Question: I have this song that takes up more than 12 Megs on my ASR 10. Problem is: after it's done playing it freezes with the "locating message" stuck on the screen. Any way around this? It sucks having to reload that sucker via 1.4 diskettes EVERY time.

OR Question: I just did this little sequence, made it into a Song and I saved it, and it says it doesn't fit on the floppy. The floppy is empty  -I just can't believe that the Song is more than 3167 blocks!

Yuuch...

Is the song 12 megs because you are using RAMTracks or DiskTracks with the song? If not, your sequence is a victim of the "expanding sequence" bug. Somewhere along the line, the EPS/ASR misallocates or does not defragment the data in memory before writing it to disk, thus it writes loads of garbage data between the sequence information in the Song file.

The easiest way around this is to treat the Song file with our Tools program. We have put a utility in there to shrink the Song file down and delete the garbage data. Otherwise, the way around this is to save all your individual sequences individually, and then create a new song, and reload all the sequences in. The size of the sequence will go down. Even if you are using RAM or Disk Tracks, recompiling the sequence will help your situation.

Otherwise, here are some helpful tips for you to minimize the effects of this bug.

• The excess data is contained within the song data. We believe the bug is useless data that is put into the memory structure of the song in RAM. Other than noticing that the Song does not fit on a floppy or takes a very long time to save, one indicator of an "expanded sequence" are long EDITING... times. When this delay becomes annoying enough, use the below steps to shrink your Song back to normal.
• While you are composing the Song, NAME YOUR SEQUENCES. This makes them much more readily identifiable.
• Do not use Song Tracks - below, you will have to erase the Song itself, and you'll never be able to exactly replicate the information.
• Write down ALL the data within EDIT SONG STEPS, including the sequence name, repeat times, mute and transpose information.
• Save each sequence used within the Song, using the SAVE CURRENT SEQUENCES function.
• Use the ERASE SONG &ALL SEQ? function to erase all the sequencer. Look! you have all your memory back.
• Load each sequence back from floppy/Hard drive.
• Re-input the data into EDIT SONG STEPS.
• Use SAVE SONG & ALL SEQ? function to save the Song.
• Continue to work with the sequencer/song data - you will notice that the sequence will start "expanding" again. Repeat the above steps when the EDITING... pause becomes unbearable for you again.

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