Zygoat has recently released a new beta version of their drum machine application, Doggiebox. Ben Kennedy developer of Doggiebox made the announcement some days ago through the Zygoat Doggiebox discussion list.
Changes in this build (1F2) since version 1.3.1 (1E15):
- Now a Universal Binary (will run natively on Intel-based Macs).
- Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is now required.
- The framework for loading and saving sound file on disk has been replaced with entirely new code.
Known issues:
- Sound playback is inconsistent under Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard).
- Exporting to some file types (e.g. MP3) does not work properly.
Areas for testing:
Make backup copies of your song and drum kit files before re-saving them with this version of Doggiebox, particularly if running on an Intel-based Mac. With this in mind, test to make sure that files you create with this build still open and work properly in Doggiebox 1.3.1. Also verify sound file importing and exporting and note any problems with compatibility of output files or the user interface.
This Beta version of Doggiebox is only available to registered users. If you would like to subscribe to Doggiebox’s mailing list, you can do so either via this web-based form or by sending an empty message to doggiebox-subscribe@lists.zygoat.ca.
Other comments:
The move to Univeral Binary has meant increasing the minimum supported Mac OS version from 10.3 (Panther) to 10.4 (Tiger). This is a side effect of portability; put simply, the routines that Doggiebox has used since 1.0 for handling sound files (a library called libsndfile by Erik de Castro Lopo) is hard to build for both PowerPC and Intel without involving two physically different computers. Fortunately, starting in 10.4, the Mac OS has provided similar sound-file services. Thus the decision has been made to retire libsndfile in favour of the OS-provided code. Aside from the Universal Binary build, this is the new major change in this build.
The playback problems under Leopard still persist for the moment, but this issues
will be addressed soon.
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