NewStyle AXS is an old DOS tracker that was a commercial product from some Dutch Devs in the 90s...They made it into windows (barely) then gave it out for free starting in 2001...
I always found it had an alluring GUI that is like a large screenmate & I really like its anti-aliased synth which is capable of producing a large variety of sound & sounds 'right on' in my ears..
It also has 'smart patterns' which is cool & evidently Arguru thought so too as he implemented smart patterns into Noisetrekker which are STILL here today in Protrekkr...
Notice the built-in HELP right on the GUI...LOL... I hafta use a screen magnifier on that one...
Anyways it do have a few issues but NONE are show stoppers...Since I am about 25% into a serious tune in it I figure I will post what I find out so far quite a bit...
I use XP SP3 on most everything...
FIRST....VERY STABLE!...No crashes at all, no hangs very efficient on directsound your machine won't even know it's running...This is very tight coded 352 KB EXE!!...It has a few other files but STILL everything below 400 KB!
SECOND...And this is a BIG ONE!...AXS will absorb any kinda 16 bit WAV but I spent hours trying to figure out why it would not save the samples in the song file, I thought there was an issue with my samples but NO!...If you do not use a sample in a song it will be discarded upon save...So when I added samples after this epiphany I made Block 000 a junk block pressing every sample note in the sampler...You ALSO have to do this with a tuned sample that you press 'FILL OCTAVE' you have to play every note of the octave in the junk block...When done you just mute all the tracks of the junk block, remove from sequencer area...
THEN you can save your song file & will all be intact next opening...I found a bit on this in the on-GUI help AFTER the fact...
THIRDLY....In the beginning testing WAV render for function - Testing WAV Render found that manual is useless as manual is updated version '2' & not applicable. But the WAV Render did not work for me but the Disc Streaming did. Open the 'setup' button & choose the 'RenderToDisc' option, Open your tune AND open your C root directory, Now press 'play' & in a few seconds you should see 'test.wav' show up on C root dir. Let tune play & shut off right after it ends, rename WAV & take into editor & trim off fat...
Those are the big ones so far, there is a bit of an issue with storing presets as the light does not flash like its supposed to but you just give the button a second click & it saves OK, having trouble renaming presets, Don't worry if you screw up as it only saves/overwrites bank if you do so down in the files area...
Also the whole DRM Drumkit open/save don't work...It saves a zero-byte file & it won't open an original DRM drumkit so saving into an AXS song is your goal...
Pretty much it so far...I haven't tried hooking up a MIDI controller yet just doing oldskool from QWERTY, You can apparently do some live recording of automation haven't tried yet...I have entered commands & interpolated all is well there with knobs-sliders animating as expected...
It does not seem to have the ability to fade-in then fade-out a tune but who cares? After WAV export I will simply do that in my audio editor...There is a command for tempo change but haven't tried yet...
You can get it from here-
https://web.archive.org/web/20030527131006/http://www.resolutionaudio.nl/Plus some extra stuff as well...
Here's the Sonic Spot page from 1999 when it was a commercial DOS product... ($60.00)...
https://web.archive.org/web/19991122032954/http://www.sonicspot.com/axs/axs.htmlAnybody else wishes to try their hand just ask if you get baffled or waylayed right here on the thread...