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Sample Editors : Sound Designer
Overview When a small Santa Cruz based company developed the
second version of its ground breaking sampler - the Emulator II, an even smaller company based a few miles down Highway 101 decided to forge ahead into developing new Mac software. The development of Sound Designer was a ground breaking
innovation which paved the way for todays ProTools Digital Audio Workstation. The close working relationship between the two companies means that an early version of Sound Designer is a highly desirable adiition to your vintahe
Emulator or Emax.
 Sound Designer for Emulator II The original Sound Designer software was developed for the revolutionary Emulator II in 1985. Peter and Evan saw the Fairlight CMI,
and decided to emulate the computer based sample display but on the newly introduced Apple Mac computer. Sound Designer for E11 provides sample transfer to and from a Mac,
waveform display, Emulator II front panel emulation and sample editing. Sound Designer files (both individual samples and a complete sample bank) can be stored onto the Mac hard drive or floppy drive.
 Mac only software - launch price $995.
Sound Designer for Emax/etc. A different version of Sound Designer software was developed for each of the new samplers that
entered the market in the mid 1980's. Each one attempting to be the leading alternative to the Emulator II. The following samplers have there own Sound Designer software:
- E-mu Emax
- Sequential Prophet
- Akai S900
- Korg DSS-1
- Ensoniq Mirage
Mac only software - launch price $995.
Sound Designer Universal In 1987 Digidesign took Sound Designer a stage further, by adding some new features, and by combining support for each individual sampler into one software
version (1.5). At the same time some basic DSP facilities were added using the Mac's hardware (not a separate card). The software is also compatible with the internal Mac Nubus "Sound Accelerator" card from
Digidesign, which provides dedicated DSP hardware (on a Motorola 56001 chip), and high quality audio outs (and audio ins via a separte remote ADC box).
The digital mixer in SD Universal provides a range of useful Digital
Signal processing:
- MIX - combine two sound files in any proportion
- MERGE - Splice two samples together with a crossfade
- GAIN CHANGE - normalise a sample, vary the gain
- CROSSFADE LOOPING - crossfade within a loop
- DIGITAL EQ - Peak and shelf equalization
Sound Designer Universal is undoubtably a better generic sample
editor than the previous separate versions. However the inividual features that supported each sampler have been removed. So the very useful Emulator II Sample Bank transfer and front panel controls have
gone. Universal supports the following samplers:
- Akai S700/900/1000/X7000
- Casio FZ-1/FZ-10M
- Dynacord Add-1
- E-mu Emax (non SE)
- Ensoniq Mirage, EPS
- Korg DSS-1/DSM-1
- Oberheim DPX-1
- Rolnas S10/S220/MKS100/S50/S550/S330
- Sequential Prophet 2000/2002
- Simmonds SDX
- Yamaha TX18W
- MIDI Sample Dump Standard
Sound Designer Universal for Mac ($395)
 Sound Designer Universal for Atari ($349)
Sound Designer II
Digidesign continued to develop Sound Designer (version 2.x) with new DSP features and support for the later Audiomedia cards. Sound Designer II became the standard 2 channel
editor on the Mac for most of the 1990's, until it was overtaken by the new G3 hardware and Avid's lack of interest in this market area. Version 2.82 was the last version made, however the sample drivers
were removed in version 2.6 - making the later versions useless as a sample editor. The drivers were removed form the program because of timing considerations. The sampler drivers were written using a Mac II
and standard 1MHz MIDI interface. The resources needed to update the drivers and keep them current with significantly faster Macs and MIDI Interfaces, required a large amount of resources.
Sound Designer SK for Mac ($595)
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