Turbochip - 7-channel YM+DMA replay

[junosix]

Changed the mixing to multiplexed 50kHz and added a handful of effect commands, sounds a lot cleaner now! It's really nice having the space in the YM channels to add very lengthy echo notes.

Now "just" to write an editor...

[Tomchi]

Seconding Dma-sc !!!

[evil]

Changed the mixing to multiplexed 50kHz and added a handful of effect commands, sounds a lot cleaner now! It's really nice having the space in the YM channels to add very lengthy echo notes.

Now "just" to write an editor...

Very well done, this sounds much much better!

Out of curiosity, how much of a VBL frame does it cost to play?

[junosix]

Thanks! Reading up about the 68k swap instruction for fixed point and figuring it out that way really helped (was doing Bresenham-type scaling before and turns out that's not really the way to go).

It's about a third of a VBL at the moment but that's because I haven't quite got my head around using addx in addition to swap, which will bring the VBL time down a bit then that could be brought down even more by going mono or 25kHz. It's sounding good enough now that I think I want to take it down the quality route rather than possibly compromising the sound for CPU performance.

It's actually not entirely impossible to write tune data directly into the source file and for it to almost look pretty much like it would as a tracker. I've got a couple of things I want to finalise with effects then I'll pop a copy up if people are interested in having a play.

[evil]

Thanks! Reading up about the 68k swap instruction for fixed point and figuring it out that way really helped (was doing Bresenham-type scaling before and turns out that's not really the way to go).

It's about a third of a VBL at the moment but that's because I haven't quite got my head around using addx in addition to swap, which will bring the VBL time down a bit then that could be brought down even more by going mono or 25kHz. It's sounding good enough now that I think I want to take it down the quality route rather than possibly compromising the sound for CPU performance.

It's actually not entirely impossible to write tune data directly into the source file and for it to almost look pretty much like it would as a tracker. I've got a couple of things I want to finalise with effects then I'll pop a copy up if people are interested in having a play.

A third of a frame isn't bad for a 4-channel 25 kHz (which is what a 50 kHz multiplex is) synth, plus regular YM-sounds.
Looking forward to hearing more from it

[junosix]

Got the bones of an editor going now so I'll post the progress so far so you can have a play. Have used it in Hatari, seems to only like TOS 1.62 at the moment though.

There's no way to edit the waveforms or drum sounds yet, but there is a bass drum and snare drum and a handful of wavetable waveforms built in. Hit Escape to get to the operations screen, and hit F2 to load the demo song, then Escape again to get back to the editor screen, then hit Return to start playing. Have attached a text file with some instructions below.

No fancy memory allocation at the moment so if you try to go past pattern $1f it'll crash...

[junosix]

After I'd got the STE out to have a nice go on r0x Zero I decided to try this out on the real thing and found there was a problem using a trick to get an extra 16 pixels out of the STE, only seems to work in medium resolution in the emulator and not on actual hardware. So I've altered the screen layout a bit to work with 640x200 and also sorted a problem when running on 2.06. Have updated the attachments above (version number is the same).

[MM41]

tried on my 4mb STe with Satandisk:
if running to the hard drive no sound loaded after F1
if running to the floppy drive after hard driver loaded, sound loaded but bad noise when played
if running to floppy (without hard drive) the sound is good

i had some freeze when i use TC with my satandisk (no keyboard response)
The hard driver must interfert with TC

[junosix]

Thanks for trying it out! I've got an idea what that could be so I'll address that and upload a new version when I've put more features in. Unfortunately I haven't got a Satan or hard disk to test it on.

Here's a cover that I did of one of my favourite C64 tunes, really pleased with how it came out. Have attached it, rename it to TC_DEMO.TC and you should be able to load it in.

[troed]

Love this.

[dma]

Wow, will have to try it asap.

[matt]

Sweet cover is great, and the sound out of TC is superb

[Cyprian]

"Sweet" sounds great,
IMO much better than SID version

[junosix]

Small update, waveform editor. Screen is a lot smoother on the real thing, Hatari's video recording is a bit low framerate on my laptop.

I'd suggest not having the sound up too loud for this one!

[evil]

Great stuff Junosix!
I've always loved the C64 version of the tune, and while the SID have it's strengths no matter what you compare it with I very much enjoy your Turbochip version (it have it's own strengths).

At 02.00 I first thought the triangle/sine-sounding melody was on the softsynth channels, but realised it's plain square YM, it fooled me completely, sounds great

[junosix]

Another update, couple of things to properly sort out still but my girlfriend is down tomorrow so I don't know if I'll have any time before Christmas to do anything more with it for a while, but I've added quite a bit - there's a waveform editor, sample loader and copy/cut and paste functions plus other things. Basic quick guide as a text file within the .zip along with hard disk and disk image versions of the program. Have included a couple of demo songs and some short test patterns.

Hope you have fun with it!

At 02.00 I first thought the triangle/sine-sounding melody was on the softsynth channels, but realised it's plain square YM, it fooled me completely, sounds great

It's both (if you look at channels 3 (YM) and 6 (DMA) they are the same note data) I absolutely love how that ended up sounding as two layered channels.

[matt]

Really excited to hear what people produce with this!

[shoggoth]

Could this evolve into transwave synthesis, perhaps? (i.e. modulating through a set of synchronised waveforms, hence producing all sorts of effects such as pulse width modulation or even filter fx). It would consume a bit of memory, but perhaps it won't affect CPU usage that much (I'm clueless obviously since it's not my own code).

I think this is an amazing project. Breaking new ground.

[junosix]

Could this evolve into transwave synthesis, perhaps?

Don't see why not! Maybe for Turbochip 2 perhaps but it's a definite possibility. Couple of things to finish off with this version first though but I'll definitely think about it.

[mOdmate]

A*m*a*z*i*n*g*! <3

This could evolve into the greatest tool for the STe of the decade. I cross my fingers you find the time to work on it in the next months!

[ctirad]

Looks great! But, what TOS and setup to use under hatari? I was able to run the first version, but the 0.2 shows just the black screen. Tried TOS1.62 UK, 1.62CZ and 2.6.

BTW, do you plan to add support for the MIDI input and Hi resolution?

[dma]

Hey junosix, glad to see an update with copy/paste functions.
I've tried playing with the editor and understanding the "instrument-less" approach.

Some suggestions (as always with such early versions):
- Key repeat should be added to the editor (more than crucial imho ).
- Key preview mode should not stop entering notes on the pattern.
- When a note is entered, it could recopy "instrument" settings from the last entered note (or having an edit mode for this behaviour).

Do you envision arpeggios on one channel only for the final tool?
This limitation can give some specific kind of composition. But on the other hand, it's a limitation.

[junosix]

I've been running it as TOS 1.62UK / 1MB STE under Hatari, so not sure what's causing the black screen

I plan on MIDI/hires (much) later, when I have everything else sorted.

Key repeat should be added to the editor (more than crucial imho ).

Agreed!

- Key preview mode should not stop entering notes on the pattern.
- When a note is entered, it could recopy "instrument" settings from the last entered note (or having an edit mode for this behaviour).

Okay! Will consider it

Do you envision arpeggios on one channel only for the final tool?
This limitation can give some specific kind of composition. But on the other hand, it's a limitation.

For the first version, yes.
I'm trying to introduce some deliberate limitations (in order to keep filesize down as data of course increases with each channel added and I don't want CPU use to get too crazy with advanced effects) so getting the balance right is a bit tricky but as we know, limited options can often be a good thing

Also instead of the pending tremolo effect I'm going to implement a limited wave-stepping effect for PWM, etc. in its place. Tremolo can be emulated with this using copies of the same waveform at different volumes. Hoping to perhaps have a couple of days before Christmas to have a go at that.

[ctirad]

Ah, switching from 4MB RAM to 1MB did the trick

[MiggyMog]

I am looking forward to the updates!

A thing I would like to see in a tracker would be some advanced chord / scale / mode stuff making use of the circle of fifths to suggest complementary chords and notes.