I think that you might find some applicable "prior art" in the VME patents, related to voice mail applications, probably filed arround 1976-80 or so. Voice mail is audio by defintion, and the VME patents dealt with the use of hard drives for storing audio as messages, etc. Also, a lot of other telephonic feature sets have digital and a/d-d/a to-from disc., especially as included in digital pbx's and keysets of the late 70's and early 80's. I suspect that some of these patents have expired, yielding the basic claims into public domain, by now. Joe ----- Original Message ----- From: Tony Lambley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 9:03 AM Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] EVO status...was: (open-source like hardware)
> Back in the 80's people were using the Synclavier for audio on video > productions. I know they were serious beasts, but I doubt they would have > kept all that data in RAM. The latter Fairlights were probably similar. > Anyone have any first hand experience of them? Maybe they're the prior-art > people are looking for? May be the Mellotron was implementing read-ahead > too! > > --- > > > > >Halion does use the smae technology BUT steinberg have shown that they > have > > >been using an equivalent algorithm before the patent have actually been > > >granted to Nemesys. "Where?" will you ask? Well, in cubase of course! > Every > > >audio sequencer I know of have to do read ahead of audio data if they > want > > >to be useable! > > > > We have a document about keeping beginnings of the audio segments > > in memory for instant play in such multitrack application. > > So, if that was all what was needed, we are in safe. > > > > But sure I would like to get more information about how Steinberg > > avoided patent royalties --- just in case the situation is not that > > simple! > > > > We should search for old manuals of jingle players. Two years ago > > I checked plenty of Amiga software if there was anything, but no. > > A friend wrote and installed one such jingle player using the trick > > to an ice-hockey hall at 1993 (or so). Such jingle players are > > not sampling synths, but they could provide docs on the trick > > and on if a loops were used (one shot sampling synth is not good). > > > > Also, two years ago we found out that a person worked on such > > disk sampler. I remember we ended up to the situation that they > > never published details of this unique installation. > > > > In any case, preload in multitrack editor is totally different > > from a disk sampler. Perhaps Steinberg had something else too. > > > > > > Best regards, > > > > Juhana > > > > > >
