Notice:

This page of The Auricle Site is in some sense always 'under construction'. If you have a question not posed and answered here, it may be covered in a subject treated in our Press Kit or you may submit your question directly via webmaster@auricle.com .

1. What is your revision or update policy?
   We keep the Auricle up-to-date regularly by issuing revisions yearly (well approximately, but that's about the average over the last ten years). These revisions encompass both bug fixes and enhancements to existing functions as well as the addition of new functions or features. Most often these new features are ones suggested by owners. We currently charge approximately $250.00 (exclusive of shipping , handling and California Sales Taxes if applicable) for each revision which includes a supplement to the loose-leaf manual. If a revision is published within six months of a purchase, the revision is at no charge. Revisions 'in-progress' as they evolve and develop over time are available for use by Registered Owners at no charge. These 'works in progress' and the associated documentation may be downloaded from this Web Site as they are made available (see Owners' Corner). They will also be mailed at no charge upon request. NOTE: The charge for a periodic update to an owner of multiple licenses is that update's unit price multiplied by the number of keys that owner has acquired. 
2. I may use the system on scoring stages, risking my reputation and orchestra costs as usual. Should I be concerned about reliability?
   Yes you should, always! And not just about The Auricle. As far as The Auricle is concerned, though, we can only say this: Since its inception in late 1983 The Auricle has never 'crashed' on a scoring stage or otherwise screwed up in any way that interrupted production... and that means in many hundreds of major features as well as countless TV shows, here and abroad. If you are serious about an acquisition and are still concerned, we will be more than glad to put you in touch with some owners of whom you can inquire directly.
3. Is there a version of the Auricle for Apple's Macintosh computer?
   No, and there is not one planned. We have nothing against the Apple's Macintosh (a couple of them are powered up around here all the time - the Auricle's manual is produced on the Mac, for example, and many of the Auricle's functions are 'modeled' on the Mac before written in assembler on the PC). In fact, when we first undertook to rewrite the Auricle for a new platform in 1986-87, our first choice was a Mac given its then established installed base in the music community. But when testing it (then Plus's, SE's and Mac II's) for its ability to accurately run a click track 'wild' (without external SMPTE lock), we became quite concerned about its ability to be SMPTE failsafe on the scoring stage: Against pro laboratory test equipment (a Hewlett-Packard interval counter), the Mac was always running slightly fast... lets say a 120 BPM pulse (500 milliseconds per click) ran at 499 milliseconds/click! Small though this may seem, the result a run length error which make 'wild' film sync impossible. One millisecond per beat adds up. Over 100 beats (only 25 4/4 bars!) and you are already out of whack vis a vis picture by a tenth of a second! OK for a rock and roll hit but not for a "hit" in a Star Wars score.
   We first thought it was just problematic code design in the programs we were using for testing the Mac (Mark of the Unicorn's Performer and Opcode's Cue) - their programmers may not have paid attention to and corrected for downward rounding errors when loading the Mac's integer based timer. With no easy way to be sure whether it was these programs or the Mac, we were put in touch with one of the top programmers at Apple who came over to look at what we were up to and to discuss our concerns. He advised that the Mac OS stole timer tics and that it was not otherwise designed as a 'real time' machine. He suggested going with our other option, the Yamaha C1, since it had a complement of OS isolated timers (3 in all) in addition to the usual PC timer. So, when considering other issues as well (like the Mac OS itself, for example, which is and has been a moving target over time and so can create a bug and revision nightmare for those like us who cater to super-niche markets), we decided against the Mac. The newer generations of Mac machines and OS's may have addressed and resolved these earlier, fatal timing problems... but its too late as far as we are concerned... and even later still when one ponders that Apple Inc. continues to keep us thrilled with suspense as to whether it really has a long term future..
4. Can Auricle run on a Macintosh in a DOS window?
   Technically, yes; but practically NO! Which is to say there is no reason that the code can't work on the Mac via the proper emulator. Its just that the necessary hardware resources The Auricle requires are simply not there. For example, The Auricle currently relies on the V24s MIDI Interface card (we are looking into a USB substitute). But neither the Mac nor any PCI IBM-PC cards have a 'place' for it. And neither the Mac nor any Mac IBM- PC Cards sport a 'clone' of the IBM parallel printer port which is necessary for the Auricle's Lock Key. Given enough money and enough nerds, we could probably write around these problems. But in the small community of professional composers and music editors we serve, we wouldn't survive the effort financially.
5. Is Auricle an MS-Windows application?
   Although Auricle provides a windowing environment itself, it is strictly speaking. a DOS application and not an MS-Windows application. Auricle can, however, be accessed via Windows either (1) in "full screen mode"; or, (2) if you have enough memory and you are in 386 enhanced mode, in a DOS window in Windows. But be cautious: Some owners have reported occasional 'timing' oddities and various resource allocation and driver conflict problems when running Auricle via Windows which have not always been easy, if not impossible to unravel.
6. Why support only Voyetra's V24s MIDI Interface Card?
   Voyetra's V24s is the only MIDI interface card ever made with a complement of on board hardware timers (three altogether). This allows us to do such things as run clix and streamers simultaneously "free", that is, without external SMPTE lock, and still be accurate to picture to within about one film frame in 10 minutes! This allows us also to generate time code while all this is going on so that Auricle can drive digital video and listening sequencers... great for rehearsing without the need to roll tape. But this also makes the Auricle essentially fail-safe on the scoring stage where, if time code fails for some reason, you can still record "wild" and have your music nevertheless match picture at the dub and not fear having to send an expensive orchestra home (see, e.g., Moonlighting, where there was no picture and thus no time code!). Also, since two of the three V24s timers are "ganged", this allows Auricle to easily create beat values of up to four (4) seconds (15 BPM!) for those "grand pauses" or fermatas so essential to filmic technique. And there's another reason: Keeping the system simple - the V24s reads time code directly... there's no need to traipse additional luggage (SMPTE>MTC black boxes) to the scoring stage. CAVEAT: The market is advancing rapidly away from ISA to PCI, USB and Firewire. We have enough V24s around. But we are still constantly vigilant for the availability of a PCMCIA or USB V24s clones. If one hits the market, we expect that we will be supporting it as soon as we can code for it.
7. Does Auricle produce streamers, punches & flutters on the computer's display?
   No. In music computer software, click and MIDI clock timing, handling and production must always take priority over visual display procedures if timing accuracy and tempo stability is to be maintained. Thus, computer display visuals always lag the 'real time' events behind the scenes (you can witness this for yourself just in the frequently sluggish or jerky bar/beat counters seen even in the best GUI sequencer programs, for example). Streamer graphics in this environment can thus almost always and mostly do look amateurish (we've seen some systems that have tried!). So we opted to forget it as nothing more than computer confectionism. Besides, there seems to be a pointlessness in doing so when the whole idea of a streamer is, and has been since the Forties, to provide a visual conductor's cue 'over' the actual picture (which Auricle does quite professionally in conjunction with the Cueline streamer generator ).
8. How does Auricle produce a click?
   The usual computer "beep"; and, for scoring stage purposes, via the output of selectable MIDI note(s) over a selectable MIDI channel. The sound or quality of the click produced by Auricle's MIDI output is dependent of the nature and quality of the attached or 'listening' MIDI instrument.
9. In what computer language is The Auricle written?
   The program was written and is maintained entirely in Assembler. It can be a bitch to work with. But this insures the fastest, most compact code possible.
10. How do I sync up my Mac (or whatever) sequencer to the Auricle?
    Basically it goes like this: SMPTE time code > AURICLE (MIDI song pointer/MIDI clocks) > your Mac sequencer. This means you don't have to worry about timing in your sequencer making sync changes enormously easier and less painful, particular on the scoring stage when (a favorite Jerry Goldsmith technique) you are moving both a large orchestra and umteen racks of synths simultaneously!
    
11. Is The Auricle copy protected? __________
    
    Yes and no! The Auricle's distribution disk and/or any one or more files on it may be copied or duplicated at will by an owner (or anyone for that matter) without restriction. However, The Auricle will not load and run on any hardware platform on which it is installed unless a Lock Key (above graphic) is affixed to the computer's parallel printer port. This Lock Key is a 'logic device' manufactured for us by Rainbow Technologies. It contains ROM code necessary to the operation of the program. No Lock Key... no program, so to speak.