Regrettably, we aren't living in the most uplifting of times right now ![]()
201 2022-03-18 22:55:41
Re: Spring (1 replies, posted in General Discussion)
202 2022-02-03 22:45:21
Re: next gen engine ideas (135 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Good find. I've used xor phasing on >1bit signals in a couple of engines, but it never occurred to me that the effect strength could be controlled in this way. Very cool.
Btw, shouldn't it be possible to implement ring modulation like this?
203 2022-01-20 19:06:20
Re: Understanding Computer Sound. ZX Spectrum (youtube) (3 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Heh, nice. Well, the video surely deserves more than the ~20 views it had yesterday.
204 2022-01-20 18:15:44
Re: Shiru's 1-Bit Music Compilation Vol.2 (16 replies, posted in Sinclair)
From what limited testing I've done, it also looked like apack is the better general purpose compressor, but zx0 seems to have a slight edge over the former when compressing beeper music data. Surprised to see that zx5 performs so much better than zx0 for Freezing Point.
205 2022-01-19 21:30:18
Re: Shiru's 1-Bit Music Compilation Vol.2 (16 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Thanks. Yeah some of the newer engines chew through RAM like crazy. I'm still surprised to hear that it was such a tight squeeze. Would you share some more details on how you pulled it off in the end?
206 2022-01-19 21:22:11
Re: Understanding Computer Sound. ZX Spectrum (youtube) (3 replies, posted in Sinclair)
I remember seeing that article before somewhere. Like the video, too, very detailed and thorough, just like the article. I'd have some small complaints about some of the more in-depth bits on code and such, but overall it's very solid.
207 2022-01-17 22:43:04
Re: Shiru's 1-Bit Music Compilation Vol.2 (16 replies, posted in Sinclair)
That's a nice package indeed. Such kick-ass tracks all around. And this makes me realize once more what an absolute wiz you are when it comes to echoes. During DiHalt voting phase those are always a dead give-away, haha. Also, I think Geostorm might be my new all-time favourite of your tracks.
208 2022-01-12 14:17:28
Re: 1tracker v0.47 (166 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Excellent, thanks a lot. I'm also glad to report that this version compiles out-of-the-box on Linux.
209 2022-01-08 11:53:56
Re: upcoming beeper compos (138 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Nah, no first place for me this time, that was to be expected. I only had one day to spend on this, so didn't polish things up as much as I could have. So, congratulations on your well-deserved win, Shiru. Excellent work. Especially beating we with my own engine hahaha.
It was a very strong battle overall. Really like BioMech as well, that middle section with the fast arps sounds so slick. Surprising entries from AER as well, glad to hear some beeper from him again.
210 2021-12-30 22:08:06
Re: Reverse engineering of a music greeting card chip (8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
What about using Padauk PMS150c? Might make for a circuitry small enough to fit into an actual gift card.
211 2021-12-28 22:02:04
Re: Reverse engineering of a music greeting card chip (8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
Excellent article, thanks. I have a hunch this lsfr trickery could also be useful for 1-bit engine code.
ATTiny would be an interesting hardware emulation backend to support in Bintracker, actually. So Bintracker could serve as an editor for greeting card melodies, haha. Perhaps that's overkill for something this simple though.
212 2021-12-28 21:54:56
Re: upcoming beeper compos (138 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Next DiHalt is coming up! Jan 6th-8th, with beeper compo as usual.
213 2021-12-23 22:52:04
Re: Reverse engineering of a music greeting card chip (8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
Random brainfart, maybe the 16 bits rom are mask values for some binary counter that is related to the pitch lut? ie pitch lut contains base init values for the lsfr for one octave, and the 16bit rom has something to do with selecting an octave.
214 2021-12-22 09:09:51
Re: Reverse engineering of a music greeting card chip (8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
Ha, I always wondered how those work. Nice read indeed, thanks for sharing!
The part about using LSFR to produce frequencies is most interesting. I tried to implement this idea in a ZX beeper engine once but didn't manage to reduce the overhead from needing to implement the LSFR in software down to a level where it would offer any advantage over just using 16-bit counters.
215 2021-12-11 23:39:32
Re: ON and OFF - new 1-Bit beeper album (4 replies, posted in Sinclair)
The pinnacle of modern 1bit music. Fantastic compositions with a very distinct and recognizable style, and an incredible amount of polish. Who'd have thought something like this was even remotely possible back in the late '00s.
216 2021-10-29 19:09:11
Re: 2020/2021 party with 1bit msx (2 replies, posted in General Discussion)
I think the only demoparty with 1-bit music this year was DiHalt Lite. I also played 2 live shows this year, but nothing about them has shown up online so far. Still waiting for some videos for one of them.
217 2021-09-30 19:04:50
Re: Beeper engines conversions to 8080 (3 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
Thanks for the information. Unfortunately it's a bit hard for me to follow zx-pk.ru, as google translate does not do a very good job translating the mostly informal language used there.
Is the 8080 source code available for these ports?
Also, first time I hear about Lvov PK-01. Found this emulator, is it any good?
EDIT: nevermind, seems it's also available in MAME. Hard to find documentation on the machine, though.
218 2021-09-19 18:41:59
Re: Any reason for using both 3rd and 4th bits of #fe port? (3 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Haha, no, I can't take any credit for that discovery, you figured that out by yourself!
I've done some experimenting with using bit 3 for reverb. However, volume levels for bit 3 vary considerably between 48K board revisions (not to mention different models), so it's not really useful. Generally speaking, the output from bit 3 is low enough that it can be ignored for practical purposes. (It does cause problems for engines with a high volume resolution, but that's another story.) Anyway, the main reason you'll see bit 3 being used is because it costs additional cycles to mask it out. Povver is a typical example of this: Use of bit 3 is by no means intentional, but there is at least one location where I couldn't find enough cycles to mask it. Aside from that, some PFM-based engines use bit 3 in sync with bit 4 for a little extra volume boost. Alone Coder's BeepTracker engines do this, for example.
219 2021-09-18 21:17:07
Re: new engine: povver (19 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Meh, that's pretty bad news. But great you figured it out, thanks a lot for your efforts!
So basically any engine that doesn't mask bit 3 will be incompatible with the +3. Which is like, most of my engines
So I guess you better stick to Shiru's engines for now.
220 2021-09-17 10:19:11
Re: new engine: povver (19 replies, posted in Sinclair)
It's totally unclear to me what's going on here. Let's wait for Noel.
221 2021-09-16 22:08:04
Re: new engine: povver (19 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Very odd. This should toggle the border color every scanline, but seems it's actually running much slower?
Admittedly I'm pretty much out of ideas, so let's wait and see if Noel will be kind enought to run some tests.
222 2021-09-16 20:36:40
Re: new engine: povver (19 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Ah, crap. Here you go.
223 2021-09-16 20:12:58
Re: new engine: povver (19 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Damn. Could you try the attached .tap and post an image of the screen? Probably won't tell us much either, though.
You don't happen to know any other +3 user who could test this on their machine?
224 2021-09-16 16:18:10
Re: new engine: povver (19 replies, posted in Sinclair)
I see. Very strange indeed. Yes, sounds like it's running in contended RAM, but then it seems to run at pretty much the same speed as the 48K version!?! Well, let's first rule out contention issues. Could you export an .asm file from 1tracker, and post it here? (Or, if you want, assemble it yourself at 0xc000 and try it out. 1tracker's asm output works with sjasmplus.)
Also, have you tried with any other engines?
225 2021-09-15 18:55:34
Re: I am having all kinds of problems, apparently (18 replies, posted in Calculators & Pocket Computers)
Yeah, that looks a bit nicer for sure
Care to make a pull request on Github, with the updated fritzing file? Or, if you can't be bothered, just attach the .fz here.