Common questions and answers about PMsndX.

Q.  How do I enter the registration information?
A.  To enter the registration information, pull down the
    menu from the control panel and select either the
    Welcome or About menu item.  The display will contain a
    button to bring up the registration display.  The
    information may be entered from the keyboard or from a
    file.

Q.  Where is the registration information stored?
A.  PMsndX stores all of the registration information in the
    os2.ini file.  This amounts to about 20 bytes of data.

Q.  Why is the executable greater than 500k?
A.  Duh.  The source for this program is about 40000 lines
    of C++.  There is about 100k of icons and graphics that
    takes up a lot of room because the icons contain
    versions for each of the different displays (e.g.
    Independent Color Form (=VGA), Independent Form - (1.2
    format), and 8514 - 16 colors).  Also, the .RES (resource)
    file for PMsndX is 230k (which includes the icons and
    dialog descriptions).  The REXX portion of the code
    takes about 100k and the rest is the dialogs and alogrithms.

Q.  I have a Sun audio file that plays on my Sun machine but
    results in a "Unsupported style" error when PMsndX attempts
    to load it.
A.  Sun hardware supports U-Law files with and without headers.
    When a header is not present, the Sun hardware assumes that
    the sampling rate is 8012 Hz.  If a Sun file results in an
    unsupported style error, force it to load the file in the
    .ul format and specify a rate of 8012 Hz.  Alternately,
    if the "Require Header for files" is not checked (the
    default) in the MISC page of the Properties, any file with
    an extension of .au will be loaded as .ul if a valid .au
    header is not present.

Q.  What happens when I try to play a 16 bit sample on an 8
    bit sound card?
A.  PMsndX is capable of editing and manipulating sounds
    of any number of bits, rate, and channels.  However,
    audio adapters may be limited in their capabilities and
    may not support multiple some of these characteristics.
    Therefore, PMsndX will still load and manipulate samples
    that cannot be played on the audio adapter but the MMPM
    dialog will disable all of its buttons.  If you have
    an 8 bit audio adapter PMsndX will automatically detect
    that it cannot play 16 bit files and set the "Play 16
    bits on 8 bit audio" box in the properties dialog box.

Q.  Can compressed VOC files be loaded?
A.  Unfortunately, I cannot find documentation on the
    compressed VOC formats and they are not implemented in
    PMsndX.  A future release may have this corrected.

Q.  I have a file created by sox10.  Why can't PMsndX load the
    file?
A.  SOX for DOS and OS/2 were ported from the Unix environment.
    Under DOS and OS/2, as a file is read or written, the data
    is filtered so that single linefeeds are replaced by carriage
    return-line feed sequences.  Under Unix, this does not occur.
    As a result, a SOX file cannot be loaded because it has extra
    characters in the header and body of the data.  SOX needs to
    be recompiled with the file IO system set for binary so that
    it does not try to filter the data.

Q.  I want to load a large sample.  How do I minimize the
    memory requirements?
A.  When a file is loaded it is stored as 16 bit samples
    regardless of the actual sample size.  This takes up
    roughly twice the memory as would be required for 8 bit
    samples.  The MMPM buffers make up a second copy of the
    data in memory.  This copy is exactly the size of the
    data that would be written to disk.  If it is an 8 bit
    sample file, then the samples in the buffer are 8 bits.
    If it is a 16 bit file, then the buffer contains 16 bit
    samples.  During an editing operation (i.e. cut, paste,
    or anything in the toolbox) the data is double buffered
    to allow the operation to be aborted.  Finally, when the
    UNDO capability is enabled from the settings dialog, a
    copy of the last sample will be maintained for the UNDO.

    So, to reduce the memory requirements, make the following
    settings:
        Go to the PLSNDX settings page and set "Free memory after
            loading".  Clear the "Enable Quick queueing" also.
        Go to the EDSNDX settings page and clear the "Enable UNDO"
            checkbox.
        Go to the Editor page under EDSNDX of the properties and
            set the "Delay AUDIO Loading"  (you can still play
            the sample by using the Editor menu and selecting
            "Load AUDIO Data Now".

Q.  Why doesn't the little man run when the REXX window is
    minimized?
A.  If the REXX window is minimized to the Viewer, it will
    still be animated.  However, if it is minimized to the
    desktop OS/2 does not process the SETICON messages and
    the icon is not animated.  There is nothing I can do about
    it.

Q.  When I load a file from the command line, it does not
    play in PlSndX.
A.  Check the AUDIO page of the Properties dialog and set
    "Play on Load" or "Play on commandline load".  Without
    one of these options selected, files are only loaded
    when specified on the command line and are not immediately
    played.

Q.  I have a file that will play with PlSndX but will not play with
    EdSndX.
A.  PlSndX implements a feature which can automatically resample
    a file so that it is a multiple of 11025 Hz; however, EdSndX
    does not implement this feature. The MMPM/2 system for OS/2
    performs better when the sampling rate is a multiple of 11025 Hz.
    EdSndX does not implement this feature because it is intended
    to be an editor in which the original sample is preserved.

Q.  EdSndX crashes when the play button is pressed when the playpos
    cursor is at the end of a sample.  Sometimes play just stops
    after pressing the button and a second press starts it again.
A.  This is a problem I have run into with MMPM because I have to
    convert the returned ending position from 1/3000th seconds to
    indexing values.  The problem is caused by roundoff error and
    by MMPM reporting a position that is not exactly the end of the
    file.  To correct for this, I have added a setting that lets you
    specifya Zone in which I can detect the end of the file myself.
    The default value for the zone is 300 samples, but you may need
    to increase it to get better performance.  When playing back a
    sample, this value has no effect.  It only affects how I interpret
    the signals that come back from MMPM/2 when I go to start playback
    again.