Setting Up: Chapter 1
A Word About Sound Bridge
Included with the QuadraSynth Plus is a 3-1/2" floppy disk containing a software program called Sound Bridge. This software has been provided free of charge in an effort to promote sound design for the QuadraSynth Plus.
Sound Bridge is a Macintosh™ sound development utility which compiles custom samples from a variety of sources into the QuadraSynth Voice format, and downloads the compiled data to an Alesis PCMCIA Sound Card via MIDI Sysex to a QuadraSynth Plus or S4 Plus. Originally developed for in-house use only, Alesis soon realized the need for individuals and sound developers to be able to burn their own Sound Cards as well, using whatever samples they wanted. Sound Bridge makes this possible without having a PCMCIA card burner attached to your computer. All you need is a QuadraSynth Plus or S4 Plus.
Sound Bridge creates a QuadraSynth Voice (multi-sample) by loading Sample Cell I or Sample Cell II format Instrument files. Using this format, Sound Bridge is able to determine key group and velocity group split points, root notes, sample playback rates, tunings, start points, loop points, and loop tunings. Sound Bridge can also create QuadraSynth Voices without Sample Cell Instruments by loading single AIFF, Sound Designer, or Sound Designer II files.
Sound Bridge does NOT require Sample Cell hardware. The Sample Cell Instrument file, or sample file, may be loaded directly into Sound Bridge from any disk (i.e. CD-ROM, floppy disk, hard disk, etc.). For example, a user may load data from a Sample Cell CD-ROM, and send this data to the QuadraSynth PCMCIA Card, without ever using Sample Cell!
Sound Bridge can write to PCMCIA cards (or PC Cards) of up to 8MB in size. These cards must be either Type I SRAM (150ns or faster) or Type I Flash RAM cards (AMD C-series or D-series 5V Flash Memory Cards). If you are unsure whether a card is compatible with the S4 Plus, contact Alesis Product Support for more information.
The Sound Bridge disk contains the Sound Bridge application, and an electronic manual which will give you all the information you need to know to run Sound Bridge.
