At any rate, it's always cool finding new tricks. Personally I just either write volume changes into the synth, or just mix things properly and it comes out in the wash.

Yea but the wav channel only has four bits of resolution, so you cant really escape that?

The wave channel and master volumes work in different ways. The wave channel volume lower the volume by shifting each sample and discarding the lower bits. So in effect, wave channel only has 3 and 2 bits of resolution for the lower volume settings. The master volume does not have THIS problem but obviously affects all sound channels routed to that stereo channel.

SketchMan3 wrote:

If the wav instrument is playing a solo all by itself you could always fiddle with the volume pot if you are post-pot-pro-sounded? derp

If it's playing by itself just use M commands,

Alternatively you could mix your wav channel full left and everything else full right, then use M commands to change volume on the stereo channels independently.

Wouldn't using M commands still only give you 3 steps of volume for the wav channel, though?  That's something I've never thought to compare, E vs M on the wav channel.

If the wav instrument is playing a solo all by itself you could always fiddle with the volume pot if you are post-pot-pro-sounded? derp

If it's playing by itself just use M commands,

Alternatively you could mix your wav channel full left and everything else full right, then use M commands to change volume on the stereo channels independently.

Personally, I usually just use the E command and stretch it out longer if I want a longer decay. It usually works out okay, imo, since there are a lot of other sounds to mask the simplicity.

Sometimes I'll use the Synth screen and simply set the VOL setting high on the top and low on the bottom, and reverse that for swells and ignore the clicking. *shrug* Actually, I have one song in which I intentionally invoke clicks in the intro to emulate a record player to make the listener accustomed to it so they don't stand out during the rest of the song. I hope it works...

The click is mostly unavoidable with most Game Boy models and most LSDJ versions (the  v4.7.0+ "antispike" fix might reduce some of the click you get and using different motherboard revisions sometimes helps as well). It won't be very clean, though. The sonic qualities of the clicks mean they easily masked by other sounds, but if you want the note to play by it's lonesome, it's tough to avoid. Slowing down or speeding up the rate at which the frames change can sometimes help.

Just to repeat something I've probably said before, it can help if you match the speed of the frame change to the tempo of the music. So that the clicks will fall on 16th steps. The clicks can be covered up percussion pretty well.

edit: Or Multiples of 16th notes will help too. If they fall on 32nd notes then half of them will be on 16th notes, etc..

As for getting more resolution to your volume adjustments, you'll need to learn how to use the synth screen and wave editor. You're currently setting the instrument up via the synth screen, but if you go into the wave editor you'll see you probably only have 5 frames that actually contain audible waveforms. In the wave editor you're going to want to draw as many frames of the wave as you need or want. Obviously, each one should be slightly quieter than the previous.

Don't forget, numbering for frames is 00-0F for the first synth, 10-1F for the second and so on.

EDIT: Any time you edit on the Synth Screen, every single wave frame of that synth will be immediately overwritten reflect those settings. You can use the Synth Screen to get a good starting point, but don't touch it again after doing manual adjusting on the Wave Editor screen! It'll silently overwrite any changes you made.