Make sure the wave file uses PCM encoding. You can check using the properties page of the wave file (right click in Windows Explorer). PCM is the only format that DirectSound can handle. If the wave file uses another form of encoding, convert it using a wave editor or sound file conversion program such as Awave. If your file is in PCM, try loading it into an editor and saving again. Sometimes the header can be become corrupted, and resaving can fix this problem.

Jambient is compatible with Windows 95 and 98 systems running DirectX 8 as well as DirectX 7. The good news is that we plan a version that will allow you to take advantage of DirectX 8. Planned features include: more precise timing, audio effects, 4 channel audio, streaming of sound files (lets you play bigger samples), MP3 compatibility. Watch the site for announcements; we will be taking applications for beta testers once our first pay and register version is released - probably in March.

You need to install DirectX. Download it from www.microsoft.directx

At present, Jambient has no built in recording facility. You can, however, use third party software to record Jambient's audio output:

1) Some sound cards, such as Sound Blaster Live!, come with recording applets in combination with drivers and hardware that let you record what is being played. Just make sure that the Wave device or "Record What U Hear" is selected in the mixer window for RECORDING properties. (Microsoft's recorder will only let you record tiny snippets.)

2) If you don't have such a recording applet, Total Recorder is an inexpensive and great applet that lets you record from just about anything. Depending on your hardware, in jambient you may have to go the options panel and select Total Recorder Mixer as your playback device.

3) Virtual Audio Cable is a nifty device driver that lets you pipe audio from one piece of software into another. You can use it to pipe the audio output of Jambient into a recording applet. You'll have to select output to VAC (DirectSound) in Jambient through the options panel, and make sure you select input from VAC in your recording applet. You could also record through VAC using a sound editor such as WaveLab.

jambient can read wave files encoded in PCM format. It supports stereo or mono samples, at any of the standard sample rates and bits per sample settings. If you are planning to make heavy use of your samples with jambient's 3d spatialization feature, you should convert them to mono to improve performance, since DirectSound needs to convert stereo samples back to mono before rendering them in 3d.

Not at the moment. As of this writing [Nov, 2000], our main concern is getting Jambient out on Windows. We appreciate that a lot of people in music and experimental sound are Mac oriented, and we plan to address this need. But at the moment, our priority is getting the word out to Windows users.