Rob Hubbard on the Atari 8-Bit

[PeteD]

hehe not bad. Some stuff works ok, others not so much I was messing around with doing something like this myself the other day, looks like there's no need.

 

 

Pete

[Heaven/TQA]

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

 

I am using this player on iMac...

[Heaven/TQA]

hehe not bad. Some stuff works ok, others not so much I was messing around with doing something like this myself the other day, looks like there's no need.

 

 

Pete

 

Unfortunatly there is no real "music driver" available at least for us non-polish users. Not sure if sviety described how he has done the emulation...

[atariksi]

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.

 

He's WRONG regardless of how you interpret it. Also read your own post #44.

[atariksi]

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...

 

De Re Atari is a good start, but ignoring misinformation helps more. Best thing is to try out yourself on both platforms before getting involved with debates like I do. That way no can find any fault with you.

[PeteD]

Of course everyone is wrong apart from you know who.

 

 

Pete

[analmux]

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)...

 

So, if nobody was mentioned, then why keep writing things like this:

 

....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.

 

Seems like you're mentioning someone. I'm curious who. As I didn't see any, could you please point out who?

 

Talking about off-topic stuff, we could as well easily discuss someone sitting on the northpole, eating tons of peanuts.

[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.

 

Don't feel sorry, but, your answer is not the answer to my question. However, in the meantime, feel free to reply.

 

 

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.

 

OK, but I (also) didn't mention the sawtooth/triangle waves here. Just pulsewave is a standard feature, supported by standard actions of writing some values to pokey registers. However, no book mentions how to properly deal with this feature, and I wouldn't call this feature some 'freak of nature'.

 

 

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.

 

It is no problem to play 4 channel tunes on Pokey, which are not out-of-tune. I don't understand why you think so. And, I'm not talking about distortion C&E basses or something, as these are out-of-tune as hell, and IMHO sound like sh*t.

 

Anyway, what you are saying here still has nothing to do with a wide variety of kinds of instruments possible on pokey, which should result in a wide variety of styles of pokey-tunes.

 

 

POKEYs "features" are very well documented

 

Wow, OK, please give me a copy of these documents. These would really be helpful to me.

 

But seriously, f.e. 'high pass filter' is not the right name for one of pokey's features. However, it is called like this in EVERY official document about pokey. This just confuses the user. It is nothing like a high pass filter. In reality, it is the feature for pulse waveforms, and at the same time for ring modulation, or AM-synth.

 

 

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.

 

They seem impractical to YOU. Not to me. OK, I agree, we could call these 'freak' features, but frequency resolution is the only minus. Besides this, these features give more variations, resonances and sub- and super-harmonics than possible on SID. Let's say a larger continuum of possible waveforms, thus more flexibility. Sorry to say.

 

About Raster, he has his own reasons, and I DON'T believe these have anything to do with the ideas you're posting here. First, Raster made his RMT as a sparetime project, and that's why he already did a really good job. The next problem is writing a newer version of RMT supporting all this, but also staying compatible to the older RMT versions. So, Raster is not to blame for anything here.

Edited February 22, 2010 by analmux

[PeteD]

The reason why it's apt that nobody is was mentioned in that post is that everyone knew who he was talking about, maybe something to do with the contents of his posts being so insane. I don't think Ste was deliberately missing off the name as it was obvious who he meant.

 

I'm also talking about that same mad as a fcking snake person in my post, you know full well that I am.

 

If this is what these threads come down to then I'd be better never bothering getting involved but then that would just be what certain people want (they/you know who they are too, atariksi for one). Petty bickering gets us nowhere.

 

 

Pete

[PeteD]

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.

 

Don't feel sorry, but, your answer is not the answer to my question. However, in the meantime, feel free to reply.

 

 

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.

 

OK, but I (also) didn't mention the sawtooth/triangle waves here. Just pulsewave is a standard feature, supported by standard actions of writing some values to pokey registers. However, no book mentions how to properly deal with this feature, and I wouldn't call this feature some 'freak of nature'.

 

 

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.

 

It is no problem to play 4 channel tunes on Pokey, which are not out-of-tune. I don't understand why you think so. And, I'm not talking about distortion C&E basses or something, as these are out-of-tune as hell, and IMHO sound like sh*t.

 

Anyway, what you are saying here still has nothing to do with a wide variety of kinds of instruments possible on pokey, which should result in a wide variety of styles of pokey-tunes.

 

 

POKEYs "features" are very well documented

 

Wow, OK, please give me a copy of these documents. These would really be helpful to me.

 

But seriously, f.e. 'high pass filter' is not the right name for one of pokey's features. However, it is called like this in EVERY official document about pokey. This just confuses the user. It is nothing like a high pass filter. In reality, it is the feature for pulse waveforms, and at the same time for ring modulation, or AM-synth.

 

 

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.

 

They seem impractical to YOU. Not to me. OK, I agree, we could call these 'freak' features, but frequency resolution is the only minus. Besides this, these features give more variations, resonances and sub- and super-harmonics than possible on SID. Let's say a larger continuum of possible waveforms, thus more flexibility. Sorry to say.

 

About Raster, he has his own reasons, and I DON'T believe these have anything to do with the ideas you're posting here. First, Raster made his RMT as a sparetime project, and that's why he already did a really good job. The next problem is writing a newer version of RMT supporting all this, but also staying compatible to the older RMT versions. So, Raster is not to blame for anything here.

 

Firstly I'm not "blaming" raster, just saying that as far as I recall whilst looking through threads only recently he actually says he won't include them because he doesn't agree they're worth it.

 

As to the rest of your reply, you're seemingly taking the whole thing out of the context we're talking about again (re-read my posts rather than just reacting to them as you first see them) so I have no intention of wasting any more time. You know where decent docs for the standard pokey features are as well as pretty much everyone else does.

 

*edit*

Just for some "documentation" on POKEY http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue34/112_1_16-BIT_ATARI_MUSIC.php I find the images with tuning inaccuracies rather interesting.

 

Pete

Edited February 22, 2010 by PeteD

[snicklin]

De Re Atari is a good start, but ignoring misinformation helps more. Best thing is to try out yourself on both platforms before getting involved with debates like I do. That way no can find any fault with you.

 

Thanks for the pointer to the book, I've never really looked into De Re Atari before as Mapping the Atari has always been pretty good for the purposes I've needed it for. Yeah, I'll keep myself out of arguments, it's really not worth it.

Edited February 22, 2010 by snicklin

[PeteD]

hehe not bad. Some stuff works ok, others not so much I was messing around with doing something like this myself the other day, looks like there's no need.

 

 

Pete

 

Unfortunatly there is no real "music driver" available at least for us non-polish users. Not sure if sviety described how he has done the emulation...

 

The way I'd started to do it was re-vector the writes to the SID registers (d400 onwards) to somewhere safe in A8 ram then call the SID player routine. That leaves you with a table of all the info on what SID is supposed to be doing. You can then take stuff like the ADSR and convert those to channel volume changes/time, the waveform register you can at least get noise and square right then fudge the others (square again), tricks like ring mod etc can be done in software to some extent. The bit I was working on last was taking the SID 16bit frequencies and turning them into POKEY ones somehow. It was working to some extent having a table matching the high byte of the SID frequency but that alone obviously won't work due to the range/accuracy difference.

 

 

Pete

[analmux]

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'm sorry, nothing personal, but I already decided it is a waste of time -for me, as a person- to write any official documentation about Pokey's full features, properties and inner workings. I know what I know. I created my own pokey documents for private use. To translate these, and make them understandable takes too much time, and I didn't see much people here being enthousiastic about it. As I'm in some financial crisis at the moment, I'd say, give me $3000 and I'll do it

[PeteD]

Just to finalise my meanings from the posts I've made so far so I don't have to keep going round in circles with each now guy taking them out of context.

 

I'm talking about what the chips were designed for, how they WERE utilised based on those designs NOT on what's been found out in the past few years. The discussion had gone from Hubbard to why most pokey stuff sounds or rather sounded the same. The main reason for this (as you rightly say) is nobody knew what you do now BUT that's the whole point. It doesn't matter how easy it is to do approximations of various things on POKEY now, it's what was available to the musician at the time. As I've requested, instead of telling me how easy all these new POKEY sounds are, show me code, show me downfalls/problems then I'll happily include them in my stuff but it'll also give people the opportunity to see for themselves this POKEY "black magic"

 

 

After just reading analmux's last post while typing this one, I'd ask for ANY code or docs in whatever format from anyone (even if you're under the impression I dislike you). And I know what you're going through with a financial crisis, I've got to sell my house somewhat sooner than I'd expected (ie, months rather than 5 or so years)

 

 

Pete

[PeteD]

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.

 

Don't feel sorry, but, your answer is not the answer to my question. However, in the meantime, feel free to reply.

 

 

 

Just to come back to this one. Are you implying I'm also registered as oky2000? If so please contact Albert immediately as he frowns upon such things!!

 

 

Pete

[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.

 

He's WRONG regardless of how you interpret it.

 

It's nothing at all to do with interpretation on my part, the original post very clearly says "SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff." and your response wasn't related to that point - i was merely pointing out your straw man argument.

[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.

 

Don't feel sorry, but, your answer is not the answer to my question. However, in the meantime, feel free to reply.

 

 

 

Just to come back to this one. Are you implying I'm also registered as oky2000? If so please contact Albert immediately as he frowns upon such things!!

 

 

Pete

 

It's no problem having 2 accounts when you're one of the heroes of the past

[PeteD]

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.

 

Don't feel sorry, but, your answer is not the answer to my question. However, in the meantime, feel free to reply.

 

 

 

Just to come back to this one. Are you implying I'm also registered as oky2000? If so please contact Albert immediately as he frowns upon such things!!

 

 

Pete

 

It's no problem having 2 accounts when you're one of the heroes of the past

 

Cool, I'll remember that if I ever feel the need to register under a different name

 

 

Pete

[analmux]

Come on, now don't pretend you didn't know that already.

[PeteD]

Come on, now don't pretend you didn't know that already.

 

Well, I know a certain someone sometimes classed as a past hero had more than one account, they're now banned and quite happy about it. I also know that frenchman tried it and got banned. If you're still implying I've got more than one account then I'd ask you to please do something about it, a good banning would save me a fair amount of misery

 

 

Pete

[analmux]

In my eyes you're a grown-up and honest man, so I assume you are able to solve it yourself. Anyway, it's not my job to find people with 2 accounts. You could have a good reason for it.

[PeteD]

In my eyes you're a grown-up and honest man, so I assume you are able to solve it yourself. Anyway, it's not my job to find people with 2 accounts. You could have a good reason for it.

 

WTF is that crap supposed to mean?

 

Really now. I'll ask for the last time, if you think I have, ask Al, if you're talking about someone else, make yourself clear. What your post sounds like is you thought I had, you tried to report me, you were told you were wrong and you post that crap.

 

Please, if you haven't already done so, PM Al, ask him to verify what you say then to post here cuz I'm getting sick of this.

 

*edit*

I'll tell you what, I'll do it for you as "it's not your job"

 

 

Pete

Edited February 23, 2010 by PeteD

[atariksi]

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.

 

He's WRONG regardless of how you interpret it.

 

It's nothing at all to do with interpretation on my part, the original post very clearly says "SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff." and your response wasn't related to that point - i was merely pointing out your straw man argument.

 

First of all you yourself are stating there's differences so let him reply for himself as to what he meant. You are not HIM but a hypocrite as you contradicted yourself in order to support him.

 

There's two ways to look at it:

 

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

 

If means the same music, then the problem is incompatibility. If it's different music, then it's still wrong as POKEY also sounds different for different music. QED. Take your rubbish elsewhere.

[PeteD]

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.

 

He's WRONG regardless of how you interpret it.

 

It's nothing at all to do with interpretation on my part, the original post very clearly says "SID music sounds different between composers unlike with Pokey stuff." and your response wasn't related to that point - i was merely pointing out your straw man argument.

 

First of all you yourself are stating there's differences so let him reply for himself as to what he meant. You are not HIM but a hypocrite as you contradicted yourself in order to support him.

 

There's two ways to look at it:

 

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

 

If means the same music, then the problem is incompatibility. If it's different music, then it's still wrong as POKEY also sounds different for different music. QED. Take your rubbish elsewhere.

 

You've really lost the plot with this one. Normally at least some part of what you say makes sense but this is just ramblings designed to fuel your need to argue. Oh wait, I forgot, for some reason rambling is offensive

 

 

Pete

[atariksi]

De Re Atari is a good start, but ignoring misinformation helps more. Best thing is to try out yourself on both platforms before getting involved with debates like I do. That way no can find any fault with you.

 

Thanks for the pointer to the book, I've never really looked into De Re Atari before as Mapping the Atari has always been pretty good for the purposes I've needed it for. Yeah, I'll keep myself out of arguments, it's really not worth it.

 

Here's a link although probably better to get a hard copy from Ebay:

 

http://www.runtime.demon.co.uk/Systems/Atari/Books/DeReAtari/Chapter7.html

 

Some quotes from it (to promote that chapter):

 

"The computer's use of distortion offers great versatility and controllability. It is easy to synthesize of an almost endless variety of sounds, from rumbles, rattles, and squawks to clicks, whispers, and mood setting background tempos."

 

And he seems to follow my philosophy about no randomness:

 

"These poly-counters are not truly random because they repeat their bit sequence after a certain span of time. As you might suspect, their repetition rate depends upon the number of bits in the poly-counter; i.e., the longer ones require many cycles before they repeat, while the shorter ones repeat more often. "