Lord-Chaos Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 Is RMT ´s quality now better than Softsynth or is Softsynth still the best music program when it comes to quality? I mean Softsynth is pretty useless for ingame-music since you can only display a few block-graphics lines or the quality will be bad. I used it for porting some classical music pieces where it´s quite good for. BTW. Softsynth is Public Domain and if it´s not available on the net I may convert for emulators, but I don´t know if it will work on emulators. The program is rather old, made in 1985 and has some bugs that let it crash sometimes. Thimo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 Is RMT ´s quality now better than Softsynth or is Softsynth still the best music program when it comes to quality? RMT is a very capable composing tool in which it is possible to use more of the POKEY's features than in other composing tools. I mean Softsynth is pretty useless for ingame-music since you can only display a few block-graphics lines or the quality will be bad. this is a really pity... Let's take a look at some points of the Softsynth: really cool deeper notes High notes are unlistenable not useful for games ... Let's take a look at RMT and the underestimated POKEY many unused features because of some... lacking deeper notes. Because POKEY is playing the higher notes, it will always be useful for games. By assuming those features... the best way for optimized POKEY Music is the combination of RMT with those Softsynth features for deeper notes. An updating for the deeper notes at around 600Hz (instead of Softsynth's 4000Hz) every bass-sound up to 300Hz will sound amiga-like... The playing points can be set by DLI and in the VBI... When tuned the Softsynth-tones together with the pokey's sounds, you can put them together in arpeggios... slides... etc. At the end you have the opimized result of: full spectrum frequencies for most complex melodies two 16Bit Channels+pcm and two pcm only channels ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samurai Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 i dont think that somebody will be able to achieve such as great synth instruments as Softsynths has on RMT. But RMT is the best Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 i dont think that somebody will be able to achieve such as great synth instruments as Softsynths has on RMT. But RMT is the best Referring to square- and triangle- and simple sine-wave and when full support for POKEY's 16Bit is given, Softsynth can be beaten easily , because it sounds ugly in higher notes.... 16 Bit stands for the full range of playable melodies, and the characters of softsynth can give the best base-line and additional be used for LFO manipulations on the POKEY voices... An engine at about 600Hz will be able to do so and it will be possible to combine this with G2F graphics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samurai Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 emkay: please let me hear more 'synthable' instruments and overall feeling than in J.Husak's Sofsytnh musax. Gretz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 emkay: please let me hear more 'synthable' instruments and overall feeling than in J.Husak's Sofsytnh musax. Gretz. Well... I think that Wodospadem Czasu is one of the best Tunes on XL/XE, but I know why: The Song is a controversal to the rest of POKEY Tunes that are always played two octaves too high.... so it uses always notes that are way to low... Outside the XL/XE world this song is "average" because of the easy notations. It is a physical rule, that a tone only can be generated when the quantization is at the double. So with 4000Hz updatings, only a sound with 2000Hz (at max.) can be played clear. Everything above is the quantization-tone itself with some "sample-noise" and that is what you hear in higher notes in softsynth songs. And... yes... it would be an easy thing to create better songs than in softsynth if a composing-program was able to do as I wrote above. (I think even Jakub Husak would create new songs with this). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracon Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 I think that Wodospadem Czasu is one of the best Tunes on XL/XE, but I know why (...) And... yes... it would be an easy thing to create better songs than in softsynth if a composing-program was able to do as I wrote above. (I think even Jakub Husak would create new songs with this). Yeah, this song rocks!!! It shows what A8 is really capable of. I have also this song in mp3 format. SOFTSYNTH itself was a messed-up program (I mean its "interface") and I couldn't imagine how one can write such amazing song as WODOSPADEM... in it. BTW. "WODOSPADEM CZASU" means something like "Through the waterfall of time".... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdefabri Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 Reviving dead thread (hey, it IS Halloween!! ) Where can I find SoftSynth - not on Fandal's site (or maybe it is, and I'm just not searching in the right place)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelmischief Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 (edited) Well... I think that Wodospadem Czasu is one of the best Tunes on XL/XE It's almost unbelievable that this was made on an Atari 8-Bit. The range and clarity of the sound, plus the variety of the instruments, are incredible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZZSE1LF0p0 Edited October 28, 2016 by pixelmischief Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 (edited) I'm not sure about that version, there seems to be some post effects cleanup or it's been ported to something with better sample resolution like an Amiga. This clip seems to be unmolested. It's also in the ASMA database, not sure if there's an executable version around - would be nice if there was. http://asma.atari.org/asmadb/search.php?details=257 Gives me an idea... turn that into a VBXE pic and put the executable of the song with it... VBXE graphics = no DMA steals so the playback won't be affected. Edited October 28, 2016 by Rybags 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 The program itself: ftp://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_forever/Tools%20-%20atr/SoftSyhteziser/ "Wodospadem Czasu", source code: http://husak.pl/wpdepl/atari/WODOSPAD.txt 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 So Jakub used Softsynth? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 (edited) Yeah, and still uses it sometimes. On Wapniak 2013 Cover Compo there was his Radioactivity as entry listed. Edit: demozoo link for someone who wants to listen to it on real stuff: https://demozoo.org/music/90007 Edited October 28, 2016 by miker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matosimi Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 i dont want to invade softsynth thread, but i think this is the best song on a8 ever: http://asma.atari.org/asmadb/search.php?play=682 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 i dont want to invade softsynth thread, but i think this is the best song on a8 ever: http://asma.atari.org/asmadb/search.php?play=682 I have to agree. Had my Atari since 1982, and have yet to hear something better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted October 28, 2016 Share Posted October 28, 2016 Now that's some awesome vibes... good times and memories Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted October 29, 2016 Share Posted October 29, 2016 i dont want to invade softsynth thread, but i think this is the best song on a8 ever: http://asma.atari.org/asmadb/search.php?play=682 Wow!!! And WOW very nice indeed. - Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted October 29, 2016 Share Posted October 29, 2016 Wow!!! And WOW very nice indeed. - Michael BTW - it did this with screen DMA on too. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted October 30, 2016 Share Posted October 30, 2016 (edited) BTW - it did this with screen DMA on too. The real impressive part of this is that it uses the A8's features in the correct way. High notes played with the soundgenerators, Drums played digitized. The weird part is that after all this time , still this Thread is "up to date" instead of an RMT WITH Softsynth topic ... Edited October 30, 2016 by emkay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greblus Posted October 30, 2016 Share Posted October 30, 2016 I have to agree. Had my Atari since 1982, and have yet to hear something better. I'm an old metalhead and Pokey sounds get on my nerves sometimes but... Today I had to check if this is real: https://soundcloud.com/user-799776082/cracow-acid-city And it really is. Kudos to you Makary! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted October 30, 2016 Share Posted October 30, 2016 The drums are punching cool if it's pure Pokey. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted October 30, 2016 Share Posted October 30, 2016 We need to get hold of this guy... an executable of that and his other work would be great. That sounds like 16 KHz mode, maybe some 1.79 MHz mode, not sure if there's any digitized stuff - the percussive stuff just sounds like decent usage of normal Pokey sounds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greblus Posted October 30, 2016 Share Posted October 30, 2016 The exec is here: http://atarionline.pl/forum/?PostBackAction=Download&AttachmentID=8584 And I'll ask Makary to drop in to the forum so maybe he'll write something more about his bag of tricks. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted October 30, 2016 Share Posted October 30, 2016 Thanks. Looks to be no digtized stuff, in any case it's RMT running at 3 iterations per frame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaPa Posted October 30, 2016 Share Posted October 30, 2016 Thanks. Looks to be no digtized stuff, in any case it's RMT running at 3 iterations per frame. More likely 4... one which is not visible in VBI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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