[Ann] ColdSnap Audio

Requests for features
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aowen
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Posts: 39
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:52 am

[Ann] ColdSnap Audio

Post by aowen »

As part of the ZXodus][Engine I've developed a generic Z80/AY library based on Sergey Bulba's ProTracker 3.6 player from Vortex Tracker II. If anyone cares to do a z88dk port I'd be happy to share the code with that individual for the purposes of creating a z88dk version, although I'd prefer not to publish the assembly language version (for reasons relating to the ZXodus][Engine licensing).

Currently supported hardware:

Amstrad CPC
MSX
Pentagon
Sinclair ZX81 / Timex TS1000
* ACE
* Fuller
* Zon-X / ZXpand-AY
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
* Fuller / DK'Tronics
* Melodik
* Zon-X
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 / +2 / +3 / +2B
Timex TC2068
Timex TS2068

Unlike other derivatives of the Vortex player, ColdSnap Audio uses pre-generated tables specific to the target platform. In particular, the note tables are calculated from the most accurate frequency values available. This does mean that some ornaments in existing tunes will sound wrong (and only version 3.6 format tunes are supported), but it also means that any tunes created specifically for ColdSnap Audio will sound the same on any of the target platforms. The player itself is considerably smaller (around 1800 bytes depending on the chosen hardware) and uses headerless .PT3 files (remove the first 100 bytes).
alvin
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Posts: 1872
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:39 pm

Post by alvin »

I will take a look at it.

There are other things we are looking at too -- AYFX for sound effects, wyz tracker because I hear it can play well with sound effects and how to instantiate hardware in the i/o space so that there may be more than one AY chip served by the same code. There's probably room for a variety of players just like in the 1-bit case.
aowen
Member
Posts: 39
Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:52 am

Post by aowen »

alvin wrote:I will take a look at it.

There are other things we are looking at too -- AYFX for sound effects, wyz tracker because I hear it can play well with sound effects and how to instantiate hardware in the i/o space so that there may be more than one AY chip served by the same code. There's probably room for a variety of players just like in the 1-bit case.
For my own project I'm using BeepFX to do the sound effects without needing to touch the AY. Of course on some machines, the AY is the only sound they have. If you're looking at other trackers, Arkos is probably as full featured as Vortex and is also multi-platform. http://www.julien-nevo.com/arkos/

I'll email you the ColdSnap Audio package.
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