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Thanks all!

YERZMYEY - as akira says, no extra audio hardware, just an insanely powerful Amiga I wrote my Hively stuff when I had an 060 (I sold it not long ago), and Hively needs the 060 mainly to run its GUI and large screen resolution - the multichannel software mixing probably doesn't need quite as much power, but there's little point running Hively on anything less. Actually, even with an 060 there's a lot of lag on the keys, etc. But consider that it was originally coded for AmigaOS, running on 233mhz+ PPCs with video cards etc. - the version for classic Amiga is a port that buzz^exotica made after I nagged xeron for aaaages to give him the sourcecode ;D

So Hively mixes all its channels into one audio buffer stream, then uses AHI, an audio interface layer for various Amiga operating systems, to point that stream at hardware - whether it's a SoundBlaster card in a towered Amiga, a VIA chip onboard one of those expensive SAM motherboards, or a plain old Paula chip on an A1200 which will spit out anything you feed into it, like all those mp3s used in demos for the last ten years or so

Good suggestion though YERZMYEY - I'll write up some technical details for people's curiosity and add them

Right, hopefully the last one, then I'll try to stop bumping with every little update

Now you can pass URL arguments to ChipdiscoDJ to load playlists from m3u files you've put somewhere online and to declare config options to save you from having to set them each time.

It takes playlist A, playlist B, cue-device, midi-in-device, interpolation and colour-scheme (or some, or none of those) like so: http://crayolon.net/chipdisco/index.php … amp;midi=2

Emar - it used to work like that, when I was doing DSP-based volume control. Obviously that's ideal, but the DSP-based volume was causing crashes aplenty. The solution for stability was to control volume by hijacking the player's calculation of module channel/note volume (between 0 and 64) and scaling everything. Sadly, because the buffer-display (it's not true spectrum analysis, it's actually just a total cheat - drawing the contents of the audio buffer ) can only read from the post-mix output, it always sees things *after* that volume scaling has been done.

I'm trying to come up with a solution for that. Maybe I can duplicate all the channels in the module and read volumes off them, but not send them to the mixing engine...though I'm already duplicating channels for ultra top-secret 'jam' channels

The coloured blocks at the bottom of each deck, while pretty-looking, were intended as a very poor substitute for the buffer-display's visual feedback: you can usually see kick and snare hits, especially in less densely populated mods' patterns. Not great, I know...

boomlinde - that's another thing I sacrificed in order to use a GUI library that wouldn't cause me heavy pain and would let me chop out a thousand lines of my own confusing code I did try this out last year in my own GUI, but found that, depending on screen-size and various other factors, it wasn't very satisfactory in all situations.

Another option would be pickup mode, like many hardware synths use for knobs. The click is registered but the control doesn't 'catch' until the mouse position reaches the current value. If I did that, I'd have to make it an option, as not everyone would like it.

By the way, for performance scenarios, I would suggest that MIDI is the ideal means of controlling ChipdiscoDJ, particularly the crossfader. And that's really easy for me to do pickup mode in - most of the controls already have it (though I'll check).

I agree with you about the speed/tempo values, however it still wouldn't be a solution for all modules. Well, I don't need to tell you how many composers down the years have experimented fucking around with speed/bpm values This is tied in with another problem (or feature, you decide): I have an option for enabling or disabling tempo override, which is supposed to force your on-the-fly BPM changes upon a module even if that module has its initial BPM command entered on row 0 of every single pattern. I've played around a lot, but all it proves is that if you want to do serious performance DJing in Chipdisco, you need to know the mods that you're putting in; perhaps even to the point of editing them yourself beforehand. Not ideal, but at least it's *possible*, unlike with mp3s, and MilkyTracker/etc have lots of good find&replace functions now.

Anyway, I'm thinking about these issues and trying to figure out solutions. More updates soon!

Cheers all!

Updates: I've fixed the fonts, I've generally overhauled and improved the GUI, I've reduced the width to 1024px (netbook-friendly!), added BPM fine-tune buttons and on-screen transpose (pitch) controls AND fixed the OSX/Linux hanging issue when choosing cue-mix device.

Emar - good suggestions, cheers! I should say, though, don't hope to get pinpoint-accurate beatmatching with this. Actually, you *can* beatmatch, but not if you use the cue-mix, as there's a slight lag when the cue-mix is sent back to the main outputs. Which defeats the whole object of the cue-mix Maybe I'll be able to fix it one day... Let me know if you do a DJ set with it, anyway

Yes, I absolutely recognise the need for that Actually, +/- keys and Shift with +/- leys used to control +/-1 BPM...I think I disabled them during the overhaul and forgot to put them back in. I shall do so! And maybe I'll complement them with some nice +/- buttons on the GUI too...

I hadn't heard of maxmod before - looks interesting, thanks for the heads-up.

Flopps - cool! I'll be interested to hear how you get on. If you need any tweaks made, or have suggestions for improvements after using it in a real-life situation, just let me know

Forget about 68k Hively unless you've got a bvision, a Picasso or a scandoubler (as well as an 060), and even then you may as well fucking emulate I only got Buzz to port it to 68k as a desperate hack anyway. I'd dare to say I'm the only person to have played live with Hively in 10+ chans with keyjamming and it's a low-volume, lag-tastic nightmare. Works great under emulation, though;) Btw, Delfinas etc won't help the lag, as the mixing is still all done in soft before Paula.

Oh, and I sold my Phase5 Blizzard 1260/50mhz for £450 last month, leaving me with just a 1230. Proper Phase5 Blizzards (not the DCE ones) are great and trouble-free; accept no imitations...but on the other hand, save yourself a shitload and just emulate Yeah, you heard me.

(Edit: added some smileys in case people thought I was getting militant about this shit. There are 8 Amigas (and 1 empty A1200 case) in my direct line of vision as I type this, but I'm still recommending emulation as a remedy for Gear Acquisition Syndrome, so clearly my militant days are behind me.)