New Oric Music Tracker AYT (Supersedes Audio Tracker)

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Twilighte
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New Oric Music Tracker AYT (Supersedes Audio Tracker)

Post by Twilighte »

AYT is a new Music Tracker for the Oric Atmos with Disk Drive. It is currently in Beta release. All Downloads, Manuals and Tutorials can be found from the main wiki stub below.

http://wiki.defence-force.org/doku.php?id=oric:ayt:main

AYT is an 8 Track Tracker(Initially written as the music editor of choice for the Wurlde game), and is much more powerful than Audio Tracker.
It requires no special hardware, just the humble Oric Atmos and DD.

It supersedes AudioTracker which won't be taken any further now. Sorry for that. :(
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Post by waskol »

I was thinking...
It would be very helpfull to develop a "cross-developpment" tracker under Windows that you could use alongside with the OSDK.
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Post by Twilighte »

I was about to complain that this should be raised in a separate topic but the idea has been raised more than once.

Currently i know of only one tracker that does this for the AY. Vortex Tracker for windows. Unfortunately the format is overlly complex and i found it nye impossible to implement on the Oric. :(
This is a great shame because there are literally thousands of fantastic tunes already in Vortex Tracker format.

There are also a few YM trackers out there, composing tunes for eventual use on the Atari ST computers.
And plenty of SID trackers.

But i do like the idea of a cross platform open source AY Tracker development. I could provide music formats and an Oric player but the editor code and sound rendering engine would need to be done by someone else. :P
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Post by waskol »

And ideally, what format would you need ?
What makes Vortex too complex to use in your Opinion ?

May be could it be possible to create directly an oric memory block (to put on a dsk or a tap file) that could be play like a snap, I don't know ?
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Post by Twilighte »

waskol wrote:And ideally, what format would you need ?
I would always go for a Tracker environment myself but i know others prefer Staves. For tracker (at least) i would observe the age old List, Patterns and Effects because this is the bulk standard structure.
As for format i would be inclined to borrow elements of Vortex tracker since it drives the same AY sound chip.
I can provide a more detailed format, but am still working on the next version of AYT so a little busy at the moment :P
waskol wrote:What makes Vortex too complex to use in your Opinion ?
The number one problem with Vortex is that there is little documentation in English. Vortex is a Russian music Editor intended for the ZX Spectrum and its eastern european and Russian clones.
The other problem is that what docs do exist in English are not descriptive enough to fully understand and ultimately implement into a 6502 Player (Spectrum sources are all in Z80) :(
waskol wrote:May be could it be possible to create directly an oric memory block (to put on a dsk or a tap file) that could be play like a snap, I don't know ?
Well this technique sounds extremely basic and has been done with some success. Dbug wrote an encoder and player that dumped the ay registers to a file then picked them up and dumped them into the ay. However this format is quite inefficient and a little memory consuming. Dbug will hopefully react to this thread and reply himself :P
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Post by Dbug »

Something worth mentionning about Vortex Tracker, is that the source code is available, and it is written in Delphi.

I seem to remember that Waskol knows Delphi, so perhaps he could help implementing a custom load/save format which is Oric friendly ?
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Post by waskol »

Dbug wrote:Something worth mentionning about Vortex Tracker, is that the source code is available, and it is written in Delphi.

I seem to remember that Waskol knows Delphi, so perhaps he could help implementing a custom load/save format which is Oric friendly ?
yep,starting from their source code, it could be possible :wink:
I just need to get some specs.
ANyway, I promise to have a look to everything there and give you my feedback, what I discovered, what is of interest, etc...

Edit : its source code compiles for Vista on my Delphi :)
Last edited by waskol on Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Chema »

Don't want to get too off topic, so I'll start saying I have been playing with AYT over 10 minutes and it is VERY NICE indeed. Seems quite easy to use, such as AT was.

I only hope this time it is finished and we could get the compiler working so we can use it in our Elite Clone. Talking about this it will be very nice to be able to export is as asm source (maybe with a PRINT function? inside the program). I also hope the result is as easy to handle as it was the music for Space:1999 from the source code.

On the Windows-based tracker, I am really for it. If Twilighte finds it difficult to adapt Vortex, I can imagine it should be a nightmare, but it will be a really rocking solution. Moreover if it can generate asm as I stated before. On the other hand I am, of course, biased, but I will prefer something easy to use, that could generate sfx and tunes to be used in programs (so compact and not CPU hungry) than something powerful but complex and fat. But that is my POV as a programmer :)

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Post by Dbug »

To me, the biggest advantage of having a windows player is mostly that I could ask some musicians to do some compositions for us. Jonathan is the only active Oric music perso, it's kind of hard to get other people to help if they have to use native Oric software, specially considering how in general the emulators troubles have output sound correctly without too much latency.
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Post by Twilighte »

Chema wrote:Don't want to get too off topic, so I'll start saying I have been playing with AYT over 10 minutes and it is VERY NICE indeed. Seems quite easy to use, such as AT was.
Thankyou, it is much appreciated when i hear people say this. btw, your cheque is in the post :P
Admittedly it isn't quite as easy as AT but what it offers over AT is much more attractive imho :)
Chema wrote:I only hope this time it is finished and we could get the compiler working so we can use it in our Elite Clone.
The compiler is currently being written. AYT has been packaged with everything on board (bar SID and Digidrums from original spec) so is a bit cpu hogging (Tests show irq uses a maximum of around 3K cycles). However a song need not use some of the higher cpu intensive bits like higher resolutions and 200Hz SFX. Also a whole load of optimisations can be done if cpu is required over memory use.
In fact the music compiler has already been coded and compiled but not tested yet. This compiles the music into a relative format so that it may be relocated anywhere in memory(conceivably $400-$FFFB).
The complicated bit is the player, since people will probably want this relocatable? which makes things a bit taxing.

Chema wrote:Talking about this it will be very nice to be able to export is as asm source (maybe with a PRINT function? inside the program).
Some of you may have noticed the disabled Print option in the File editor. That was originally intended for this, but i will add it as an external utility.
Chema wrote: I also hope the result is as easy to handle as it was the music for Space:1999 from the source code.
The SFX formats are almost identical to AT so inclusion into Game SFX should be very easy to implement.
Chema wrote:On the Windows-based tracker, I am really for it. If Twilighte finds it difficult to adapt Vortex, I can imagine it should be a nightmare, but it will be a really rocking solution.
Well i guess i may have overrun a bit there. I tried writing a player a couple of years ago but failed, mainly because the information about the PT3 format is scattered and what there is is either in Russian or unintelligable English (Sorry Bulba).
PT3 (as far as i know) is ProTracker 3 but for the Spectrum, not the old MOD/XM Protracker 3 format for the PC.

Chema wrote:Moreover if it can generate asm as I stated before. On the other hand I am, of course, biased, but I will prefer something easy to use, that could generate sfx and tunes to be used in programs (so compact and not CPU hungry) than something powerful but complex and fat. But that is my POV as a programmer
I personally think AYT is much better for SFX generation even though its format is similar to Vortex. AYT's SFX are programmable, with conditional branching, unlike Vortex sequential Effects.
Vortex would be much better than AYT for the production of music from someone like Baggio or other non-oricians. Vortex fortunately permits its AY to be changed to be compatible to other systems, like CPC or Atari.

But i definately agree that having a Vortex Player would be invaluable on the Oric. I know they got it working on the CPC. Although Z80, the CPC does run at 1Mhz like the Oric.
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Post by waskol »

And if... ha, it sounds crazy, but... if AYT was ported to the windows environment ?

Do you have the sources of your tracker ? Is it pure asm, or mainly in C for OSDK ? or Basic ?
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Post by Twilighte »

AYT is in asm (XA). No C at all, sorry dudes. i always program everything directly in asm nowadays, pre 1995 was doing half basic, but not since Symoon found me a way to access sedoric through mc.

I can provide all sources and formats as you want.
I can also provide designs for a windows based tracker, which would be taking the best things of other windows trackers :P
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Post by waskol »

Twilighte wrote: I can provide all sources and formats as you want.
Yes I do want !
Twilighte wrote: I can also provide designs for a windows based tracker, which would be taking the best things of other windows trackers :P
ho man, provide !
wilfrid[dot]avrillon[AT]gmail.com :P
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Post by Chema »

Twilighte wrote: But i definately agree that having a Vortex Player would be invaluable on the Oric. I know they got it working on the CPC. Although Z80, the CPC does run at 1Mhz like the Oric.
I was thinking... well maybe something totally stupid (forgive my lack of knowledge about this topic). The Vortex Tracker program seems to be able to save in text format. In this format everything seems quite much more readable (to the extent this things can be readable). For instance a sample is saved as:

Code: Select all

[Sample5]
TNE +000_ +00_ D_
TNE +000_ +00_ 9_
TNE +000_ +00_ 5_
TNE +000_ +00_ 3_
TNE +000_ +00_ 1_
TnE +000_ +00_ 0_
TnE +000_ +00_ 0_
...
TnE +000_ +00_ 0_
TnE +000_ +00_ 0_
tne +000_ +00_ 0_ L
Which is a complete mystery to me, but it is the same notation used by the program when defining a sample, so it should be documented :?: The last L seems to indicate the end of the sample.

The rest is similar, so that the saved data seems equal to what you see on the screen:

Code: Select all

[Pattern2]
..30|..|C-4 DF.. ....|E-2 7E.. ....|E-5 2F4. ....
..18|..|C-4 A... ....|E-3 .E.. ....|E-5 .... ....
...C|..|E-5 B... ....|E-4 .E.. ....|--- .... ....
..30|..|C-4 A... ....|E-2 .E.. ....|E-5 .... ....
Could it be possible to write a program (for PC, I mean) that takes this input and "compile" it in a format that is readable by an Oric player? This way we could have a player in asm sources. Add the output file (also a source in .byt format, for instance, whith some labels) and use XA to create an Oric executable which will load and play the tune.

Anyway, back to AYT...
The complicated bit is the player, since people will probably want this relocatable? which makes things a bit taxing.
Well not really. If I can have it as asm sources with labels, I can compile it along with the whole project, so no need of relocatable code.

Cheers.
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Post by waskol »

Chema wrote: Could it be possible to write a program (for PC, I mean) that takes this input and "compile" it in a format that is readable by an Oric player? This way we could have a player in asm sources. Add the output file (also a source in .byt format, for instance, whith some labels) and use XA to create an Oric executable which will load and play the tune.
Sorry to be so dumb :roll:
- Which input ? the vortex sample or the "screenshot" ?
- I even wonder if it is possible to take the input file and create directly the Oric exe !
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