Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Well, the good news is that this isn't too hard. The bad news is that it's a tad
expensive to do digitally, and you should really consider the analog route
unless you want to "get serious."

To get good fidelity, you'd need to get one of the new 12- or 16-bit sampling
cards (Sunrize, I think), which aren't cheap, and use up *gigagobs* of disk
space to "record" the CD- if the software can in fact record that much data
directly to disk. (I'm not that intimate with its capabilities.)

On the other hand, if you know of anyone with a decent 4-track
(See NOTED::COMMUSIC), the practice of editing using two decks (or a deck and a
CD) is fairly common and not difficult if the deck has "punch-in, punch-out"
capability. The latter uses a footswitch and/or preset locations to record over
only a selected portion of a track.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
	Bob

    First the bad news...

    Its possible, but 60-90 second samples of any reasonable quality are 
    going to require *lots* of memory, even for just one. And if you want 
    stereo sound you'll need twice as much. 

    Anyway, this is what you might do...

    You need a sound sampler, software to drive it (usually comes with 
    the sampler) and a music editing package of some sort. Plus plenty
    of time and patience.

    I have the Technosound sampler, and AudiomasterII sampler software 
    (though the Technosound software works, I find AudiomasterII is easier
    to use). I also have MEDV3, an excellent music editor that is freely 
    available (Public Domain). I've an A500 with 1Mb.

    The sampler is just a black box you plug into your parallel port, and 
    hook up to your sound source. Mine costs around 30 British pounds.

    I've sampled stuff from my CD player quite easily. Usually these would
    be 4 or 5 second samples which I'd use as a loop. To get the loop to work
    I use the sample editor to get the sample size precise. I then use MED
    to sequence the various loops. It usually takes a while to get this part
    right because MED timing is hard to tune. Even harder is mixing loops
    from different records, because the samples are usually different lengths,
    and need some 'adjustment'...thats where time and patience comes in.

    The 'quality' of the sample is mostly determined by the sample rate you
    use. The lower the sample rate, the lower the memory usage, but the lower
    the sound quality. 

    hope this helps,

    Dave    

    Thanks for the replies. The sound sampler was the piece I was missing.
    I'd been reading the notes about MIDI but it always seemed like it was
    hooked up to a keyboard or something instead of regular stereo
    equipment. It sounds like I should be able to get started for about
    $60 - $70 with this Technosound sampler and maybe get the AudiomasterII
    software later if I need it. I have an Amiga 500 with 3 Meg (512K
    Fat Agnus) and an rd53 (71 Meg). I could add a 2nd rd53 if I need it.
    Does this setup seem up to the job? Does the entire sample need to be
    in memory and can it be stored on disk? My stereo isn't really set up
    for editing. I've got the Sony CDC-700 CD player and a Denen hr-m30
    cassette deck. I use my hifi vcr as a second deck but it doesn't really
    have any editing features either. Any other suggestions?
    
    Thanks,
    Tom
    
    p.s. - I do need stereo and the quality needs to be good but not great.
    The sound systems at ice rinks aren't great but I would like them to be
    the limiting factor and not my recording.
    

You're expecting too much from the Amiga 8 bits of audio output.  However,
	you can record about 3 minutes with your memory, or so.
	I don't know but don't expect current software to link together
	splices fromhard disk in real time for the final recording.
	This just isn't the way to do this.
	Tom