Digital music on regular Atari ST (again)

[yerzmyey]

Hi there.

After 2 years of break, we prepared another ATARI ST album with MOD-music -

YM-DIGITAL: „White Mouse Ate a Cat”

Our WWW site: http://ym-digital.i-demo.pl/

 

 

Tracklist/downloads:

01. Factor6 – Average day

02. Factor6 – Brighter sides

03. Yerzmyey – Meteor Rain

04. Factor6 – Rasengan

05. Factor6 – Housesizer

06. Yerzmyey – Time Dilatation

07. Factor6 – Atari Otaku

08. Yerzmyey – Alley of Stars (a cover of Lipko/Sosnicka)

09. Factor6 – White mouse ate a cat

10. Yerzmyey – Among Aliens

11. Factor6 – ST-02

12. Yerzmyey – Quantum Fluctuations

13. Factor6 – Techno Eric

14. Yerzmyey – Funky ST machine (bonus track, Atari STE, 8 channels of DMA chip)

 

Total Time: 50:06 min.

 

YM DIGITAL are:

YERZMYEY (Atari 520 ST, 4Mb of RAM)

FACTOR6 (Atari 520 ST+, 1Mb of RAM).

 

All songs (except the bonus-track) have been made on ATARI 520ST computers with YM2149 chip.

 

Cover-art in full quality.

 

Software used:

- ProTracker ST 2.1

- Hex-Tracker 0.844

- DigiComposer 1.0

- YM 50kHz Module Player

 

Recorded from real hardware: Atari 520ST.

 

The bonus track has been made on Atari 1040 STE 4Mb. It has 8 channels of DMA sound and has been composed on Octalyser 0.96r. Recorded from real hardware.

[+wood_jl]

Incredible! All those years of disappointment and shitting on the ST's YM2149, and now this! Obviously, the YM was not in the hands of the right people, back then!

 

Although it has another voice, I don't think POKEY can do this. This music makes the YM sound SID-quality!

 

Awesome! Thanks for posting!

[jens]

Yeah, sounds really great.

Good work again. :-)

Thanks, guys!

[yerzmyey]

Yo,

 

Here are the MOD files: http://ym-digital.i-demo.pl/YM_DIGITAL2.zip

 

They're for Atari ST, STE, Falcon 030, PC (and partly for Amiga) etc.

IMPORTANT: All songs and players are properly segregated for all machines.

Please READ THE TEXT FILES to avoid problems.

For PC versions - use MilkyTracker.

 

For every machine there is included a proper player (or even special versions of the songs).

 

 

 

 

As for PC: it can't recognize 6ch MODs, so here You have in the archive the same 6ch music,

but in format of 8 tracks (with 2 last tracks non-used).

 

**DO NOT** use them on Atari ST, pls.

For Atari ST there is a special catalogue:

ST_versi.on

 

Of course all 4-channels MODs (all by Factor6 and one by me) work with PC just fine.

 

Greetz,

Yerzmyey

[Junosix]

Amazing work yet again! "Techno Eric" is hilarious!

[Mr SQL]

Awesome work yerzmyey these tracks are fantastic!

 

You can really push the chip in the ST and your work with Pokey (Mountain in the Sky, etc) is equally awesome. Ditto for your ZX/Spectrum compositions - are those done with the stock hardware too?

[yerzmyey]

Amazing work yet again! "Techno Eric" is hilarious!

 

Thx man. Yupp, Factor6 is good. Also I liked his ballad (the second track, if I recall), or the song with "I'm the Atari fan" in Japanese.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr SQL:

 

Many thanks.

As for the ZX Spectrum, they all are made on the standard machines (I mean hardware solutions coming from 1981/1982 and a bit later), sometimes with new devices that are not being produced nowadays, so I use copies of 80s interfaces.

 

With exception of ZX81 - the latest songs on two ym2149 chips for sure can be considered as made on modified hw, because "2 ym chips" config is totally new and wasn't present in 80s.

 

 

 

 

Kind regards,

Y

[+rdemming]

Incredible! All those years of disappointment and shitting on the ST's YM2149, and now this! Obviously, the YM was not in the hands of the right people, back then!

 

Although it has another voice, I don't think POKEY can do this. This music makes the YM sound SID-quality!

 

I think you are confusing YM2149 chip music and digital music that happens to be played with the YM2149 (the YM2149 is used as DA converter then instead of a wave form generator). YM chip music use the frequency generators of the YM chip to produce wave forms. The advantage is that it uses little CPU time. The disadvantage is that it sounds artificial (it simulates an instrument).

 

With digital music, as in this case, real instruments are recorded and special software (usually called a mod tracker) can play multiple of these instrument recordings at the same time and at different pitches. Here the soundchip is used as DA converter and does not use the wave forms the soundchip normally generates. The advantage is that it sounds as a real instrument (as it is a recording of a real instrument). The disadvantage is that it costs a lot of CPU time since digital samples have to be mixed and played at a high frequency (min. 8KHz). In comparison, YM chip music is only updated at 50 or sometimes 100Hz.

 

Since these .mod files store the sound as digital samples, it can be played on every DA converter (thus on various different soundchips and machines) and will sound more or less the same on every chip. Only the quality of the sound will differ since the quality depends on which frequency the machine can play the samples and with which accuracy the soundchip can be used as DA converter. That is why you can play Amiga .mod music files on an Atari ST. This technique was already used back in the day (listen for example to Wings of Death) but usually only on title screens. Having this kind of music takes on a YM2149 too much processor time to be played during game play. The STE and Falcon added special DA converter hardware to play this kind of music with low CPU time at higher frequencies (up to 50KHz) and better accuracy (8 bit on STE, 16 bit on Falcon). You also had printer dongles for the ST that converted the printer port to a DA converter to play this kind of music with 8-bit accuracy or you could play this music via a sound-sampler cartridge.

 

And this is also possible on the Pokey (there are .mod players for the Atari 8-bit). Of course the quality is lower than on an ST since the 8-bit lacks the CPU power to mix samples at a high frequency.

 

Robert

[yerzmyey]

Since these .mod files store the sound as digital samples, it can be played on every DA converter (thus on various different soundchips and machines) and will sound more or less the same on every chip.

 

Just to elaborate the above, we don't actually care if it is possible to do on other machines or not, because we have and use Atari ST machines, so we're interested what can be done on the Atari. Other things are strongly secondary to us.

 

So - we made the stuff on our 520STs. Regardless whether they can be done on other platforms or not, because we're Atari users. And - although we realize the MOD format is common - it's not relevant to us, because we use this and not another kind of computers at the moment.

 

Hence, regardless any relevance of the above lecture, it is true.

 

PS: Hm, actually it's only 50% true, because 50% of the material is the Octalyser's 6-channels and 8-channels format, which has players only on modern PC and not any more mysterious "other platforms" not to mention Pokey on XL/XE.

But yes, it works on STE and Falcon. :) It's all has been described in detail, in the TXT files.

[+wood_jl]

I think you are confusing YM2149 chip music and digital music that happens to be played with the YM2149 (the YM2149 is used as DA converter then instead of a wave form generator).

 

Yes sir, indeed I was. THANK YOU for that nice explanation; I really appreciate it.

 

 

 

 

Just to elaborate the above, we don't actually care if it is possible to do on other machines or not, because we have and use Atari ST machines, so we're interested what can be done on the Atari. Other things are strongly secondary to us.

 

 

Still awesome!

[oky2000]

A lot of early games used samples if only for SFX, I remember Technocop and Gauntlet 1 off the top of my head, later on software houses got more tight with time and money and I guess that sort of genius coding went out the window sadly until people started using them again. I really admire those early games coded with the 'can do' attitude instead of 'want samples in games...get an Amiga' type slap in the face.

 

Thanks for the album release, will download and have a listen later