201 Reply by garvalf

(130 replies, posted in Calculators & Pocket Computers)

cool, I'll test it out

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202 Reply by garvalf

(129 replies, posted in Sinclair)

They're playing the beeper compo now: http://chaosconstructions.ru/en/start/live

(edit) : "Black roses will blossom" is very impressive!  The first tune was cool too.

For my own tune I don't know why first the sound was ok, then suddenly went very low and only came back to a normal level at the end sad
Using google translate for the live steam, some people said something like: "Well, at least to admire the stripes" "people you hear the music can not be heard by swapping" "French silence". Maybe their Pentagon saturated too much with the Squeeker Plus engine...

There were only 3 participants for the beeper.

Now it's AY music.

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203 Reply by garvalf

(3 replies, posted in Sinclair)

cool, it looks good smile

(edit) and I've just seen the demo .tap file, it's well done!

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204 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I've applied the fix but I'm afraid it breaks some parts of my song. Maybe I was using a bug but I doubt it, because the sound is cut for some high notes, but not always (on other channels than ch4). I'll send you an email with some examples, before and after your modifications.

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205 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I haven't experience anything like this. Is it really out of frequency or is it almost not noticable?
Do you have a sample tune with this behavior?

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206 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

thanks again, you're the best!

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207 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Thank you for the quick fix. Now it's much easier to adjust the saturation to a more bearable level.
For the "Envelope overrides the Channel volume" or the reverse, what do you think would be better? After a bit working with this, I've got the feeling the reverse (like you said earlier) would be more logical but maybe it's just me.

And sorry to bother you also with this (I forgot in my previous post), but it seems the detune is not working.

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208 Reply by garvalf

(21 replies, posted in Sinclair)

oh yes, midi, mod or XM import would be very cool too!
There are various converters between all those formats so we're never stuck.

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209 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I've put a sample file on the github tracker

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210 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I'm working more on my Squeeker plus tune. Very enjoyable to compose with this...

I've noticed on the slide kick channel, if I enter some volume change, it doesn't change the duty cycle. But it works if I create a new instrument for that.
Also it looks like for tone instruments with volume envelope, it's the envelope which takes precedence over the channel volume (from my quick tests)

Hmm, strange I've made further tests and now it seems for example for instrument 3 (tone), I can't even change the duty by modifying the volume channel. I'm almost sure it worked before so I don't understand (i'm using this from another computer, maybe my settings? I'll investigate further).

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211 Reply by garvalf

(21 replies, posted in Sinclair)

> Any more thoughts on the language thing?

none, as long as the notes can be defined in a way that can be easily be imported / exported from other tools (like mml or abc can be) the rest will probably be fine.
For the record, there are already some abc parsers in lua, in C https://sites.google.com/site/abcparser/
and a cool preprocessor: http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/#abcpp

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212 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

thanks, it's working now.
I've compared the two xmkit versions, there aren't so many differences, so it's not that bad. Maybe one day you'll manage to make a library suitable for every engine, but for the moment it's quite an achievement. Well done.

I've played with the squeeker plus, the duty change with volume or envelope is very clever, it's working fine, except it doesn't really sound similar with milkytracker, but I'm used to imagine clean sounds with some saturation in them wink Sometimes the saturation is quite too much though...

I guess the volume channel and the envelope are cumulative?

It seems possible to make several points in the envelope, is it taken into account by the engine? With two points, if I change the middle one, it will change the sound but I can't really tell if it's an average or if it modulates the effect (I think the former).

For the instrument envelope, we mustn't forget to enable ("on") it in the settings (it's just below the "add" button)

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213 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

it seems there is a required xmkit.h file which is missing in the archive... (I need to recompile xm2squeekerplus)

ok, I found it there, in the zbmod dir: https://github.com/utz82/ZX-Spectrum-1- … od/xmkit.h

edit: can't compile it:

I've cloned the whole github repo, i could compile zbmod but for squeekerplus, after copying xmlib.cpp and xmlib.h I got this:

g++ -c -Wall -Os -s -std=c++11 -o xmkit.o xmkit.cpp 
g++ -c -Wall -Os -s -std=c++11 -o xm2squeekerplus.o xm2squeekerplus.cpp 
xm2squeekerplus.cpp: In function ‘int main(int, char**)’:
xm2squeekerplus.cpp:103:79: error: ‘class xmod’ has no member named ‘instrVolEnvUsed’
          && (xm.ptnVolumes[ptn][0][row] == xm.ptnVolumes[ptn][0][row-1] || xm.instrVolEnvUsed[xm.ptnInstruments[ptn][0][row]]) && !xm.ptnTriggers[ptn][0][row])
/.../
xm2squeekerplus.cpp:219:34: error: ‘class xmod’ has no member named ‘instrVolEnvPoints’
      unsigned char startval = xm.instrVolEnvPoints[i][j*4+2];
                                  ^
make: *** [xm2squeekerplus.o] Erreur 1

and a bunch of other errors sad

g++ --version
g++ (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3) 4.8.4


I'll try the windows binary meanwhile.

(edit2) : ok, it was commented in the xmlib code, probably you've extended this in the version missing, I've uncommented after that: //TODO: hide this

and it compiles now smile

(edit3):

but the converter doesn't work (even with demo song):

XM 2 SQUEEKER PLUS CONVERTER
Segmentation fault

but with wine I can use the .exe so it's ok for me at the moment...

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214 Reply by garvalf

(21 replies, posted in Sinclair)

The ABC notation standard is quite exhaustive (and still evolving), but it's more made toward folk / classical users, using real instruments. Yet a common use for extending it is to use the comment symbol % so it won't interfere with other applications. For example in a program which can convert to midi, one can add this:
%%MIDI channel 1
%%MIDI program 20 % reed organ
%%MIDI transpose 0

There are a bunch of applications for working with abc files, for example for converting from midi, for transposing, to printing to pdf, for converting to lilypond etc. (I've been using abc for almost 20 years so I like it quite much, I've transcribed many tunes with it).

The MML problem is there are several software using it, but they use different syntaxes, so you can get a tune in MML which won't compile because of some incompatibilities. As far as I've seen, most MML allows to define macros, for making differents parts or even some rythms. With the 3ML tool, it's ok for using with midi tunes (even if you have to manually import every track). MML is more popular among chip musicians so it might be a better choice.

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215 Reply by garvalf

(21 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Cool. And even beyond coolness: an other incredible engine.

A MML like converter would be a good idea.
I don't really enjoy the MML syntax itself (not very logical), and prefer the ABC notation syntax: http://abcnotation.com/

A comparison:
https://lut.im/KhLBayqqz5/z6oGgMJvmama32Wy.png

In ABC :

X: 1
M: 4/4
L: 1/8 % you can define the base note here
Q:1/4=120
K:C % 0 sharps
C2 D2 E2 F2|  G2 A2 B2 c2| d2 e2 f4| g2 ab c'4|]

In MML:

t120 cdefgab>cdef2ga8b8>c2

What I like in abc, we have at least 4 visual octave ranges: C, C c and c' (C, being the lower). It's possible to add marks to get even lower, for example C,, or higher (c'')
It's also easier, in my opinion, to read (and write) music this way. Just by a quick glance, we can see if a part is lower than the other. After a few < > < < > in MML, it's more tedious.
- In ABC, we use the opposite for length of notes. If 1 is the base, 2 means it doubles the base length.
It may just be an habit, but the advantage is you can count to check if your mesure or part is complete or not:
d2 + e2 + f4 = 8
g2 + a + b + c'4 = 8

Of course, using MML would be better for such a tool, because MML is widespread among chipmusician. And there is a very good tool to convert from midi to MML: http://3ml.jp/download.html (you can export tracks individually)

I've written a few tips and useful links about MML there:
http://garvalf.online.fr/index.php?page … s_pmd98.en

(sorry for highjacking this thread!)

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216 Reply by garvalf

(135 replies, posted in Sinclair)

it would make a really cool synth!
I love those sounds. That's awesome.

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217 Reply by garvalf

(20 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I love this one!

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218 Reply by garvalf

(13 replies, posted in Sinclair)

it sounds very nice together, and this tune is great!

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219 Reply by garvalf

(17 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Congratulation for this work and achievement!
Now we don't need to use old spectrum software (which are quite difficult to use) for making 1-bit digit music (even though some of the pleasure to design the music can be found in using them).

I used to make some mod music, but like you because of the problem of the creation of the samples (either rip some already premade samples, or make them myself), I prefer to compose pure synthesis music (1bit, ay, sid, fm...), also I get more fun from starting it from scratch. It's also the reason why my last MOD were made using only the wave drawing feature of milkytracker.

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220 Reply by garvalf

(41 replies, posted in General Discussion)

it looks much better this way. Congrat to your girlfriend!
There is still some blue in the responsive / mobile part. I think responsiveness works, with the top menu and such, the only "problem" is we can't see the name of the last poster, we have to use the phone in landscape view.

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221 Reply by garvalf

(41 replies, posted in General Discussion)

It looks better this way. Yet the background is a bit strange but it's ok when you don't scroll.
Maybe something like that (in b&w):
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvraxxIinl1qap1jz.png

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222 Reply by garvalf

(41 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I see it now that I refreshed my browser with ctrl+F5. Good job. It looks great, and with the slogan back, it would be even nicer. Why not adding it to the banner itself? This way you can use a cool 8-bit pixeliased font for the letters.

For the general style, since it's 1-bit, I wouldn't dislike a black and white CSS (instead of all this blue), but it might look less appealing...

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223 Reply by garvalf

(7 replies, posted in Sinclair)

wow, this zeta engine has a very fat and powerful sound!

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224 Reply by garvalf

(129 replies, posted in Sinclair)

the border fx is already built-in with the engine I think. A version with drums would be wonderful!

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225 Reply by garvalf

(129 replies, posted in Sinclair)

The mp3:
http://events.retroscene.org/cache/3055 … signed.mp3

And I've just put the .tap there:
http://garvalf.online.fr/var/upload/mus … d_gods.tap

It's using the xm2squeek converter, for the squeek engine.

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