• Registered: 2015-06-29
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Topic: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

As you may already know, I got last June a fpga board called MiST, from Lotharek in Poland. It can recreate Atari ST, Amiga, Amstrad logics, but also the ones from a ZX Spectrum. It's a very cool device!

http://www.harbaum.org/till/mist/index.shtml

The problem for using it to render beeper music, was that the z80 cpu recreation was not very accurate. But today the creator of the MiST announced that a new version  was released, from another developement project, and this time it seems to be nearly perfect!

I don't know how it can compare to Speccy2010 or the Vega, but I'll probably record a new thing on it now.

my 1-bit music - my soundcloud
  • Registered: 2015-06-29
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Re: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

Looks good.

Are you getting one of the new versions?

ZX Beeper Album: 1-bit Mechanistic

3 Reply by garvalf (edited by garvalf 2015-12-30 10:40:06)

  • Registered: 2015-06-29
  • Posts: 368

Re: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

in fact this new version is just a "core", and like the firmware you can easily update it (just copy the new file on the sd card), so I have access to the latest version.

https://github.com/sorgelig/ZX_Spectrum-128K_MIST

I see this project seems to be interesting as well: http://zxuno.speccy.org/  The target price is 40 € for the fpga card and accessories (at the moment you have to solder everything yourself).

If you wish, I can record a song from your 1-bit Mechanistic album so you could hear how it sounds. It'd be interested to compare with original spectrum and vega as well. Do you have a vega recording of one of your songs?

my 1-bit music - my soundcloud
  • utz
  • utz
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  • Registered: 2015-06-28
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Re: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

Glad to hear about the improvements in the MiST core. I'm not into fpga devices myself, but the MiST certainly seems like an excellent choice given the range of platforms it supports. Please do upload some recordings if you have the time, I'm curious how well it performs.

website | bintracker | github | bandcamp | soundcloud

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  • Registered: 2015-06-29
  • Posts: 365

Re: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

Sounds like a great piece of kit.

Garvalf - would be very interesting to hear a MiST recording of a Mechanistic track. I've still got the raw speccy recordings (without EQ applied) for comparison if you're interested. I've been meaning to record something directly from the Vega for a while but not had chance yet.

ZX Beeper Album: 1-bit Mechanistic

6 Reply by garvalf (edited by garvalf 2016-01-06 14:30:57)

  • Registered: 2015-06-29
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Re: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

I've posted some files there:

http://garvalf.online.fr/index.php?page=blog_2016-01-06

When I open the resulting wave in a sound editor, along with a wave from a real spectrum, my spectrum seems to be a bit slower (in a 2 minutes song, there is 1 second difference at the end)

I'll try later with engines having more bass, it would be more relevant for the sound. When I compare some songs with the fuse emulators and real spectrum, it's not very obvious which one is which. The real spectrum is somehow slightly warmer.

my 1-bit music - my soundcloud
  • Registered: 2015-06-29
  • Posts: 365

Re: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

Qchan sounding very nice smile

Will be interesting to hear how it copes with more bassy engines, as you say smile

I've just finished recording my entry for DiHalt Lite 2016 from my trusty 48K Spectrum.
There is still something about the sound when listening to the music directly from real hardware (using headphones connected to the mic socket) that can't be truly replicated though imo.

I agree, the real spectrum sound is somehow warmer.

ZX Beeper Album: 1-bit Mechanistic
  • utz
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Re: MiST FPGA and ZX Spectrum

Seems to me that the MiST version has a tad too much high end/fuzz. And yeah, it does sound somewhat colder. I suspect the emulation of the ULA and it's auxilliary components isn't totally accurate yet.

website | bintracker | github | bandcamp | soundcloud

utz's Website