metatronaut
Offline
Chips & Dip :3

Hey all!

So I've been running into some issues that are getting hard to ignore...

For starters, wobbles in the S channel sound on time, the way I want it when I build the phrase out, but then gets out of sync when I play it in song mode,

And second, some notes (specifically in the N channel) will not play at all, and at very important parts, like a transitional crash.

Is this a known issue? Or might my ROM/cart be somewhat corrupt?

I tried the same song on 2 different systems, (modded DS, and unmodded GBA) and the same spot(s) encounter these problems.

Thanks!
-Sam

EDIT: It appears that the N channel issues can be fixed by lowering the volume of other instruments or muting a channel. Maybe CPU overload?

Last edited by metatronaut (May 31, 2015 1:30 pm)

Vegasdiamond
Offline
Antwerp, Belgium

The N issue might be caused by CPU overload, as you mentioned. In the original gameboy, the noise channel has the lowest priority, sometimes causing noise notes not to trigger at all. I presume that the GBA has a similar functionality and this is causing your problem. On the other hand, the fact that lowering the volume fixes it may point towards another cause.

I'm guessing your wobble time issue is because you put the LFO on free instead of trigger. If I remember correctly, if you put the LFO below the middle is triggered, and the LFO below the middle line is free. Can you confirm if this is the case?

metatronaut
Offline
Chips & Dip :3
Vegasdiamond wrote:

The N issue might be caused by CPU overload, as you mentioned. In the original gameboy, the noise channel has the lowest priority, sometimes causing noise notes not to trigger at all. I presume that the GBA has a similar functionality and this is causing your problem. On the other hand, the fact that lowering the volume fixes it may point towards another cause.

I'm guessing your wobble time issue is because you put the LFO on free instead of trigger. If I remember correctly, if you put the LFO below the middle is triggered, and the LFO below the middle line is free. Can you confirm if this is the case?

Ah that's probably why I was getting weird stuff. Thanks for the reply!

oliver
Offline

There is no CPU overload (if there was, you'd hear hard clicks), what eliminates the N sounds is probably clipping. To avoid clipping, reduce the volume of all channels.
Nanoloop 2.7 plays each channel near the overall maximum volume and notes also default to maximum volume. As soon as two notes play at once, their sum at some points already exceeds the available dynamics range and is clipped. However, depending on sound type, clipping is often not noticable until the signal gets heavily distorted. Nanoloop also uses soft clipping which adds distortion before the maximum is reached but makes it smoother. One effect of massive clipping is that some sounds, often the noise, are cancelled out almost completely.

Nanoloop 2.7 has this agressive loudness setting because the dynamics range is so limited (9 bit). Even at maximum volume, the noise foor is always near. If each channel had a fixed 1/4 of the available range, the aliasing noise would be very dominant (if that's a wanted effect, you can always have those crunchy low-bit effects by lowering the volume).