pouët.net

Hello.

Lately Shiru made a BEEPER engine (Spectrum 48) with 9 audible channels, however it has no its own editor and we use XM files.

What is the best XM editor in your opinion, except ModPlug Tracker, Skale Tracker and FastTracker2?

Skale is dangerously unstable, Fast sadly doesn't work on new PCs (argh, a pity, I loved the program) and about ModPlug I don't want to talk at all. My cardiologist forbidden me.

Milkytracker

Milkytracker

FastTracker2. Works fine in DosBox. Milkytracker is the runner-up.

If you're talking about the XM files, I hardly suggest you Milkytracker.

kusma, I don't think they're going to use DOSBox.

With "hardly" do you mean it is good or NOT good?

I mean it's good.

Thanks a lot, my friends.

Well, as for the FT2, I encountered an annoying thing under the DosBox - right CTRL doesn't work and it's crucial for copying entire patterns.

So the MilkyTracker it is.
I will check it out.

Until now I made the first 9channels beeper song on Skale but when I was making another, I discovered some minor bugs related supposedly with various number of raws in patterns. It went crazy at some point and I was close to lose my 6 hour work (which was scary :) ).

Let us keep fresh about your project...

But for me seems really a titanic thing make 9 channels out of 1!

Ah Mister Beep... Check out also the new versions of Open Modplug Tracker, as I might know they've fixed lots of compatibility problems!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/modplug/

Mister Beep: Try using Taewong Yoo builds of DOSBox, they have nice GUI which allows to remap keys and are up to date. I'm using them and can't complain about anything.
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/

That's ok, your player doesn't work on a modern PC either *bad-dum-tsh*

You can clear the Ctrl-F5 mapping from the default DOSbox config and cut/copy/paste in FT2 like nobody's business. Don't let that stop you :)

Thanks again, I will test all of this.

As for the beeper engine, it's made by Shiru and I made the first full song on it (recorded from real hardware)
http://8bc.org/music/MISTER+BEEP/The+Ninth+Fighter-Ship/
however I'm afraid to continue the work on Skale, I must admit.

Best wishes,
MB

Hey man, not bad that stuff, as I've listenen.

Well certainly we don't have the envelopes and the possibility to use very much different timbres, but I'm pretty sure that I can make nice music even using this engine! Looking forward!

Meanwhile, I could make a demo tune using this engine, if you want :)

SoDa7:

Thanks a lot.
Actually all is here:
ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/shiru/zx/octode.zip
with an instruction and some short example.
However the detune can be big sometimes (you know - 3,5Mhz on the CPU), so it happens the composition needs to be rewritten with other notes, to avoid the detunes. That's how I made it, anyway.
Enjoy. ;)

PS: Actually I'm writting something on it even now, using the mentioned MiklyTracker. :)
Thanks again, all!

Didn't trixter want to do something similar? Speaker MOD player on an XT or something?

But here it is only for chiptunes. The XM tracker is only an utility instead of native 1-bit chiptune editor (which doesn't exist in case of Octode engine).
So that's not digital music, only notes are converted.

Thanks for letting me test this software...

Well, those are the results with the experiment...

I've did a short music module using the "template" song packed in the file that I downloaded. Then, I've downloaded the sjasmplus in order to get the file compiled for testing it with the emulator.

Saving the xm file with OpenModplugTracker makes the converter going in crash, saving the xm file with Milkytracker makes it ok!

I've noted that the higher notes are also loud, not only a bit detuned.

I guess isn't possible to use volume commands in the xm file, right Mr. Beep?

MISTER BEEP: I'm just saying but I'm currently writing a tracker and it should be real easy to implement some kind of export script for Shiru's replay routine.

anyways, quite a nice hack that is :-) 9 channels on a spectrum, yea!

I'm not sure it would work on XT (you mean IBM-PC XT right), but there is a player (which requires VGA I think) that I had back in the day that played mods through the internal speaker - Visual Player.

http://www.scritube.com/limba/engleza/software/Visual-Player10125115.php

1. Fasttracker 2
2. Skaletracker (whats unstable? I never had any problems with it except for all the missing features, tried the latest version?)
3. Modplugtracker
4. All other XMeditors in the world
5. nothing
6. nothing
7. being gangraped by nSync
8. being vilently gangraped by nSync while reading hugi
9. milkytracker

it seems mr dubmood is a huge fan of milkytracker

FastTracker2 is surely the best, I just have no possibility to use it.
Skale was my favourite for years, now I noticed some problems while changing number of raws (various for various patterns).
Like I said before, also SoDa7 noticed it, somehow XM coming from MPT don't fit into the compiler (on the other hand, XMs from FT2, Skale and Milky - work OK).
Thanks anyway for your time.


SoDa7:
yes, the highest tones are the most loud (or actually - the lowest tones are the most silent :) ), but this engine has no volumes: CPU has to play with 9 channels too much.
However there is another engine (2 actually) that work on the same principle:

Qchan
ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/shiru/zx/qchan.zip
with 5 channels (4 tones + drums) and it has volumes

Tritone
ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/shiru/zx/tritone.zip
with 4 channels (3 tones + drums) and it has volumes too, although I'm not sure if they aren't fixed still, actually.
You read TXT files, just in case. And listen to SNA files to know what sound do they generate (different in all cases - that's the idea of beeper sound after all - various software synthesizers).

Sjasmplus is requires for all, also the XM editing is.

Best wishes and thanks again, everybody.
MB

Its been day I try to forbid myself to run into the usual .it > .xm troll and nothing happened. AM I THE ONLY ONE TO THINK ABOUT IT (and the children) ?