date order. The new File Manager module is named SPUTTER. . Added a /I switch to SPUT, to display file information only without actually playing the file. . Added code to SPUT to pickup the playback rate from the header record of Covox .VMF format files. . Added code to SPUT to recognize ? on the command line as a plea for help, and print the help screen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER v1.05 changes: . Added random file selection capability using wildcards within filename. I added this because I got tired of hearing the same sounds every morning as my system booted up, and didn't feel like constantly changing the batch files either. Now my batch files just say "SPUT *.*/q" and I hear a different file each time. . Check for the case of the length of the sound data in the header record being incorrect. This only happens when the file has somehow been truncated, but caused SPUTTER to play beyond it's allocated memory. Now a warning message will be printed. . More documentation has been written, and a section for sources of sound files has been added. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER v1.04 changes: . Added support for Covox 1-bit ADPCM format files and the /F01 and /F81 switches. . Added support for Covox 2-bit ADPCM format files and the /F02 and /F82 switches. . Added support for Covox 3-bit ADPCM format files and the /F03 and /F83 switches. . Added support for Covox 4-bit ADPCM format files and the /F04 and /F84 switches. . Pickup playback speed and file format from the header record of Amiga 8SVX format files. . Identify Amiga/Sonix files and pickup playback speed from the header record. . When a key is struck during playback, only flush a single keystroke, instead of the entire keyboard buffer. . Fixed Internal Speaker playback routine sometimes not detecting end of file properly. . Fixed time calculation of encoded files still not correct. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER v1.03 changes: . Added support for 1-bit CVSD format files used by IBM. . Added /F11 switch for CVSD format files. . Added /W switch to redirect output to a disk file. . Added /H switch for high-pass filtering (Differentiator) . Added /L switch for low-pass filtering (Integrator) . Fixed replaying first part of buffer for files over 65535 bytes. (This problem was accidently re-introduced in v1.02) . Fixed printing of Macintosh title hanging system. (This problem was accidently introduced in v1.02) . Fixed Macintosh title printing even with /Q switch. . Fixed calculation of playback time for compressed files. . Removed Missed Sample messages. This was for debugging only, and was inadvertently left in. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER v1.02 changes: . Added support for silence encoding. This is analagous to repeat character encoding known as RLE and can save a considerable amount of disk space without any noticable difference in sound quality. A soon to be released utility will allow you to rewrite any sound file with silence encoding. DEMO.V8S is an example of a silence encoded file. You can play it back with no switches for normal playback, or you can use the /F8 switch to hear just the non-silent passages. The little cracks you'll hear with the /F8 switch are the places where silence has been compressed into just a few bytes. . Added /F88 switch to support 8-bit PCM silence encoded files. . Added /N switch to generate noise inplace of dead silence when playing files with silence encoding. . Added display of total bytes output, and number of silence groups processed. . Added SPUTPOR environment variable to change the default output port without having to enter it on the command line. . Added SPUTDIR environment variable to define a default directory for sound files. . Added /Q switch to enable quiet mode, and not print any text on the screen. . Rewrote keyboard handling to be safer and more consistent. . Implemented a temporary solution for the problem of hanging when run under DESQview. It is now safe to run SPUTTER in DESQview. . Set limits on oversampling to avoid system lock-ups. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPUTTER v1.01 Enhancements: . Added /P switch to allow selection of output device. (Internal Speaker, SpeechThing, VoiceMaster, SoundMaster) . Added /T switch to invoke treble enhancement. . Added /X switch to force SPUTTER to drive the Internal speaker using the DAC routine or vice-versa. This just produces another variation of playback. . Changed /F values to allow for expansion of support for additional file formats (1->8 2->28 3->38). . Just print a warning if file format is unrecognized, and continue with playback anyway. . Changed Macintosh oversample default from 2 to 1 just for consistency. SPUTTER v1.01 Bug Fixes: . Fixed the playback time calculation when oversampling is used. . Fixed incorrect parsing of hex port addresses. . Fixed problem of reading too few bytes into memory for files larger than 65535 bytes. This caused garbage to play in place of the end of the file. . Fixed problem of playing files larger than 65535 bytes that caused SPUTTER to play beyond the end of the buffer and then hang the system. . Fixed problem of overflowing buffer when reading a file into a buffer that's been truncated because of insufficient memory. SPUTTER v1.01 Known Bugs: Yes there really are two known bugs. The only reason I'm releasing this version of SPUTTER with 2 known problems, is that there are users waiting for fixes provided by this release. Both bugs are easily avoidable, but not so easily solvable. Both problems should be resolved in subsequent releases of SPUTTER. Problem 1: SPUTTER hangs the system when run in DESQview. So don't run it in DESQview until this problem is fixed. Problem 2: When too high a rate or oversample value is selected the system hangs. The limit seems to be around 220 samples per second on a 20mhz PC, but may vary on other systems depending on CPU speed. To help work around this for now, SPUTTER limits playback rate to 215 samples-per-second.