Making of this tunes ????

[Axel]

But there is something wrong with the music of Techno Cop in this video, the channel with the accompanying arp-chords is too quiet, which causes a less balm for the ears. 

Give it another try on a good emulator, it is a very good track! 


And, hey, I like your conversion of "Space Debris" soooo much! 
I discovered it many years ago in the AY project library. 
Nur mal so am Rande. 

[Axelay]

You might be able to do an approximation with a Plus machine, which can feed the AY slightly faster than the CPU (and benefit from releasing the CPU to prepare the next samples while it plays back via DMA) but even then memory and sample rate are probably going to be limitations.

I thought a little bit better than an approximation on the Plus?

[ComSoft6128]

I'm making a video of the Klimper disc, do you have approximate timings for the three tracks?

Sorry, not really, did you find it out for yourself?

I can use the timing from SoundCloud (I missed that earlier in the thread) for one and the other two will get my usual two minutes for tracks of indeterminate length.

[andycadley]

You might be able to do an approximation with a Plus machine, which can feed the AY slightly faster than the CPU (and benefit from releasing the CPU to prepare the next samples while it plays back via DMA) but even then memory and sample rate are probably going to be limitations.

I thought a little bit better than an approximation on the Plus?

It's a great version, although I'd still say the samples in the ST one sound a little cleaner to me. But then they're also different tunes.

The impressive thing with the GX demo over the ST intro though is that it's doing that whilst also running something that looks more like the actual game, rather than just a static screen full of text.

[ComSoft6128]

Hi @BSC , the text & video below have not yet been published on YT - if there are any corrections to be made please let me know.


2022
Klimper disc - BSC Slow by 'BSC'

From SoundCloud:
"Another tune I wrote on the CPC back in the 90s using Soundtrakker. I think it was inspired by a C64 tune by Padua from that time. The track was recorded from my SID emulation engine, consisting of 3 virtual SID channels: one saw-tooth wave and two square-wave with varying duty cycle."

Links:
https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=18667
https://cpcrulez.fr/demostestDO_klimper.htm
https://soundcloud.com/betasoftcologne/klimper-bsc-slow
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=91266

Not emulated - original hardware and software.
Please note that  the aspect ratio for this YouTube video is 16:9 but the CPC monitor
has an aspect ratio of 4:3 so you may wish to adjust your viewing device accordingly.

[Axel]

The GX-Version of Beast sounds surprisingly good! Respect! 

[BSC]

Hi @BSC , the text & video below have not yet been published on YT - if there are any corrections to be made please let me know.

Sounds good, go ahead! And thanks for recording & uploading

[ComSoft6128]

Cheers,

I'll schedule it for Tuesday with the other two on Wednesday & Thursday

[eto]

How is it possible to make an ST sound so good? Is this only a question of a high enough sample-rate or can the ST produce 8-Bit-Samples instead of 4-Bit via the YM-Chip with some clever tricks?

I am no expert in this, but I have read a few articles in the past and made my own thoughts about this. So I might be completely mistaken, but I think there are 3 factors, why ST samples sound better:
1) The ST has much more RAM. This means, it can easily hold better samples in RAM. 64KB is just enough for 8s of 8Khz sample sound or 4s of 16KHz. 
2) The ST has much more CPU power. Moving data to the soundchip at such a high frequency is a lot of CPU load. And for modules you also have to mix several channels. On the ST the CPU can easily do that for 8-15bit samples without much overhead. The Z80 has much more work to do - and I guess that's the reason why Digitracker is using 7bit samples instead. 
3) Both soundchips do not offer a real linear DAC, that is required for 8bit samples. A 8Bit DAC produces 256 different levels of voltage on its output. This simply cannot be accomplished directly on the GI/YM soundchip. There we have 3 channels with 16 logarithmic volume levels per channel. What is now done on the ST is, that you combine all variations of 16 volume levels on 3 channels and measure the voltage level on the sound output. This gives you a list of 16^3 (4096) voltage levels. In this list you try to find 256 voltage levels that are closest to the voltage levels of a real 8bit linear DAC. On the ST this seems to work pretty well (although still not good if you compare it e.g. to the STe that has a real 8bit DAC). On the CPC it's unfortunately slightly different: The designers of the CPC wanted to have something special, so they offered "stereo" output. This means, that from the 3 output signals of the GI, 2 are combined for left and 2 for right. One channel is supplied to both sides at half the volume, so it is kind of the center. While this is a quite funny effect although mostly useless, it has a huge disadvantage for samples: you can no longer combine 3 channels, but only 2 channels. And one of these channels is at half the volume level. This leads to the situation that you have only 16^2 (256) different volumes available and within these, there are again many, many volume levels that are too close together. And even worse, there are several zones in the 0-255 level range, where you simply don't find a matching voltage level for a linear output level.

So at best, you will be able to produce a sound that is closer to a 5bit or maybe 6bit DAC. But far from the quality of the (almost) 8bit sample sound on the ST.

[Axel]

Thank you very much. 

But I must say, stereo-sound has always been a great feature for me. Listen to CPC-music via a good ghettoblaster or even a stereo-system is a great pleasure! 

Play "Tempest" with big speakers...WOW! Arcade at home. Like an earthquake!

Same for the music. It is really a shame if you listen to CPC-Music over the internal mega-shitty mini-speaker.