A Word About Sound Bridge - Alesis S4 Plus Reference Manual

Chapter 1: Setting Up

A Word About Sound Bridge

Included with the S4 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 S4 Plus.
Sound Bridge is a Macintosh™ sound development utility which compiles custom
samples from a variety of sources into the S4 Voice format, and downloads the
compiled data to an Alesis PCMCIA Sound Card via MIDI Sysex to an S4 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 an S4 Plus
or S4 Plus.
Sound Bridge creates an S4 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 S4 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 S4 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.
10 S4 Plus Reference Manual