New Apple II Digital Music Synth! (Page 1) - Other Vintage Computers & Consoles - Forums

1 Feb 9, 2010 10:29 pm

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Los Angeles

We teamed up with the renowned M.J. Mahon to create a revolutionary performance synth for the Apple II computer:

Introducing the Digital Music Synthesizer for Apple II personal computers! The DMS is the only wavetable synthesizer for the Apple //e, IIc, and IIc+ computers that is suitable for performance use. It supports up to 8 voices, which can be selected from the 10 on disk, and played (monophonically) from the Apple II keyboard. It can be used to record performance for later playback as well. Also, the DMS doesn’t require a monitor! Just turn on your Apple II and when the drive light goes off. Then hit the space bar you’re ready to play live~! One less bulky monitor to drag to the gig anymore~!

Requirements: A2.DMS requires an Apple //e, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs computer with 80-column capability, at least one 5.25” floppy disk drive. Use with a monitor is optional.

Get your 5.25" floppy disk copy of the D.M.S. for just $14.95!

Sounds on disk are: Acoustic Piano, Vibraphone, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Bass, Trumpet, Clarinet, square wave, sawtooth wave, sine wave, and (for Bud Melvin)... Banjo!

Here is a mp3 demo*: DMS Demo
* Sounds EQ'd with some noise filtering.

For more info please visit here:
www.8bitweapon.com/store.htm

Last edited by 8bitweapon (Mar 25, 2010 7:52 pm)

2 Feb 9, 2010 10:50 pm

akira^8GB

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New York City

Can we change the sounds? No offense, but the default selection sounds lame and it would be much more rewarding to be able to use yoru own stuff.
More tools for the II should be made!

3 Feb 9, 2010 10:56 pm

8bitweapon

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Los Angeles

akira^8GB wrote:

Can we change the sounds? No offense, but the default selection sounds lame and it would be much more rewarding to be able to use yoru own stuff.
More tools for the II should be made!

We discussed this option with our programmer many times:

"This would work fine for percussive (play-only) sounds, but tonal voices are
quite different--SOUND.EDITOR can be used to "prep" a .wav sample sound,
but a lot of post-processing is required to create a voice file.

There are a lot of restrictions on what can be a voice and how it can be created.
For example, the pitch of a voice cannot be variable during a "note", or at least
it won't be played back as variable.

Currently, my tools do not permit "previewing" a voice during creation, nor do
they permit interactive "tweaks", so the process is pretty cumbersome and
prone to disappointment, with frequent need to repeat 100 steps with a slight
change to see if it will fix an audible problem...

I don't find it particularly pleasurable or easy. ;-("

The process is too hard for people to make their own samples for this software. Besides, presets never hurt anyone!

Last edited by 8bitweapon (Feb 9, 2010 11:03 pm)

4 Feb 10, 2010 1:37 am

arfink

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Minneapolis

Hmm, this looks alot like other A2 sound software I have seen, but with a somewhat cleaned up interface. Just out of curiosity, who did the software design for you? Good work on this, and if you ever decide to make it cheaper I'll be happy to play with it and review it on my Apple IIgs. For that price I could get me another 3.5" floppy drive. Being a college student means I spend 90% of my time broke.

Oh, and if I was ever going to buy this, there would be a couple of things I'd like to know, such as:
1. Is it copy protected? 5.25 floppies die easily, so it better not be.
2. Is it running on DOS 3.3 or Prodos 8? If Prodos 8 then that's awesome because I can put it on my hard drive.
3. If I, say, am a fairly skilled Apple II user and wanted to hack sounds in... would information on how to do this ever be provided even if no tutorial is ever written? I honestly don't care how hard it is, knowing me I'd try it just because, but I'd need technical info probably.
4. Can I get the source code? Long shot, I know.

5 Feb 10, 2010 1:55 am

akira^8GB

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New York City

8bitweapon wrote:

Besides, presets never hurt anyone!

Presets have dealt a whole lot of damage to electronic music ;p
Thanks for the explanation.

6 Feb 10, 2010 2:47 am

8bitweapon

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Los Angeles

HI arfink - Sure drives are $20, but shipping is another $10+ minimum. Our software is $19.95 with shipping included!

I will ask Mike (our programmer) your questions.

He made a version of this under the name rtsynth. Most of the same code, but this one is streamlined for live performance. You no longer need a monitor and the software boots up to a live playable mode. On rtsynth, you had to boot it up and then load the voice packs then run the program. Lots of commands to do that require a monitor.

The disk is not copy protected, I do know that much.

7 Feb 10, 2010 7:35 am

8bitweapon

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Los Angeles

arfink wrote:

2. Is it running on DOS 3.3 or Prodos 8? If Prodos 8 then that's awesome because I can put it on my hard drive.

"Yes, it's ProDOS, and can be installed on a hard drive--I have it installed on mine!"

arfink wrote:

3. If I, say, am a fairly skilled Apple II user and wanted to hack sounds in... would information on how to do this ever be provided even if no tutorial is ever written? I honestly don't care how hard it is, knowing me I'd try it just because, but I'd need technical info probably.

"For a fairly skilled Apple II user, it is certainly possble to create new voices.

I can provide a description of the voice data structures and a few Applesoft programs
that will help in transforming a sampled sound into a usable voice. It will take me
a week or so to get the "tutorial" together to make this more likely. ;-)

It's a moderately steep learning curve with some trial and error, but it can certainly
be done. ;-)"

8 Feb 10, 2010 7:50 am

Tinctu

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Slovakia / European Union

Sounds good. And A2GS soundchip was amazing... Like Gravis on PC...

9 Feb 10, 2010 12:16 pm

akira^8GB

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New York City

Tinctu wrote:

Sounds good. And A2GS soundchip was amazing... Like Gravis on PC...

This software doesn't use the Apple IIGS's Ensoniq wavetable synthesizer. This is software for legacy Apple II

10 Feb 10, 2010 1:36 pm

Tinctu

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Slovakia / European Union

Ahh ... anyways sounds cool. Good work...

Last edited by Tinctu (Feb 10, 2010 1:37 pm)

11 Feb 10, 2010 3:43 pm

8bitweapon

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Los Angeles

Btw, I dont know if you all are aware, but the Apple II doesn't have a sound chip! Apple Exploits a glitch on the board that creates a tonal buzz. This software takes the glitch 1 step further by playing 1 bit samples though the glitch in pitch.

12 Feb 10, 2010 4:03 pm

athleos

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Seattle, WA

Mahon is a legend. That Cratesynth he built was really cool. Here's his webpage: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/ It's got some great A2 stuff on it as well as some info on his sound editor and RTSynth.

13 Feb 10, 2010 8:17 pm

arfink

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Minneapolis

Ahh, so this is Mike Mahon? I believe I have actually met him, though I'm not sure he remembers me...
As for the glitch: that's not exactly true. It's just that there is a speaker tied to a memory register, and if you cycle that register fast enough you get crunchy 1 bit sounds.