SymAmp with Amiga MOD support

[Prodatron]

In 2020 Maarten Loor ported his MSX NOP MOD player to SymAmp, but some issues were left, and I was too lazy to fix them at this time.

Now his Amiga MOD plugin is nearly fully running in SymAmp, and the 16bit I/O conversion has been done, so you can run it on the Amstrad CPC in SymbOS, too.



SymAmp supports 15 and 31 ("M.K.") instrument 4channel Amiga MODs and up to 62 patterns.
You need an OPL4 compatible MSX sound device (the original MoonSound or clones like the Monster Sound or the OPL4 Shockwave) connected to your CPC via the Amsdap slot expander.

I have to fix an issue with arpeggios and one more thing, then I can release this new version of SymAmp.

[XeNoMoRPH]

Awesome !!!, Waiting release for test 👏👏👏

[HAL6128]

Great stuff!
A pity that is doesn't work with a OPL3 compatible sound card.

[Prodatron]

I got the Willy adapter from PulkoMandy yesterday and the OPL3LPT
But the OPL3 chip is FM only, no wavetable capabilities, so no Amiga MODs here and similiar stuff.
A VGM Plugin for playing OPL1/2/3 stuff would be possible for SymAmp.

[TotO]

Yes, the OPL1/2/3 are low-end FM chips used on gamme entry synthesisers and early PC soundboards like AdLib.

[zhulien]

Why do they call them FM chips? Paula on the Amiga and pretty much any 2 DACs are also FM right?

[Prodatron]

FM is frequency modulation, while wave table devices are using samples.

- Frequency modulation:
OPL1-3 (used in the Adlib PC soundcard, later FM-part of the Soundblaster, on the MSX as "MSX-Audio", "MSX-Music" etc.):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_modulation_synthesis

- Sample-based:
OPL4 (the Wave table syntheses part), Paula (Amiga), Gravis Ultrasound (PC), SoundBlaster AWE32 (PC), etc.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-based_synthesis

[HAL6128]

Just a thought: with OPL3 or SP2 addons you can play cool MIDI sounds (GM / e.g. Monkey Island or other stuff). I think it's worth a try to create a MIDI player or tracker?

[XeNoMoRPH]

by the way, I am the proud owner of a powerful Gravis UltraSound MAX, ISA format, with 1 mega of RAM !!!  [ here is , inside IBM PS1 ]

[Prodatron]

Congratulation! I don't have my Gravis Ultrasound "Classic" anymore. For the PC it was a revolution. Too bad, that it was only successful in the demo and tracker scene.

But for me it is still crazy, that with the MoonSound/OPL4 the MSX as a Z80 machine already had a similiar powerful hardware at nearly the same time (1994). 16bit samples, 44KHz, at least 24 PCM channels (instead of 32).

[XeNoMoRPH]

[Prodatron]

SymAmp 4.0 has been released:


http://www.symbos.org/appinfo.htm?00005


What's new:

- Amiga MOD 4channel file support on all platforms (CPC, MSX, Enterprise) with an OPL4 wavetable sound device (MoonSound, MonsterSound, OPL4 Shockwave, Dal So Ri)
- new modern skin
- enhanced playlist with up to 250 entries
- playlist accepts files from multiple folders and is sortable
- player shows full song titles if available
- correct playtime display for very long modules and MP3s

Some facts about the Amiga MOD player plugin:

- supports both 15 and 31 instrument MODs ("M.K.", "M!K!", "FLT4")
- up to 62 patterns per song
- up to 2MB samples, if enough wavetable ram is available

Restrictions:

- currently only 4 channel MODs are supported
- speed command works only with "ticks"-setting, not correctly with BPM setting

Thanks again to Maarten Loor!

[XeNoMoRPH]

That skin Rocks !!!! 

[norecess464]

No support for .MDL files ? I'm shocked ! 
Kidding, it's an amazing work!

[Prodatron]

Kidding, it's an amazing work!

Thanks!  I wonder, if there is anyone here in the CPC scene, who has access to a Moonsound compatible OPL4 device? I know that Genesis8 has one, someone else?

No support for .MDL files ? I'm shocked ! 

If you are speaking about the...

- CPC Digitracker MDL format: I think >95% of them are converted Amiga MOD files. It makes more sense to play the originals with full 4 channels and better 8bit sample quality instead of 6/7bit.

- PC Digitrakker MDL format: This is a very complex format, which was able to handle nearly all other tracker formats of that time like S3M, XM, MOD, ULT, 669, MTM etc. etc., with up to 32 channels, instruments with volume- and frequency-envelopes, multiple samples per instrument, a very compressed file format both for patterns and samples, two effects for each note and more.IF this could be played on a Z80 you can play nearly ALL existing tracker modules on a Z80 (besides the IT format) It would be probably an own project. SymAmp already rised a lot, I have to take care that it won't become too big.

[XeNoMoRPH]

Hey @Prodatron i have FM blaster Monster sound  OPL4 too 👍👍

[Prodatron]

SymAmp 4.1 has been released:

http://www.symbos.org/appinfo.htm?00005

It now supports SA2 modules (Surprise! Adlib Tracker 2) for playing these on the Willy by Pulkomandy + OPL3LPT as well as on any MoonSound/OPL4 compatible sound devices like the MonsterSound, OPL4 Shockwave etc. (for CPC, MSX, EP).
The player has been originally ported from 8086 by @madram for the CPC-ISA project and rewritten, debuged and extended (adding most effect command) during the last days by myself.

If you have a Willy board+Opl3Lpt
or a Moonsound compatible device you can try all these sounds now:
http://symbos.org/download/media/sa2.zip

[HAL6128]

Very impressive and fast development! Thank you.

[GUNHED]

Currently I'm on the country side. So I have no CPC with mouse.
Now I downloaded all that new symbos 3.1 and Symamp.


Well, I can't use the mouse pointer, it's frozen. Which keys to use please?

[Cwiiis]

Currently I'm on the country side. So I have no CPC with mouse.
Now I downloaded all that new symbos 3.1 and Symamp.


Well, I can't use the mouse pointer, it's frozen. Which keys to use please?

If you hold down COPY, the arrow keys and space/return work as the mouse and left/right buttons (I may be wrong about the buttons, but it's something like that) - alternatively, a 2-button joystick also works.

[GUNHED]

If you hold down COPY, the arrow keys and space/return work as the mouse and left/right buttons (I may be wrong about the buttons, but it's something like that) - alternatively, a 2-button joystick also works.

Thanks a lot for the hint! It really works, but probably it's way better to use a joystick. Just strange, why to need to hold copy down. Maybe the next update can fix this and the cursor keys + Space will be just usable.