---------------------------------------------------------------------
  SND Player v1.00, January 5, 1999
  (C) 1997-1999 Assemsoft & Dead Hackers Society
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- Programming:
  Odd Skancke <ozk@atari.org>

- Interface, this document & website:
  Anders Eriksson <ae@atari.org>

- Latest version can be found at:
  http://sndplayer.atari.org


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  What is SND Player?
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  Over the 18 months SND Player v0.3b  has been out, most people have
  taken it for a samplesound player due to it's name. However, that's
  not the case at all. 
 
  Apart from a sampleformat named 'snd', the coding guru Jochen Knaus
  of Aura has created a unified way of playing many chipsound formats
  very easily.  He named  this format 'snd'  as well,  and it's those 
  files SND Player plays.
 
  What's "chipsound" then? Well, it's those lovely sounds coming from
  the analoge  sound processor in  our  Ataris. Many  people into the 
  'demo scene' or old-time users since the eightbit years adore these
  kind of songs.  Much due to the art of creating sounds that are way
  ahead of what the soundchip originally was designed for. 
  
  Making music  for the YM- chip (or SID  and similar chips  for that
  matter) is  not  only a matter  of hitting the  right notes  in the
  musiceditor.  No, creating chipmusic that becomes classic, you have
  to know how the soundchip work, with different waveforms and so on.
  Many of the old- time musicans  (and still a few  among them exist, 
  hello  Tao of Cream!)  wrote  their  own music-editors  and  replay 
  routines.  Without these  genious persons,  we would still have the
  "blipp blopp" sounds that Atari provided us with  (Sound machine...
  arrrgh!).
 
  However, a large part of todays computer society doesn't understand
  the geniality of chipmusic. They call it trash and get mad that SND
  Player wasn't anohter mpeg audio player.  Well, forget these boring
  persons, and get listening! 
  
  Hail Hippel, Huelsbeck, Big Alec and the rest!
 
 
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  Functions in SND Player:
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  First of all,  SND Player is totally  rewritten since v 0.3b. Not a 
  thing is still there.  Even Jochen Knaus SND Format has changed and
  those parts have been replaced.	
 
  SND Player  features the  full (big!)  GEM library  from Assemsoft,
  allowing  total compatibility  over all TOSes  and colourmodes. You 
  even get  the colouricons in TOS 1.xx!  If you have a 68000 machine
  with graphics card,  the init might be a  bit long; but you have to
  live with that.
 
  SND Player supports drag & drop,  va/av start messages, and a hide-
  window thing.  It runs perfectly in  multitasking enviornments, and 
  enters "MiNT Domain" for full compatibility with long filenames and
  quoted filenames (read: spaces in filenames).
 
  However, here  ends the similarities  with other GEM- applications,
  SND Player looks totally different.  It has a 100% customized look.
  Why?  Well, to be  honest - isn't it  fun  with some  refreshments?
  At least, that's how  we see it.  It is still a  perfectly behaving
  application in multitasking, just standing out a bit with the looks
  of it! You can even load the .rsc file into your fave rsceditor and
  make a new "skin" for it which is so popoular with those ampplayers 
  (x11amp, winamp, macamp...).
 
  Naturally,  SND Player also  works as ACC  under singletos and take
  filenames from commandline.
 
  The  buttons  in the  main / about windows  does  hardly  need  any
  explanation, except for the plus and minus buttons; some snd- files
  have multiple songs in them.  With those buttons you  can step thru
  them (try the hippel enchanted lands levels file for example).
 

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  Problems:
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  Yeah... well of course there is a backside as well.  Some songs are
  really  not  suited  for  playing in  multitasking,  or  with  030+ 
  machines at all.  We have tried to filter out the songs which seems
  to fail,  and those  that seems  to work.  Beware,  if you  are not 
  certain  that a  songfile  works,  make sure  that you  have  saved 
  eventual work.s
 
  Extra sad is that all of TAO/Cream songs fail to run. Floppy- drive
  gets mad and  all freezes.  TAO is one of the  absolute best Atari-
  musicans,  and if you are interested  to hear his songs anyway,  we
  suggest that you  download his "Steps" musicdemo,  it was a classic 
  before relased!
 

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  Warrany:
---------------------------------------------------------------------

  None exists. You are using SND Player completely at your own risk.


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  Distribution:
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  SND Player is freeware. It can be copied freely, on CD-Roms, Cover-
  disks or whatever. Just credit us, alright?
 

end of file 