SFX Updates
SFX 6.2.6 Update Updates to SFX 6.2.6.0
Actual Requirements to run SFX
This is really hard to lock down as different users have different demands on how SFX works. If you're playing a couple door bells and a toilet flush, pretty much any system that will run Windows Vista or Windows 7 well will work fine.
As you begin to demand more and more from SFX and your playback system, CPU, Memory and Video begin to become more important for system performance. SFX is optimized to send critical messages to a high priority thread while less important messages (screen refresh, etc) to a lower priority thread. CPU's speed is critical when mixing and decoding audio streams. Memory is important when you are trying to play large amounts of audio. Video/Graphics comes into play when displaying large amounts of information to the user. A typical high performance system would be a multiple core CPU (dual or quad), 4 GB of RAM (Windows 7) and a video card that has it's own GPU and memory.
You probably can grab any off the shelf "gaming" computer running Windows 7 and have enough power to run 30 or so audio files to 16 outputs at one time for around $1000. Higher end, dedicated Digital Audio Workstations could playback hundreds of audio files through 64 output channels. Such systems can be found at SWE Sound Productions (http://www.swesound.com/) or ADK ProAudio (http://www.adkproaudio.com).
Sound Cards
Any sound card that supports ASIO is recommended. Most Pro sound cards support the ASIO driver model and SFX will output audio at the lowest latency (<8ms) using one of these boards. You can use non-ASIO sound cards (Sound Blaster, etc) but will need to install a driver that will emulate ASIO (www.asio4all.com). While this is a solution to non-ASIO sound cards it does add latency.
SFX 5.6 Transition to SFX 6.x
SFX 6 is an entirely rewritten version of SFX 5. With improved and lower cost technology, features that were on our “wish it could do list” have been implement into SFX 6 with room to grow. With so many new changes, SFX 6 may appear to be complex, however the essence of SFX 5’s “ease of use” is inherit in SFX 6 and barriers that made SFX 5 difficult to use, have been removed.
Creating your show is as easy as dragging and dropping Audio files into your cue list, setting volumes and pressing GO. That process hasn’t changed, what has changed is the types of audio files you can use, how SFX stays out of your way when you are editing properties, and the features you‘ll expand into.
How SFX 6.x differs from SFX 5.6Training Topics
Each of these topics takes less than 3 minutes to go over some of the basics on how SFX 6 is used. Topics are just an overview and may take additional time to understand the entire process of how things work. Free free to edit and add to these pages.
'How Do I... '
This section is a copy of the How Do I help files in SFX 6. You can also access these same tiny tutorials within SFX 6 by going to the help menu and selecting "How Do I..."
Creating Your 1st Production'User Interface:'
Enter Volume Levels
Enter Time Values
Set Default Volume Level
Set Default Volume Change Time
Set Default Wait Time
Docked Windows :Change the basic look of SFX to use undocked windows.
Using Input Relays to Trigger SFX
If you have ideas for new topics that can be covered briefly in this "How Do I..." format, please let us know by sending an email to: richard@stageresearch.com