Digital Audio Processor
-----------------------

For Silicon Graphics (IRIX 5.x, IRIX 6.x), PC (Linux and NetBSD), Alpha
(Linux), Sun (Solaris 2.x)

Copyright (c) 2000 Richard Kent

Preamble
--------

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass
Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Introduction
------------

Welcome to the Digital Audio Processor, otherwise known as DAP. This program
was originally produced as my final year project for a degree in Computer
Science at Heriot-Watt University, near Edinburgh in Scotland. Since then I
have been changing and improving DAP, attempting to make it the best sample
editor and processor available on the UNIX platform. It still has a long way to
go though !! 

The original reason for producing this program was the apallingly basic (but I
suppose functional) "SoundEditor" bundled with IRIX 5.3 which is far too basic
given the advanced nature of the Silicon Graphics audio facilities. 

What is DAP ?
-------------

DAP is a comprehensive audio sample editing and processing suite. DAP
currently supports AIFF, AIFF-C, WAV and RAW audio files, 8 or 16 bit
resolution and 1, 2 or 4 channels of audio data. Note however that compressed
AIFF-C files are not currently supported, only non-compressed AIFF-C files.

The package itself offers comprehensive editing, playback and recording
facilities including full time stretch resampling, manual data editing and a
reasonably complete DSP processing suite. Note however that time stretching
does not currently work on Solaris (still trying to debug !!).

How much does it cost ?
-----------------------

Well out of the goodness of my heart (cue violins) I've given you DAP for free
- that's right for absolutely nothing - including the source code. Yes, this is
uncrippled, unrestricted freeware. However to ensure continuing development on
DAP please feel free to send me some hard earned cash as a donation :) Either
that or just send me a postcard from wherever you happen to be at the time !!

Using DAP with sox
------------------

For compatibility with sox, the popular audio conversion tool, the "Sox
Compatible" preference must be switched on in DAP. Switching this option on
simply tells DAP not to save any textual information when saving AIFF files.
This is necessary as the current version of sox is rather buggy and doesn't
like odd length strings. I'm gonna try and check in a fix to sox but for now if
you have any problems converting using sox switch this option on.

Using DAP with WAVs
-------------------

DAP now has the ability to import and export WAV files. Note that many audio
applications that use WAV files do not correctly support the official chunk
format of WAV files and thus may experiance problems with the files exported
from DAP. If problems are encountered when using WAVs exported from DAP try
switching on the "Basic WAVs" preference. Note that with this option switched
on no textual or loop information is saved in the exported WAV.

Requirements
------------

To run DAP you must have the latest release version of XForms (1.0) installed
on your system. This means that the XForms shared library files (libforms.so*)
must be in your library path. See http://world.std.com/~xforms and
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/xforms/ for further details on XForms.
Note that on my system I found that I needed to manually add /usr/X11R6/lib to
my LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

For Linux, NetBSD and Solaris you will also require the Open Sound System (OSS)
audio drivers to be installed properly. These drivers are normally supplied
with Linux but NetBSD and Solaris users may have to install them manually. The
older VoxWare drivers (upon which the OSS drivers are based) may also work but
are untested. See http://www.opensound.com for further details on OSS.

Compilation and installation
----------------------------

For details on compilation and installation check out the INSTALL file
contained in this directory.

And finally
-----------

Please send me comments and feedback, whether you think the program is good or
a load of cobblers. Bug reports, suggestions, criticisms and general banter are
just as welcomed as are any hard cash donations to entice me to continue
development on DAP (address given later) :)

So that's it, no instruction manual or help file (yet). A fair chunk of the
program is self explanatory, the rest can all be worked out with
experimentation. If there are any features you don't follow then just give me
an email and I'll attempt to explain my thinking !!

Oh, and not all the effects are functional yet. The only effects not working at
the moment are gated reverberation and equalization. I will get around to
finishing these one day. I will....

Enjoy, and hope to hear from you all real soon....

TicH

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                   Name  - Richard Kent (Tich)
                   EMail - richardk@cee.hw.ac.uk
                   WWW   - http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~richardk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
