161 Reply by boomlinde

(23 replies, posted in Commodore Computers)

yogi wrote:

This is interesting. I know that a noise channel was included on most sound generators at that time but I didn't think that sample play back was by design, but more for enhancement of the tone channels.

First and only thing that springs to mind is the NES, but hopefully someone else can fill me in on other machines. I thought about PC-88 at first but I don't think those had sample decoding YM chips until years later.

yogi wrote:

When you say 'like a PSG', did/does it generate channels of digital waveforms or are you referring to shifting the pitch of a sample, as most wavetable synths do?
As to the Covox, when it was introduced on the Apple]['s MockingBoard,  seemed like a response to the Amiga and it's Paula.

Yeah, I mean more like a wavetable synth, but without resampling or anything like that. Just independent channel playback rates quite immediately derived from the master clock, like the channels of an YM2149 or the likes; a very simple design compared to most wavetable synthesizers, I think. When I think about "wavetable synthesizers" I think of the likes of MT32, AWE etc., though.

I didn't know about the Covox for Apple II!

Yes, these known tricks were rolled into the Palua by design. Where as the AY could be pushed to do samples, at a high cost of CPU cycles,  but it's main application was generating waveforms.
The development history of the two machines is a good soap opera, full of twists and  tangles. From my reads, seemed like the Amiga was designed for the Paula, when the original customer, Atari, dropped support for the sound chip.

It seems like a mess. Atari at the time were obiously interested in saving money by doing the simplest viable design. In the end, the ST is a pretty neat computer. I've been thinking that the Amiga could really have used a supporting off-the-shelf audio chip. Any YM would have made it a lot more than it was. Instead we have games where you have to choose either sound effects or music in the options menu or really annoying channel stealing, which seems quite ridiculous by the time they released the A1200. What if they just tacked on a PSG or an FM chip as well?

So true. IMO the Paula set the stage for digital sound. And at the same time it's revolutionary approach limits it's attraction for a stand-alone 'chip' synth. The Amiga has far more appeal as a whole system, from a retro aspect smile
Yogi

Agreed, agreed and agreed!

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162 Reply by boomlinde

(162 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I collect money from patent violators on behalf of owners of vague patents.

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163 Reply by boomlinde

(23 replies, posted in Commodore Computers)

yogi wrote:

Isn't that what made the Amiga great, it was the first sampler?

There were a few home computer sound chips built to facilitate sample playback at the time Amiga was released.

Got totally away from the concept of a sound chip, it sounded like what ever you feed it?

Well, it is a sound chip (but it has a few other features totally unrelated to sound). To be fair, the Paula behaved a lot like PSG sound chips of the time. Beyond setting up sample pointers and playback lengths, it's a lot like a PSG in that you typically produce music by changing the period length of each channel.

The home computer sound device that best embodies the idea of "sounding like whatever you feed it" is probably something like the Covox Speech Thing or a beeper. You literally push samples to it at whatever rate you want/can, and it outputs them on its resistor ladder without any fuzz.

After people were making the amazing mod music that DIDN'T sound like a chip, people started figuring out how to play samples on the ST's AY?

The Amiga was released at almost the same time as the ST and didn't sound quite like it right at the start. But people had already been using tricks to play samples back on at least SID chips, but probably all kinds of beepers and PSGs.

Never had hands on an Amiga, so does it have a a unique sound, aside from the filters?

Well, you can quite easily replicate it. The software and sample sources are probably more important aspects of its perceived uniqueness. The least trivial aspect of emulating the Paula is probably getting the variable rate playback to sound good. Simple interpolation will just sound awful, so you have to do either ovesampling+filtering+downsampling or synthesize it with something like BLITs.

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164 Reply by boomlinde

(23 replies, posted in Commodore Computers)

TSC wrote:

and the other filter removes all the high end for some ridiculous reason.

I see, that makes sense. I mostly ever used A1200s, so I never noticed. I think the filters were a half-assed attempt at simple reconstruction filters. The niftiest use I found of them was for the tunnels in Lotus Espirit Turbo Challenge II -- when you ride into tunnels the filter is enabled smile

Funny thing is that when people hear "filter" they get all excited assuming it's a variable cutoff frequency resonant 12/24 dB/octave low pass filter. The roll-off starts somewhere at, what, 10 KHz, with a kind of flat roll-off (6 dB/octave?). It's really boring.

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165 Reply by boomlinde

(3 replies, posted in Collaborations)

^
except people will probably get in touch with you anyway and you won't like their music

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166 Reply by boomlinde

(23 replies, posted in Commodore Computers)

The filter settings are on/off as far as I know (or rather a lot/not so much). I'm not sure why you'd remove it; in its "off" setting the sound is quite crisp. The channels have independently variable playback rates, which I think is the most characteristic feature of the chip. The DACs are not quite linear resistor ladders. There is a mixing stage where you can scale the output of each channel from 0-100% in six bits. I'm not sure how exactly that's done but I'm guessing it's in the analog domain, probably not a lot unlike how the SID envelope modulation is done (analog multiplier and two DACs per channel) The mixing is done in such a way that any mixer setting will still give you the full 8-bit range of the sample output. It seems most likely to me that AM/"FM" (period modulation) was intended for sound effects and low frequency modulation like vibrato and tremolo. Unlike Yamaha "FM" (phase modulation) it's probably musically useless at audio rate modulator frequencies, but I can see AM being useful for ring modulation. Looking at Mapping the Amiga, it seems like you can turn off the audio output of the fourth channel, which probably isn't meant to assist in AM/FM since channel #4 can never modulate another channel. Debug feature? The documentation of these rarely used features could be wrong, though. I don't think the 6-bit scaling of the modulator has any effect on its modulation level since that would either require digital multiplication or a set of ADCs. That would also have made the AM/FM useless for vibrato or tremolo, since silencing the modulator would also zero the modulation level out.

In short, the AM/FM features were almost never used for a good reason, and the remaining features aren't particularly exciting on their own. The software is IMO much more important to the "sound" than the chip itself, but that's not to say that the hardware didn't play a huge role in the design decisions that shaped it. A midibox design based around it would either be a boring sampler or a tracker-in-a-box.

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167 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

IndigoChild wrote:

Strange how when your on the internet you can not defend yourself.

Tried a more stable line of defense than a weird website babbling on about psychic children without citing any sources? Another good way of defending yourself is to attack inaccuracies with facts instead of painting yourself the victim.

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168 Reply by boomlinde

(71 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Are you sure?

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169 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

9-Heart wrote:

Let's be honest - In fact, everybody could pretend to have synesthesia?
So, what's the difference between synesthesia and astrology? I mean everybody can tell me: "Dude, i see colors if i listend to music!" or "Hey man, i can taste that sweet jams." without beeing able to proof is he for real or just tripping on shrooms.

I mean cool if you have this abilities, but for me it just sounds like astrology-bullshit. Sorry.

You could pretend a lot of things, but I don't think that that alone is a valid reason to dismiss it as "astrology-bullshit". As far as you know, the world only exists in your head, but unless you're high or a hermit philosopher you don't go around dismissing the unknown on that basis.

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170 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

sleepytimejesse wrote:

Well then this we can agree on, I never said that anything else was irrelevant, because everything is math. I only brought to this website inhabitated by musicians that examples are to be drawn by music, boomlinde.

Explain what you mean by "everything is math" -- I agree in the sense that you can apply mathematics pretty much everywhere, but that's not to say that everything is maths. It's like saying that everything is a drawing because you can picture it on paper. Which is pretty much also the basis of my whole argument, so feel free to pick it apart.

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171 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

e.s.c. wrote:

not with traditional natural selection, but if it really is more common in artists and musicians, then it may work to some extent.. i mean at least as long as people keep finding creativity in others sexy, that is wink

Yeah, sure, as long as creativity consistently follows being able to see a bunch of new colors, but I'm not sure how or why it would. This line of thinking makes more sense with things like synaesthesia, I think.

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172 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

float.bridges wrote:

Boomlinde, http://seeinganew.tripod.com/id18.html is close to what I was talking about. But it is a theory. Not a solid fact. I'm sorry if it came off as me pushing it as truth. The senses aren't really something humankind knows a lot about for certain, it seems.

Even if you disregard that this is a bunch of excerpts from the personal journal of a philosopher published on a tripod website, there is nothing there to support the idea that "a synesthete is a person whom the senses weren't completely divided."

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173 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

sleepytimejesse wrote:

Well, harsh personal criticism aside

Where did I criticize you personally?

sleepytimejesse wrote:

I was more talking about the link between musical practices and theoretical mathematics, which is undeniable in my opinion.

Much like the link between theoretical mathematics and <insert anything here>? I agree.

sleepytimejesse wrote:

There are relevant examples to be drawn, as I think Vihart eloquently elaborates on better than I can apparently attempt to.

I'll have to watch that video when I get more robust internet access in a couple of weeks.

sleepytimejesse wrote:

I'm not trying to dispel misinformation here, just part of a healthy discussion about something I don't think a lot of people have exposure to, boomlinde.

No one accused you of trying.

sleepytimejesse wrote:

That being said, probably not super relevant to this topic, but I was excited to see that maybe other chipmusicians were open to a theoretical discussion. My bad, I suppose.

It seems to me that it's not theoretical discussion that you are interested in if you want to abandon it at the slightest hint of criticism. For a theoretical discussion you need a theoretical foundation, and vague ideas based on misunderstood concepts of theoretical physics will eventually have someone disagree or question them.

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174 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

float.bridges wrote:

Not all of it is learned, however, as when we're born, all of our senses are one sense, and as we grow, the senses start to divide.

Is there a reputable source that can confirm this? Are you sure that you don't mean to say that our perception of our senses as distinctly different sources of input changes as we grow older?

float.bridges wrote:

A synesthete is a person whom the senses weren't completely divided.

Again, is this coming from a guy on the internet or is there verifiable research to confirm it?

float.bridges wrote:

@IndigoChild, will we ever actually adapt into being able to witness these beautiful and unseen (by real human eyes) colors?

Maybe through the use of technology or training, but as I can't see the evolutionary advantage a person with this ability would have over a person without it, I don't think we'll naturally evolve it anytime soon. That's my opinion.

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175 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Just calling bullshit pseudoscience what it is. Don't shoot the messenger.

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176 Reply by boomlinde

(100 replies, posted in General Discussion)

sleepytimejesse wrote:

That's what I'm sayin'. I'll try to explain myself better though.

The third dimension is a cross-section of the fourth dimension, and so on and so forth. If a second dimensional being were to see a third dimensional object cross through its plane, it would see something in front of it appear, grow wider, get thinner, and then disappear. We might see a fourth dimensional object crossing through our plane as something appearing, growing taller and wider, shrinking thinner and shorter, and disappearing entirely.

In this way, back to music, in the fourth dimension, every aspect of your music happens at once, and already exists, but you are creating that linear cross-section, which becomes the music another person plays/hears. You have looked ahead and back, considered many possibilities for this collection of frequencies, and how to transform them against themselves in ways that are pleasing or interesting, and in ways which, both aurally and mathematically, are harmonious.

This comes down to really just drawing a parallel between disciplines, music theory (counterpoint, in particular) and theoretical physics, which I admittedly know much less about, but have had much personal luck in understanding through drawing these parallels in conversation.

What a load of bullshit pseudoscience to say that time domain problems have you consider the state of the problem over time. It's not unique to music, and has no relation to theoretical physics more than any other spacetime problem, such as picking your nose or not pissing on the toilet seat.

EDIT: And yes, the n-1th dimension can be expressed as a cross-section of the nth dimension, but unless you are talking about a specific dimensionality there is no way for me to know what dimension you are talking about when referring to "the fourth dimension". There is no "the" fourth dimension in any general sense. From this explanation it seems like you are talking about spacetime, though.

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