Loading Sound Files

Some contraptions in AudioMulch operate directly on sound files that have been loaded into the contraption. FilePlayer, MultiFilePlayer and SoundIn stream directly from disk and therefore use less memory, making them ideal for playing long soundfiles; while LoopPlayer, Drums and BubbleBlower keep the entire sound file in memory. LoopPlayer plays looped samples in time with the beat. Drums triggers short samples in time with the beat based on a repeated pattern. BubbleBlower granulates a sound file.

Supported Sound File Formats

AudioMulch supports:

• WAV and AIFF files
• sound files of varying bit and sample rates (including 24bit and floating point files)

AudioMulch does not support:

• MP3s
• sound files created using ADPCM or other compressed formats

Note: AudioMulch can only run at a single sample rate at any one time. To change the sample rate setting, go to the Audio General page of the Settings/Preferences Dialog Box. Any files created at a different rate to that specified will be converted when loaded into AudioMulch. This sample rate conversion feature is optimised for real-time performance rather than quality. It may therefore cause some audio degradation of unmatched files. For optimal audio quality and processing efficiency, convert all sound files to a single sample rate before you use them in AudioMulch. To do this use a sound file editor such as Audacity, Audition, CoolEdit or WaveLab.

How to Load Sound Files into Contraptions

You can use either of the following two methods to load sound files:

1. Drag a sound file into the contraption's sound file slot directly from the Macintosh Finder or Windows Explorer.

2. Click on the Select Sound File button, found on all sound file recording and playback contraptions. This opens the Select Sound File dialog box. To open a sound file, navigate to the file on your computer, select a sound file with the mouse and click Open.

You can press the Play button in the Select Sound File dialog box to preview sound files. If you check the Auto play check box in this dialog box, sound files are previewed automatically every time you select a file. If you have a multi-channel audio interface or two sound cards, the audio output for previewing sound files can be configured to output to a separate output (such as to headphones). To change the sound file preview output, go to the Sound File Preview page of the Settings/Preferences Dialog Box.

To close a sound file, click on the Close Sound File button.

Automatic Sound File Location

Once you start working with sound files, if you keep your sound files in a fixed location, AudioMulch will be able to locate them easily every time you open an .amh document. If you need to move the files, you can ensure that AudioMulch can locate them again by keeping the sound files used by the .amh document in the same folder, or a sub-folder of the folder that the .amh document is saved in. Make sure you move both the document and the folder(s) containing the sound files together. The Save a Copy with Sound Files... item of the File menu allows you to save the .amh document along with a copy of all the sound files that it uses. This is the easiest way to store all referenced sound files along side the relevant .amh document.

If a file does happen to go missing, AudioMulch has an Automatic Sound File Location feature that finds any files that may have gone astray.

The auto-locate feature searches for sound files in the order listed below. The first location found is used.

1. The location the sound file was in relative to the document when it was last saved.
2. The location the sound file was in relative to the AudioMulch application file, when the document was last saved.
3. The absolute location of the sound file, when the document was last saved.

Manually Locating Missing Sound Files

Once AudioMulch has tried to locate missing sound files using the automatic location system, it will display a message asking if you want to manually locate the files it hasn't found. If you choose Skip, or Skip All, the files that have been skipped will remain missing and you will be asked to locate them again the next time the document is opened.

If you manually locate a missing sound file, AudioMulch uses the new location of the file to try to locate other missing sound files that were stored in the same folder or a relative folder. This means that if all of your sound files were stored in one location, and you moved them all together to a different location, you will only need to manually locate one missing file in order for AudioMulch to automatically find the rest.