76

(6 replies, posted in Sinclair)

So, as I got more new ideas mentioned in the next gen engine ideas thread, I decided to test them out inside the Ear Shaver EX engine. Here is the update. It introduces two more sub-engines into the mix:


8: CrossPhase. Another kind of a Phaser1-like modulation engine, but a bit different both from Phaser1 and EarthShaker. It is a single channel mode, much like engine 6.

9: ModPhase. Provides two channels with always-on PWM modulation and modulation alteration via W column. T2 channel is louder than T1 channel.

The modulation alteration effect is better heard with long notes, it sounds kind of a mild guitar feedback.

Edit: updated it so ModPhases's default W always resets phase LFO, while other values keep it free running; phase LFO's are now separate and independent for both channels. This makes it more handy and versatile.

77

(135 replies, posted in Sinclair)

And if we just drop xor N right before cp d, it gives a quite interesting modulation control!

78

(135 replies, posted in Sinclair)

The idea above gives this simple PWM modulation type for the 16-bit adders system. It takes two 16-bit accumulators but a single adder:

    ld hl,0 ;acc1
    ld de,0 ;acc2
    ld bc,100 ;adder
    
loop

    add hl,bc
    ld a,h
    inc de
    cp d
    sbc a,a
    and 16
    out (#fe),a

    jp loop

79

(135 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Just come up with a dumb, but more controllable and thus usable PWM-like modulation idea:


    ld hl,0
    ld bc,100
    exx
    ld hl,0
    ld bc,201
    
loop

    add hl,bc
    ld a,h
    exx
    add hl,bc
    cp h
    exx
    sbc a,a
    and 16
    out (#fe),a

    jp loop

bc=100, bc'=100+detune is the regular PWM like drift, bc=100, bc'=bc*2+detune is one with octave etc, bc'=bc*4+detune is another octave, etc. Other not related values is kinda Earth Shaker'y, but not so much, a different kind of the sound.


Edit: I tested it out, and it actually matches exactly to Phaser1 in the resulting sound for any given adders I thought to test. Interesting.

Re-Edit: Nah, I messed up the previous test (was testing it inside Ear Shaver EX framework, and used a wrong pointer). It is really different both from EarthShaker and Phaser1! Hence giving this potential engine a name of CrossPhase, will add it as an Ear Shaver EX's update for now.

80

(135 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Yeah, I trying to get my head around it, but it doesn't really works the expected way. The inner adder works as usual, 3500000/t-states of inner loop/(65536/FREQ1). The outer adder is presumably 3500000*number of inner loop iterations/t-states of inner loop/(65536/FREQ2). However, when the second (modulation) frequency happens to be above the inner loop sample rate, i.e. a few phase changes should happen, it introduces another frequency into the equation, a kind of low frequency carrier, and the resulting frequency kinda gets unpredictable.

Not that it is useless anyways, but to make it usable from composer standpoint it is better to find a way to provide the secondary divider in a form better than a 0..65535 value per note.

81

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I guess that's because there are too few people in the voting - about 50 total (offline/online), and half of them voting at the place, on pieces of paper, and some of them are not really understand what they're doing (people came here with their families), so it is easy to make mistakes.

One problem is that number of votes is different per each entry, some people chose not to vote for particular entries, and authors generally not voting for their own entries. So if I would vote for my own entry, I'd likely get 2nd with that tiny margin, hehe. As for lqm, I don't really know what it is.

82

(135 replies, posted in Sinclair)

One problem with it is that I still can't figure out the math required to control the modulation in a predictable way - without it a suitable modulator needs to be hand picked for each and every note. So yeah, maybe a variable rate offset will turn it into something more useful and controllable.

83

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

The results:

[ ZX Spectrum Beeper Music ]

1.   7.61   A Strange Game by utz ^ irrlicht project
2.   7.18   Synthetic Heartbeat by Ataritufty ^ 1bit Forum
3.   7.17   Noise In My Head by Shiru
4.   7.14   Cosmic_Puppy by AER
5.   7.06   Traffic Lights by Shiru
6.   6.04   Yo Yo Beep Beep by Ataritufty ^ 1bit Forum
7.   4.33   SAD Beeper by rnR T.A.D. 7E6 ^ s'ky killer's

84

(135 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I'm not sure if we ever used it somewhere, sometimes I'm forgetting all the tricks we've discovered prior. Anyways, a weird kind of modulation:

 add hl,bc
 ld a,h
 cp duty
 sbc a,a
 out (#fe),a
 ... 256 times

 each frame:

 ld de,1000
 add hl,de

I.e. each frame add another value to the accumulator. Different values produce various kinds of modulation, a good variety of those.

85

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Yep, both of my tracks are Ear Shaver EX, and a few more to come sometime soon. I was trying to explore the possibilities of this particular engine and the potential of the whole engine-per-row approach. It is really promising indeed, although I'm thinking to EX it a bit more.

Totally, the strongest compo in years.

86

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Complete results yet to come, as the prizegiving is going right at the moment, but congrats, AtariTufty (2nd with Synthetic Heartbeat) and utz (1st with A Strange Game)! Finally, utz's entry got a praise it deserves! My personal favorite this time was AER's Cosmic Puppy, though.

87

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Yes, online voting is still open, results tommorow: https://events.retroscene.org/dh2023/beeper

88

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Color me impressed, guys! 7 songs, and the humble beeper is still at rise! So many cool sound colors, so many neat finds. The compo is still kinda crowded with my engines, tho. Sorry, was busy, had no time to add the recent utz's developments to the tracker yet, but I believe some of those are the next best picks.

89

(4 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

A regular VIC-20 sound chip sound is heard in some demoscene productions. The chip is actually interesting to explore, as it is capable to produce not just square wave, but bit patterns. I've tried to exploit this trick in the PETSCII Robots driver, but it didn't turn good enough. There is a lot to be explored. A glimpse of this is heard in the video linked by utz.

As for 1-bit stuff on VIC-20. Well, it is 6522 then, so exactly the same thing as the stuff that I did for the PET.

A spoiler: a native PET PeskySound-driven editor has been put into the queue of projects some time back. Should be portable to the whole 6522-equipped Commodore range easily enough.

90

(4 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Great! I thought of eliminating the row noise as an obvious engine evolution step to take, but never really done any engine with that.

91

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

DiHalt 2023 is coming up! Jan 5 it is, so there is some time to get your bits together!

A note, the tables for the data structures in the docs are messed up for Pulsatilla and Pindsvin. Not really sure how interpret them at the moment, Pulsatilla's table somehow mention ch5 even.

Just as I thought just a dozen engines left to be added to 1tracker, and we're done, three more gets added. Great sound!

94

(3 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Pretty cool, dynamic tune. Guess it is time to put some work into a Phaser4.

95

(3 replies, posted in Sinclair)

That's Tritone Digi as the file_id.diz says.

This is kind of an answer of the Soviet electronics to the graph calculators such as Ti-8x. To my knowledge, it is a totally unique design, not a copy or derivative of something (like most of other Soviet electronics), yet it is based on the cloned CPU architecture, yeah - the 16-bit LSI-11, which is at heart of the BK line of home computers. It even had a dock station MK-92 with a 4-color plotter and tape interface. First prototyped in 1986, released in 1988, produced till 1992. At the time of release it used to cost nearly as much as a small Soviet car. Not a vapor hardware either, I personally seen it in a shop being a kid.

It was the last mass produced device of such kind in the USSR. There was a similar but 8086-powered MK-98 follow up in the works, a few production quality fully functional prototypes were found, but it was never available to the mass market.

Of all places and possibilities, the (probably) first PCSPE use in a published production that has been done by someone but me, is the Bad Apple port to the USSR designed pocket computer MK-90. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qESkvDjKXA

Just released a new demo for the Commodore PET. Complete with the CB2 1-bit music! This time the music has been created with Reaper and my PETCB2 VST.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FFPCuDqi_g

99

(2 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

It seems the humble PET finally gets some love lately!

An insane video hack, would never ever think of something like that.

100

(164 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Oh, you probably creating the source block at the very first row. It is a common issue in the code, will fix it ASAP.

Edit: fixed, uploaded.