@node "Welcome"


                                   WELCOME

Welcome to OctaMED Soundstudio! The MED in OctaMED stands for Music EDitor,
and that's exactly what OctaMED is: a versatile music composer and editor.
Although quite sophisticated, OctaMED is also easy and interesting to learn.
You can compose music for games, demos, animations, presentations, or simply
use the program as a stand-alone editor.

In the early days of the Amiga, programmers needed a fast, convenient way to
write music for games and demos. A music program called Sound Tracker was
written in response to this need. It provided a perfect way to incorporate
sound tracks into programs, and as a result, most Amiga games and virtually
all demo programs had their music written with Sound Tracker (or one of its
many imitation programs, known as "trackers").

Unfortunately, like many programmer's utilities, trackers required great
patience. Although composing music was not especially difficult, they often
crashed, seldom caoften
crashed, seldom came with instructions, and refused to multi-task (one of
the Amiga's major attributes). In spite of these problems, trackers became
increasingly popular, a testament to their usefulness.

Recognizing the value of Sound Tracker, Teijo Kinnunen began designing an
improved program. The first version, MED 1.12, appeared in Autumn 1989.
Teijo improved this version with new program code and, in April of 1990, he
release MED 2.00. Perhaps the most important new feature was MIDI support.
MED n excellent piece of music software; virtually
every Amiga publication of both sides of the Atlantic has praised MED.

In 1991, after being persuaded by Ray of RBF Software, Teijo released
OctaMED, a great improvement on MED with its main new feature being the
ability to play eight sounds at the same time, breaking out of the Amiga's
four-sound limitation. With the release of OctaMED Professional V5, the user
interface was completely redesigned to give the program a much more
"friendly" appearance. The program thus moved into the 90's by becoming
Kickstart 2 only, leaving many users with no choice but to upgrade.

OctaMED V6 further modernized the program and introduced ARexx support. Now
the ultimate tracker has arrived: OctaMED Soundstudio. It Includes a
completely redesigned and powerful notation editor, an amazing new playing
mode (Mix), plus enhancements in nearly every other part of the program, we
are confident that you'll enjoy the premier Amiga music package!

                           @{" Contents  " link "Main" 0}
                           @{" Disclaimer" link "Disc" 0}


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