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Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

Hehe, don't worry, it was just a stupid joke. I've been using Linux for 15+ years, but I certainly don't think it's the greatest thing in the universe. Imo it has become less attractive in recent years, too, due to certain developments. I do believe though that MS will eventually ditch their own kernal in favour of a Linux based one. 3 things that make me think that:

- MS is now one of the biggest sponsors of the Linux Foundation
- WSL2
- dropping Chakra for Chrome

While the latter has no direct connection to Linux, but it shows that the company philosophy is shifting away from doing everything in-house.

Anyway, let me just say I still very much appreciate that you took the time to make 1tracker build smoothly on Linux, even more so considering the story you told.

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

x64 support is there now. What I love about releasing tons of free stuff that actually worth a fortune in development, is the feedback. Previously it used to be 'oh, but it does not work on my 64-bit system'. Now when I just get this resolved, it turned into both of 'oh, but it is not for Linux', 'oh, but it is not for Mac'.

I'm sure up to making software more accessible and to supporting more platforms, but only if it does not take too much effort/resources that could be otherwise spent to other developments (or to make damn music, I got a dozens of music tools already that I have never used myself). Unfortunately, for VST it is anything but easy. The original framework documentation is exceptionally bad, VST3 is exceptionally over engineered, there is tons of compatibility quirks between hosts, none of numerous VST wrappers out there are easy to setup or use, possibility of hooking up Qt or SDL is a total mystery, etc. No wonder most of VSTs out there were made with the SynthEdit, and you can barely find a properly programmed open source one.

website - 1bit music - other music - youtube - bandcamp - patreon - twitter (latest news there)

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Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

Regarding feedback, welcome to human nature, I guess. I think it's inevitable. Still sucks, of course.

I've briefly looked into VST in the past, and indeed it seemed like a huge mess. Sadly Steinberg's stance and actions don't help to advance open source development in that field either.

In regards to DAW plugins in general, the situation is hardly better on Linux & Co. This is from the LV2 documentation:

What not to do: If you are new to LV2, do not look at the specifications and API references first! These references provide detail, but not necessarily a clear high-level view.

And then they wonder why adoption of this standard is so slow (even though the standard itself if quite good imo). And the API reference actually isn't bad, but it indeed provides no overview whatsoever.

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

I deal with this kind of feedback since 2007 or so, so yeah. Still difficult to stay cool at times.

A while back, way before I took the VST route, I had a desire to support LMMS, which was the best free FL-style DAW out there. I come to their IRC channel and started to ask questions, like, how to make native plugins, are there people who would want it. They said - nah, do VST instead. So I did eventually, and I guess it has been a good advice, after all.

website - 1bit music - other music - youtube - bandcamp - patreon - twitter (latest news there)

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

Some users from the French Linuxmao website (especially jpcima) ported Evalua and Chipwave and a few others to lv2 (and vst for linux as well). You can easily compile them and use them from any DAW:

https://github.com/linuxmao-org/shiru-plugins

LMMS can "natively" load and run windows VST (even from Linux, using Wine and their own engine called VeSTige), and it can also run LV2 and native linux VST with the Carla Engine (it's an external project but it runs well).

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

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

website - 1bit music - other music - youtube - bandcamp - patreon - twitter (latest news there)

32

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

Whaa, what a crazy machine is this? Is it like a miniature BK or something?

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

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.

website - 1bit music - other music - youtube - bandcamp - patreon - twitter (latest news there)

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

Hello,
I am having an issue when trying to use pcspee with fl studio 21 in windows 10.
the plugin works as expected and i can set envelopes, and i can route the midi to each channel from the daw.

the trouble is with the UI, when i click in the plugin UI to another midi channel, all the envelope settings stay the same. i cannot set custom envelopes per channel.

in other words, the plugin UI is forcing me to use the same envelope settings for every midi channel. is there a way to fix this?

35 (edited by Shiru 2023-06-18 06:45:13)

Re: PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW

I don't know. I have many reports regarding FL-related issues, but I'm not an FL user, and it works just fine in the FL demo version on my end.

I mean, it is very likely there is some problem in my UI code, but VST format is extremely badly documented, and almost no one programming UIs directly as I did, most VSTs created with SynthEdit-alike constructors. So I can't even know for sure.

website - 1bit music - other music - youtube - bandcamp - patreon - twitter (latest news there)