_-_-
Offline
Chainsaw Police wrote:

nanoloop is good, but extremely limited to what it can do

Wow. No. The limitation lies not in the software.
Although I agree that there is no software that utilizes the full potential of the GBA hardware, nanoloop is far from limited.

The question is really what would be interesting on the hardware- not how much it could computationally do.

I think nanoloop embodies that in a good way- It takes advantage of how minimal the controls are of the system and presents the user of a intuitive, fun & quick way of composing music. If you want to make something more complex, do so- I find no trouble in creating very lush sounds & music with nanoloop.

Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, I just don't think we should lay blame on tools that can be used in so many ways by so many different people.

Last edited by _-_- (Jul 29, 2012 6:53 pm)

Saskrotch
Offline
Chicago IL
_-_- wrote:
Chainsaw Police wrote:

nanoloop is good, but extremely limited to what it can do

Wow. No. The limitation lies not in the software.
Although I agree that there is no software that utilizes the full potential of the GBA hardware, nanoloop is far from limited.

The question is really what would be interesting on the hardware- not how much it could computationally do.

I think nanoloop embodies that in a good way- It takes advantage of how minimal the controls are of the system and presents the user of a intuitive, fun & quick way of composing music. If you want to make something more complex, do so- I find no trouble in creating very lush sounds & music with nanoloop.

Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, I just don't think we should lay blame on tools that can be used in so many ways by so many different people.

he might be talking about how you're limited to a very small amount of writing space per track / per channel.

wedanced
Offline
San Francisco

Nanoloop is limited as shit. have you tried playing notes in between each step without sacrificing a usable space? try to change a notes without re-triggering it. The Gba has waaaay more power to it other then 4 channels. Nanoloop cant do complicated instrument designing like you see in lsdj or any kind of automation to the sounds timber as there is no commands. That is just the beginning of a long list of weaknesses that Nanoloop has compared to other programs.
Nanoloop sacrifices some of the most basic functions of a music program in favor of keeping the "minimal" and "intuitive" design that people harp on.
In all honesty I find that all the simplicity that nanoloop incorporates is what makes it the one of the least intuitive options. You always have to find work arounds and compromise with the program to get it to do what you want for the most basic of sequencing. For me it gets in the way of my creativity and writing. constantly having to make those compromises and having those compromises run into each-other creating a new problem is just way too much a pain in the ass to handle. It slows me down to a crawl.

none of these problems have to do with the hardware. it is just how the software was designed from the floor up to utilize (or not) the hardware.

It works for some people who just dont mind making those sacrifices but for me i cant stand it.

I have used all versions of nanoloop for iphone, gba, and gb. Nanoloop is great for some things but to just ignore those details is lying to yourself.

Chainsaw Police
Offline
Sydney, NSW
Saskrotch wrote:
_-_- wrote:

Wow. No. The limitation lies not in the software.
Although I agree that there is no software that utilizes the full potential of the GBA hardware, nanoloop is far from limited.

The question is really what would be interesting on the hardware- not how much it could computationally do.

I think nanoloop embodies that in a good way- It takes advantage of how minimal the controls are of the system and presents the user of a intuitive, fun & quick way of composing music. If you want to make something more complex, do so- I find no trouble in creating very lush sounds & music with nanoloop.

Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, I just don't think we should lay blame on tools that can be used in so many ways by so many different people.

he might be talking about how you're limited to a very small amount of writing space per track / per channel.

Nope, I'm pretty much talking about what wedanced said. It can generate some cool noises,but there's really not that much fine control over parameters and values. I think trying to get a perfect on-tempo-speed LFO was impossible.

I'm surprised nobody's brought this up yet. I personally wouldn't pay ~$80 for something that hasn't got as much control or user-friendliness as LSDJ, which can cost anything from five cents to ten bucks and over. However I got my cart in a trade for a broken DMG, so I can't complain!

martin_demsky
Offline
Bratislava, Slovakia

Do you want to play samples on a GBA? It sounds weird, ofcourse GBA have powerful ARM7TDMI RISC CPU and that Z80-clone for backward compatibility, but for sample-based tracker i like to use everything else, like SunVox tracker for iOS, or Cinemax's Rytmik for Nintendo DS.

Chainsaw Police
Offline
Sydney, NSW
martin_demsky wrote:

Do you want to play samples on a GBA? It sounds weird, ofcourse GBA have powerful ARM7TDMI RISC CPU and that Z80-clone for backward compatibility, but for sample-based tracker i like to use everything else, like SunVox tracker for iOS, or Cinemax's Rytmik for Nintendo DS.

Now, I might be totally wrong on this one, but I've been playing through Fire Emblem 8 again, and some of the sounds feel like they've been sampled. It's really clean, but still has that oldskool atmosphere to them - like the Amiga has a particular distortion to sampels played back on it, the GBA has it's own.

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire

There's lots of sample usage in GBA games.  There are even tools that will rip all the sounds from a game into a soundfont for you.

Chainsaw Police
Offline
Sydney, NSW
egr wrote:

There's lots of sample usage in GBA games.  There are even tools that will rip all the sounds from a game into a soundfont for you.

awesome! in that case, i'd be all for sample usage on a gba tracker. they sound lush as all get-out, but still have that old-timey distortion to it

4mat
Offline

Yeah beyond the stereo output there is *no* hardware support for multiple sample channels on the GBA, all mixing / dsp effects were done in software.  This was a real bugbear at the time because you'd have to trade off CPU time to the rest of the game.

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire
4mat wrote:

Yeah beyond the stereo output there is *no* hardware support for multiple sample channels on the GBA, all mixing / dsp effects were done in software.  This was a real bugbear at the time because you'd have to trade off CPU time to the rest of the game.

Do you have any recommendations on games or homebrew that handled this particularly well?  Looking for something to pick apart as an example.

EDIT:  This is the only half way interesting example I've found http://www.gbadev.org/demos.php?showinfo=1365

Last edited by egr (Jul 30, 2012 1:11 pm)

The Silph Scope
Offline
Riverside, CA
wedanced wrote:

Nanoloop is limited as shit. have you tried playing notes in between each step without sacrificing a usable space? try to change a notes without re-triggering it. The Gba has waaaay more power to it other then 4 channels. Nanoloop cant do complicated instrument designing like you see in lsdj or any kind of automation to the sounds timber as there is no commands. That is just the beginning of a long list of weaknesses that Nanoloop has compared to other programs.
Nanoloop sacrifices some of the most basic functions of a music program in favor of keeping the "minimal" and "intuitive" design that people harp on.
In all honesty I find that all the simplicity that nanoloop incorporates is what makes it the one of the least intuitive options. You always have to find work arounds and compromise with the program to get it to do what you want for the most basic of sequencing. For me it gets in the way of my creativity and writing. constantly having to make those compromises and having those compromises run into each-other creating a new problem is just way too much a pain in the ass to handle. It slows me down to a crawl.

none of these problems have to do with the hardware. it is just how the software was designed from the floor up to utilize (or not) the hardware.

It works for some people who just dont mind making those sacrifices but for me i cant stand it.

I have used all versions of nanoloop for iphone, gba, and gb. Nanoloop is great for some things but to just ignore those details is lying to yourself.

tl;dr: nanoloop is the OS X of chipmusic software
wink

Lazerbeat
Offline
Tokyo, Japan
wedanced wrote:

Nanoloop is limited as shit.

I was kinda astounded that NL 2.3 / 5 only have square waves.

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire

MaxMod wont work.  Precompiled stuff only.  sad