Search options (Page 12 of 21)

In case anyone interested, I also released a drum synth counterpart to ChipWave - ChipDrum. It is capable for some1-bit'ish sounds too.

Updated a little bit, fixed the annoying GUI flickering during plugin load.

Also a shameless plug, just released ChipWave, a synth plugin that has many characteristics of old sound chips such as AY, SID, POKEY, as well as some features that come from 1-bit synthesis. You may find it interesting.

I don't really have time to play the auction games, and the buy now prices is not that dirt cheap - it is a price of an used PS4/XBO here, and I don't even know how much the delivery would be, because almost no one sends to Russia. Likely as much, judging by past experiences. And the local prices is downright crazy, $500-1000. I can't afford any of it.

No, not yet.

So, we're all failed to support this one. Only one beeper song from AER, 14 entries total, mostly AY music.

I was hoping to do a beeper track with the new engine (Ear Shaver), but other things interfered, so only finished the engine itself when the compo was already running.

Nice one!

Can you show a screenshot of how it looks in your DAW? I'm interested to see if my readme explains the intended workflow clear enough, and how you arranged the things.

One interesting thing to consider about these devices is that, like I mentioned, most of them using a 32768 Hz crystal. That's so called 'clock crystal', normally found in digital clocks, it has this specific frequency exactly because it is so easy to get 1 Hz clock out of it by dividing it by 32768 (just 15 D-triggers in sequence).

This, however, means, clock speed of an MCU is normally just 32768 Hz, i.e. it executes 32768 1-t opcodes in a second. We get used to have a 10-30 KHz sample loop in our ZX engines, but you simply can't have a loop that fast on an 4-bit MCU like that. Considering it is 4-bit, there is going to be a plenty opcodes even with simplest 8-bit counter based sound generation loop. Even if you have to generate just a 440 Hz tone, you can only have 32768/440=74 opcodes to do this! So a way to overcome this limitation has to be found, and I think that's what makes these specific non-pure square tones in old electronic games.

Yes, no effect for W (duty) for ES. Was thinking what can I do for it, but not found an interesting application so far. Maybe will come up with something, so it will be Shaver 2. Would certainly add some noise mode there, maybe a Phaser and QChan like modes too.

Was thinking on those variable-channel engines too. Yes, it is just to difficult to fit into a generalized tracker design. One crude way would be just ignore extra channels in some modes, and add a large general purpose effect column on the side, so each engine will pick only values it needs to from there.

Like,

C-1 123 C-2 123 --- ... ---... ABCDEFG

Four chanenls first, some may be not used in some modes, and values of the ABCDEFG block get interpreted depending on currently active engine. Internally they may be compiled into different structures, or maybe just change a small array of parameter bytes, and each engine will interpret some of the bytes in its own way.

A new engine added without changing the version, Ear Shaver.

I would keep the overall pitch a little bit higher, it will sound better. That's due the way 8253 works, it does not restart count right away once a new divider is loaded, so if your pitch gets very low, like in a kick drum slide, to a few dozen hz, then you need a high pitched sound, it won't start until one period of the low pitched sound gets completed. So if the pitch was at, say, 24 Hz, it may take up to 1/24 second before higher pitch will take effect, but that maybe a time to play another pitch (arpeggiated) already, and it will sound distorted and kind of like having weird gaps or drop outs.

If you always keep pitch weil above the 'frame rate', it will sound good. I.e. if you use 60 hz update rate, try to keep your pitch not lower than 60 Hz, better to keep it higher than 60 Hz most of the time.

Arpeggios is not a problem for piezo speaker itself. Frequency response is, it cuts most of the low and mid-low end (like up to 700 Hz), and has various resonances in the higher end. Take a look:

As an alternative for Monotone, you can use my PCSPE VST plugin. It allows to create very complicated single channel music for actual PC Speaker, and you can use it with your favorite DAW. You can use some of my impulse responses to make it sound like a piezo as well.

Tamagotchi said to have a 6502 core inside. Bandai's LCD game is probably something along the lines of TMS1000.

It is sure possible to make some music routine for SM-510 that would sound more interesting than simple beeps. However, nothing has been done in this area yet, because this isn't some popular thing, it was reverse engineered and emulated just recently, and there is simply no development infrastructure yet. Like, you need an instruction set doc, an assembler, an emulator that allows to test your code, and you likely won't be able to run it on the original HW, as it uses mask ROM.