Rob Hubbard on the Atari 8-Bit

[analmux]

HA! Looking like "Atari vs. Commodore" brewing again!

 

Maybe not the thread title, but our old pal Bill Shakespeare's "A rose by any other name..." line works!

 

(not a complaint; this stuff is always a good read)

 

Nah, there's no argument here about it apart from emkay's ridiculous posts yesterday causing a stir because he'd basically made up everything he posted

 

I've got no problem at all with people having a preference, it's delusion/lies I think most of us "C64 freaks" have a problem with.

 

 

Pete

 

Anyway, Pete, any progress in your 'exploding fist' conversion?

[analmux]

HA! Looking like "Atari vs. Commodore" brewing again!

 

Maybe not the thread title, but our old pal Bill Shakespeare's "A rose by any other name..." line works!

 

(not a complaint; this stuff is always a good read)

 

....I still wonder when Rockford will be back

Edited February 22, 2010 by analmux

[analmux]

...he's mad as a fcking snake.

 

Why will this guy NOT get banned?

[analmux]

...2. SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff.

 

So, that's Pokey's fault, is that what you're trying to say here?

[PeteD]

HA! Looking like "Atari vs. Commodore" brewing again!

 

Maybe not the thread title, but our old pal Bill Shakespeare's "A rose by any other name..." line works!

 

(not a complaint; this stuff is always a good read)

 

Nah, there's no argument here about it apart from emkay's ridiculous posts yesterday causing a stir because he'd basically made up everything he posted

 

I've got no problem at all with people having a preference, it's delusion/lies I think most of us "C64 freaks" have a problem with.

 

 

Pete

 

Anyway, Pete, any progress in your 'exploding fist' conversion?

 

From what I've seen of development times for most A8 stuff I'd say it's making rapid progress.

 

 

Pete

[PeteD]

...he's mad as a fcking snake.

 

Why will this guy NOT get banned?

 

No reason to. Next.

 

 

Pete

[PeteD]

...2. SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff.

 

So, that's Pokey's fault, is that what you're trying to say here?

 

I'd say in a way, yes. POKEY is nowhere near as flexible or reliable as far as being in tune in it's standard state as SID is. The fact that it is possible to make some other noises on pokey, after all these years doesn't disprove that fact. SID (at least in the early years) is analogous to a synthesizer, pokey almost to a single instrument. To answer one of emkay's earlier thoughts, Hubbard was a synth player, was no doubt used to the early days of patches etc so when he moved to SID it was almost exactly the same, patch different sounds together to come up with an "instrument". With the palette of different waveforms, effects (ring mod, pwm etc) it's a lot easier and more intuitive to a musician than fighting off key notes and having a choice of just square or noise.

 

 

Pete

[+save2600]

Whoops! Sorry, keep thinking this is an L. Ron Hubbard thread... lol

<quietly exits>

[PeteD]

lol

 

poor L. Ron, Battlefield Earth and the epic 10 book Mission Earth are great sci-fi "operas" and then he writes THAT thing which if you ask me was all a joke anyway and look what happens.

 

 

Pete

[abbotkinneydude]

@PeteD

 

Thank you for pointing out the (obvious) differences between POKEY & SID.

 

Those chips were designed a few years apart and I'm sure most Atari developers would be delighted at being allowed to develop for the "next" platform (which would have been AMY but it seems out of reach for the moment being). Right now, Stereo Pokey seems to be the best we have access to.

 

Thanks to everyone for the great comments on this thread.

 

(And as of midi command inputs into an Atari tracker, it'll be worth exploring into another topic).

 

Cheers.

[+Philsan]

...he's mad as a fcking snake.

 

Why will this guy NOT get banned?

 

Yes, why?

(Unless mad as a fcking snake in English is a compliment)

[atariksi]

Listen to the music, Hubbard did.

Then listen to the music of Galway and others.

 

You clearly recognize the difference in the usage of SID music.

I'd bet that tunes like International Karate and Jet Set Willy were there on the A8 before.... even before C64 reached the market. The Sid versions got enhanced by the given generators and the easier handling of music stuff.

That's all.

 

Hubbard is often called "Music God" by C64 freaks. But, really, he only was something like that on the SID. The flat ear hurting sounds, he produced with the Pokey brings all back to the ground.

 

The music itself was well, but you never could drive the stereo to an enhanced level.

I wonder, how the results would sound with some enhanced POKEY sounds.

 

Btw:

 

so the most successful and famous musician in computer gaming history chose the most advanced soundchip available in any computer for 10 years and he chose the wrong platform did he? i very much doubt he would agree.

 

This is an oxymoron how you wrote this sentence.

When Hubbard went to use SID and the C64 for making music, he wasn't any famous. The KEY moment for his sussess, is one of the KEY moments for the C64. You might remember that he was the "1st" musician releasing a real piece of music on the C64 in Monty. So what happened, if he really was a "Music God" and created such stuff for the A8 ?

 

 

And then listen to other composers and you notice their music sounds unique too.

 

The wrong platform was not chosen as

 

1. 99/100 they sound a lot better on SID

...

 

 

So some more opinions out of the blue with no proof. Perhaps, there were 99 C64 programmers to 1 Atari programmer so 99/100 sound better on SID. More people went for the cheaper system.

 

2. SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff.

 

That's supposed to be good? That means it's more incompatible-- that's bad. I'll take the cycle-exactness over variability.

[atariksi]

@PeteD

 

Thank you for pointing out the (obvious) differences between POKEY & SID.

 

Those chips were designed a few years apart and I'm sure most Atari developers would be delighted at being allowed to develop for the "next" platform (which would have been AMY but it seems out of reach for the moment being). Right now, Stereo Pokey seems to be the best we have access to.

 

Thanks to everyone for the great comments on this thread.

 

(And as of midi command inputs into an Atari tracker, it'll be worth exploring into another topic).

 

Cheers.

 

Just another viewpoint of someone who doesn't know a thing about the POKEY. Without even talking about notes, you should understand that musical notes is only one aspect of POKEY. DACs is another, latency is another, frequency of operation is another, etc. etc.

[atariksi]

Whoops! Sorry, keep thinking this is an L. Ron Hubbard thread... lol

<quietly exits>

 

It should be about that as C64 vs. A8 was already dealt with.

[TMR]

2. SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff.

 

That's supposed to be good? That means it's more incompatible-- that's bad. I'll take the cycle-exactness over variability.

 

He said different between composers as in each had their own style and the sounds they were using reflected that difference - for example, almost any David Whittaker tune can be identified as his purely by the sounds used, that and the rather jolly nature of most of his output were part of his style (listen to Red Max on either machine, that tune is far too feckin' happy for a post-apocalyptic race against time kind of game!) and the other musicians around had their own unique sound in part because they also either wrote their own music drivers or had one written for them.

[analmux]

...2. SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff.

 

So, that's Pokey's fault, is that what you're trying to say here?

 

I'd say in a way, yes....

 

So, in reality 'oky2000' and 'PeteD' are the same person.

 

 

POKEY is nowhere near as flexible or reliable as far as being in tune in it's standard state as SID is.

 

Who told you this, and what exactly do you mean with 'flexible' or 'reliable'? Pokey frequency control is always the same, so always reliable. About flexibility: Pokey's frequency domain is larger, and using 16bit & 1.79mhz clocking isn't that far from SID's frequency resolution. When at least 3 different clockings are possible there's more resolution than just 8bit waveperiod resolution. So "nowhere near as flexible" (sounds like SID = "lightyears better" than Pokey) seems a bit exaggerated.

 

So, what exactly do you mean? And, to keep in context, what does 'being in tune' have to do with music of different composers sounding different? It just sounds like nothing more than nice words for nice imaginary properties of SID.

 

 

The fact that it is possible to make some other noises on pokey, after all these years doesn't disprove that fact.

 

1) It's no question of just 'some other noises'.

2) The wide variety of pokey waveforms presently known has (again) nothing to do with being in tune.

 

 

SID (at least in the early years) is analogous to a synthesizer, pokey almost to a single instrument. To answer one of emkay's earlier thoughts, Hubbard was a synth player, was no doubt used to the early days of patches etc so when he moved to SID it was almost exactly the same, patch different sounds together to come up with an "instrument".

 

Of course, I can imagine how easy it was to compose music for SID. The SID is easier & more straightforward to understand. But SID's main features are also very well documented, contrary to Pokey's features.

 

 

With the palette of different waveforms, effects (ring mod, pwm etc) it's a lot easier and more intuitive to a musician than fighting off key notes and having a choice of just square or noise.

 

So, you forgot that these (and more) are all possible on Pokey. Pokey supports ringmod, sync, pwm, triangle, sawtooth, but also a lot of interesting smooth combinations, resonance features and others. Too much to list. Using these features 30 years ago would give a totally different result.

 

So, it seems now it's simply too late. Extended Pokey features got discovered & analyzed too late, and no chance to turn back time. But, I believe when we got the right pokey tracker 30 years ago, there would be far more variety in pokey tunes, possibly used in games. And that's my point, it's not totally pokey's fault when pokey tunes all nearly sound the same. There was no decent documentation. Generating pulse waveforms on pokey isn't explained anywhere in any book or official document. However, it is very easy to do, in terms of used CPU-instructions. Pokey was clearly designed for using the pulsewave feature. And this is only one example. Many more examples possible.

[Irgendwer]

...he's mad as a fcking snake.

 

Why will this guy NOT get banned?

 

Yes, why?

(Unless fcking snake in English is a compliment)

 

Yes - must be, also like:

 

that mate is a right load of bollocks.

 

or

 

are u being deliberately obtuse?

 

But we already have an explanation from PeteD for this behaviour:

 

All talent, no ego needed.

 

 

CU

Irgendwer

[snicklin]

Can anyone tell me what the best document there is out there with regards to Pokey? It would be interesting to experiment with.

 

I've played with RMT but nothing more than that...

[PeteD]

@analmux

 

Sorry if on a public forum I replied to a post targeted at someone else but I believe that in such a public forum anyone involved has the right to reply.

 

So, to reply to your post..

 

When I talk about SID and POKEY as I said in my post, I'm talking about the bog standard chip and it's KNOWN capabilities, not ones that happen by some freak of design such as combining two very high pitch notes and by the interference between them getting a different waveform. When I talk about flexibility I think anyone would agree that more waveforms = more flexibility. When I talk about reliability I'm talking about something that keeps being touted as a 4 channel music chip not being able to play in tune when used with 4 channels, something I think most musicians would find rather a problem.

 

POKEYs "features" are very well documented, POKEYs happenstance sounds created by odd mixtures of different notes isn't a "feature" so much as an accident. Remember I've been talking about the base chip and applying that to why people think most POKEY stuff sounds the same.

 

I've read some of the threads on here about PWM, triangle/Saw waves etc and to be honest they seem impractical and nowhere near as "flexible" as SID standards. I believe that's one of the reasons Raster refuses to include them in RMT.

 

Unfortunatly when you're talking about a 30 year old machine then yes, any new discoveries to make different waveforms IS too late.

 

Understand that I'm not knocking the POKEY, it does what it does and then some, just I can't agree that if you take it and SID as a "music" chip, the SID was and pretty much still is the superior design and there's nothing wrong with that, as we all know SID came later.

 

*edit*

I do see where you're coming from, that if someone had taken the time you have to analyse all possibilities of the chip it "would" be different but that's the problem emkay had, it's wishful thinking and the fact it didn't happen was due to it not really being designed to do all these things, whereas SID was, hence it being documented. There's hardly anything special about the SID docs back then (list of notes, bits to set for waveforms, adsr ms timings etc) and a lot of advances have been made on SID since, so do we turn back time and take THOSE into account also? How about talking the 8580 back in time so there were no filter problems and better waveforms? The discussion here is about what WAS done, when it was done and what was possible, hence the angle of the points in my posts.

 

 

@atariksi

 

No point with this reply really as it'll be ignored but what makes you think that YOU are the only one who knows about POKEY? Seemingly like you're the only one with all the knowledge about colours or how to get 8 colours per line and still have sprites free

 

I'll freely admit I don't have the advanced knowledge of all the little tricks and tweaks of someone like analmux but please don't belittle my skills and knowledge to the extent that you'll presume I don't know about the DACs etc. We're talking about music as played by the standard waveform stuff in this thread, Hubbard music and others in general. Music that needs to run in a game, not a sample/mod playing DAC thing that would eat CPU. Where does latency come into it? I suppose the speed of reading the joystick ports also effects the music routines?

 

 

It's sad that as soon as one of the A8 guys gets banned from a thread all this crap has to start again. If some people were honest they'd admit they really understand other people's point of view and what's been posted but you can tell straight away from the first posts by at least 2 guys in this thread that the bitter attitude towards "c64 freaks" or outsiders has to turn the thread into this again.

 

 

 

Pete

Edited February 22, 2010 by PeteD

[PeteD]

RE: mad a s fcking snake. You guys are clutching at straws. If Al or another mod wanted to ban for a post like that then they would have. When applied to a person (there was nobody actually mentioned) who invents some new world history so that the A8 and POKEY suddenly become the source of seemingly all SID music then it's actually true too. It's also no worse than posts I see by a lot of other people on here but crying foul to the mods is somewhat lame.

 

 

Pete

[PeteD]

Whoops! Sorry, keep thinking this is an L. Ron Hubbard thread... lol

<quietly exits>

 

It should be about that as C64 vs. A8 was already dealt with.

 

Keep taking the happy pills. I knew it was too quiet round here and that you were just waiting to start this all off again.

 

 

Pete

[Heaven/TQA]

just downloading 73mb SID from High Voltage... obviously I had all files on my PC but not on my Mac... and just have discoverd the SID player for iPhone but it needs to download each SID separatly...

[PeteD]

Mac sidplayer is a nice looking app. I use JSidplayer on PC, seeing the Mac one makes me want to code a new GUI because the Win ones are lacking some nice functionality.

 

*edit*

What you really need is this.

 

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=19157

 

lol

 

Pete

Edited February 22, 2010 by PeteD

[PeteD]

As an aside and/or a result of this thread I'd ask analmux and anyone else with deep knowledge of the inner workings of POKEY to start a new thread (maybe in the coding section) and post info on how all these new sounds work. I started to write my own player the other day and went on a hunt for info and all I could make out is the triangle stuff kind of works most of the time but takes 2 channels and might produce a rather annoying high pitched whine and the pwm wasn't very flexible. I'm perfectly willing to add anything anyone wants to my code whenever I'm working on it, doesn't matter if I agree it sounds ok or not, that's just my opinion but I'd rather code something that people wanted than watch people hacking stuff into RMT. It might also help with eventually getting a more accurate POKEY emulation.

 

 

Pete

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

I prefer SID-Emu (or SIDplay, SIDload) to playback SID sounds on the real A8 with the pokey chip

Alas, it only supports 8.3 filenames and with approx. 35,000 SID files from the High Voltage archive quite many SID sounds need to be renamed...

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

 

 

Mac sidplayer is a nice looking app. I use JSidplayer on PC, seeing the Mac one makes me want to code a new GUI because the Win ones are lacking some nice functionality.

 

*edit*

What you really need is this.

 

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=19157

 

lol

 

Pete

sid_emu.zip