vitoco Posted June 30, 2015 Share Posted June 30, 2015 Hi. Raster gave us a wonderful tool to compose and play music in our 8bit Atari computers. Thank you! Although I googled for information about RMT, I could only find a couple of pages with some editor shortcuts, but no user manual or tutorial is available (AFAIK). I've played with the songs included in the latest release, changing parameters and trying to guess what the result was, if any... I'd like to compose something from scratch (including the design of the instruments), but I have no idea how to start. There are many "obscure" things like the parameters (flags) inside rmt_feat.a65 config file, or the purpose of the frequency tables inside rmtplayr.a65. I'd really apperciate if someone could share here some docs, reveal the secrets of the player, introduce things like the "song" concept or just tell us his experience using this music tracker. Thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billkendrick Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 I've not tried to toy with RMT yet myself, but it seems like the de-facto "gold standard" for music composition these days, so I'm definitely hoping there are (or will some day be) some tutorials for utter n00bs like me. I played with Chaos Music Composer, never enough to make real music, back in the 1990s. :-/ I'm also curious, was RMT's source ever released? With the untimely death of Radek, I worry about the communities ability to update the software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baktra Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 User documentation for Rmt has always been available in the download package. Doc/Rmt_en.htm is the file name.You will be able to find some explanations there. Besides, the Rmt site is still available at http://raster.infos.cz/. As for the source code, only members of his user group may know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 3, 2015 Share Posted July 3, 2015 RMT is the best PC Tracker for the A8, for sure. Depending on many missing features and the faulty POKEY emulations... things will never get finished... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 RMT is really a powerful tool. Without it, it wasn't possible to create all of the sound demonstations. Some of them show what POKEY is able to to. Some of them show impressively the different sound styles. Questions? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 (edited) What I'm trying to explain is that the result in RMT differs even in simple "atari waves" . So any song sounds different on the real thing. But, this doesn't usually mean worse... or better. It's just the stability of the created sounds. So, If you want to create something special in RMT, you always have to replay the resulting tune on a real machine, to compare whether it works, or sounds different. The two examples were played on the ASMA ... This one was recored from a real Atari: A native soundtracker, running of a real machine, doesn't have this problem. Edited July 4, 2015 by emkay 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creature XL Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 A native soundtracker, running of a real machine, doesn't have this problem. I am pretty sure I will regret this, but I am way too curious. Some years ago, when I started to experimenting in writing a tracker to run ON the A8 and asked you for input, you said it is not worth it. Only a PC tool would be useful. Now it seems you are saying something totally different? BTW, the "Bankong knights" is cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Now it seems you are saying something totally different? I'm just explaining one of the biggest flaws of RMT, that the emulations weren't really sounding like a real machine. A PC tool is the only tool, to have people working on "A8" music, when they only use a PC and don't own a real A8 setup. There is no controversy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 BTW, the "Bankong knights" is cool. My personal favorite is this still this one... (from 1:19 on) ... there is still nothing compareable in the quality of stability of the melody and used sounds, created variations, and used octaves.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sack-c0s Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 a RMT network hack, which uses the PC editor but can keep an Atari in sync as a player would be pretty cool. Should solve the editor comfort problem and the playback accuracy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 a RMT network hack, which uses the PC editor but can keep an Atari in sync as a player would be pretty cool. Should solve the editor comfort problem and the playback accuracy And, when enough sound examples /Music were available, people could correct the emulations ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vitoco Posted July 8, 2015 Author Share Posted July 8, 2015 RMT editor is able to emulate using one of two different libraries: apokeysnd.dll and sa_pokey.dll ... Based on your experience, which of them is the recomended one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 apokeysnd seems closer to the real thing, but there are still volume and timing differences. Also, the emulation seems to get interfered with any interrupt on the PC... at the start and the end of the tune, there were "waveshape" glitches, pokey plays that stable. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Triace fights with RMT each time... In last musics Miker needed to help but Triace never would touch native tracker except on Amiga.... Only PC trackers even for SIDs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Emkay btw which tool are you using recording PC screen recordings? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 Emkay btw which tool are you using recording PC screen recordings? CamStudio Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Another example of modulations... played inside RMT. But there's the problem, handling the modulations: You cannot manipulate them directly, just passive. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 (edited) @ emkay, Why not doing a new try of your own compositions? 99% of your hundreds of tunes are all existing non-PoKey tunes, ported to RMT songs. Edited July 10, 2015 by analmux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Or at least an old try, f.e. the one we worked together: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Or what about this silly test? See more also here about RMT 1.28 Patch 8: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234769-rmt-patch-8/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/235449-rmt-128-patch-8-programming/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 @ emkay, Why not doing a new try of your own compositions? 99% of your hundreds of tunes are all existing non-PoKey tunes, ported to RMT songs. You know, back in those days.... the late 70s .... such pieces of sound would have been groundbraking. Today it is nothing special, and also , the response is rather low, because there is nothing more different than every person's taste of music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 btw.. taste of music I never didn't bother about "Cats in the cradle", and I'm also not really satisfied with the sound of POKEY, but I like the result of the conversion, thinking of all the given limits ... and, well, YOUTUBE immediatly recognized the "original" tune Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vitoco Posted July 23, 2015 Author Share Posted July 23, 2015 About Tempo: is there a way to tweak the player or modify a song in a RMT file in real time, in order to play it at the same speed on both NTSC and PAL real hardware? I'm trying to find a way not to have two versions of the same XEX program, just one that is able to adjust the speed based on the detected hardware. BTW, RMT editor has an option to select between NTSC and PAL, but that's only during playback in the editor, AFAIK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xuel Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 In your VBI or frame loop, you can skip every sixth call to the player to play a PAL RMT on an NTSC machine. If the tempo is not a multiple of 5 though you'll get some syncopation but it might not be too bad. If you can afford to burn CPU cycles you could poll VCOUNT to wait exactly 312 scanlines between calls to the player. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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