Awave, Troubleshooting and Frequently Asked Questions, (c) FMJ-Software ============================================================================= Last updated: 960917 Contents: 1) General questions 2) Problems under Windows 3.1 3) Auditioning troubles a) General b) Advanced Gravis UltraSound c) Creative Labs SB AWE32 d) Turtle Beach WaveFront synths ============================================================================= 1) General questions: Q I can't save in .XYZ format even though Awave claim to support it! A Not all formats can store _all_ types of data. Ex: only very few formats support saving whole bank files while most formats (supported by Awave) supports saving single waveforms. What type of data you are trying to save is determined by what kind of 'node' or 'item' in the tree view list you have selected. See 'File Formats' in the program help file and look at the export formats list for info about what formats support what data types. Q I try to load, audition or play this really huge file, but it takes a very, very long time or the program just exits with an out-of-memory message... A Awave is currently limited to working only with files it can fit into memory. To play huge files you may need a huge amount of physical RAM. This is especially true for large MPEG audio files (BTW, the MPEG de- compressor is not very optimized at all so don't even expect a 1/10th of the speed of real time decompressors, e.g. XingSound). Q The AudioPlayer doesn't work. I get no sound, or it sounds really strange.. A Try selecting 'Use Window multimedia services, unbuffered output' in the Options->Program->AudioPlayer property tab. Q Why don't you make a Machintosh version? A With Softwindows 95 you can in fact run Awave on a Power Mac. For a 'native' version, see the next Q. Q Why don't you make a DOS/OS2/Linux/Unix/Amiga/Atari version? A Because I don't have the time or the motivation. If there's enough people interrested interest (read "I'd register if only you'd do an"), I might be persuaded to do a command line version, stripped of the user interface and all editing functions... Q Is there a batch convert function? A Sort of; you can open multiple files (in the standard Windows fashion, hold down Ctrl or Shift while selecting files) and then save all items by using the 'Save all in multiple files...'function on the File menu. This will save all instruments, or, all waveforms, depending on the capabilities of the output format you choose. The items will be saved as files with the name you choose, the last two characters in the filename beeing used as an increasing index. Ex: Myfile00.Wav Q When saving stereo data to a format that only support mono waveforms or when doing an SDS transfer, how do I specify which channel of the stero data should be used? A In theese situation Awave always automatically merges the channels by an 'arithmetic average' algorithm. However, you can use the waveform item->Properties->Editor->Process wizard to specifically convert the data to mono before you save it; there you can choose between 'average of channels', 'left channel only' or 'right channel only' algorithms. Q My synth doesn't support bidirectional or reverse looping, what can I do about wavforms that uses it? A Try: 'Edit->Process all->Comvert loops'. Q How do I unistall Awave and remove all the file type associations? A Run awave, then Options->Program->Uninstall. Or, under Windows 95, you can use the Windows 95 Control Panel's Install/Uninstall feature. Q Where is all the audio processing functions listed in the help file for the Audio precessing wizard? I only see a few of them! A Some of them are only applicable to some sorts of data (like 'convert mono to stereo' is only meaningfull for mono data) while other is only implemented for some data types (like remove silence only works on mono data) and finally, many of the functions requires you to select a range in the waveform first. To do that,in the wavform properties editor tab, press down a mousebutton over the waveform, drag with the mouse and release the button. To unselect all, just click on the waveform again. Q For some synthesizers formats, Awave can only read 'disk images', why can't it read the disks directly? A Because they are not in FAT compatible format and thus are not readable by the OS. This means that it would require some serious lowlevel reprogramming of the floppy disk controller in order to read them.While this is possible under DOS and perhaps under Win3.1, it is far more difficult under Win95, not to speak of under Win NT, requiring (three different) custom ring 0 device drivers (for the three resp. OS's).This is not a project I care to embark upon... There are Shareware/Freeware DOS programs for the resp. synthesizers that you can use to make disk images instead. Q How do I do to 'hear' the loop in the loop point editor? A First enable auditioning. Backin the loop point editor,press the'Apply' button to update the loop point. Then play it on your keyboard! If you don't have an external midi keyboard and are using Awaves 'virtual keyboard' then you'll have to use some other 'virtual keyboard' program since Awave's doesn't work in the property sheet boxes (you need the keyboard for typing in numbers there!). If you don't have one of the supported wavetable cards, you may use Awaves 'Audio Player synth' but beware that, due to interpolation artifacts, the loop point may sound wrong (pops and cracks) if you do not play it at the midi 'root key'. Q I'd like to be able to add a few audio file format conversion functions to my commercial softwares,is it possible to license parts of the Awave code from you? A Yes it is, for more information look at my www page: URL: "http://hem.passagen.se/fmj/awlcpack.html" Q In the waveform advanced properties page, why is the data type controls always 'greyed out' for some file formats (like .WAV) ? A Theese controls are only available for file formats that internally in Awave is handled by a 'generic' waveform data reader. Some file formats has more specialized readers that won't let you change theese things. There's really no reason why you should change theese things in thoose cases; the data type controls is intended for use when reading raw data formats which lack any 'header information'and you may have to manually adjust the data type. Another reason they may be 'greyed' is if you have done any editing or processing on the waveform data.In that case they are greyed to prevent the 'editing' from beeing lost(by rereading the data from disk which is what happens if you change the data type). Q I just get a 'Windows error: 32' message when I try to start Awave! A Look in your Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files to see if'Share.Exe' is beeing loaded. If it is, then remove it. Q I just hangs when I try to read a'raw 32 or 64bit floating point' file A This may happen if it isn't in fact a floating point file, it is a corrupted file, it is not in IEEE format or something like that... Q Why can't it read the Adlib's .ROL format? A Awave can only handle 'wavetable' based audio and instruments, i.e. things based on digital recordings of actual sounds. The adlib (and the .ROL files) uses FM-synthesis which is a 'mathematical formula' for producing sounds and simply isn't compatible with Awave,nor with any of Awave's 'export formats'. Q Why can't I read a .MID file and convert it to a .WAV? A A .MID, or 'midi file' contains the 'score', instructions on how a synthesizer should play a piece of music. Awave only handles 'wavetable' audio (see previous Q) which is a different thing altogether. Of course, I could do a 'software synthesizer' that could 'play' a .mid file and output it as a .WAV file rather than to the speakers.However that would be a lot of work to implement, and I really mean *a lot*, if you want professional quality results. Also it would require a midi instrument library which would increase the size of the Awave package with a couple of megabytes.Besides,it all falls sort of outside what Aweave is intended to be. Q I try to play a .MOD file but I can only hear sound 'snippets', why? A A .Mod file contains basically a bunch of wavetable based instruments (like a bunch of .WAV files) plus one 'score' (like a .MID file). Awave only handles the wavetable instruments (the 'samples') and it is theese you can play. See the previous Q on why the score can't be played.Get a program like 'Mod4Win' if you want to play the 'score'. Q Why can't it read .CDA (i.e. Audio CD's under Windows 95)? A I have not been able to figure out how / if this could be done under Windows 95; nor has anyone else to the best of my knowledge. It is possible to do under DOS/Windows 3.1 though(by calling the MSCDEX driver which isn't used under Windows 95 or Windows NT). Awave has to run under all Windows platforms so I can't do that... There are a few Shareware programs around that should do the trick (they generally run under DOS). Beware that some CD-ROM drives has hardware 'locks' that will prevent them from reading raw data from audio CD's so it still may not work... Q How do I read a file as 'raw audio' data, i.e. how do I override Awave? A If the file in question is 'autodetected' with '100% certaincy' (in the lower right portion of the file open dialog) as a supported file format then you cant.You can however often go 'waveform->properties->advanced' tab and change the data type there. This will not work for some types. If the file type can't be detected at all (0% certaincy)then it will be read as 'raw data' and you will automatically get to this tab when you load the file. If however it is detected with say '33% certaincy' and you get an error message when you try to open the file then you may try to remove the file extension (e.g. turn 'foo.bar' into 'foo') in order to fool Awave into not detecting it at all (0% certaincy) and read it as raw data. Q Why don't you do a French/Deutch/Japanese/whatever language version? A Partly because I do not have the necessary language skills, but mostly because developing and maintaining several different language versions would mean a huge amount of additional work and I believe that 99.99% of the users knowns enough of the english language to use the present version. If anyone would like to translate the help file, then I'd be happy to supply the necessary english source texts. Q Why is the first letter in item names sometimes bogus? A Awave attempts to ensure that all items have unique names(since this is required by several synthesizers), this is often done by 'increasing' the first letter. ============================================================================= 2) Problems under Windows 3.1: Q Program complains about not being able to load COMCTL32.DLL when I try to start it. A You must have a Win32s version that supports the common controls introduced in Windows 95.When this was written,this means Win32s v1.3. Look in the WIN32S.INI file in the ...\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory to determine what version of Win32s you have. If you need an update you can get it from Microsoft, or, you can dowload it from my WWW-page. Q The Midi SDS transfer and/or the auditioning stuff doesn't work. A No. For some strange reason 32bit multimedia callbacks doesn't work on a few Win32s systems, Sorry... Q This automatic file association stuff doesn't seem to work. A No. It is disabled under Win32s because it was designed for Windows 95 and under 3.1 it really clutters up things and doesn't work that well; so you'd probably not want it after all. You can manually associate files in the File Manager if you want to. Q It just hangs when I try to start Awave? A It seems like Win32s isn't compatible with a few systems (say 1%). If this is the case for you, then no other 32bit Win32s programs are working either. Q Why does X happen when I try to do Y? A Don't know, the Win32s libraries seem to be quite buggy on some systems (I guess they are not a very high priority at Microsoft :-)). Q Now I don't dare to install Win32s on my system! A Take it easy, when you only run W31 programs Win32s will lie dormant and not affect your system whatsoever. It is first when you start a 32bit program that Win32s gets loaded into memory. ============================================================================= 3) Auditioning troubles: a) General Q The virtual keyboards key layout is not well suited for my non-querty keyboard (e.g. german keyb. may have X and Y swapped). What can I do? A You can edit the key assignment for the virtual keyboard with the registry editor (regedit.exe) that comes with Windows 95. Open "this_computer->HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->FMJ-Software->Awave" and edit the mtVKeys string. It's just a string of (normally 29, but maximum 36) characters holding the ascii key to assign to a note, begginning with C3 for the first character, then in increasing order. Q Why doesn't the virtual keyboard work in the property sheets? A Because there you may need your keyboard to type in numbers and stuff. Use some 'onscreen' virtual midi keyboard program instead (like the vpiano.exe program that comes with Cakewalk Audio). Q When I have the AudioPlayer in DirectSound mode and have enabled auditioning using the Awave software synth. Now I can't use the audio card in any other program. Qhy? A With this particular setup, Awave keeps the digital audio device open (almost) all the time which prevents other programs from using it. If I don't do it like that, then there would be a 'click' when you start and stop playing a note on the software synth which I think would be worse. You can quickly toggle auditioning on/off using the Options>Auditioning menu item. When it is off, then you can run that other program. b) Advanced Gravis UltraSound Q Auditioning doesn't work on my GUS PnP! A Auditioning on the PnP is not supported at the moment. You can put it in GUS classic emulation mode and use the old GUS windows drivers, but that will also lose you all benefits of the PnP. c) Creative Labs SB AWE32 Q Program complains about not being able to load AWEMAN32.DLL when I try to use auditioning on the SB AWE32 (or comapatible). A You must have this .DLL installed in your WINDOWS or WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.You must also have the very latest drivers that supports the new .SF2 file format. Q I get this message: AWEMAN32::AWE_ERR_DEVICE_DRV_INVALID A You have 'mixed' up driver versions. This happened to some people who had installed the 'beta SF2 drivers' and then an sbw95up.exe package which conatined newer SB16 drivers but in fact older AWE32 drivers. Get and install the very latest sbw95up.exe package. Q After running Awave and using auditioning for the AWE32,I have trouble running a few 16bit programs that uses the AWE32. Why? A This is a bug in the 'beta SF2' drivers. Get the release drivers. Q Where can I find theese .SF2 compatible drivers for the AWE32. A From: "http://www.creaf.com/creative/files/win95/sbw95up.exe" Q When auditioning waveform items, I can only hear anything within a certain keyrange. A It seems like the EMU8000 synthesizer use by the AWE32 can only interpolate within a certain range so if the note is too far off from the Root key, then nothing will sound. d) Turtle Beach WaveFront synths Q Program complains about not being able to load WFGATE.DLL when I try to use auditioning on the Maui/Tropez. A You must have this .DLL installed in your WINDOWS or WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. It is available from Turtle Beach and it comes (and is automatically installed) with the latest versions of their WavePatch and Wave SE softwares. Q When having auditioning enabled, why does it take such a long time to start up? A Not my fault. It's the same thing as when starting TB's WavePatch. Q When I load a bank file (.WFB) in WavePatch to my Tropez or Rio, I get a 'bank not saved for the Tropez/Rio' message. Why? A Awave sets 'Maui' as synth name in the WFB files but that is the only thing that would differ from a Tropez or a Rio bank. Just click ok to load it anyway. =============================================================================