Gilderfluke&Co 8 Bit Digital Audio Systems - Manual (Page 11)

¥ Volume, Bass and Treble controls on every card.
¥ You can use any number of cards in a system to provide any num-
ber of simultaneous audio tracks.
To record a sound into a Digital Audio Repeater, a master (tape, CD,
DAT, video tape) of the sound is played into a Macintosh or IBM compatible
computer which has some sort of sixteen bit sound card installed. This takes
the original audio and turns it into digital computer data. This data is then
run through the SNDCMP8 utility program we provide and 'burned' into
computer memory chips called Eproms. These are plugged into the Digital
Audio Repeaters. From this point on, the repeaters can play back this sound
whenever they are told to. Since the sound is stored on the repeater in com-
puter memory chips, it will never change or require any service of any kind.
Any tape deck would require regular cleaning and lubrication of the tape
heads and moving parts, as well as their regular replacement.
The SNDCMP8 software for digitizing the audio into the AB-Clock is avail-
able from Gilderfluke & Company. If you would prefer to have us digitize
your sounds then simply send your master audio recording to us. When
sending audio masters to us to digitize, DAT or CD recordings are preferred.
1/4Ó quarter track at 15 IPS reel to reel or a cassette with Dolby B/C encod-
ing can also be used, but be aware that any tape hiss from these original
masters will be permanently recorded into the AB-Clock.
Gilderfluke also has libraries of prerecorded sounds and sound effects
which we can record into the AB-Clock for you if you would like.
Each AB-100 or AB-Clock can store up to 255 separate messages in its
memory. Each of these can be any length from 1/35th of a second on up.
Each of these individual messages is known as a 'spiel'. To access these in-
dividual spiels on a card, you can use the serial port interface to the audio
system or the AUX PORT available on each card. Any spiel on any card can
be played through or looped at any time.
When using the AB-Clock to select and play spiels, the order of priorities is
as follows. If it finds any sound it should play it will skip the remainder of the
checks until the next time through. This means that if a special show is
scheduled for today, it will take precedence over any weekly shows or the
tolling of the hours. Everything has priority over the tick and tock sounds:
1) Once each minute checks for any special shows to play for today.
2) Once each minute checks weekly schedule for any special shows to
play.
3) Once each minute checks to see if it it time to toll the quarter, half,
three-quarter or full hour.
4) Once each second checks to see if it is time to make a tick or tock
sound, but only if it is not already making any other sound.
Our Digital Audio Repeaters are intelligent. They know how to 'downshift'
their bandwidths to whatever bandwidth the audio was recorded at. If
there is a moment of silence in your recording, An AB-100 or AB-Clock will
actually stop using any memory at all until the sound starts up again.
Because of this, our systems are able use far less memory for an equivalent
bandwidth. They are also able to play back both low and high bandwidth
sounds from the same Repeater card. The Digital Audio Repeaters each
check on how much memory they need to use and adjust their speeds as
often as thirty-five times each second.
Although this 'downshifting' saves the amount of memory you need to
use, it can make it darned difficult to estimate the number of Eproms your
recording will need until it has actually been digitized. The following charts
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