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Instrumentarium: Final release, links & summary


analmux

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The music track "Instrumentarium" is composed, tracked and RMT-patched by myself:

 

ANALogue MUltipleXer

 

I used a patch to change some RMT possibilities: f.e. I added sawtooth wave (ringmod), triangle wave (linear subharmonic), clarinet (16bit), distortion guitar (16bit) and sync modes (2-tone filter & 16bit). At the end of 2009 this tune was named as "Instrumentarium Remix 1"; it's the same tune. I was using exotic undocumented PoKey features. It takes almost no CPU time.

 

The soundtrack was recorded from a REAL ATARI 800 XL! See here:

 

YouTube - Analogue Multiplexer - Instrumentarium:

 

 

In the zip attach you will find: RMT 125 Patch 3 tools, Instrumentarium rmt/xex/atr/mp3. You should find sa_pokey.dll and sa_c6502.dll elsewhere.

 

Here you can find related topics:

AtariAge Forums - Atari Systems - Atari 8-Bit Computers - A new Pokey tune: Unusual instruments?

AtariAge Forums - Atari Systems - Atari 8-Bit Computers - Instrumentarium Remix (Pokey tune with unusual instruments)

201408140105.zip

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Excellent stuff! This is one of my favorite tunes.

 

Are you fairly satisfied with the current state of Altirra's POKEY emulation?

 

To my ear, it sounds like Altirra does a pretty good job playing this song with some exceptions:

  • The triangle waves at 2:15 are mostly absent if you don't enable non-linear mixing which I think is understandable since non-linear mixing should mimic the hardware better. However, even with non-linear mixing enabled there is some hiss and it doesn't sound as clear as your hardware recording.
  • In general, your recording sounds less harsh, perhaps more filtered. Maybe this is due to the analog nature of the Atari audio circuitry vs. the DSP nature of Altirra?

Here's a recording from Altirra with non-linear mixing for comparison:

 

altirra-instrumentarium.mp3

 

I used Audacity to amplify the .wav from Altirra to fill the dynamic range and exported to .mp3. I don't think this should have introduced any distortion since there was no clipping.

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... Are you fairly satisfied with the current state of Altirra's POKEY emulation? ...

Yes, even the 2-tone filter sounds correctly IMO. It's easy to hear the triangle wave hiss, but it's easy to ignore when listening.

 

Anyway. Now I remember the AA-discussion about non-linear effects a few years ago. Someone wrote down a list of computings of non-linear values.

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  • 2 years later...

This is good stuff. I tested this on RMT 128, some of the sounds don't come through. Was something changed from 125 to 128 that would impact it?

 

Notably the guitar part...most everything else seems to be as demonstrated in the video above.

The 1st thing you have to learn is that nothing is perfect ;)

Instrumentarium is done in a patched RMT version. The "Instruments" in that tune were also not "Instruments" as definable in RMT. In RMT you may be able to adjust some sounds, but it doesn't use POKEY correctly to have any instrument played at the right pitch . That's why several patches exist.

Edited by emkay
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The 1st thing you have to learn is that nothing is perfect ;)

Instrumentarium is done in a patched RMT version. The "Instruments" in that tune were also not "Instruments" as definable in RMT. In RMT you may be able to adjust some sounds, but it doesn't use POKEY correctly to have any instrument played at the right pitch . That's why several patches exist.

 

Right, so you mean the emulation isn't 100% correct? So the "real" Instrumentarium as shown in the video is played on a real machine?

 

I was wary about using the "patched" versions, as maybe it changed some things. If it's for the "better", I'll use it.

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  • 1 year later...

As we continue to mourn the loss of analmux... please continue to take all his fine discoveries and work and update them to the current crop of tools and trackers. While our hearts froze at that time... the work must not. We don't wan to lose his gains and his passion.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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The bug is a pain in the neck sometimes. The hard-restart workaround doesn't help?

I tried doing that, but the music then sounds choppy. If it helps, I'm using Deflemask. Also, I wish that Delek, the boss of the project, would put the POKEY into his tracker, as it's a multi-system tracker as well; you can almost instantly convert a song from one system to another .

Edited by EnderDude
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I tried doing that, but the music then sounds choppy. If it helps, I'm using Deflemask. Also, I wish that Delek, the boss of the project, would put the POKEY into his tracker, as it's a multi-system tracker as well, and you can almost instantly convert a song from one system to another :) .

A POKEY Tracker on the PC with real Tracker Commands? Won't the Hell freeze before that happens?

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I tried doing that, but the music then sounds choppy. If it helps, I'm using Deflemask. Also, I wish that Delek, the boss of the project, would put the POKEY into his tracker, as it's a multi-system tracker as well; you can almost instantly convert a song from one system to another .

 

 

Sure. It's up to the Deflemask community whether a given system will be added or not. There's a poll etc. Not many people voting for Pokey there as far as I know.

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Why would you expect the POKEY to never have a proper tracker? Is it because you think the fan base for the 8-bit line is too small to make what I said too good to be true?

IT's where a chip that is build in a "pre Computer music" era, used by people who like somehow the standard "detuning" hit people who like to program tuned music on chips with pre-defined music interfaces.

 

So It would be more a miracle than just "to good to be true" ;)

.... additionally the fact that several software preparations didn't hit POKEY emulations, to enhance the clarity of music.

POKEY has , as a RAW Sound-Chip, a lot of physical issues to fight with. Things get out of control quickly. But, if you don't forget about "what music is" and to handle POKEY correctly with all physical rules, the results get unexpected (good) ways.

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pokey requires the whole orchestra to be tuned a few times to get things right for the concert to go off well. A good deal of people want this pre packaged and ready to go without that, they want canned stuff that all is perfect but dead. It's easy to adjust dead things. I personally can't stand the canned music of today with everything going thru a tuner, a singer who is run through autotune and songalyzer. It lacks emotion or comes off as fake. They try so hard to approximate it and contort on stage, but it's funny when they trip or stop and the music and harmonizer keep going.... I like the raw nerve a pokey has and can hit... it's so odd that a chip like that can still provide such nuance. instead of the sterile sound of so many others. That said, people can do the pokey stuff first and de tune to match it... :)

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