little sound demo

Want to discuss about Demos on the Oric, here you are !
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jbperin
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little sound demo

Post by jbperin »

Hi all,

Just a little demo to present the result of my recent works on the topic of high quality sound sample replaying on Oric.

I wanted to see what was the "best" sound quality that could be reached on an Oric.

Dbug advised me to read this post on msx forum and I found that the idea of using Viterbi algorithm to encode sound was very good.

I have been very seduced by this approach which, IMHO, is the best approach to get a highest possible fidelity for sample replaying.

So I made a python version of the encoder and I coded a player for the Oric.

I selected a sample of a groove I like, I encoded it with the python script and I made it play on the Oric.

Here's what I came up with:
GROOVE.tap
(44.96 KiB) Downloaded 203 times
The sample start playing when the file is loaded and you can stop it by pressing any key.

I find it sounds good on a real Oric (not on an emulator) but I don't think this viterbi technology is adapted to the Oric's capabilities because samples are hyper hyper heavy in memory.

This 3.6 second sample at 4Khz took something like 1 hour of calculation for its encoding and use 40kb in memory.

So I give up this technology.

For more information on this demo refer to this thread.
Last edited by jbperin on Thu Aug 12, 2021 2:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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jbperin
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Re: little sound demo

Post by jbperin »

Welcome from barbarian 2 :
WELCOME.tap
(24.6 KiB) Downloaded 207 times
One Small Step for Man :
ONESTEP.tap
(29.89 KiB) Downloaded 194 times
The Large Memory that Stays Large :
LARGMEM.tap
(29.99 KiB) Downloaded 203 times
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jbperin
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Re: little sound demo

Post by jbperin »

In my opinion, sample must be reserved for spoken word or accurate instrument sound rather than for mucic, because music can be far better rendered with AY sound instead of PCM replaying.

Moreover, it is possible to make music with native PSG sound system (noise+envelop+volume+..) but is not possible to make the PSG speak without using PCM.

However, for the sake of analysing the sound dynamic in bass and medium, music turns out to be a more convenient tool.

So I take benefit of this statement to post this little funky loop :

SuperFreak
FREAK.tap
(44.94 KiB) Downloaded 194 times
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Steve M
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Steve M »

They don't sound too bad on the emulator. Things do tend to sound better on the real Oric.
Twi used to make sample 4bit instead of 8bit which squashed them down in size but the sound does become a bit more distorted.

Soundtracker used little short samples so you could have a few different sound to play a tune. But they were so short it was limited in what it could do. I think Soundtracker has a utility to convert samples to the 4bit format.

Denis Bonfield designed a sampler for the Oric. I have a picture of the circuit board somewhere. I think details were printed in OUM but they only printed one side of the circuit board.

The samples we used for Rhetoric disks were done by Stephen Meachen. I have a disk of samples from The Mask which were used. The ones with Twilighte's loader were reduced down to 4bit but the rest weren't.

The most impressive sample I heard on the Oric is of Warhawk.
I have a disk with it on if you haven't heard it.
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Dbug »

Steve M wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 9:24 pm The most impressive sample I heard on the Oric is of Warhawk.
I have a disk with it on if you haven't heard it.
Never heard it, if you have the disk, please share!

Actually, if you have plenty of music disks or other demos like that, would be interesting :)
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Re: little sound demo

Post by jbperin »

Steve M wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 9:24 pm The most impressive sample I heard on the Oric is of Warhawk.
It sounds very good indeed but I think it is chiptune rather than sample.

I've never known Twilighte but it seems to me that he had worked on both capabilities of the AY PSG. The little demo I published here relate to the sample approach .. while the tune you're talking about is more likely to be a chiptune such as what we can have with YM or PT3 players.
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Steve M »

The Warhawk video is Commodore version. I thought the Oric one was sampled but I may be confusing it with other music I have on the same disk.
Playing it again it sound like soundchip so maybe it's a port? (It's called Hubbard on the disk.) Sorry for misremembering !

The other tune that is sampled is M. Man - which was either Music Man or Micro Man, I forget which. I think this is what I am confusing with Warhawk
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FRENCHp2.DSK
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Steve M »

I think the disk of samples that Twi had are out there. They were available from his website.
They should have samples from Monty Python, Star Trek etc.

I think there are 2 disks. The first works but the second has errors in the loader prog (DEMO.) It's not too hard to debug it.

The One with the Mask samples is the same type, so I think were by Stephen Meachen.
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SFXMASK.DSK
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Dbug »

Interesting, if you start the Hubbard one and type LIST you get that:

Code: Select all

CALL#1000: ' BY TIVOLI PIRAT
Who the heck is this person :D

Would be interesting to compare the music with the Atari ST versions of this music, which exists in at least two versions: One from the B.I.G. Demo by "The Exceptions" and the actual version from Hubbard (he only made a couple of musics on the ST).
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Symoon »

Thanks for the Warhawk link!
Interesting comments pointing the fact the Rob "borrowed" this one from John Keating - The Unknown Planet (1975).

I'm pretty sure a (chiptune indeed) version was available for Oric using some MYM player (blurry memory, that was long ago).
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Steve M »

The Atari ST version sounds different to me.

Tivoli Pirat was a hacker name, I think.

https://www.oric.org/software/rambo_music-1256.html

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1766&sid=0333005c8 ... 9a8e328f26
Last edited by Steve M on Tue Aug 17, 2021 10:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Steve M »

Here's the samples. https://twilighte.oric.org/twinew/start.htm
Click audio (on the left) and then Sample Batch files.


There's also the CanCan disk which always reminds me of Twi's sense of humour.
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CANCAN.DSK
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Steve M »

Here's the Circuit board image for the sampler.

Details can be found in OUM 91
https://library.defence-force.org/index ... ent_page=7
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Oric Sampler PCB Layout.jpg
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Re: little sound demo

Post by ibisum »

Wow this looks really cool .. but, it seems twi's site has a cert problem: https://twilighte.oric.org/twinew/start.htm
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Re: little sound demo

Post by Steve M »

It works if you proceed.
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