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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

great news, it will be nice to listen to 1bit music on compo :-D

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

Awesome tune Shiru, hyperactivity at it's best hehe. Too bad there weren't any more entries. You're welcome to blame me for that, too, though on the other hand you'd have steamrolled me with this one

Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

Thanks! Well, at least it'll makes people on the SV aware of the GTIA capabilities, so maybe eventually they'll get more interested and it'll turn into a more popular compo. One issue, I believe, is lack of easy to use tools, the 1tracker support is quite clumsy at the moment - you need to manually re-edit data a bit, and assemble the engine with an external assembler. To be improved, of course.

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

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

people say Atari has the nicest sounding graphics chip :-)

GTIA = "Graphic Television Interface Adaptor"

30 (edited by Shiru 2022-08-14 08:38:04)

Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

Oh, actually you're reminded me one interesting topic. I recall someone already attempted it, but generally it is totally underexplored, I believe. The idea is to generate audio using the video output. Like, we often put colored strips to the screen when a beeper engine is working (because Spectrum shares border color selection with the sound output bit). These strips actually produce voltage changes in the video signal at audible frequencies. It is possible to display patterns on the screen that will produce certain tones, and by changing the patterns it is possible to play music.

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

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

https://youtu.be/CxpAOMCtFvI?t=2525

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

Shiru wrote:

Oh, actually you're reminded me one interesting topic. I recall someone already attempted it, but generally it is totally underexplored, I believe. The idea is to generate audio using the video output. Like, we often put colored strips to the screen when a beeper engine is working (because Spectrum shares border color selection with the sound output bit). These strips actually produce voltage changes in the video signal at audible frequencies. It is possible to display patterns on the screen that will produce certain tones, and by changing the patterns it is possible to play music.

Like this? https://github.com/luamfb/tempest-lcd
I also faintly recall nitro2k1 doing something along those lines on Gameboy.

Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

Yes, this exact idea. Although I never seen this one, the one I saw was using Video RCA connector plugged into Audio input. Anyways, very cool stuff.

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

34

Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

I think the sound will always be noisy by the extra bursts of horizontal and vertical sync

but... about Port 0xfe

> he lowest three bits specify the border colour; a zero in bit 3 activates the MIC output, whilst a one in bit 4 activates the EAR output and the internal speaker. However, the EAR and MIC sockets are connected only by resistors, so activating one activates the other; the EAR is generally used for output as it produces a louder sound. The upper two bits are unused.

is it possible to make one channel louder by using a different bit combination?

35 (edited by Shiru 2022-08-18 20:14:30)

Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

This was a matter of discussion for several years on ZX scene, and the conclusion was that the difference between these volume levels is very subtle (a fraction of a volt) to be noticed by the ear; and this behavior is not replicated on most Amstrad models and clones. To my knowledge, no one ever actually tried it, though.

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

36 (edited by utz 2022-08-18 20:17:54)

Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

The problem is that a) MIC output is on average VERY quiet compared to EAR (-0.3V vs -5V and b) MIC output differs wildly across Speccy board revisions (let alone across models). So it's not that useful by itself, but I want to try and use MIC for reverb one day.

Edit: I tried it on my 48k (board rev 4B iirc), it was barely audible.

Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

> Like this? https://github.com/luamfb/tempest-lcd

Weird coincidence that this was on Hack a Day only yesterday?
Or did someone send it into them..

https://hackaday.com/2022/08/18/lcd-mon … -the-hits/

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

I stumbled across it on HackerNews, so quite likely it either came from there or Hackaday.

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

This year at SV I am exhibiting the Beep'em All 6 music collection.

I hope that there will also be original songs in 1bit compo

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

xxl wrote:

This year at SV I am exhibiting the Beep'em All 6 music collection.

Yesss!

xxl wrote:

I hope that there will also be original songs in 1bit compo

To be honest I completely lost track of what is available on GTIA nowadays. Could you post a list of currently available engines?

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

1. Huby
2. The Music Studio
3. Octode
4. Phaser1
5. Qchan
6. Sample Tracker
7. Tritone
8. ZX-7
9. ZX-10
10. Lyndon Sharp engine
11. TritoneFX (not enough examples tested)

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

Well, in the end I was too lazy again to make something yikes Looks like I wasn't the only one, though.
To be honest I'm also somewhat demotivated by the lack of new engines (with the exception of TritoneFX, which is not so useful, sadly). I think if we want to put GTIA back on the map, we need some new, state-of-the-art GTIA engines. Preferably native Atari ones. Atari 8-bit is a more powerful machine than Spectrum, so in theory it should be possible to make a more powerful 1-bit engine for it, shouldn't it?

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

a new dedicated engine for GTIA without a music editor won't be worth much.
Recently, a SampleTracker engine for 1Tracker appeared - I would like to check it out.

Meanwhile, a music disc from SillyVenture23:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CUtr0Qkvf4

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Re: SillyVenture 1-bit Compo

If there is a new engine with not-too-difficult data format, I can add it to Bintracker. If game_music_emu supports GTIA then 1tracker would also be an option.

I don't think the SampleTracker engine will sound too great on GTIA. It's pretty bad on ZX beeper as well from what I remember. I think Shiru added that more with AY/Covox in mind.

Yay, Beep'em all VI! Great collection.