Overview

About the Virtual Sampler Library and Virtual Sampler SDK

The Virtual Sampler Library (VSL.DLL) provides applications running under MS Windows 95 and NT with a MIDI-controlled, low-latency, fully programmable wavetable module implemented entirely in software.

Using the Virtual Sampler Library, you can play both sound effects and music by issuing simple MIDI messages. When dealing with sound effects, you are relieved of the need to negotiate the intricacies of DirectSound programming or (worse) of hardware-specific APIs, but retain the ability to synchronize screen and audio events precisely. When dealing with music, you can use standard MIDI tools to create your songs, and yet know exactly what the user will hear, independently of his or her synthesizer hardware.

The Virtual Sampler Library will work with all 16 bit sound cards complying with Microsoft's DirectSound standard, including ones without any kind of wavetable hardware support. It will also work with sound cards lacking a DirectSound driver, as long as DirectSound itself is present on the system and can access the sound hardware through the slower waveOut device (part of the old, 16 bit Windows multimedia API). Low-latency operation does however require DirectSound support.

The Virtual Sampler SDK contains the documentation and code needed to use the Virtual Sampler Library in your own programs. It also includes the Mellosoftron, the popular emulated sampler based on the Virtual Sampler Library, for quick sound patch creation and editing.

IMPORTANT: For size reasons, the VS SDK and the Mellosoftron are distributed in separate archives. The Mellosoftron archive is available from http://www.abc.se/~m9303/ml.html.

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About the Virtual Sampler API

Although the virtual sampler at the core of VSL.DLL is an object (in the C++ meaning of the word) you will never deal directly with it or with any other object defined by the Virtual Sampler Library. Instead, you control the virtual sampler through a C-style (i.e. procedural) interface. Therefore, no knowledge or use of object oriented programming is required. If you only want to write straight C (or Pascal, or Basic), there is nothing preventing you from doing so.

Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of Virtual Sampler Library functions:

1. initialization and shutdown functions - invoked before and after playing the virtual sampler;
2. global configuration functions - used to modify the properties and environment of the virtual sampler;
3. play control functions - used to play the virtual sampler.