Aegis Sonix

Aegis Sonix is a music sequencer and a score editor for the Amiga created by Aegis Development and published in 1987. The application offers a combination of a notation editor and an editor of digital sounds and is able to edit IFF music instruments and other digital sound files.

Aegis Sonix
Developer(s)Aegis Development
Initial release1987 (1987)
Operating systemAmigaOS
PlatformAmiga
TypeMusic sequencer

History

Commodore International developed but never officially released a sound application called Musicraft for its Amiga series of computers.[1]: 44  Aegis Development bought rights to Musicraft from Commodore and contracted the original developers Mark Riley and Gary Koffler to continue its development. The application - now under the Aegis Sonix name - was released in 1987.[1]: 45  in 1989, Aegis left the Amiga market and sold its software products to a Californian software producer Oxxi, Inc, which continued to use the Aegis brand.[1]: 46 

Features

The software includes a score, keyboard, and an instrument editor. The program uses two file formats, the SMUS file format, which is an IFF based tracker module music format, and the INSTR file format which contains the instrument data.[2] Sonix can also read music files created by Deluxe Music Construction Set and works as a MIDI sequencer.[3]: 77  Sonix offers 8 music tracks: the first four are useable for 4 voices of the Amiga sound hardware and also for the MIDI instruments, the other four are available only for the MIDI instruments. All 8 tracks are independent of each other and can be used at the same time.[4] The score editor allows to write notation for sheet music.[3]: 76  The application serves primarily a music synthesis tool for creation of analog or digital sounds and is able to edit IFF music instruments and other digital sound files.[1]: 45 

Reception

A review in the French magazine Tilt commended easy to use menus[3]: 76  and good documentation and highlighted the combination of a notation editor and an editor of digital sounds as the main strong point of the application.[3]: 77  The AmigaNews magazine evaluated the use of Sonix with MIDI and noted among several benefits few limitations: the program doesn't support recording of a key press on the MIDI keyboard.[4] Sonix was also reviewed in the Keyboard magazine.[5]

See also

References
  1. Dickinson, T. R. (July–August 2014). "Classic Reflections (16) Whatever happened to Aegis Development?". Amiga Future. No. 109. APC&TCP. pp. 42–46.
  2. Spanik, Christian; Tai, Thomas; Hahn, Holger (1990). Making Music on the Amiga. ISBN 978-1557550941.
  3. Hautefeuille, Olivier (October 1987). "Sonix". Tilt (in French). No. 46. Editions Mondiales S.A. pp. 76–77. ISSN 0753-6968.
  4. Vroegop, Frank (June 1988). "Amiga + Midi - ça marche!". AmigaNews (in French). No. 3. NewsEdition. p. 11. ISSN 1164-1746.
  5. "Sonix (Amiga)". Keyboard. Future US. June 1988. p. 160. ISSN 0730-0158.
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