Sound Station is a PC sampler for those on the tightest of budgets. But its imaginative use of limited resources impresses Ian Waugh...

Sound Station is one of those interesting applications which make you wonder why no one developed it before. It's a sampler, but unlike most such PC programs, you cannot only play the samples via MIDI, but also play them from within a MIDI sequencer. This effectively gives you a bargain basement sampler.

The program does its stuff by using its own sound driver. After installation, the first thing to do is open the Settings window, to set the MIDI and wave file input and output drivers. Sound Station's driver is assigned to the MIDI output, use your normal MIDI driver for MIDI input, and your sound card's driver for the wave files. Here you also set the default sample length, the sample rate (22.05 or 44.1 kHz) and resolution (8 or 16 bit).

But watch out here. The program is designed to record short samples, not lengthy audio files. Recordings are saved into the PC's memory, not directly to disk. If you set a record buffer size larger than your RAM, it will report an out of memory error.

The worst thing is, you won't be able to reboot the program because the same error will occur. And you can't simply re-install. The program creates an INI file in your Windows directory with the contents of the Settings window, and you need to edit or remove this before the program will open. The manual makes no mention of this at all. Guess how I discovered it!

The Sample window

There are three other windows. They can all be open at the same time, and the contents of the menu bar depends on whichever one is active.

The Sample window is where you load, save, record and edit wave files. During recording, you have to use your sound card's mixer to set volume levels, and recording is in mono. The program can't convert or load stereo files.

Edit functions include cut, silence and scale. Oddly, there's no paste or zoom functions. Working your way through a long file can take a while.

The MIDI window

The MIDI window contains functions for playing wave and MIDI files and for playing samples from a MIDI keyboard. It has five octave boxes, and you can assign a different sample to each one simply by dragging them over from the Sample window. Use this to create a convincing single sound such as a piano across a large range, by sampling it at six different octaves. You can also create a multi-sample layout containing different sounds. You save the arrangement as a keyboard file.

From this window you can also convert a MIDI file into a wave file, a function which I think is unique in the world of sequencers and wave players. However, as you may have guessed, you need suitable samples before you can do this. So, to convert a General MIDI file to wave format you'd need a complete set of GM samples. Hmm! Far easier, I would have thought, to sample the MIDI playback itself. Still, it's an interesting option.

What the PC really needs is a program which will play a GM file without requiring any additional sound hardware, giving everyone with a sound card access to quality standard sounds. Impossible? No, Apple has incorporated this feature in QuickTime 2 using GM samples licensed from Roland. Time the PC caught up, methinks.

The Fourier window

The Fourier window lets you construct sounds using additive synthesis. If you were brought up with digital synthesisers, additive synthesis is the process of constructing sounds by combining waveforms, in this case sine waves.

There are 49 harmonics, and for each one you can set an amplitude value and phase value. The harmonics and their amplitudes are shown at the top of the window, and the resulting waveform is drawn in the lower right corner. You can now, indeed, prove that adding odd harmonics with diminishing amplitudes produces a square wave.

An amplitude envelope can be used to give the sound more shape. You can also draw in waveforms freehand, but as a generation of wave edit programs have proved, this is not a very practical or successful way to create new sounds. Your handiwork can also be exported to the Sample window, or you can import a portion of a waveform from the Sample window to the Fourier window, for further treatment.

This is excellent educational and experimental stuff, although I suspect few users will do more than dabble with it.

The MIDI sampler

To play samples from within a sequencer, you need (ideally) to be able to select the output for each track in the sequencer. You would then assign the track which is to play the samples to the Sound Station's driver. If your sequencer doesn't have this facility, it will still be able to play samples if it can use the MIDI Mapper. In this case, you assign the Sound Station driver to the MIDI channel in the Mapper you want to play the samples on.

Next, you must open Sound Station and load the keyboard file containing the samples you want to use.

Now, when you play your sequencer, MIDI notes on the track assigned to the samples will play too. However, it's important to remember that the program can only play one sample at a time, and that the size of the samples is limited by available memory.

Unfortunately, I have to report that the program locked up quite frequently and two of the error messages it displayed weren't listed in the manual. It often required the Sound Station driver to be re-installed. My PC's hard disk may resemble Harold Steptoe's yard, but my existing WAV players and MIDI sequencers have worked well enough amid the rubble.

I'd be only moderately alarmed at this. PCs are prone to all sorts of hardware and software conflicts, and it's entirely possible this program just didn't like my PC's stomach bacteria. However, I wasn't prepared to play detective with my files and drivers to discover the culprit. If it works, don't fix it, and anyway life's too short.

If your system is lean on drivers and garbage, then you will probably fare rather better. In any event, the program is well supported by a UK technical helpline, so if the worst does happen you have a friendly English voice to help put it right.

The manual

The manual has a very short tutorial section, which is little more than a brief introduction to the program.

Most of the manual is given over to a description of the menus and windows, which is generally helpful if a little on the short side.

Sound Station is a neat idea. The principal is not dissimilar to that used by Steinberg's Music Station, reviewed in December's issue. Music Station, however, does record direct-to-disk and lets you record audio files to play alongside a MIDI track. Sound Station only handles samples which will fit into memory. But it is cheaper, of course, and you can use it with just about any sequencer.

Whether or not it's for you will depend on your aspirations. It does support 16-bit 44.1kHz recordings, so you could use it to add quality samples to your MIDI tracks. Check if your sequencer can assign different output drivers to each track, and do check the program's stability with the distributor before buying. If they check out A-okay, then it will be a very cost-effective way of getting real sounds into your MIDI tracks.