Polyphony, 48K spectrum style

[ralferoo]

Presented yesterday in Oxford by gasman:


Mahler's first symphony, as played by 12 networked Sinclair ZX Spectrums

[EgoTrip]

I don't want to be that person who has to put a downer on it. But, that sounds awful. I'd like to say it was impressive, and maybe back in the 80's/90's it would have been. But so much more has been done so much better than this. Thats not to say I don't appreciate the effort gone into it, but yeah, it sounded horrible and I'm not gonna lie about it.

[Bryce]

I'm with Egotrip on this one. Although if the first 7 minutes of self-praising waffle had been cut out I may have found it slightly better.

Bryce.

[CraigsBar]

Presented yesterday in Oxford by gasman:


Mahler's first symphony, as played by 12 networked Sinclair ZX Spectrums

Yep sounds appalling. I am sure a single CPC 464 and a playcity would play this better.

[McKlain]

That video made me remember this piece from Falwty Towers:



Brahm's 3rd Racket.mpg

[villain]

The audience also seems quite excited... 


Back to listening to "Fates Warning"...

[Bryce]

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate it. On the other hand, how did they manage to get that many people into a room to listen to a Spectrum demo in the first place?? Were they offering free beer?

Bryce.

[MacDeath]

Thumbs up because most of those speccies are Amstrad's.


But it would have worked quite better with a few CPC and PCWs connected together, with perhaps a few extra AY cards (be it PlayCyTy or the AY expension for PCW) or even a few PLUS'.

Hell even a few Oric ATMOS could have done as well.

[TFM]

I don't want to be that person who has to put a downer on it. But, that sounds awful. I'd like to say it was impressive, and maybe back in the 80's/90's it would have been. But so much more has been done so much better than this. Thats not to say I don't appreciate the effort gone into it, but yeah, it sounded horrible and I'm not gonna lie about it.

First time I agree with you, dear Dramaqueen.    Really sounds terrible. 

[McKlain]

I think that they are just using the beeper and not the AY, right?

[villain]

I think that they are just using the beeper and not the AY, right?

Yep, sounds like that...

[McKlain]

12 channels of plain square waves. 

[Carnivius]

So is it's showing off how that many Speccy's can work all linked together?  Is that what this is?   Cos it sure ain't music.  One Spectrum is enough to play the awesome music of Glider Rider.  I don't know what this is.

[villain]

I don't know what this is.

In German it´s called "Kakophonie". The roots of the word are greek.

[TFM]

That come from cacao and phonic the hedge dog. 


Ok, what we got here is actually.... Specnet - the first sound network for the spectrum. 

[MacDeath]

Not my favourite Cacophony indeed...


www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM17rAWKbIM

[TFM]

Well, that sounds way better. 

[andycadley]

It's not entirely clear from the video, but if they did that from BASIC with the actual BEEP command it's still reasonably impressive. It's not actually a very flexible way of generating sound, even given the hideous limitations of the original speccy beeper.

I'd agree though, it doesn't really seem a particularly worthwhile way of going about it, the end result certainly didn't sound particularly good even for a spectrum.

[McKlain]

Are you keeping up with the commodore?


Axel F (Beverly Hills Cop theme song) performed by two Commodore 64 computers

[Gryzor]

I'm a bit torn on this one.

On one hand, by itself it doesn't sound that bad, though I would be expecting much, much better results from 12 machines. This sounds like those poor attempts at classical tunes in early 80's games...

On the other hand, as someone who loves Mahler's First.... BLEARGGGGGH!!!

[ASiC]

Just stumbled upon this one:

http://z80.i-demo.pl/MovieMovies1-Tritona_v2.mp3

Goddamn this sounds amazing...

Will it be possible to play such a tune on the cpc?
I know that the last ninja emulates the beeper but this one uses a much more complicated engine.

[Gryzor]

That sounds lovely indeed. Perhaps a bit dirtier at low freqs than it should, but impressive nonetheless.