• Registered: 2016-03-05
  • Posts: 3

Topic: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

ALERT typical noob thread!
Hi all,
I recently discovered 1bit music and then I found this forum. I'm a total noob in this thing and I'd like to have some informations 'bout what equipment I need to make 1bit tunes with a zx spectrum. I'm a guitarist but I'm not new to chiptune as I realized a bunch of tracks with nanoloop for the gameboy and the gameboy advance, that you can hear at my soundcloud page.
https://m.soundcloud.com/gensek80

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

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

> what equipment I need to make 1bit tunes with a zx spectrum

only a zx spectrum, as 1-bit music is made from the beeper. You can convert your .tap files to waveforms and send the data to the zx through a monophonic jack cable so it can load the music.

my 1-bit music - my soundcloud
  • utz
  • utz
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  • Registered: 2015-06-28
  • Posts: 1,022

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

Hey gensek, welcome aboard! Yes, as garvalf said, you actually only need a Speccy (and perhaps a mixer/amp so you can boost the signal a bit when loading wav files created from .taps). However, tape/wav loading is slow and tends to fail frequently when doing it in loud environments, so if you plan on doing more work with 1-bit and/or playing this stuff for live shows, you might want to get a divIDE or divMMC for faster, more reliable loading. (The page I linked to is the original manufacturer, but there are other sellers/manufacturers as well, just google it).

website | bintracker | github | bandcamp | soundcloud

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  • Registered: 2016-03-05
  • Posts: 3

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

Thanks,
I'm also interested in the Houston tracker for the TI eighties. Out of curiosity, are there any 1-bit hardware synth or midi modules? I mean anything that I can sequence from external gear.
Something like the AY3 from Twisted Electrons that I purchase yesterday, but 1-bit  wink

  • utz
  • utz
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  • Registered: 2015-06-28
  • Posts: 1,022

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

Yeah, there's the 1-bit AVR synth. Also, the famous 1-bit groovebox has some very crude means of syncing to a midi clock. There might be others as well.

website | bintracker | github | bandcamp | soundcloud

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  • Registered: 2016-03-05
  • Posts: 3

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

utz wrote:

there's the 1-bit AVR synth. Also, the famous 1-bit groovebox

Uhm, sadly it seem that they're not commercially available...
On a side note, what about the new ZX Spectrum Vega or similar new hardware, is it ok in order to reproduce beeper tunes or is a totally different thing?

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

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

I guess you can build those AVR synth (hope the code is still functional). It's very cool.

Vega should be ok too, but they are not that cheap. The sounds seems to be great:
https://soundcloud.com/mister_beep/mist … ii-zx-vega

There are also other zx clone, such as the ZX Uno (should be cheaper than vega, and with more possibilities)

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

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

Yes the Vega 1-bit sound is very accuate.

There's the Vega Plus handheld coming out in September too  smile

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the- … -console#/

ZX Beeper Album: 1-bit Mechanistic
  • Shiru
  • 1-bit Wizard
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  • Registered: 2015-07-01
  • Posts: 513

Re: What hardware equipment I need to make 1bit chiptune?

Vega is a software emulator on ARM SoC, though.

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