12 Note Mapper is a software companion to "A Totally New Approach to Ear Training based on the 12 Note Solfege". With this software, you can extend your Ear Training into your regular practice session. Thus, it speeds up the progress and improves the effectiveness.

Through our beta testing, we have learned that it is a bit more complicated to set up a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) system than we originally anticipated. The built-in synthesizer under Windows Vista and XP is not usable due to its latency. This increases the complexity and cost of the system setup. It should be a plug-and-play for a majority of people to use it. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about it for now. We will release the product as planned. Due to this rather discouraging discovery, we decided to develop a version for Mac OS X platform. It seems Mac has already solved this problem for an included software with OS X called "GarageBand". Actually, Mac has a long history in Music Education and Music Creation. It is quite adequate to develop a version for Macintosh for this reason alone. We do not know the timeline yet since it has just begun.

R & D effort in EarMagic Standard is resumed. Standard Edition incorporates 12 Note Mapper function, which is introduced in 12 Note Mapper, software companion to our recent book titled "A Totally New Approach to Ear Training based on the 12 Note Solfege". On the other hand, Basic Plus Edition is still on hold. Basic Plus Edition is designed for guitar players and we would like to spend more time on guitar interface while 12 Note Mapper and its function is almost done. We know that we will discontinue Basic Edition once Standard Edition is done. Then, perhaps Basic Plus Edition will come back as Standard Plus Edition.

This is going to be just a prototype and used to demonstrate our design capability in hardware. 12 Note Mapper function can be easily implemented into a new project of any digital instrument in the form of firmware. For existing products, such an addition or update may not be available due to other ristrictions. In such a case, an inexpensive additional hardware might have some values. We might use it to solicit other companies to manufacture such a device for general public.

The following project is now on hold due to the availability of the subject chips (S40 and S24). We will continue the "hold" status until the chips become available again.

- We have been looking for an opportunity to enter into this field since the inception of the company. We have studied all the known methods available today, and we thought we would start with the most commonly used method "Sampling" as a basis. Being in this high tech valley, we came across something unexpected. IntellaSys, in our neighborhood, started manufacturing a very unique CPU. It is called SEAforth 40C18 (S40). This tiny device contains 40 CPUs and together it could deliver up to 26 billion operations per second with a fraction of power required in other CPUs. It requires no heat sink. Actually, this CPU is so different that it is simply misleading to describe it in terms of conventional terminologies. We have laid our eyes on this technology since their introduction of pre-production S24 (24 CPU version) in 2007. Now, it is even possible to create an array of this CPU, which produces an unparalleled computation power per watt. This might open the door to produce high quality virtual sound in real time.

The challenge is to design algorithms to utilize this CPU architecture. This is a huge undertaking, which is not something we can do immediately. Instead, we decided to work on something smaller, yet totally unique in the market place. We will put our R & D effort into creating suitable Physical Models with necessary Signal Processing Methods to achieve our goal. If we find it difficult to implement our idea with single S40, we will switch to a software approach. We invest this year (2009) for a feasibility study. We are hoping that we will be able to tell you something exciting by the end of this year.