Posted By
MMS
on 2014-11-30
16:08:07
 |  Re: Trackers ?
Hi,
Well, I like the MOD and SID music since I am 16, and the Chip music since I am 20 or so. I had cassettes fully loaded with Amiga and c64 pure awesomeness. So, it is really hard to break a >20 years old habit 
And Moog is full analog too..
Benefits: You have no real limitation on the waveform and need no complex circuitry or complex player routine (like SID) to have a special sound with filters, etc. Certainly there COULD be some other limiations, how you can manage transient from one sound to the other.
Although FM synthesis really needs no real memory, I had some ridicoulously small .MOD chip tunes, had very special sounds, and only took 30-50KB. OK, still too big for 64KB, but they wrote for 16bit computers (not fully optimized for size), so you may get the point.
From sound wise chip digi music it does NOT differs soooo much from the SID music, but you NOT required to emulate the way how SID works inside, and you may use the extra CPU power to have a fourth music channle for eg. drums. But according to my view, the SID digi-player was a fantastic achievement.
Yes, the SID Card (I have one too) has the 8bit port, but I am not sure, if it could be called Covox? It was used to digitize sound with the Disney sound device, but I am not aware of the opposite. rockmonitor and the others used the 4bit volume change method, so I have doubts, if the SID 8bit is so easily reachable? As an input, I agree. as an output, I have doubts, but maybe you are right.
The Covox via the ACIA is an easy and straighforward stuff. You just send the 8bit data to User port (sorry, C16, C116), and theouter 8bit DA IC will do the rest. The complexity of such a board is zero. You can make it (with a not precise) resistor ladder too, but the TI Ics do a better job. Sound is great, but you are right, you need a proper sample rate. I do not expect 16 channel of 16 bit samples to be played, but 4 time 8 bit one.
Well, Trackers exists for ZX Spectrum, Atari XL (6502 based), Enterprise. I do not think that it would be a shame to have it here too.
Peace !
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/96/94
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