WaveTari

[MemberAtarian]

 

 

A new tool for playing wave files on the Atari 2600, written in Python.

It converts the wave file to 8000Hz 8bit mono, uses Trogdor's Perl script to turn the file into a readable binary (somehow the same method with Python resulted garbage), then gives you the code for the Wave player (made by me) and the Wavetable to play.

Unfortunately, you cannot display anything while playing the sound.

 

Original script: https://atariage.com/forums/blogs/entry/5907-wav2ataripl/

Source: https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZMvUQkZlj97zcC3yK7529578yphtjh2avzV

Executable: https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZ1vUQkZk2fd5sN16Um08jwznyHoNYUFj9kX

Binary created as example: https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZWvUQkZD4WeNbDORk46orqiWp78kSmujcKk (16K ROM)

[MemberAtarian]

Updated: The EndPoint thing did not work, so I decided to add an algorithm that generates all binaries from 0 to 255, then choose one that is not in the data table and use that byte as an end byte.

[iesposta]

For samples I’ve made for games, I use 4000Hz as a starting point, which uses less ROM data and allows longer duration. 

8000Hz sounds very good.

 

Thanks for the tools!

[MemberAtarian]

20 minutes ago, iesposta said:

For samples I’ve made for games, I use 4000Hz as a starting point, which uses less ROM data and allows longer duration. 

8000Hz sounds very good.

 

Thanks for the tools!

Thats true, I only wanted to have sound after you have choosen your game or perfect for game over. It's frightening to hear a clear voice coming out from your VCS.

[Mr SQL]

Awesome audio player!   Sound quality is excellent - 

 

I like both the 8000 Hz samples and the 4000 Hz samples iesposta used to digitize Popcorn with TJoppen's sound engine.  

 

The 8000 Hz sample is very clear and 4000 Hz allows a 32k ROM to fit over a minute of digitized sound.

 

Here's an idea that can be implemented for both players that may lend itself better to higher quality sampling since it requires shorter duration:

 

Break the digital sample up into 1/2 second segments that can be marshalled and reused or mixed in with tracker sequencer like we saw with the C64 scene and the SID chip to create mixed music compositions on the VCS.

 

Play the video on this thread for an example of what I'm talking about with the segments - it breaks the sample (in this case 5 seconds) up into 1/2 second segments and repeats one of the segments to create the effect; segments can also be resequenced: 

 

 

[MemberAtarian]

Unfortunately, this won't work in the VCS. The CoCo is frame based and the VCS is scanline based and you really have to read bytes fast if you want to have fluent sound quality. So you would have to make a tracker that sacrifices the end of every scanline for doing the wave playback stuff and you have to 100% precise, thats the main reason you don't see Atari games with digitalized voice too often. Its evern worst than reading the paddles.

[Mr SQL]

50 minutes ago, MemberAtarian said:

Unfortunately, this won't work in the VCS. The CoCo is frame based and the VCS is scanline based and you really have to read bytes fast if you want to have fluent sound quality. So you would have to make a tracker that sacrifices the end of every scanline for doing the wave playback stuff and you have to 100% precise, thats the main reason you don't see Atari games with digitalized voice too often. Its evern worst than reading the paddles.

Yes I understand you can't have a display with this player with the VCS due to the timing constraints.

 

My idea is to put an index on the sample to allow the player to be called to play just 1/2 second segments of the digital sample instead of playing the whole sample -  

 

Couple this with a tracker sequencer player like TIATracker or the simple one built into bB and you would have a combination player that plays TIA tunes interspersed with digitized sound sequences.

 

[KevKelley]

I was interested in trying this program out but my computer did not recognize the file formats in the first post.  Is there a particular way to get this program to operate?

[MemberAtarian]

On 11/17/2019 at 5:36 PM, KevKelley said:

I was interested in trying this program out but my computer did not recognize the file formats in the first post.  Is there a particular way to get this program to operate?

They are exe for windows, dunno what you meant by that.