HardSynth Method Messy? Or Just Different.

[Kjmann]

I read a post by emkay today in the "Magical Sound Shower RMT 8 Channel w/synth Instruments" Thread. Emkay had this to say in commenting on one of the songs i did.

 

<quote>

 

It seems, you have the right ear for the "over all" correct pitch.

So, why don't you give the hardsynth method a try?

 

If you have a look at my thread, I made examples of a possible conversion.

particular the popcorn tune, has sounds built in, that can easily be listen to, because pokey is not "yelling".

This "crying the balls of", destroyes the fun to listen at almost every tune.

"Hardsynth" makes it possible, to have "straight" sounds.

 

<unquote>

 

 

so i ask the question: Is the hard synth method worth using?

 

Well, to Start off let me say that Emkays instrument work is VERY cool. Can't knock the cool stuff he has come up with and in pokey music he is definitely a force to be reckoned with. but, my only problem is that the hard synth method musix sound "sloppy" for lack of a better word. someone commented in a thread earlier <don't remember which one> that he thought that the use of a 15khz and 64khz pokey combined <duel pokeys of course> was the best solution. this is something that i have tried and found that it is a very good idea. but only in some cases. my space harrier song

sounded terrible when i tried to convert it to hardsynth. it sounded "ok" when i tryed to add a filtered instrument to it. and overall sounded best <at least in my opinion> as a standard 64khz pokey song. on the other hand i believe that magical sound shower was best suited for filter instruments in 8 channel mode.

The songs I'm currently working on I am trying several different ways. so I ask all of you. Is Hard Synth the way to go? is that the sound you like best? or is it too "messy" sounding.

 

=)

 

At any rate, I'm enjoying doing these pokey tunes. hope chris <space harrier project> will like the new boss/bonus round musix when i'm done.

[analmux]

...so i ask the question: Is the hard synth method worth using?...

 

I think that it is

 

...but as far as I know, Hardsynth does not simply stand for 'just 15khz mode'.

 

To me, the instrument work of emkay was interesting. It is a totally different method. F.e. before emkay started the tread I was not aware that you can use a 1.79mhz filter setting. I can't remember to have heard similar sounds in any music demo.

 

...but alltogether most of the times all sort of sound-corrections are needed..almost depending on which note you want to play, so a Pokey-tracker with an instrument-dependent note/pitch table is really a must.

 

Hardsynth also pushes the emulation to its limits. Some of the testtunes are not correctly played by the sa_pokey.dll and in the .sap players. My experience is that most of the tunes sound better on the real machine.

 

Anyway, beware of this: the ratio 64khz/15khz is not exactly 4, thus you have a tuning problem when you use both modes (64khz left and 15khz right). The exact ratio is 114/28 thus it is easy to eventually correct pitchtables.

 

...so Hardsynth is just a different way of setting up instruments. Just like the pokey musicians had to get used to Pokey standard usage in the past, now it's time for some musicians to try the hardsynth-colors to make pokey tunes and get used to it, as long as they want it. I for instance would like to do a 'real' piece of music with Hardsynth instruments when time admits it.

 

especially when you clock down to 15khz, you should look for another music style to adapt to Pokey tunes. And when you use just a single Pokey in 64khz mode you always have the 'bass' problem. Do you want to use 16bit generator A or 8bit generator C. For pure bass tones you sacrifice one voice, and i.m.o. the generator C was never a serious bass to me.

[emkay]

Actrually, making music on the small A8 is like self talking. Only some other Atari8 Freaks may like, what a musician on the A8 is doing.

 

Let's have a look at the demo scene:

Technical sounds and interesting variations, fitting to a demo, are much more impressive than some "pling" sounds, with out of tune basses that are really none.

 

Make some interesting sounds at the low sound range, always sounds impressive.

My adaption of the AMEGAS Theme even impressed some old C64 freaks.

 

So, if someone is interestd in making A8 music, that has a bigger range of possible listeners, a Musician on the A8 better use the Hardsynth techniques.

Additional, when some very good pieces of music are done with this techniques, some other may create a POKEY-Tracker that really supports this techniques, which may result in better music also.

[analmux]

Actrually, making music on the small A8 is like self talking. Only some other Atari8 Freaks may like, what a musician on the A8 is doing.

 

Let's have a look at the demo scene:

Technical sounds and interesting variations, fitting to a demo, are much more impressive than some "pling" sounds, with out of tune basses that are really none.

 

Make some interesting sounds at the low sound range, always sounds impressive.

My adaption of the AMEGAS Theme even impressed some old C64 freaks.

 

So, if someone is interestd in making A8 music, that has a bigger range of possible listeners, a Musician on the A8 better use the Hardsynth techniques.

Additional, when some very good pieces of music are done with this techniques, some other may create a POKEY-Tracker that really supports this techniques, which may result in better music also.

 

Example: there are a.f.a.i.k. no trackers available that support a proper 1.79mhz mode filter handling. Listen to the tune below.

 

Note: 15khz mode bass and 1.79mhz voices has really a lot of potential, if only a tracker was available that can give a stable note2pitch table.

 

The 1.79mhz filter is a very funny mode. It is generated by squarewaves but it sounds like sawtooth waves.

The filter operation works like a logical XOR of the 2 combined squarewaves (when 0 stands for lower part, 1 for upper part of the cycle). The result is a double-periodic function that consists also of 2 notes. One pitch is obtained from the greatest common divisor (GCD) and the other pitch is obtained from the least common multiple (LCM) of the 2 original pitches. How this can give a sawtoothwave for the 1.79mhz clocking is a thing I'd like to explain deeper on my hardsynth page. It has something to do with the working of the capacitor: it is like an integrating circuit. The integrating effect only happens on very small timescales (i.e. thin peaks of the signal), thus at higher pitches. The mathematical integral of a constant function is always a linearly accumulating function, which gives us the wanted sawtooth function. Two 1.79mhz voices which fall often outside the audible spectrum can be combined with filtering to the GCD (also not audible most of the time) and the LCM of the pitches. It is the LCM of the pitches that is exactly the pitch of the resulting squarewave note. So it depends on the pitch-difference between the two combined voices how the notation happens to be, i.e. how you should compute a note2pitch table for a 1.79mhz instrument. RMT does not support it, but you can do approximations, with tweaked standard tables.

[Heaven/TQA]

ehm... analmux.... thanks for the explanation... it seems i should have studied physics or maths... but as i am a marketing guy i would say instead "groundbreaking sound capabilities lies beyond..."

Edited February 15, 2007 by Heaven/TQA

[emkay]

"groundbreaking sound capabilities lies beyond..."

 

Yes, thats the right term. With a full Pokey supporting tracker, you will hear never expected qualities of MUSIC.