TylerBarnes
Offline
Dallas, Texas

Finished my first attempt at a 1-bit tune. It's not very long but my god it takes so long to program on this thing. (At least for me)

TI-82 Classical Tune

One thing I've noticed is that my batteries do not last very long. The screen quickly becomes very dim. I can get like 10-20 minutes out of it before it starts getting hard to read. Haven't had the batteries die on me yet cause I end up changing them just out of the need to see what I'm doing.

Has anyone had similar experiences with their TI-82?

Last edited by TylerBarnes (Oct 3, 2013 11:13 am)

SketchMan3
Offline
NC in the US of America

Hey that was cool.

Alright so I found my younger brothers old TI-83+, now I just need the link cable. I'm a bit excited. I'm also a bit disappointed to hear about the low battery life.

I assume the sound comes out of the mini-headphones jack? Why would somebody put sound generating capabilities in a calculator in the first place?!?

boomlinde
Offline
Sweden
SketchMan3 wrote:

Why would somebody put sound generating capabilities in a calculator in the first place?!?

The port in the bottom is meant to be used for serial communication. I guess it could even be used to load data from tape smile

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land
TylerBarnes wrote:

Finished my first attempt at a 1-bit tune. It's not very long but my god it takes so long to program on this thing. (At least for me)

TI-82 Classical Tune

Nice, congrats on being the first to release a TI tune!

TylerBarnes wrote:

One thing I've noticed is that my batteries do not last very long. The screen quickly becomes very dim. I can get like 10-20 minutes out of it before it starts getting hard to read. Haven't had the batteries die on me yet cause I end up changing them just out of the need to see what I'm doing.

Has anyone had similar experiences with their TI-82?

Now that doesn't sound good at all. I can't confirm the problem, I've been using the same batteries for 3-4 month now on my testing calc (not using it that often, but it should have ramped up a few hours of playback time now). And in theory, that shouldn't happen, since normally the link port is always powered on, so playing back music should technically increase battery life. But well, that doesn't mean much...

Two questions for you, then. First, what type of batteries are you using? Ideally you should use Lithium ones. Alkaline work, too, but will last shorter. Zinc-Carbon batteries on the other hand shouldn't be used for TI.
And second, could you tell me what TI model you are using, ie. what's your ROM version, and is "TI-82" printed in yellow or in white on your calc?


boomlinde wrote:

The port in the bottom is meant to be used for serial communication. I guess it could even be used to load data from tape

Indeed. I'm actually thinking about implementing a feature that would allow you to dump song data as wav, so that one could use any mobile devices with a line-in as a quick'n'dirty solution for backups.

Last edited by irrlichtproject (Oct 4, 2013 2:43 pm)

TylerBarnes
Offline
Dallas, Texas

I'm using the classic TI-82 with white text. Alkaline batteries, a brand that give me no problems in my gameboy. ROM is 19.0

Here's a before and after.

› Show Spoiler



EDIT: LOL. So I googled a bit and found out that despite not having a physical wheel, it DOES have a contrast control. my contrast was just turned down. I used 2nd and up/down arrows to adjust the contrast

Last edited by TylerBarnes (Oct 4, 2013 8:51 pm)

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

Phew, that takes a bit of a load off my mind. Still, the screen shouldn't go blank after 20 minutes. So please keep me updated about this anyway, and let me know when the current battery set has run out.
There might be other causes for this: either you have a faulty calc (there are know cases of some ti calcs draining the batteries in a few hours), or the batteries you got weren't "fresh". When inserting a fresh set of batteries, the screen will normally be so dark that the first thing you'd do is turn down the contrast.

TylerBarnes wrote:

Finished my first attempt at a 1-bit tune. It's not very long but my god it takes so long to program on this thing. (At least for me)

Yup, the interface certainly isn't ideal but it's the best I could come up with considering the memory constraints. I'll try to think of more features that make editing easier. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. For now, I can only recommend to use copy/paste a lot wink
Also I should really get the note tables for engine 2 and 3 done, I guess.

Last edited by irrlichtproject (Oct 5, 2013 12:00 pm)

TylerBarnes
Offline
Dallas, Texas
irrlichtproject wrote:

Also I should really get the note tables for engine 2 and 3 done, I guess.


Notes in (parenthesis) are detuned and unusable. All red notes are usable notes. Also marked if some notes where sharp/flat. Capital letters signify how off the note is, for example 'Flat' is more flatter than 'flat' and 'FLAT' would be the flattest.

MARK Engine 3


TIM Engine 1

Last edited by TylerBarnes (Oct 8, 2013 2:20 am)

Solarbear
Offline
Lexington, KY
TylerBarnes wrote:

Notes in (parenthesis) are detuned and unusable. All red notes are usable notes. Also marked if some notes where sharp/flat. Capital letters signify how off the note is, for example 'Flat' is more flatter than 'flat' and 'FLAT' would be the flattest.

You are a saint. Thanks for these!

SketchMan3
Offline
NC in the US of America

hey man bad intonation is one of the coolest features of 1bit beeper music
It adds character

Last edited by SketchMan3 (Oct 6, 2013 2:51 pm)

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

Thanks TylerBarnes, these are great! Mind if I include them in the manual?

TylerBarnes
Offline
Dallas, Texas
irrlichtproject wrote:

Thanks TylerBarnes, these are great! Mind if I include them in the manual?

Sure thing. and I would be honored.

I'll try and get TIM Engine 2 done in the same way once I finish the current track I'm constructing. That is, unless it uses the same values as TIM Engine 1? I haven't done a single thing in that engine cause I have no use for it. I'd rather have the extra voices :]

TylerBarnes
Offline
Dallas, Texas

I'm having something strange stuff happening. I'm working on a new tune, and found some of my notes in my MARK table are somewhat off. I was very thorough when I initially made the table. Sat there for hours listening to sine waves and tweaking. Can pitch drift due to batteries or something? This is just got my head hurting. I'm currently updating the table with the new values. But damned if I wasn't certain they were all right before. I'll keep checking if any more drifting happens after I'm done updating my table or if I'm just going crazy.


EDIT: heres a modified MARK table. Lets hope this one sticks tongue

minor edit: forgot to alter red note indicators as well. is fixed.

Last edited by TylerBarnes (Oct 8, 2013 8:42 pm)

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

Thanks mate - manual updated. If you could make a table for engine 2 as well, that'd be greatly appreciated. (yep, different engine, different pitch).

I have no idea if the pitch is actually shifting... anything goes with these calcs, really wink In any case, I think if the ratios are correct then all is well, since you can't MIDI sync HT at the moment, so no need to have accurate pitch. And if necessary, I could add some global fine pitch feature or something later.

Also, who will make the first non-chromatic table? Mind you, all the bits from the second sound demo aren't tuned whatsoever - I just used "lazy" values... $40, $60, $80, $a0 ... it always works LOL

TylerBarnes
Offline
Dallas, Texas

I also had a quarry about note retriggering. Is there anything you can implement that would fix it? it makes some of the highest tempos unusable cause the retrigs are in the audio spectrum. I'm of course using long drawn out notes. Fast notes changes are obviously fine with the retrigs cause the note is changing.

Also I think a master tune would be more useful than you think. If it is able to maintain the ratios between notes and stay in tune with itself it will open the possibility for a more accurate table to be made. Since the higher octaves have fewer steps between the traditional notes, it will be possible to find a better sweet spot to maximize the usable in-tune notes. Of course this method could already be implemented but it wouldn't mesh well with extra music gear. I can already attest that using midines as my lead synth over a TI-82 backing track is extremely fun.

Last edited by TylerBarnes (Oct 9, 2013 12:30 am)

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land
TylerBarnes wrote:

I also had a quarry about note retriggering. Is there anything you can implement that would fix it? it makes some of the highest tempos unusable cause the retrigs are in the audio spectrum. I'm of course using long drawn out notes. Fast notes changes are obviously fine with the retrigs cause the note is changing.


Unfortunately I can't do much about it, at least not with the way the engines currently work. Song data is read in on every line, and during this period the sound routine can't be updated reliably. That said, I'll try my best to tweak things a bit. Try this build and tell me if it's any better.

TylerBarnes wrote:

Also I think a master tune would be more useful than you think. If it is able to maintain the ratios between notes and stay in tune with itself it will open the possibility for a more accurate table to be made. Since the higher octaves have fewer steps between the traditional notes, it will be possible to find a better sweet spot to maximize the usable in-tune notes. Of course this method could already be implemented but it wouldn't mesh well with extra music gear. I can already attest that using midines as my lead synth over a TI-82 backing track is extremely fun.

Ok, I'll try to implement this soon. It'll be for pitching down only, though.
Thought about some more live features as well, for example pitch and speed could be made usable during playback without too much difficulty. In any case it'll be a good excuse for me to finally improve the keyhandler, which should in turn slightly improve the situation with retrigger.

Akareyon
Offline

Due to lot of work lately, there's not much I can add to the topic at hand except that irrlicht project totally rocks for coding a 1-bit tracker for calculators which is stereo, native, includes drums and pure 1-bit excitement.

I hope I'll catch up soon.