Impulse Tracker 3 Coming Your Way!

Written by Makke

Yes, the development of Impulse Tracker 3 has started (and been going on for sometime now), and the first version is already in beta testing. It's not a public release, as the editor doesn't work yet. The developers are the Check group Unreal, and they say they're very inspired to do this, and they've got over 1000 e-mails supporting their work.

The new and improved Impulse Tracker will require a Pentium/K5/6X86 CPU, at any frequency, 16 MB of RAM (this may rise to 24) but the developers suggest that you buy 32 MB or more. Hey, memory is pretty cheap these days. The soundcard should come with 32bit drivers. This is not required but strongly suggested.

You should also have a fast graphic accelerator on PCI, but AGP is recommended. The operating system for this nice proggy will be Win95/98/NT 4.0/5.0.

The optimal setup, however, is MMX/PII/K6/6X86MX at 166 MHz or more, 32 MB RAM, 2 soundcards and 4 speakers. Graphic board is AGP and Windows 95/98/Windows NT 4.0/5.0 operating system.

This program promises to be mighty and powerful, but it does cost some energy of your computer. The 486 will be no more supported in IT3. The 486 hardware is simply too tired to use this tracker on. But this is easy to understand, as we all know that Windows 95 doesn't work very well with 486s. At least not compared to a Pentium. But a Pentium won't really do either. An MMX machine is probably the lowest hardware you should use.

To get the IT3 to become a more professional program, they decided to use Windows over DOS. They want the program to be able to compete with pro-software like Cakewalks and Cubase. And the usage of Windows also makes the soundcard compatibility much better.

As I said, IT3 will be a professional software, and this means that it WON'T be free of charge (as nothing nowadays). There will be a LITE version and a PRO (ELITE - hehe) version. The LITE version will be either free or a lowcost shareware program, but the PRO one will be more expensive.

The main differences between the versions are diskwriter, hardware mixing devices support (EWS, AWE, GUS, etc.), password protection, some plug-ins and a printed manual (Lite vesion will have only the electronical one). There will be also some deduction for IT2.xx registered users.

You can read more here:
http://mp3.musichall.cz/IT3/index.html

- Makke / Comic Pirates / Hugi