Audio/MIDI System Basics

Leftover Legalities How to park so you won’t get a ticket –Every car parked in an MET lot must have a valid BSU parking permit. –Don’t leave your car here when you’re not here, especially overnight, or if you have a Residence Hall permit. –If you have to park in the lot east of the studios, move your car to the west lot once space becomes available.

Digression: Let’s Learn to Count Counting Systems all work the same way: each place in a number system represents a value times the base of the system raised to a specific power. What’s a base?

Why Does This Matter? Or, Will it be on the Test? Binary is the language of computers and digital systems Each place in a binary number is called a bit Bits, Bytes, etc. Understanding binary numbers allows you to understand digital audio.

Hexadecimal Hexadecimal (Hex) is the language of MIDI. MIDI messages are expressed as a two-place hexadecimal number 16 2 = 256 possible values = 2 8 = 8-bit binary number

Consistency Check If MIDI is a digital system, why isn’t it expressed in binary numbers? OK, why do you need 256 values if almost all MIDI messages have a range of 128 possible values? OK, why hexadecimal again?

Parsing: The Key to Comprehension Humans are adaptive. Computers are not. In the old days, every last bit of memory in a computer system was essential (think Y2K bug).

Audio/MIDI System Basics Or How to Solve Your Own Problems

Operating Systems Handles basic tasks, like how hardware parts communicate with each other, defines how the user interacts with the computer, how software communicates with the computer, etc. Most OS’s are extendable, meaning that functionality can be added to the OS through additional code. Mac OS 9—Extensions. (Audio—Sound Manager)

Control Panels let you change settings that Extensions use. The Sound control panel lets you change the settings of the Sound Manager extension. Extensions extend the functionality of the OS, as in the case of audio and MIDI, but do not address issues of specific hardware. Drivers deal with specific hardware.

Examples: MOTU Audio System (MAS) MOTU Audio System is an extension. MOTU Firewire Audio Driver is aptly named a driver. MOTU 828 Enabler is not aptly named. It’s really a driver.

Examples: Digidesign Mbox 5 extensions—no separate driver for the Mbox Software that accesses Digi hardware directly offers “Digidesign” as a menu choice Digidesign® Direct I/O