POKEY sound resources

[+Karl G]

I've largely avoided experimenting with POKEY sound for 7800 projects due to the cost it would add to carts. With the HOKEY on its way, it seems like making carts with POKEY sound will be much more economical down the road.

 

Anyway, I was looking for resources for developers on POKEY sounds/music. For TIA, I rely heavily on this site to hear the different sound types, etc right in my browser:

 

https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-music-toy.html

 

Is there anything equivalent for POKEY sound?

[+Muddyfunster]

I was looking at this the last few days too.

 

I would love something like that to work on with Pokey. I've been looking at @Synthpopalooza's pokey documentations and spreadsheet in the other thread and trying get something that sounds like a melody instead of a dentist's drill, not much success yet  ..

 

For just tinkering with SFX, did you see @fultonbot's Pokey tool? 

 

[Shawn]

35 minutes ago, Karl G said:

 With the HOKEY on its way, it seems like making carts with POKEY sound will be much more economical down the road.

 

 

 

I'm sorry to say this but it's a long way down that road as HOKEY isn't anywhere near completed nor will it be released in any timeframe that could be called "soon".  I've spoke to Fred about this recently. Trust me, I want HOKEY to be a thing just as much as you do but we have to be realistic about this.

[+Karl G]

8 minutes ago, Shawn said:

 

I'm sorry to say this but it's a long way down that road as HOKEY isn't anywhere near completed nor will it be released in any timeframe that could be called "soon".  I've spoke to Fred about this recently. Trust me, I want HOKEY to be a thing just as much as you do but we have to be realistic about this.

That's good to know. Thank you. Hopefully though, measured against how soon I'll likely have a 7800 game that's complete and ready for the AA store, it may well be "soon enough" since it appears to be undergoing active development again.

[Synthpopalooza]

On 1/12/2021 at 11:41 AM, Muddyfunster said:

I was looking at this the last few days too.

 

I would love something like that to work on with Pokey. I've been looking at @Synthpopalooza's pokey documentations and spreadsheet in the other thread and trying get something that sounds like a melody instead of a dentist's drill, not much success yet  ..

 

For just tinkering with SFX, did you see @fultonbot's Pokey tool? 

 

One thing to keep in mind, as we all know, is that POKEY emulation on the 7800 is far from perfect.   A7800 and ProSystem both have their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to certain settings.  $Ax square wave settings, and standard 8-bit settings seem to work ok on both emulators, but anything else is a mixed bag.

 

When doing music, I use the Atari 8-bit emulator Altirra to cross-develop.  It has the best POKEY emulation of any emulator, bar none.  There is also a tool called Pokey Explorer Tool which is very useful for seeing what certain sounds are like.

 

http://virtualdub.org/altirra

 

 

Edited January 14, 2021 by Synthpopalooza