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Emagic's SoundDiver 3.0 Universal Sound Editor/Librarian

With the proliferation of synths of both hard and soft varieties containing zillions of sounds, the market for Librarians and Editors may seem to have shrunk. But Emagic's SoundDiver continues to develop. Review by Ian Waugh

Requirements: PowerMac, System 7.1 or higher (OS 9.0 or higher recommended), MIDI interface, hi res display recommended

Librarians are used to store, catalogue, sort and find sounds which may be stored across a large number of synths. Editors, of course, are used to edit sounds, and usually the large and clear on-screen controls are far easier to work with than the fiddly buttons and small LCD displays on a hardware synth. Plus, software editors can help with sound creation (setting parameters at random, for example), using facilities which rarely feature in a synth itself.

You know you need a Librarian when you can't find that killer sound or if you simply like being organised. If you like creating your own sounds or even tweaking them, an Editor will make the process far easier.

SoundDiver is a Universal Editor and Librarian meaning it can support virtually any synth. To do this it uses specially-written software modules for each synth and it currently supports over 500 devices. You can, of course, also create your own but this is not for the beginner.

When first launched, the program it offers to scan your MIDI system to automatically detect all your instruments. This means each one's MIDI In and MIDI Out should, ideally, be connected to your computer. You can get around this with MIDI Switchers but to use the program - and your gear - to full potential it needs to be able to fully communicate with them.

After the detection phase, SoundDiver will know what synths you have and what sounds, presets, and so on they contain. Opening an "instrument" shows its sounds and settings, and from here you can open an editor to edit a sound, a Multi or whatever. There are many graphic displays here making editing far, far easier than on hardware synths, and envelopes, for example, can be changed by dragging nodes around the display.

There are many edit facilities from copy and paste, to randomisation. Sounds can be organised and a Find facility makes them easy to locate.

Like Emagic's Logic, SoundDiver supports Key Commands (hot keys) and Screensets which let you save and recall window layouts This is a great time-saver when editing.

In fact, SoundDiver's look-and-feel is very much like Logic and if you're a Logic user you'll certainly feel at home here. Using the two programs together confers another benefit - AutoLink, which enables the exchange of MIDI names and data between them.

If you have several synths, lots of sounds and need to edit them, SoundDiver will be a great time-save. It is, however, a sophisticated program and you will need to read the manual (all 464 pages of it) carefully and give yourself time to become familiar with it. Having said that, you can quickly set it up as a Librarian without delving into its more-powerful features.

For such a powerful and all-encompassing program, SoundDiver is also very well priced, and even if you only use its as a Librarian, it's still good VFM. Altogether an impressive piece of software and highly recommended.

Ian Waugh