VinsCool

Thank you very much! I believe there is still a lot of very cool sounds this chip can produce, and I do my best to understand how they work and also make use of them

Been playing around a bit more tonight, and now applied the same idea into the bass tables. I have to say, this is some incredibly good results, compared to how these tunes originally sounded. Some of these tunes got considerable improvements with these changes, some things may also have been broken, there's many things that could go wrong too. Currently, even when there is a bit of dissonance somewhere, it feels a lot more fitting, if that makes any sense, lol. I suppose anything could happen. I also really liked how my tune, still unfinished, sounded like with these tuning changes, so here's a video I also attached a bunch of executables I had listened at random earlier, I hope you guys enjoy how things sound like! Credits go to their own authors when they aren't my own tunes, of course! tunes tests 4.zip POKEY Table 64khz (Octave Pattern, C) v10.txt

6 would mean that depending on what setting we are trying to achieve, specific tables would be called to it, so for example, turning an instrument into 16 bit on the fly would switch to the same note but on that table, high pass filter could have its own if certain modulation is intended (eg: the channel is 7 semitones up to get a "distortion guitar" sound), going into 15khz or 1.79mhz with a different distortion would make the frequency adjusted to the note that was playing, etc Pretty much what RMT already does automatically, except the user would be allowed to chose what, how and when things would happen. At least this is what I believe I understand this would be.

I prefer this over making something sound worse! lol The idea I had was to make things sound as good as they could be, if I am even able to, that is. Technically the higher octaves have barely any difference, it's what lies below that was mostly changed, in order to make everything a lot more consistent. Well the best way to know is to listen to each version side by side, that really was all I did to know if what I tried to do helped or broke something. 1 tiny change can make a big difference, especially in the higher tones, so yeah, hopefully it really did help a bit overall There is also giai_phon_mien_nam, or computer_world, or castle_von_krumpen_arp_fix, or hopefully most of the tunes that made use of the Distortion A the most, that might see major improvements, or fail miserably if my idea was shit, lol. Hopefully I was able to improve the tuning in a good way. For the ones I personally have listened several times with comparison in mind, many notes seem to work better together now, but some others are a bit debatable, mainly sharps, and E and G that feel slightly off in some situations, so it's a lot of trial error, so far the combination I have is currently the nicest of the bunch, but it's definitely possible to improve it, there are 256 tones that can be chosen after all! I also noticed a few combinations that also made many of the Distortion basses tones work much better in the mix, and I noticed a certain pattern that I wanted to experiment a bit later tonight or maybe another day lol If my theory turns out to be actually true, that means there may another potential improvement using the same approach, this time in the Distortion C 😮 I mean, what I had in mind here wasn't to make the perfect tuning, but to making as many things as possible sound in-tune together, which ultimately makes the whole thing seem correct, instead of having many notes that are sounding wrong, or out of tune. I like to believe if I make everything equally out of tune, the resulting sound might be in-tune! I honestly felt that way the other day, and I really was ready to give up since I felt like I was wasting my time on some stupid ideas, and would eventually make a fool out of myself, lol But now I believe I am finally starting to understand, and so far got to a point I wouldn't have expected, so maybe it was actually worth it? At worst, it would be experience and no one is harmed, or at best, I would be able to contribute something useful in the Atari 8-bit scene.

That would certainly make a lot of sense that way I believe. When I was making own observation regarding the notes mapping, it surprised me how so many things could have been done differently, just for having more settings, and cases for different table use. I especially really like the mapping of your table above, being able to pick up what distortion to use on specific notes would make a lot of things faster since it would remove the necessity to add an additional instrument, however I don't know how well things like vibrato and portamento would be handled from that point, I suppose a check to not have these effect used on these distortions would make sense. From what I could tell 16 bit was already done in a way similar to yours, having tables for high and low bytes, but this is pretty much absolutely necessary in the first place, since doing notes manually is pretty slow directly in the music tracker. As far as I know, things were done in the way they are currently done in order to save as much memory as possible, so I can understand the reasoning behind it. I am not a programmer however, so my own observation as an outsider may be absolutely wrong. hahaha

Emulated, but this should sound almost exactly the same on hardware. I will try these tunes later during the week end

Okay, I got a little carried over and now it's really late lol Pretty much everything in this folder sounds great now! There's surely some room for improvements but it's a lot better than my last attempt. I hope I am not becoming tone deaf with all that time spent listening to the tunes tonight 🥴 tunes tests 3.zip

Finally got some very good results now. This is possibly the best I could get the Distortion A tuning for now. There are some things that still aren't that great, mainly sharps being a bit off, but it's not as bad as my earliest attempts. I also made some interesting observations with that alternate tuning: - The overall sound is more stable in certain conditions, such as high pass filter special sounds created with certain semitones interval, 7 semitones apart does some really nice power chord tones, for example. - Chords now shouldn't sound as dissonant as they used to be, since the intervals are a bit more constant up to the 7th octave, most things shouldn't sound out of tune as much as a result, up to certain limits, that is. - As the frequencies go higher in tone, it gets closer and closer to the "original" RMT table, which was based on some 1983 documentation specific for NTSC tuning, which was probably what made it sound so weird in PAL and 15khz mode. However, now it's actually purposefully scaled to these frequencies, so things are more "in-tune" between the lowest and highest octave. Not quite perfect but I think it sounds much better that way. - Harmonies are much better with distortion C(E) basses, there is some really good resonance on many notes, and I noticed their "frequencies" are also very similar now... This cannot be a coincidence... and I am too curious to not check this out sometime later 👀 - Running tunes in PAL with my new table makes about everything sound considerably better, in fact now the notes are incredibly close to a really good 440hz based tuning, which was actually not expected. Same behaviour as described above. - Running that table in 15khz seems to have drastically improved the tuning as well, for the reasons mentioned above. I suspect 1.79mhz mode will also benefit? I need to confirm. - My new table is now incredibly close to synthpopalooza's Distortion A 15khz table, even though it was actually intended to 64khz, based on a 443hz tuning, clearly there is a connection somewhere... - Note B-2 is actually possible to get with the frequency FF... which is actually not officially supported by RMT for some obscure reason. - Perfect octaves come from perfect divisions in the frequency value. for example, B-2 uses FF, B-3 uses 7F, and that makes a perfect 2:1 resonance. Same observation for every notes. Unfortunately, this logic didn't translate perfectly downward between notes, however, I was able to get as many octaves as I could to be "perfectly tuned" together. As long as a "good" tuning frequency exists in the higher range, dividing downward will always produce a perfect 2:1 resonance, but the opposite isn't always true. So I picked up as many notes as I could that were nicely tuned and made them go downward. - Fun fact, I noticed that 00, the highest possible frequency, is actually a B-10 note, perfectly in-tune to FF, and no, I am not making this up, do the math! 😮 Also just for fun I tried out the "Merge" feature of RMT2LZSS... Works pretty nicely for making medleys! I just did a sloppy conversion of my Raymaze 2000 tunes as a test, also using this tuning theory. I still am testing out tunes for now, but so far I got some pretty conclusive results. This makes me pretty happy... I was starting to believe I wasted my time for the last few days, but now I think it turned into my favour So now I'm just about to mass convert my .rmt files for like the 3rd time this evening, and I'll make sure to report back the results, hopefully I won't encounter yet another serious problem on a random tune... POKEY Table 64khz (Octave Pattern) Final.txt Raymaze 2000 Themes (Merged).xex

Thanks, these distorted sounds could have been more stable tbh... I probably have reached the limit of my own patience trying to get the tuning work anymore too, I'll just give 1 final check today then move on to something else I wanted to experiment Uridium I just liked the way the notes sounded together with my tuning change, but that's about it, it was not my own tune after all.

Gave a new attempt, and like I said in my edited message earlier... my idea turned out to not work as well as I wished I got a near perfect series of octaves up to the highest pitch, but then came to the realisation... the notes weren't that great together. Anyway I did some more changes, and pretty much just broke more things now lol I got some good results, some bad, and some pretty catastrophic, that I also included because I deserve to be laughed at 🤣 I broke most of the 15khz sounds because of that, but the lower octaves sound pretty good I think. in short: I messed up Octave 6 and 7, C and G are sharp, G is especially the worse in some tunes, it often sounds off. C seems okay in most cases, however. In the less good results, there are parts that were caused by my manual adjustments when I made them before, and so this didn't translate too well into a different tuning table. Did I waste my time? most likely lol POKEY Table 64khz (Octave Pattern) v10.txt tunes tests 2.zip

This, especially, is driving me crazy at the exact moment, lol 😆

haha yeah, that sounds pretty much like it!

Thank you! I'm just about to try something different, I noticed a lot of things wrong. I have actually figured out a new pattern, which doesn't actually just fix the dissonance, but make me able to literally get ALL notes in-tune! 😮 At least I was able to try several min7, maj7, and other funny combinations, and they all pretty much sounded great, so I have really good faith about this one! I just freshly hacked up RMT2LZSS and currently converting many of my .rmt to test out what it sounds like. It's very likely to make distortion basses sound off to it, but if I go with Distortion A alone, B2 up to B10 is now tuned! All octaves, 5ths, and most intervals sound pretty good! I haven't noticed any major dissonance now, and if there is, usually vibrato will get through it. I took another approach this time, octave based, starting from the highest pitch and descending, in perfect divisions by 2 each time until the lowest octave. I expected more issues since it no longer matched my theorical 443.9 scale from the last time, but like everything that sounded wrong seems correct now. That means, essentially, I could get as many notes as possible to sound nice together, and that approach worked much better. Trying to get as close as possible to existing tuning scales ultimately cause serious detune on certain notes. I'll report back with a handful of executables later tonight [EDIT] and of course just to look like an idiot it seems like I was wrong lol, I wonder where I messed up this time... I get some serious problems with F#, but everything else seems ok so far...

SIDWIZARD also has some great ideas for managing effects too, a bit like a mix of several methods into 1 efficient way.

Specifically Atari, I had done something dumb but I don't think it was that bad. I had one of my 800xl disassembled and cleaned up thoroughly, and once I was done I was meticulously reassembling it, tightening ever screws together... then put everything back on, and wiped the surface one last time. Somehow that made the keyboard no longer work properly, with an entire row unresponsive and the A key stuck at power on. Thankfully I only had to loosen the screws under the keyboard to bring it back to normal, so I assume they really were "loose" on purpose, probably to not make the keyboard contacts too close to the keys. I also had done several stupid things in the meantime for all sort of electronics, but never really damaged anything beyond repairs, the most recent one has to be shorting my VIC-20 with the video cable I use for my Atari, trying to find which one was actually carrying the video signal... I certainly found which one was carrying the voltage, oops. Nothing was damaged at least, it simply made my monitor flash for a second, and the VIC-20 to reset. Another pretty cursed one I did was to use a nail filer and a knife to take off some plastic from a C64 shell, since each halves weren't fitting together, and I had no other parts around, so I made them fit regardless... 😏 Sure that was pretty stupid, but in the end it did work and also didn't look too bad from the outside, haha.

I think I made more progress with the improved tuning idea now. So I tried out some random tunes I had around to see how they got sounded like... and well I like it so far The tunes that depended on certain notes to achieve some special modulation really sound nice now To get these executables generated I used a nice little workaround where I hacked my own table in the RMT2LZSS executable lol A bunch of these tunes aren't actually mine, but you get the idea, it was mainly to see how the sounds harmonised now. Not too bad for only changing the "pure" table I think. I'll attach the table I came up with so far too. There is definitely some room for improvements, and 15khz specific things to try, but I think it sounds pretty good now. tunes tests.zip POKEY Table 64khz (A=443hz Theorical 2) v5.txt

Technically I did do some modifications for some of the tunes I posted here yesterday, but it was mainly intended to improve the tuning instead of adding or changing features

Someone already did it, actually!

Yuuup... i will just use google drive next time, I probably broke the site earlier lol

Been recording some more stuff on hardware Corridors of Time (Alternate Tuning) This one sounded great on the real thing! VinsCool - Corridors of Time Alternate Tuning (Hardware).ogg Some tunes by Spring, which were then converted exported from my sloppy tuning changes in RMT, also sounding great! Spring - My Time As Castellan 2 Alternate Tuning NTSC Speed (Hardware).ogg Spring - Castle Von Krumpen Alternate Tuning (Hardware).ogg Some tests based on the manual 15khz tuning, and the original WIP version of the same tune: VinsCool - Temple of Questions Tuning Test 6 (Hardware).ogg VinsCool - Temple of Questions v41 (Hardware).ogg And some tuning fail due to a mistake i made in the hex editor earlier, everything was off by 1 semitone, but I thought it still sounded nice after I transposed the bass down so here is it VinsCool - Sketch 10 WIP Tuning Fail (Hardware).ogg Wow Atari Age really did not like me making this post. Too me several attempts to upload the audio files ._. I hope this time it will work lol

Just for fun I recorded a few executables I had around since I was playing around on my machine for some other tests and recordings Those were recorded off a NTSC 800xl. This sounds pretty damn cool! Exo Area1.ogg Exo Area5.ogg Exo Title.ogg

I have, it's really awesome stuff, he's been sharing a lot of his research on the Atari Chiptune discord lately, and that stuff was exactly what motivated myself to get a lot further with the POKEY sound generation, and a lot of his own tables had helped me greatly for several of my own tunes already! It's so much fun to create "impossible sounds", even more when it makes sense as to how and why it can be done You're welcome! Yeah I can get ahead of myself too many times, and get lost in some ambitious projects I need to put in stand by simply for either being too difficult to realise (my rambles regarding RMT's implementations of several things is in direct relation to that!), or take so much time that I simply couldn't get it done, or when I manage to, it takes an eternity to complete (the Battle Squadron cover, for example, took me nearly 2 weeks of evenings I had available as free time!), or just get halted to a full stop for a combination of every reasons (Electric City anyone? ). I seriously love POKEY explorer! It truly lets me experiment with sounds so easily, and it has helped so much for my own research regarding frequencies tuning, impossible sounds and very creative sound design too! One of my WIP tunes called "A Permanent Temporary Solution" relied heavily on ideas I got when I was poking around in the program. A Permanent Temporary Solution V2.xex That thing is also unfinished but I think you get the idea behind it It's also one of the few projects that relied on my "hacked up" workflow which consists of manual AUDCTL settings, hacked up instrunents based on serious usage of commands 1 and 2, duplicate instruments, and more instruments, just to get the exact tones and frequencies I needed. And that is the exact kind of projects that make me scream out of (exaggerated) frustration due to being limited by the music tracker itself Thankfully, as Rensoup said: LZSS rules! 😆

Of course I did not mean to sound ungrateful and demanding when I posted my rambling the other day! Just what is available to use is already excellent, and a lot of fun to play with. it's getting into "expert tricks" territory that makes me realise how much things could have seen improvements Speaking of which I have still been trying to get better tuning going... Made little progress but valuable thoughts from friends has been very helpful. That's about getting more for personal usage at this point, but thankfully it's the results that really matter Anyway with new knowledge at hand I wonder what my next finished tune will be, and how I will be able to execute it... I mean I got way too many projects I didn't finalise for a reason or another 🤔

I just looked at the source files you mentioned... damn that looks surprisingly straightforward, I really don't see why there couldn't be any more slots available by the look of it, other than memory concern, but that's not a massive amount of data... right? I can also see vibrato tables (and frankly it looks like it could have more options), a nice implementation of 16 bit (with unique tables for both low and high byte! Clearly there is much more potential for that alone), volume levels table (which is actually something I wish I had known before, it was always annoying to guess proper volume levels being adjusted, I also wonder if there isn't a way to optimise that in order to save precious space to maybe use elsewhere 👀)... and then the manual AUDCTL settings, which were the ones I have personally been using in the tracker itself for a while now. Most interestingly, only 3 unique tables for notes, which happen to be 2 bass tables (as C and E), and 1 "pure" table, and each one seem used for several setting, which explains why editing a table breaks other things, that's literally because they're used more than once, and I do know that everything requires a unique table to actually sound good! 😰 dta frqtabpure-frqtab,$00 dta frqtabpure-frqtab,$20 dta frqtabpure-frqtab,$40 dta frqtabbass1-frqtab,$c0 dta frqtabpure-frqtab,$80 dta frqtabpure-frqtab,$a0 dta frqtabbass1-frqtab,$c0 dta frqtabbass2-frqtab,$c0 So just by the look of it, that makes sense, now I know why several things "broke" from only editing the "pure" table, it is also used in instrument type 0, 2, 4, 8! 😟 It's pretty clear to me, there are more tables that should exist in the first place... I mean, each ones of these distortions need its own table, otherwise stuff sounds out of tune, or just plain wrong. Another interesting thing I have noticed from my own experiments, thanks to POKEY Explorer, different modes (15khz, 64khz, 1.79mhz), combinations (16-bit, Joined 1+2/3+4, Filter 1+3/2+4, even several things at once!) really produce different results, and so there is simply no way a single table of notes could work for everything, this is the opposite of how it was implemented in RMT! 😱 And so, that probably sums up my observations, considering the tracker is not open source (to my knowledge), it's really not a great time to hack around, since it's literally going to be required to use several hacked versions to get certain specific things to work, and doing them by hand in the instrument editor is painfully slow for a musician who doesn't know how to code... and just now I realise how handling tuning becomes even more difficult due to its implementation 😨 To get optimal results, it's clear to me that having a way to load custom notes tables could go a really, really long way, especially if each ones could be used for specific cases. For example, I was able to prove that tuning Distortion A notes to a certain set of frequencies could be improved, and then noticed around the same time that a table working well for 64khz mode will sound weird in 15khz, and vice versa, same for 1.79, or the other distortions themselves, since they pretty much all live with similar behaviours. It looks like everything is there, so clearly editing the player code may be a very easy task, like you said earlier, it's the tracker itself that is pretty much out of reach. I mean even an idiot like myself, who hardly knows any programming, was able to edit the executable to replace the Distortion A table for my own. But this is about as much as I am capable of doing Now, I wonder if I am not getting into a rabbit hole, regarding tuning and other complicated stuff, instead of just trying to make music 😆 I can clearly see how it good that chip could be, that I am the most definitely certain about! So much potential to understand and make use, hopefully.

Awesome! I pretty much did a mix of calculation and doing tests by hand, and that has been painfully slow for the progress I got so far, so having these calculated tables at hand will drastically make that stuff much faster! The other distortions aren't a top priority for me since they can only be as good as they already were anyway, so as long as there is a decent amount of compatibility to the distortion A tables that will work for me That I really don't know! I am not too advanced in hacking RMT around in the first place, and really don't want to be for many reasons, however these files will be incredibly useful to have around, so thanks for sharing! Stuff like that really makes me wish we could actually load custom notes tables for instruments, honestly 😰. Things would be so much easier for everyone. There's too many things to consider and it feels a bit underwhelming to be limited by things like tuning to be able to make tunes sound good.