R0ger

I was under impression that SECAM basically does not need to be detected, it behaves in all aspects like PAL. Am I wrong ?

That alone does not make the frequency better or worse. The resolution of the register does. Divisor has worse resolution as the frequency increases. Phase accumulator has worse resolution as the frequency lowers. And if you consider, that semitone sequence is geometric one, you want better resolution in low tones. So especially for low register resolution, divisor might be better. But then, if you throw 16 bits at it, the method itself does not matter. Btw. Amy sound chip used linear to exponential conversion for both frequency and volume, so you could do vibratos and slides in linear space, and the were correctly converted to exponential space before being used (Amy also uses phase acumulators, also 16 bit IIRC).

I really wouldn't mind if Emkay stopped doing music. Music does not deserve this. And if there is someone putting people down, it's Emkay on every occasion. Sorry, for him I have zero tolerance.

Emkay tried to kill me several times with his music. That's not nice either.

That only changes the timbre, and can actually be controlled pretty well. It does not introduce frequency changes.

Being tone deaf is not an insult, it's blessing as far as pokey music goes. And being completely deaf is a blessing as far as Emkay's music goes.

I think emkay shows great tolerance for out-of-tune tunes.

Listening to some tunes I found one more factor .. detune effect is often used on Atari. In simple form you play the same note on 2 channels, where 1 of the channels is shifted 1 value up or down. The resulting sound has interesting new timbre, but sounds slightly above or bellow the original note. You could solve it by using 1 bellow on one channel, and 1 above on the second channel, but that already gives you 2 values difference, the timbre is different, and it's not used that often. The same trick is then used in what RMT calls 'filter' sounds, which use POKEY's so called 'high-pass filter'. The timbre is different, but the problem with slight frequency shift remains. Usually problems like these can be easily masked with slight vibrato, and it's actually main reason vibrato is used all the time on Atari

I wouldn't listen to emkay. He's recent experiment demonstrate quite clearly he is 100% tone deaf. If not completely deaf.

The main issue is pokey frequency registers are 8 bit. That is too small resolution. On clean square wave you get 2 decent octaves, after that it's getting dicey. Then there are basses. Typically $Cx distortion is used for those. That uses 4 bit polynomial to generate deeper sounds, which generate 15 bit long sequences, which are then sampled by the pokey generator. Usually 2 sets of frequency values are used, each giving different timber, and different frequency range of the resulting tone. One is named C bass in RMT. These values have to be divisible by 3, but not by 5. The resulting tone has 5 times lower frequency than the pure square tone. So now instead of 256 values you only have 55. The next bass is called E in RMT. These values must not be divisible by 3 or 5. That's 8 values out of 15. Slightly better than C bass. But the resulting tone is 15 times lower than pure square tone. So the bottom octave, which is the most precise, is useless, it's too deep. All that can be solved by merging 2 channels together, which will get you 16 bit frequency resolution. But it limits amount of channels drastically. Most of the time, it's the bass tones which sound off, while the lead tones sound more or less OK. There is no final solution to this. There are some attempts to get better bass, like discussed here: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/292342-new-bass-approach-rediscovered-in-old-song/ or here: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/272971-hard-released-a-new-demo-at-sv2017-reharden/

Some experiments with PAL artifacting can be found in this thread: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/279024-pal-blurring-and-artifacts It's actually pretty strong 🙂

Eh, uhm, this is more like feature request 😅 We can mute channels 1..4. But that's only one pokey, right ? Would be nice to be able to also mute channels on second pokey, when using stereo. Being able to mute individual pokeys, and then muting channels 1..4 across them, would work for most of the time, as I simply want to hear 1 channel. And it would be easier to extend to let's say 4 pokeys (one day 😁).

You gotta love science. Every time you think the limits have been reached, there is someone who will simply go further. SMH.

I think these are don in 1tracker, see here: http://shiru.untergrund.net/software.shtml I was also able to find this list of atari engines provided by XXL: http://randomflux.info/1bit/viewtopic.php?id=5 There is no tracker doing both, AFAIK.

Looks like simple compression, not actual speech synth.

Anyway I wonder what have you read, as I could basically find nothing.

That's bold statement. If we could do sine waves and control phase, it's true. But we can't.

This is very little discussed technique, and it seems very advanced. Do you have some understanding of it ? What intrigues me is there are not just 1 and 0 in the Altirra output. More like several levels (3 or 4). Using debugger I found it does about 4 writes per line, which would be enough for some dithering. Still the code is surprisingly simple and for how complex the sounds are. And it sounds super clean.

I've been thinking about this for hours, and it was driving me crazy .. but in the darkest hour, Phaeron comes to the rescue !

Speech synthesis is very demanding, and has to be basically cycle perfect. No idea what synchronization method SAM uses on Atari, but I've read it uses simple wait loops on some platforms. In such case, transcompiled code will never work. Also why would you do it ? You already have binary working on Atari.

Yes, I did read it. Again, ton's of 'my rights', and 'I had nothing against it until I did'. The result: there is no fixed version. You simply don't want the game to run on U1MB.

I don't even have U1MB. I don't really care. And I defended XXL before. 1) he has all the rights to make the game any way he likes 2) he has all the rights to demand removal of modified versions But you can't say anymore he isn't doing it on purpose. If he wasn't, he would actually support other people fixing it (as if he couldn't fix it himself, after learning the cause). He won't fix it, and he is preventing others from fixing it. That I can't defend. That's just stupid.

Well, no congratulations for me. Hindering distribution of version fixed by other is class one dick move in my book. That's genuine effort so the game does not run on U1MB.

It's remake of Atari game, so of course it's not off-topic. Random C64 release would be.

Ah, now i see it. That's pretty slick !