Rob Hubbard mentioning POKEY - out of tune ;)

[emkay]

Here is some quick edit. It's Altirra with Non Linear Mixing ON.

 

 

 

 

 

It's still very raw due to software limits. But I hope people get that still volume control is possible, where it technically shouldn't

 

I name it "muted flanger"

 

 

Also, a Voice I missing.... So still the question is there: How the heck getting the notations of the 3 channel SID. The Original, not the "Aimed" ones.

Edited February 10, 2018 by emkay

[Lynxpro]

 

as a heavy ST/STe/MegaSTe user post 8-bit days, I fully agree with him here regarding the YM2149 sound chip. Most of the chip music in games/demos on the ST always seemed an octave or two too high, and the sound effects shrill compared to the 8-bit POKEY. (and only 3 channels!) Until the STe with stereo PCM/DMA sound and MODs, that was a different story.

 

 

I was an ST fan but hated the YM2149. There's just something wrong about it. Nearly identical sound chips are found in the Colecovision, the Vectrex, and in the Mockingboards on the Apple II and yet the audio seems to be better in them. I don't understand it. Maybe the Mockingboard audio sounds better because they can have 2-4 of those sound chips instead of just 1. Maybe if there was a Dual YM2149 board for the ST, the audio would be better.

 

The YM2149 was a stop-gap in the ST. Shiraz wanted to use Atari Inc's AMY sound chip but couldn't get it to work. And then Yamaha wouldn't sell the YM2151 to them for inclusion in the ST. I suppose they could've used 2 POKEYs for Dual MONO sound; they couldn't have used the stereo PORKEY or the actual Dual or Quad POKEY chips without groveling to Atari Games Corp for a licensing deal or to go into a co-production agreement with them... Atari Games was able to buy the YM2151 for their arcade games - and they pivoted to Yamaha once the AMY wasn't finished/available to them - but that was because Yamaha didn't consider them to be a competitor whereas Atari Corp was going to sell the ST with MIDI ports for the music market and against Yamaha's music computers.

[Bryan]

It seemed to me that the low frequencies were cut off pretty bad in the ST. Even with a direct line out, it still sounded much thinner than Pokey.

[Sheddy]

Emkay Nice filter effects! But I don't know what you mean about 3 channels. 2 channel with drums on bass channel? Lot of songs share channel like that, or am I missing something?

Edited February 10, 2018 by Sheddy

[Lynxpro]

I dont like SID.SID is so soft...Yep only few instruments doesnt work like clear bass or crystal lead.Anyways I love pokey also YM, SN, SAA simply real PSG...SID sound like ensoniq keyboard to me.And yes I own c64 also hardSID...

 

 

Ensoniq sounds like SID because Bob Yannes is responsible for both....

 

 

I wonder how many voices the SID would've been able to produce had Commodore produced it with 32 oscillators as Mr. Yannes wanted.

[emkay]

Emkay Nice filter effects! But I don't know what you mean about 3 channels. 2 channel with drums on bass channel? Lot of songs share channel like that, or am I missing something?

As you got already, 2 channels for the main voice.

But the other 2 channels were "wasted" for Bass and percussion on them.

Sids often were built using drums and percussion on one channel. So an attending voice can be played. Giving the tune more "value"

[emkay]

Ensoniq sounds like SID because Bob Yannes is responsible for both....

 

 

I wonder how many voices the SID would've been able to produce had Commodore produced it with 32 oscillators as Mr. Yannes wanted.

Even more angry bees in the bag ?

[carlsson]

It seems Bob Yannes was looking for 32 voices but only 1 oscillator, which I suppose means all the voices would share the same waveform, filter and other settings. While it had opened for a great deal of polyphony, it also would've made the chip much less flexible in how it can combine different types of sounds (or angry bees in a wet cloth if you belong to that camp). Having a chip with 32 individual oscillators would have been spectacular but probably too much silicon even if they could finish it in time for manufacturing. Perhaps something like 3 oscillators with 2-3 voices (notes) per oscillator had been doable in the best of worlds which would mean most of the arpeggio effects would never have emerged on the SID if people could make an oscillator play chords and secondary melody lines naturally.

[RevEng]

[...] Generally once you have measured which notes can be playable - depending on which technique you use to generate notes in the first place - you will try to adjust the key of the music to fit the available notes. You soon learn which keys are preferred and which should be avoided. That is how I've gotten through 20 years of VIC-20 musicianship, which has an even more detuned sound chip than what POKEY offers. Anyone who doesn't understand the relation between keys and playable notes are bound to failure.

Complete agreement, coming from a TIA composer. It's possible to deal with detuned notes, even on the most detuned of platforms with transposition, inversion of chords, limit worst offenders to short duration, and restraint in the note range for any one element. (if you try to play every note, some will be out of tune, no matter how you transpose)

 

Another useful trick I came up with is Perceptual Tuning. Should be transferable to any unevenly tuned platform.

[R0ger]

Anyone has example of frequency switching (like in VBI) to achieve better tuning ?

 

EDIT: so I just tried .. in RMT .. A distortion .. C3 and C4, sounds quite off. No wonder. C3 uses divisor $3C. C4 uses $1D. $3C is decimal 60. Divisor is actually base frequency / (X+1) .. so C3 is base frequency / 61. Clearly for C4 we need divisor 30.5. We can't have that, so the nearest $1D, which corresponds to base frequency / 29, is off.

Switching 1D and 1E should on average give me good approximation of 30.5.

Problem is with speed of the switching. Just VBI is bad. You can hear the individual tones. Even my toner picks it up as wave. 4 times per frame is better. At least for the tuner, it can't see the changes anymore, and it reports correct average frequency. Ear is not so easy to fool, you hear strong 200Hz modulation on the tone. IMHO this is absolutely no way to go. Maybe for fine tuning in the second octave, but in third, where it really gets out of hands, it's useless.

Edited February 11, 2018 by R0ger

[Bryan]

I wrote some stuff to demo it a long time ago. I'll see if I can find it. It gave me roughly 9-bit pitch and sounded pretty good for lower notes, but higher ones needed a faster switching frequency to sound clean.

[emkay]

In many chiptunes, the composer add a "saving" note into the tune, to compensate the errors of the chip.

That's why NES tunes work very good with POKEY.

[Heaven/TQA]

Here's my 3 cents (warning, very honest!):

 

I've met Rob Hubbard in person during Pixel Heaven 2017 Festival. There was interview with him. But the guy's speech wasn't very interesting. He claimed that he was amazed with Assembler (Editor?) for 8-bit Atari but also said that making music on POKEY was real pain in the ass, unlike on SID. Even when Jakub Husak asked him why he judged POKEY so bad, Rob just treated his question as childlish one.

 

So... Let's remember his music but rather forget about Rob himself.

 

PERIOD.

Is Jakub one of the 2 on stage?

[miker]

No, he was part of audience and he just asked Rob a question.

[Foebane]

The thing about POKEY, ST's AY chip, the BBC Micro sound chip and so forth is that these all sound like general-purpose sound chips for a multitude of uses in both music and sound FX.

 

Bob Yannes' SID sounds like he made it to resemble the type of (godawful) synth music HE likes, and we all have to work around his limitations imposed on us.

 

I think this is why I don't like SID.

[R0ger]

Well for sure POKEY is best sounding keyboard controller

[Foebane]

Well for sure POKEY is best sounding keyboard controller

 

You're damn straight about that!

[emkay]

How many SIDS would you need to get a broad sounding like that?

 

[Foebane]

When I think of POKEY music, I think of this, one of the best soundtracks going! Just listen to that thumping bass!

http://a8.fandal.cz/download.php?files_id=492

 

I don't think SID can approach anywhere near this capability, it makes me wonder why people want POKEY to sound like SID.

[makary]

I have seen that number mentioned before, but IMHO it's more like 36 or even 40 before it distorts.

 

 

I'm not sure if there is any absolute threshold. Besides depending on signal amplitude/volume, the distortion seems to depend on its frequency as well. Still these numbers might work well enough as composers' rule of thumb.

[R0ger]

When I think of POKEY music, I think of this, one of the best soundtracks going! Just listen to that thumping bass!

http://a8.fandal.cz/download.php?files_id=492

 

I don't think SID can approach anywhere near this capability, it makes me wonder why people want POKEY to sound like SID.

 

It's also out of tune as hell :-P But hey, I'm nor claiming my songs are not.

[emkay]

I'm not sure if there is any absolute threshold. Besides depending on signal amplitude/volume, the distortion seems to depend on its frequency as well. Still these numbers might work well enough as composers' rule of thumb.

I think, two technical situations got to be mixed here.

1. There is a distortion when the volume level is over the limit

2. There is a direct physical mixing of the depending generators.

 

So, 4 channels using generator A won't sound "distorted" where polycounter sounds will interfere the music early.

 

Also, when I was active in checking the sounds on the real 800XL back in the 80, the distortion never had been as strong as in Altirra with the non linear mixing. Particular Generator "C" sounded very "bassy" , making the imagination of "SID" Basses possible, if only the "Orbit" had been fully controllable.

[emkay]

It's also out of tune as hell :-P But hey, I'm nor claiming my songs are not.

How about a deal. You send me the tune of Bad Apple, and I make a single POKEY of it, as good as possible. I send you the result back, you see what I did, and we could come to a conclusion?

 

What Foebane posted, isn't that out of tune, as people may realize.

OK, I don't like it either, because I miss a melodic part. But , depending on the mixing , as POKEY does, there is always a common frequency. And, as we know, common frequencies were the most reachable harmonics of a tone. So, it's a good soundtrack.

At the end it is always the taste and the volume level that points to a "in tune" or " out of tune" to the listener.

[Lost Dragon]

@Lynxpro:As someone who had spent years loving the SID and Pokey chips of the 8 bit era, having to make so with the awful AY sound when i bought my 520 STFM , was a hard cross to carry.

 

It felt so out of place on a 16 bit machine..

[emkay]

@Lynxpro:As someone who had spent years loving the SID and Pokey chips of the 8 bit era, having to make so with the awful AY sound when i bought my 520 STFM , was a hard cross to carry.

 

It felt so out of place on a 16 bit machine..

You're almost right. But the "Chambers of Shaolin" Soundtrack on the ST is .... just better than the Amiga version. There is some nifty "special" in the YM , which is only to explain by the musically knowledge that has been built in it.

Edited February 12, 2018 by emkay