3DO Tools for Sound Design

This document gives an introduction to music and sound effects for 3DO\xaa titles, provides tutorial-style and reference information for all 3DO Sound Designer tools, and contains additional troubleshooting and reference information.

Audience

This book is for sound designers who want to prepare music for the 3DO Station. While some background in composing digital audio is useful, it is not required. To understand how to work with the MIDI synthesizing capability of the ARIA tool, you need at least a rudimentary background in MIDI.

How this document is organized

Music and Sound Effects for 3DO Titles was written by a composer working for The 3DO Company. It gets you started with 3DO audio.
Installing and Launching ARIA describes installation and setup for using ARIA to create patches and for working with ARIA and MIDI.
Creating Patches with ARIA explains how to design audio folio instruments by using the tool's graphic interface for patching together functional blocks of DSP code.
Creating MIDI Projects with ARIA explains how to create music in real time by connecting your favorite MIDI Manager-compatible sequencer to the ARIA tool and listening to your music on the 3DO platform while composing it. In effect, you can turn your 3DO Station into a MIDI synthesizer.
Using SoundHack provides a tutorial-style introduction to all major features of the SoundHack tool.
SoundHack Menus and Dialogs provides a detailed reference to all commands and dialog options.
Using PatchDemo describes how to use PatchDemo, a tool that lets you listen to dsp instruments.
PatchDemo Reference lists all patch file commands in alphabetical order.
Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting provides troubleshooting information, mostly based on questions asked by developers and answered by 3DO technical staff.
Instruments Available in ARIA lists all instruments available through ARIA, providing both the "friendly name" used by ARIA and the actual name of the instrument.
AIFF Samples lists all AIFF samples on the Toolkit CD-ROM. These samples are useful for experimenting with the tools described in this document, and also may be used in a 3DO title.