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avatar_SkulleateR

Music/Song Player and AY Collection ?

Started by SkulleateR, 09:54, 18 August 21

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SkulleateR

Hi folks ....


Are there any good standalone Music/Song Players out there and where to find a collection of AY Songs/Music from games/demos/etc. ? Preferrably as a one-file-download (like HVSC for SID) ....

Gryzor


SkulleateR

Hm, I found a little collection on the https://worldofspectrum.org/projectay/ website ... but only very few CPC game tunes, mainly spectrum but quite an amount of demo tunes so this is a start ...


Still didn't find a suitabe Player for the CPC itself ... and there also have to be other formats then AY out there ? Arkos Tracker 1 + 2 I guess ?

tastefulmrship

All of my stuff is in .sks or .aks format... then converted to .ym so playable on AYEmul!
1093 tunes converted (with a few of my own)... and counting!


SkulleateR

Thx for the package, will have a look when I get home later ... any recommendations for a CPC Player then ? AYEmul seems to be for Win or Linux ....

Gryzor


tastefulmrship

Quote from: Gryzor on 13:32, 18 August 21
Damn, all of 5KB compressed :D
It's only TWO files... not all 1093!
The lot could hit the heady heights of 6kb... or even 7kb! *shocked-face*

Gryzor

Ahhh not so impressive then :D

tastefulmrship

Quote from: SkulleateR on 13:30, 18 August 21
any recommendations for a CPC Player then ? AYEmul seems to be for Win or Linux ....
I don't think there is a CPC-native player as such; most of the tunes are simply executable files.
I suppose you could set up a menu-system to play pre-compiled SKS/AKS/AKG files from disc! This would have to be done manually, though! The same could be done for ST128 tunes (and other music packages) but it would be a lengthy process!


The closest I can find is this;
amstrad cpc musics ultimate compilation - pack games © paradox (2009) (cpc-power.com)
amstrad cpc musics ultimate compilation - pack demos © paradox (2009) (cpc-power.com)
amstrad cpc musics ultimate compilation - pack duffy © paradox (2009) (cpc-power.com)

ComSoft6128

Quote from: SuTeKH/Epyteor on 14:08, 18 August 21
I don't think there is a CPC-native player as such; most of the tunes are simply executable files.
I suppose you could set up a menu-system to play pre-compiled SKS/AKS/AKG files from disc! This would have to be done manually, though! The same could be done for ST128 tunes (and other music packages) but it would be a lengthy process!


The closest I can find is this;
amstrad cpc musics ultimate compilation - pack games © paradox (2009) (cpc-power.com)
amstrad cpc musics ultimate compilation - pack demos © paradox (2009) (cpc-power.com)
amstrad cpc musics ultimate compilation - pack duffy © paradox (2009) (cpc-power.com)


I've looked at dozens of music players so far - there is nothing that could be used as a universal player + all of the music discs (so far) are specific to one filetype - .MUS, .SND , .128 etc.

SkulleateR

Quote from: ComSoft6128 on 14:24, 18 August 21

I've looked at dozens of music players so far - there is nothing that could be used as a universal player + all of the music discs (so far) are specific to one filetype - .MUS, .SND , .128 etc.


Yeah, I scrolled through many pages on cpc-power and other sites and don't find anything usefull :(


My goal would be a universal Musik Player + Music Collection on my M4/USIfAC but that seems to be harder than I thought .... maybe we can collect some music players for those formats here, and btw. how many formats are there ?


I never was much into listening to chiptunes but I know the following (please feel free to enhance the list) :


- Archos Tracker (AT)
- Archos Tracker 2 (AT2)
- Soundtracker ( ??? )
- AY Tunes (.BIN and .AY ??? )



tastefulmrship

#11
I do have a lot of AY stuff from various ZX and ST sites. I have attached some, but I think you might already have these...
All tunes are playable in AYEmul...



EDIT: There is a YM to AYC conversion tool so you can play YMs on the CPC. I played around with it a few years back and made a quick Xenon2:Megablast ST->CPC music-disk! It is attached here, too!

SkulleateR

Ok, I think I got enough music to play for a week without pausing it .... BUT ... still no way to listen to them :(


So let's just concentrate on the most popular formats found on the net !


AY : After a long reading (yeah I can do things like that  :P ), this seems to be the Z80 code for music to get played through the AY Chip. Does this mean the player code is inside ? If so, how to load/run it on a real Amstrad CPC ?


YM : This is a compressed (LHA ?) music file, which could not directly be played, so there are tools to convert this to AYC ? Where ?


SkulleateR

@tronic


Thx, that covers the YM files, but if I use the Kit AY (YM2AY) the resulting file is only 1KB and cannot be played (uncompressed YM is 78KB) ... cannot use YMCruncher since I got no windows machine, any advice ?

SkulleateR

Ok, SOME kind of progress ....


I've added a header to the AYC file and now it "kinda" plays with TSP, but it sounds weird (don't play at all in AYCPLAY) ... can somebody look into this ?


tastefulmrship

#16
I ran the Glider Rider .ym file through "YMCruncher.exe" and it works fine! It's attached here!

If you are using WinAPE to move files from Windows to the AYCPlayer .dsk file, remember to make sure the "Add/Remove AMSDOS headers" is checked FIRST! If not, it will not work! The file in the "Disc Editor" view should be 5Kb long! 6Kb is too big and 7Kb is way out!



EDIT: It even works with my .yms... ^_^

SkulleateR

#17
I converted the Glider Rider YM file with YM2AY on CPC, result is a 5KB file, but that's not playable anywhere ... then I tried to add a header that results in s 6KB file which is "partitially" playable in TSP ...


What would be the correct way to convert this o CPC, as I said I got no windows machine here ....

tastefulmrship

Quote from: SkulleateR on 12:04, 19 August 21
What would be the correct way to convert this on CPC, as I said I got no windows machine here ....
I don't think you have much choice, to be honest. There is only YM2AY that you can use on a CPC to convert ST music! According to the documentation, it doesn't convert ZX music (due to being a different frequency!) It is also limited by floppy-disc space (<178Kb) so longer tunes cannot be converted.

However, YMCruncher (on Windows) works with CPC, ST and ZX .ym files of all sizes and converting them all to the correct CPC frequency.
There is a GitHub site for this, maybe it can converted to other OS formats - GitHub - cdepecker/YMCruncher: Amstrad CPC YMCruncher initial code dump. (Java Tools that helps to compress YM music files to AYC file format)

Failing that, I could convert a load of .ym files to .ayc when not working and dump them all in a ParaDOS .dsk with the player binary! Unless someone could come up with an AmsAMP* utility!




* I claim full copyright for the name "AmsAMP" and all royalties for use of the "AmsAMP" utility (and display of the name) should go direct to my PayPal account!

SkulleateR

#19
Ok, so after setting everything up AGAIN on my M4 card, I converted some tunes to AYC, but they still sound weird sometimes ...


What are these options here to choose from :


tastefulmrship

#20
Quote from: SkulleateR on 14:01, 19 August 21
Ok, so after setting everything up AGAIN on my M4 card, I converted some tunes to AYC, but they still sound weird sometimes ...


What are these options here to choose from :
I have GoogleTranslated the manual and attached here. According to what it says in the manual, you select "4" for registers 0, 2 & 4 and "1" for all other registers. Once you have filled in the list on the right, it should save the .ayc file!

tastefulmrship

The advantage of working from home is that you can give yourself extended tea-breaks! ^_^
Here are a few .ym tunes converted to .ayc! You will need to rename them to fit the AMSDOS filename format (########.AYC)

SkulleateR

#22
Thx for those, sorting them will be a long term issue  ;D

After getting this sorted, renamed and tested I will put a package here for all M4/USIfAC owners of course, thx for all your help so far ;)

Next question, I also have plenty of .AY Files like the one attached, how do I play these on the CPC, or is there a conversion tool (AY -> AYC) too ?



tastefulmrship

#23
Quote from: SkulleateR on 07:34, 20 August 21
Next question, I also have plenty of .AY Files like the one attached, how do I play these on the CPC, or is there a conversion tool (AY -> AYC) too ?
.AY files? Hmmm... most of them play in AYEmul, but do not convert with YMCruncher.
Unless someone has developed an AY>AYC tool, the only solution I can see is to convert the .AY files to .YM in AYEmul and then .YM to .AYC in YMCruncher.

I can batch-convert them for you if you want! Post a .zip or .rar here & I will see what I can do!


EDIT: It looks like the tune-length in the .AY file is different to the actual tune-length (AID03.AY claims to be 0:46 in AYEmul but the tune is actually 2:43); converting to .YM chops off loads of the tune... so, not a viable option! Sorry!

SkulleateR

Well, there are plenty of AY Players out there, even a player for the ZX Spectrum so it should be possible to play them directly on CPC too since the AY files got the z80 code inside for driving the AY Chip directly ... question is how to get these into memory and play them on a CPC ?

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