SSTuner let you tune automatically your sampled instruments in Fasttracker II XI format or PCM WAV format.

It's well known that samples out of tune can ruin a good song, and tuning perfectly hundreds of sounds can be very difficult. Just think to the 100th sample that often results subtly out of tune respect to the one you started. Above all doing this task by hand is a waste of time!

SSTuner comes as a replacement of my old, ugly and imprecise XI Tuner, that was based on period detection to find the intonation. On the other hand, SSTuner operates in the frequency domain, using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to get the spectrum of the sound on which an analysis of the harmonics distribution is performed. A monophonic sound is expected, i.e. the program will probably fail with chords. SSTuner has been tested on almost 700 instruments, with very good results and just a few mistakes.

SSTuner let you select, through a graphic interface, even a single portion of the wave for tuning. In this way you can manage samples not uniform in time, e.g. with different notes in sequence, or a particulary rich attack. For this reason SSTuner doesn't work on *.XI or *.WAV at once.

This program has been developed using DJGPP, the DOS version of the GNU C compiler, freely available at www.delorie.com/djgpp/. This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.

SSTuner is freeware, id est it's possible to use it without paying anything, and it is distributed without ANY KIND OF WARRANTY, so you use it AT YOUR OWN RISK AND DANGER. Sampled Sensations are NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY PROBLEM caused to you and/or your data.

Even if no risk should be present, it's strongly recomended a backup of your samples before tuning them.

CPU
386 or better.

Graphic card
Any card that is VESA 2.0 compliant.
If you don't have it, you may want to use an emulation program like UNIVBE, or M64VBE if you have a six years old ATI Mach 64 like me ;-)

Operating system
DOS or Windows 9x.
If you think you cannot start a DOS application because DOS won't exist any more, take a look at the FreeDOS project.

NOTE
If your PC has a different configuration, but the program works, please contact me, so that I can update this list.

The program is fairly simple and intuitive to use. As in the old XI Tuner, you have a file selector, in which you choose the instrument/sample to tune, and the actual tuner where the real things happen.

File Selector
It is a basic file selector. It shows you the directories and XI or WAV files in the current directory. Of course you can move through the directories tree. The keys to use are:
cursor up/down, to move up/down through the list
Enter, to select a file to tune, or open a different directory
Esc, to quit the program

Tuner
Once selected the file, you are put in the actual tuner. Use the mouse to interact with the controls of the user interface.

On top right there's the message box: SSTuner will display here different output messages for you. Next you find the name of the instrument, the file name, the name of the sample that you are currently tuning, and its type. All it should be obvious. Note that an XI can have more than one sample per instrument: you can switch between them using the [-] and [+] buttons on the right. The [save] button will save the new tuning into the instrument file, putting you back in the file selector; if you have forgot to tune one or more samples, a message will appear in the message box to remember you that, and the first untuned sampled will be shown to you. The [cancel] button simply puts you back in the file selector discarding all changes.

Below there's the wave form of the sample, with the indication of the beginning and the end of the loop, if present. By default SSTuner will get the spectrum of the whole wave. However you can select just a portion of wave by holding the left mouse button from the start to the end of the chunk you want. The longer the chunk, the longer the calculation will take.

NOTE: The longer the sample you tune, the more precise the FFT will be, while with a short wave you can get rough fine tuning values. This is expecially true for bass notes. This is due to the linear spectrum returned by FFT, while the sensitivity of the human ear is logarithmic. For this reason you could get strange tunings for short samples of bass notes.

Once selected the portion of the wave to analyze (the whole wave by default), any possible DC offset will be removed, then its spectrum will be calculated through FFT, and finally an analysis of the harmonics distrubution will be performed. This is necessary because the highest peak in the spectrum is not surely the note we hear, because the note is the effect of the overall impression given by all the harmonics. The process is automatic and fairly efficient, and at the end you can see the main (fundamental) frequency highlighted. Then you can read the new tuning values on the right, and you have finished! The old tuning is also reported to let you compare the new intonation with the old one.

For XI tuning, in which there's a fixed sampling rate of 8363 Hz, the new values of Note relative to C-4 and Finetune will be saved into the file. For WAV tuning, instead, after the tuning the sampling rate will be replaced with the detected new C4 frequency: when you'll play your WAV the next time, it will play exactly a C4, so you can, for example, convert it to XI using a program like Wav2Xi keeping the correct pitch.

One more time, remember to tune all the samples in your instrument, then press the [save] button, and enjoy your tuned instrument! Next test if it's right, so you can delete the backup copy that of course you have made before using the program ;-).

NOTE: If your XI is made by two or more samples, SSTuner will only change the "Note relative to C-4" and "Finetune" values, not the mapping of the samples (that defined through the piano keyboard in Fasttracker II). It's up to you to open the instrument in FT2 and remap correctly the samples according to the new tuning, e.g. doing octave shifting and so on.

www.sampsens.cjb.net
Our web site, in which you'll find some songs of ours (Demo Tracks), our software, our personal informations (if you're curious!), some articles and a few interesting links. Moreover, here you'll always find the updated addresses to contact us.
Anyway, we're indicized on AltaVista and Yahoo, just search for Sampled Sensations.

www.insidetheweb.com/mbs.cgi/mb206444
Our message board, for general use. Everyone can leave a message or a reply. It's a good meeting and discussion point.

info@sampsens.cjb.net
Our general e-mail address. Write here if you want further information, if you have doubts or suggestions. We will willingly reply as soon as possible.

bugs@sampsens.cjb.net
Use this e-mail address to report bugs for our programs.

salvo@sampsens.cjb.net
Salvo's personal e-mail address. Who's Salvo? A member of Sampled Sensations, and the author of this... piece of program! :-)

zaky@sampsens.cjb.net
Zaky's personal e-mail address. Who's Zaky? The other member of Sampled Sensations!

NOTE
As we might change our web and e-mail servers, please always use these addresses redirected by cjb. They will always point to our real updated addresses.
So, we suggest not to use, for instance, members.xoom.it/sampsens/ or sampsens@mailroom.com.
We appreciate it very much, if you specify in your e-mails a meaningful subject.
Moreover, ask before sending any attachment!