On July 10, 2014 10:59:17 AM Fede wrote: > Hi all, > > > I have a question on a topic not frequently addressed here, but why not just > asking? > > Do any of you run some old sound blaster/adlib/gravis ultrasound card? I > mean the ones with chip synthesizers. > > Just started reading a lot about the commodore 64's SID and just found out > lot of my childhood's games actually run the audio on actual synths, which > freaked me out totally. Probably because there was no way to produce sample driven audio from SID. Actually, that's not entirely true: Later in this thread I think Len refers to the General Instrument AY-3-8910. Ironically both the Commodore SID and the AY-3-8910 *can* produce sampled audio, the SID in two different ways: 1) Use the SID's 12-bit Pulse Width Modulators to produce PWM audio. Drawback: Maximum operating frequency is around 3Khz, which gets into the audio, so you need a low-pass filter down there. 2) Use the SID's or the AY-3-8910's Volume registers to produce sampled audio. (Set the SID oscillators for 'DC' - the highest f number, or the GI's volume mode to a 'DC' envelope.) Drawback - it's only 4-bit audio samples. > > It would be nice to have any kind of synth chip running as a hardware > synthesizer on a linux computer, really. In my country, the only PCI card > with an OPL compatible chip is the YMF744b, which seems to be supported by > ALSA. Getting that would mean starting to search for methods to create .o3 > (instrument patches) files to be loaded to the card, for which there seems > to be no dedicated native linux software. Maybe through DOSbox? > > Anyway. These are still just ideas, because the topic is very vast; there > are lots of different sound chips, and I'm even considering getting a c64 > to use it as a sort of assembler csound, if that makes sense. > > People familiar to the demoscene are aware of these kind of devices' > powerfulness, but most of that that I've witnessed is tempered scale based > and traditionaly rhythmically structured (and they really rock it that > way), but it would be interesting (to me, anyway) to experiment creating > sound textures and evolving timbres on these sort of hybrid soft-hard > synths. *I might be missing lots of important details on the subject* As Len mentions later, as far as the actual desired sound produced, virtually any sound and envelope and filtering you could ever want can be done 'softly' these days - take a look at the open source xsynth or zynaddsubfx, they are very 'analog-like'. However, I think it's great that people today still want to dig in and learn hardware register level programming, even retro style. Programming sound chips in those days was a total riot - F.U.N. There's the question of what you are interfacing these chips to. Embedded MPU? PIC chip etc? Or PC driven? For experimenting these days you'll probably need something like a USB kit like a Velmann kit. Of course you can stick with the original computer like the C64. Even interface an IBM to it, so the C64 acts as a command-driven 'sound server'. F.U.N. Tim. > > So, do you people have any way to enlighten me on this? Any thoughts or > ideas? > > Thanks a lot, really. > > Fede > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-audio-user mailing list > Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
