play city 6 channel music

[arnoldemu]

If I wanted six channel sound for a future CPC game, what music trackers could be used to make it? I ask so whoever makes the music has an easy time. At the moment I can only think to use arkos tracker to compose three at a time and then double check on a real CPC. It would make composing a bit more work if done this way. Any tools on PC or St?

[TotO]

Vortex Tracker II on PC allow to compose 6ch musics that can be replayed on CPC.
VortexTracker - Unreeeal Superhero [.pt]3 (2 x AY-3-8910) - YouTube

[TFM]

Is it doable to use a 9 channel player too ? (3 PSG, 6 YMZ). That would be what I really need. 

[arnoldemu]

Is it doable to use a 9 channel player too ? (3 PSG, 6 YMZ). That would be what I really need. 

My original idea was to use arkos tracker to make a 6 channel music and to make it 3 channels at a time.

But it's good that I can use Vortex tracker to make 6 channels.

Perhaps you can use vortex tracker and arkos tracker. Play them both at the same time. Alternatively, I am sure arkos tracker could be extended to 9 channels with some copy+paste.
Of course it will take more raster time because you now need to process 9 channels. Then send 6 to YMZ and 3 to PSG.

The main problem I see is to make it easy for the musician to make this music.

[TotO]

When we started the "CTC-AY" project, it was expected to use only one extra AY to allow 6ch at all.
But, we finally put 2 YMZ to allow a faster 6ch mode to improve games speed. (only use the AY as I/O ports controller)

If you finally add the AY channels to reach 6+3, you lose this advantage and goes slower that an original CPC. 
(but sure, you does as you want...)

[TFM]

Not in every case. Depends how you do it. If you use the PSG for FX only and the YMZ for 6-channel sound it will be faster as a conventional 3 channel PSG game IMHO. Of course it depends on the time FX are used, but they are usually not CPU intense (like a song player).

Allowing people to use it like they want makes it more popular.

[TotO]

Sure, but it will be never faster than 6ch YMZ "only". 

[TFM]

That's absolutely right.

[CraigsBar]

Sure, but it will be never faster than 6ch YMZ "only". 

But Cyber Chicken works wonderfully with the extra channels used for Stereo effects and the on board sound for the music.


so perhaps it is not *such* a slowdown when running with 6+3


Craig

[TFM]

Right, at the days end all the playing of music will never take up more than about 15% of CPU time (IMHO). The  by far biggest amount of CPU time get's wasted always for writing data into the Video-RAM.