"Oh, and by the way, while you're up there can you crop the first 2.4 seconds and then time stretch it out to 3 seconds but distort the second half of the section that you applied the pre-delay to when you combined it with the third sample from yesterday's section?"

Not long ago, a question like that would have been answered by the engineer politely submitting his or her resignation. Now, not only can anyone perform the above mentioned audio acrobatics, but with the release of the Sound Blaster AWE32, that's just the tip of the iceberg! Armed with any one of a number of digital wave editing programs available, developers will be able to sample their favorite instrument, music clips, or sound effects, edit them and then transfer them directly into the onboard RAM of the Sound Blaster AWE32. Once on board, these sounds can be accessed like any other instrument on Sound Blaster 16. And since access is through MIDI, these sounds can be transposed up or down in real time for fine tuning of timbre, tempo, and pitch.

The front end of most of these editing programs is relatively consistent. The user opens a new sound file to be used as a designation and then selects the appropriate input device, be it CD, MIDI files played through a sound card, external tape deck, or a microphone. Record controls operate like familiar tape deck transports, and after you set the levels to avoid overloads, you're on your way.

Software Audio Workshop (SAW), from Innovative Quality Software (702) 368-2213 will allow you to define any section of the recorded stereo wave and name it as a region. Multiple regions then form an edit list. What makes SAW powerful is its ability to then chain regions into sequences. These regions can also be shifted against time within the specified sequence in order to generate spaces between them. Now of course it would be cool if that's all it did -- but wait! There's more. Just click on the multitrack window and SAW will allow you to simultaneously play up to four stereo sequences!

Also in the works from Innovative Quality Software: more tracks and a three band graphic EQ. All using a Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32!

Another noteworthy package is Sound Forge 2.0 by Sonic Foundry (608) 256-3133. The most striking feature about this program is the ability to display a whopping 40 wave files at one time! And what can you do to these waves once you've got them? A lot! Effects processing includes delay/echo, flanging, distortion, pre-echo, flip, fade, pan, resample, reverse, volume, normalize, and looping, to name a few. And don't forget, all these effects maintain CD quality within a Sound Blaster 16.

Just to make sure that everyone is up and running right out of the box, Creative Labs is including Wave Studio 2.0 with every Sound Blaster AWE32. This proprietary program allows the user to sample, cut, paste, crop, and affect an audio clip, which the SoundFont editor can then convert into a format which can be loaded into the RAM of the SB AWE32 and played as a MIDI instrument. The benefit of this feature is that while programs written for General MIDI will sound great, those titles that go the extra mile and include carefully chosen SoundFonts will stand out as best buys for the users who already own a SB AWE32.

Obviously, sound for multimedia has come a long way since the first Pong ball bleeped after being hit by the first Pong paddle. And now the combination of General MIDI and the SB AWE32 makes major strides in breaking down the sound walls that have risen between the developer's ideas and reality. What's that? The General MIDI patch set doesn't give you the roar of an overtaxed Osterizer on puree that is so crucial to your upcoming release "Killer Blenders from Planet 9"? No problem. Just get ahold of the appropriate appliance, stick a mic in front of it and fire it up! The AWE32 pushes the limits of computer audio right up to the boundaries of the developer's imagination.

As you can see, Creative Labs is sympathetic to the yearning of developers to have more control over the audio portion of their products. And the new breed of digital wave editors taking advantage of SB AWE32 technology may finally be able to get these 'sonic surfers' to hit the beach.

So kick the sand out of those floppies and start waxing up those hard drives...surf's up!