pouët.net

Hi
do you know about any good tunes that uses the old xt pc audio chip and speaker? :)
is there a way to transform mp3's to this chip music style?
thx

You may want to look into 1 bit audio in general, like the amazing stuff by shiru.

As I know, PC speaker can play mp3s. At least it can launch wavs. But in the most cases it would be sound really bad.
I don't know about speaker support for mp3s in mpxplay, but "Digital Sound System" can do it.

replaying digitized audio thru a pc speaker is as old as Rome... e.g. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=4066 ... i think the true question is more, can a 8088 4,77Mhz CPU decompress a MP3 fast enough for realtime playback, there's a reason Amiga people prefer PCM etc ;)

for me the true question has now become, what kind of dope is maali smoking that he even considers the possibility of realtime mp3 decoding on a 8088@4.77, and more importantly, where can i get some of that stuff :)

playing digi on pc speaker is just pwm. decoding an mp3 on a 8088 is pretty much impossible though (please prove me wrong! :)

This old stuff sounds only on pc speaker
some pro tracker modules and other kind of musics as well, there is a zx spectrum game tune at the end... :)
the source is also downloadable...but sorry it is for .286

havoc: it's the same dope that makes my rhetorical questions not sound rhetorical enough. poor quality.. almost like what a MP3 would sound on a 8088! :)

I sure know about some arguably good PC Speaker tunes. Haven't released them yet, coming soon. In meanwhile you can create some of your own using my PCSPE VSTi (outputs actual data for speaker). Music for recent AONDEMO was made this way, the thing has an equivalent of PC Speaker inside (single channel of 8253), so you can get idea of what is possible.

If you want to go more old fashioned way, there is a tracker called Monotone. I think there is some music made with it around the net, too.

You can also take a look at forthcoming Planet X3 game by 8-bit guy, did another DOS PC Speaker tracker for him. There are chances he'll release it to public after finishing the game. Mentioned here.

That's all related to PC Speaker being used a a classic sound chip, no PCM playing, no tricky software synthesis. As for PCM, well, I personally don't find it interesting, because that's just a very crude DAC. As for software synthesis, a lot could be done, I believe, but for now this is kind of uncharted waters. Only a handful games of the past and 8088 MPH demo attempted to do something in this regard. Stay tuned.

@Shiru I'm glad The 8-bit Guy got in touch with you of all people about it, I exchanged some emails with him about the ways of doing Adlib music but your tracker is definitely the way to go when supporting Tandy and 1ch speakers too :) Looking forward to the game!

For other confused readers, here's a Pouet link to Shiru's AONDEMO (which by the way kicks ass!)

I never dove deep but that music is better than anything I ever heard come out of the PC Speaker.

guys i'm not talking about using the speaker to play wav files, i want to convert them to the pc chip "squick" sound.

can 1tracker open wav/mp3 & convert it to pc speaker chip tunes?
Monotone can?

PCSPE VST looks nice :) any other things like that? free maybe?

thx

What you are looking for does not exist. There are no tools to extract melodies and stuff from wav files and convert them into 1-bit pc speaker music with chiptune sounds. Such a tool would be very hard, if not impossible in practice, to make.

Oh, there is such a tool. It's called Melodyne Editor and you can buy it starting from €400 :P

Squeaking chiptune songs never were made by an automatic conversion from streamed audio, they're all written by hand from scratch, note by note, step by step. That's what a chiptune composer does. Even when it is just a version of a popular song, it is analyzed by the ear and recreated by hand from scratch.

It is technically possible to analyze streamed audio, and extract some of its melodic contents, but that's an extremely complex task and it won't provide results that would be any comparable to a hand made chiptune.

Of course it's possible to convert anything to chiptunes automatically. In reality, chiptune composers have zero skills and they can be replaced with an electric potato. Like this conversion of a world-famous theme song clearly shows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvlI7nTgNiY

Did you know that the whole Pouet site was automatically generated, converted from empty beer cans from Boozembly? Just a bit of magic software, free 1337 of course. But it's a secret and the software is not given to lamers.

As promised, a showcase of true PC Speaker capabilities: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=79996

Also, you may want to look into 1 bit audio in ZX versions; loads of amazing stuff there http://z80.i-demo.pl/