(If only everything in life was as simple.)Ī couple of other nice labour-saving features are worth mentioning. Consequently it's always possible to jump back to an earlier point in History and revert things to the way they were before it all started to go wrong. DSP Quattro offers unlimited Undo and Redo, accessible via a floating Edit History palette. All the usual Cut, Copy and Paste (and crossfade Paste) commands are available, as you would expect, along with options to Silence or Repeat a selection, or Mix the contents of the clipboard in.
Markers can be inserted anywhere in a file by hitting Command-M. Sections of a waveform are selected by clicking and dragging, and with stereo files you can select either channel separately. Files can be imported or exported as RAW data, and it's also possible to import via QuickTime, which is great for 'ripping' CD tracks or decoding MP3s.Įach file you open in DSP Quattro appears in its own document window.Basic editing of files is easy and straightforward. Supported file formats include SDII, WAV and AIFF (8, 16, 24 or 32-bit), with the option to create and edit 32-bit floating-point files in AIFF or WAV formats. There's also a button to toggle cycled playback on or off, and a virtual ribbon controller which can be used to audibly scrub through the file at variable speeds. Each open audio file appears in its own 'document' window, which features a zoomable waveform display (with overview), a pair of level faders (the left and right channels of stereo files can be tweaked independently), level meters with clipping indicators, and an LCD-style Marker display showing the current playback position and/or the positions of selected markers.Įach document window also has its own set of transport controls, which allow you to play the file at normal speed, backwards or forwards, and to stop, fast-forward, rewind, or jump to the beginning or end of the file. The Master window contains a stereo pair of faders to control the main output level, and buttons to access a few more commonly used features.
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Apple Power Mac G3 400MHz with 448MB RAM, running Mac OS 9.2.2, with Emagic Audiowerk 2 soundcard.ĭSP Quattro boasts a well-designed user interface, and is very easy to get started with.
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Standard VST effect and Instrument plug-ins are also supported, as well as Steinberg's ubiquitous ASIO driver system for low-latency audio cards.
#Dsp quattro wont play pro
D‑Sound Pro offered a handful of built-in off-line effects, but DSP Quattro's effects are all implemented in real time. This means not only that files of practically unlimited size can be recorded and edited, but also that multiple files can be played back simultaneously, even while another is being recorded. While its shareware forbear was a purely RAM-based sample editor, DSP Quattro features a powerful new 'polyphonic' hard disk-based audio engine. The reason I mention this is that DSP Quattro, from Italian newcomers i3, turns out to be a direct descendant of D‑Sound Pro, and is developed by a team of programmers led by original D‑Sound Pro author Stefano Daino.Īlthough DSP Quattro has inherited a number of features from D‑Sound Pro (including the same comprehensive MIDI and SCSI support for external samplers), so much else has changed that it really deserves to be considered a new program in its own right. It ran without a glitch on my old Powerbook 5300, and up until a few days ago was still installed on my current Mac, and still getting regular use. So it was that I discovered D‑Sound Pro a fast, reliable and very functional sample editor which could talk to my Akai S2000, chop and change samples in dozens of useful ways, and which seemingly never crashed.
All this, as Martin observed, for "a mere 30 US dollars - less than 20 quid!" D‑Sound Pro offered comprehensive sample editing functions, a variety of built-in effects, SCSI and MIDI dump support for numerous external samplers - and even a synth oscillator for generating new sounds. This popular shareware sample editor has grown into a serious audio manipulation tool.īack in 1997, while idly flicking through the June issue of SOS, I came across a brief but very favourable review of a shareware audio editor called D‑Sound Pro in what was then Martin Russ's Apple Notes column.