BeOS Gaining Ground

Part 3: The Apps

There may not be thousands of apps out there to run right this minute, but some of the ones that are available are quite interesting. I'm going to touch mostly on some of the music related apps that I tried out on my PowerMac. There are more applications for PowerPC (PPC) than for Intel at the moment. This bias seems a little more significant in the audio category, which I suspect is due to the limited sound card support available in the Intel version at the moment. You can click on most of the small screenshots below to view a full size version.

You can find all of these programs (and many more) from the BeWare section on Be's web site at http://www.be.com/beware/index.html. Some programs can also be purchased on-line at BeDepot (www.bedepot.com).

Audio Elements

I'm starting things off with my current favorite program, Audio Elements. This is exactly the type of program I personally wanted to develop if I had the time. If you love to tweak sounds and experiment, this program is for you. It's a modular system, so you can take various components (oscillators, filters, inverters, multipliers, ADSRs, delays, etc.) and connect them together graphically. It can be triggered by MIDI (but is essentially monophonic that way), record its output to a file, and do real-time processing of audio as well. Very cool. And if you're a programmer, you can create your own modules to use with it. A trial version is available.

ObjektSynth

Screen Shot 2	Screen Shot 3

Here is a real-time, multitimbral, modular synthesizer. You can add new modules (VCOs, SVF, LFOs, ASR, mixers, delay, etc.), connect them, and play the instrument from a MIDI keyboard, or use it with MIDI files that can be read in directly or played by another application. There is no limit on the number of voices, other than CPU power, and the parameters can be adjusted in real-time. The program is quite flexible and you can easily spend hours experimenting with it. The latency of this program is quite good, so you really can use it live. For more details, you can visit the ObjektSynth web site at www.objektsynth.com, where you can also download the demo version.

Rack 747

This program models the Roland TB-303 Bassline and a 4-part 808/909-style drum machine. It can run from its internal 16-step sequencer and is MIDI compatible. Many of the sliders and controls will respond to MIDI continuous controller messages as well. Multiple copies can be run at once and they can be locked into sync with each other or to MIDI clock. If you're somewhat familiar with the interface, you should be making music in no time with this program.

BamBam

BamBam is a basic audio editing program. It can record and do simple processing like fade ins/outs, reversing a segment, and resampling. It can read and write .wav and .aiff files, in mono and stereo formats.

BeEQ

This isn't actually an equalizer (you can't modify the sound at all), but it can analyze an audio stream (either a mic or CD input, or the output of other applications you may be running) and display the frequency content in real-time.

QScope

QScope is a basic oscilloscope which can peer into an audio stream (either the input to the computer or the sound being produced by other programs you are running.) Great for curious minds or debugging.

Squiggy

This program will record and display sonograms. You can then manipulate the spectrograms, drawing in partials similar to what MetaSynth allows, and mix spectrograms together. There are quite a few operations that you can perform on the spectrograms, but it's hard to use them musically. Interesting nonetheless.

Grabbo

Grabbo is a video-to-MIDI converter. What exactly does that mean? It analyzes a video stream with some algorithm, and then produces MIDI data as the result. It will compare frames of the video to stored pictures, choosing the best match and producing the data you specify. It can also produce more rhythmic sounds by mapping frames to the corners of a cube, where each axis represents the value of a certain MIDI message. You can use is along with a camera to control sounds with physical gestures. Unfortunately I didn't have compatible video hardware to try this program, so I can't be much more specific on how it works, but it does sound quite interesting. A commercial release with more features is planned. You can visit the program's home page at www.idiom.com/~tebo.

SheepShaver

For those users that currently spend most of their time on a Mac, there is one very promising program called SheepShaver that will let you run Macintosh software within a BeOS window, supporting resolutions up to 1600x1200. Installing it wasn't very straightforward, and it did take a while to get it running properly. This program will not be ported to Intel since it is not an emulator, but actually executes the code directly on PowerPC processors. As such, it relies on the ROM that is built into PowerMacs. It can be used on BeBox machines as well if you can create a ROM file for it.

Netscape running under SheepShaver

SheepShaver is promising since it will let you essentially run BeOS and MacOS simultaneously, but programs that deal directly with the Macintosh hardware directly will not work. SheepShaver does support networking so I was able to use Netscape, but I ran into problems with most of my audio and MIDI software. I tried firing up Cubase, but it wouldn't run because it no longer thought it was properly authorized (but it works fine when booting under MacOS). Finale wouldn't run either. ReBirth did run fine with no obvious glitches in the audio, although the screen updates were slow. Audio input is not supported, but this should be implemented once the next release of BeOS is out. You might be able to use some Mac sequencing and recording software this way, but the performance may not be as reliable as the pure MacOS. Basic programs like text editors and spreadsheets, and even Photoshop work fine under SheepShaver. You can even play Marathon if you want to. Incidentally, the programmers are also working a LinuxPPC version of the program.

For some more information on SheepShaver, visit the products home page at www.sheepshaver.com.

Other Apps

Of course some people need to do other things in addition to making music on their computer, and there are a number of productivity packages out there as well. Word processing, spreadsheets, graphics and drawing, and advanced email clients are already available from companies like Gobe, BeatWare, and Sum Software. Again, a web browser is included with BeOS. Programmers are already at work porting Netscape to BeOS, and Opera Software has also committed to making their browser available for BeOS as well.

This is in no way a complete listing of the available software, but they are some of the ones I consider to be the most useful. There was a port of Csound (an incredibly powerful audio synthesis and manipulation tool) to BeOS earlier, but I believe it needs to be updated to work with R3. New programs are being released regularly, and hopefully with R4 and the new Media Kit, there will be some more great audio programs.