Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.

Palmtop BV suggest rather mundanely on the packaging for Sound Master that its principal use will be in constructing sound files for use as alarms. This is, in my opinion, a front for its real purpose... which is to let you have major FUN on your Series 5. You probably already mess around recording samples of your friends and colleagues using the S5's dictaphone buttons - well, now you can add echo, white noise or make them speak backwards. Or a dozen other wierd and wonderful effects. But remember, if you're justifying the package for your business, "It's for making your wake-up alarms more efficient" (...yeah, right!)

Sound Master works by directly manipulating raw Series 5 sound samples, and goes far, far further than the built-in Record application in the Psion ROM. With this utility you can now cut and paste fragments to your heart's content, even mixing (superimposing) two samples together if need be. It even includes the functionality of Psion's own DOS command-line converters and lets you import Series 3 sound files or import and export Windows .WAV files directly. Good stuff!

The interface is very intuitive. For example, selection of a fragment can be done by tapping the start point and then dragging the selection band as needed. Or witness the way the zoom keys give you 10 levels of detail to examine the smallest nooks and crannies in your sound sample. There is quite a lot of built-in help, though it's in a simple linear hypertext format rather than the usual S5 searchable database, which is a shame. Still, the help isn't essential as half the fun of Sound Master is in the trial and error of experimentation.

Onto the bit you'll all make a beeline for: the special effects. There are the 'boring' but necessary ones: volume, filter, fading and so forth. Then there's the fun stuff: speed, reverse, echo, metal (dalek), cathedral, vibrato and underwater. With the sample mixing facility and the way effects can be composited by running one after the other the range of sound manipulations possible is really impressive.

The only thing I missed was a way of recording new samples from within the program (as the old Series 3 version used to allow), but this is a minor criticism. Maybe one for the next version?

A must-have for any Series 5 owner who's really a big kid at heart!

See also my Sounds library.

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