Let's nerd-talk prepping samples for Protracker
category: music [glöplog]
https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_openmpt54 is what I'm using (has Amiga resampler built in)
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Does the noise matter when its playing in the background as its supposed to do?
Indeed, it didn't matter when the bass was in the background but this very tune starts with the bass playing solo. Which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do and it brings me back to the concept of starting the composing part in the target bitrate as soon as possible (so I wouldn't come up with such a bad ideas in the first place) :-)
Anyway, I'm done with this tune, it didn't sound very good at the compo but scored higher than I had expected (best of seven), I can't really complain :-) but I'll totally revisit this thread in 1-2 months. Thanks to everyone for good advices.
ok, my pro-tips.
1. do all your prep in 44khz 16/24 bit. once you go 8-bit, you can't go back
2. keep your source samples
3. make it loud, squash it, eq it
4. never use notes A#3 or B-3, the amiga DMA doesn't play these two notes very well
5. if you don't use ProTracker in winuae, on the real deal or in the clone, make sure you test it.
6. lower your expectations
7. if you're making music for a demo, REALLY lower you expectations cuz you're gonna run out of memory
8. stop fretting about sample quality, just get on and make some music
1. do all your prep in 44khz 16/24 bit. once you go 8-bit, you can't go back
2. keep your source samples
3. make it loud, squash it, eq it
4. never use notes A#3 or B-3, the amiga DMA doesn't play these two notes very well
5. if you don't use ProTracker in winuae, on the real deal or in the clone, make sure you test it.
6. lower your expectations
7. if you're making music for a demo, REALLY lower you expectations cuz you're gonna run out of memory
8. stop fretting about sample quality, just get on and make some music
Yeah, what h0ffman said, basically. The 8 bit noise goes down with the volume so make the samples loud af and then turn them down in the module.
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4. never use notes A#3 or B-3, the amiga DMA doesn't play these two notes very well
the fuck
what nagz said. lol
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7. if you're making music for a demo, REALLY lower you expectations cuz you're gonna run out of memory
As an A500 demo coder I approve of this message.
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the fuck
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Quote:4. never use notes A#3 or B-3, the amiga DMA doesn't play these two notes very well
the fuck
yep! last two notes. I mean, they work but they don't sound great. With everything else running, bitplanes, copper, CPU etc., it misses DMA slots and starts sounding grainy. Not sure if this behaviour is emulated in WinUAE. It's defo NOT emulated in the PT clone.
Fire up ProTracker on an real Amiga, load a sample and check how it sounds on those last two notes and you'll see why I said don't use them.
B-3. Cool for weird sfx :) :)
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yep! last two notes. I mean, they work but they don't sound great. With everything else running, bitplanes, copper, CPU etc., it misses DMA slots and starts sounding grainy.
Will this interfere with other stuff going on (meaning demo code), or can you safely use it as an effect without fucking up the graphics routines?
These are 2 highest notes right? Yeah there are dropouts. When theres need to go that high its better to create new transposed octave up sample and play octave lower.
secret work around: volume=00 shhh
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Quote:yep! last two notes. I mean, they work but they don't sound great. With everything else running, bitplanes, copper, CPU etc., it misses DMA slots and starts sounding grainy.
Will this interfere with other stuff going on (meaning demo code), or can you safely use it as an effect without fucking up the graphics routines?
It's not reliable enough to use as an actual effect but it's safe.
ok I see a lot of people are Amiga & PT noobz 8)
props to h0ffman for the explanation, I was about to say about those notes.
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAMqgxRkRr0 :D
X. think hard if you really need that pad stealing a whole channel to itself? :D
props to h0ffman for the explanation, I was about to say about those notes.
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAMqgxRkRr0 :D
X. think hard if you really need that pad stealing a whole channel to itself? :D
if you prep your root key right you can at least use the top two notes as wails in solos, has a very basic ringmod effect to it on a lead. I do remember doing that once or twice back in the day.
A#3+B-3 == Amiga glitchcore.
BTW it's not only PT, I was using mostly (Octa)MED and the glitch is there too.
Milkytracker will or at least can warn you about those notes.
So I challenged myself to write a track with similar limitations as on an Amiga 500.
Sample memory used: ~350 kB (could be optimized to 200..250k)
To make this sound a bit more pleasant and approximate my mid nineties Amiga-based sound setup, the usually hard-panned L/R/R/L channels were joint 50%, a tiny bit of reverb was added (to approximate my old SX-700 reverb), and the stereo was run through Satin (to approximate the cassette tape deck I used for recording back in the days).
There's nothing an Amiga couldn't handle, it's just volume+pitch+loop point modulation (it would sound a tad different on the real thing, of course).
Dunno if I'll bother to write a new replayer for this. Probably not. It was a fun experiment, though.
Here's the track: 4ch_8bit_amiga_techno_challenge-20Jun2019_320kbps (8:34 min, downloadable)
- 4 mono channels
- 8bit sample depth
- ~20 kHz sample rate
Sample memory used: ~350 kB (could be optimized to 200..250k)
To make this sound a bit more pleasant and approximate my mid nineties Amiga-based sound setup, the usually hard-panned L/R/R/L channels were joint 50%, a tiny bit of reverb was added (to approximate my old SX-700 reverb), and the stereo was run through Satin (to approximate the cassette tape deck I used for recording back in the days).
There's nothing an Amiga couldn't handle, it's just volume+pitch+loop point modulation (it would sound a tad different on the real thing, of course).
Dunno if I'll bother to write a new replayer for this. Probably not. It was a fun experiment, though.
Here's the track: 4ch_8bit_amiga_techno_challenge-20Jun2019_320kbps (8:34 min, downloadable)
@bsp: done. Thx for reminding me about fibonacci.
...and if you use OpenMPT: it’s amazing, but doesn’t sound as Protracker replay does sometimes. So crosscheck.
...and when it doesn't, shoot me a bug report at the OpenMPT issue tracker ;)
if you desire to emulate 8-bit 22khz (or lesser) sound in any daw that supports vst, i recommend you put R-Sample Factor as the final plugin in the master channel, adjust bit and sample rate (no smoothing) and there you go: thats about what you will get when you convert your samples. typically, for memory consumption reasons, you will probably go more towards the 11khz range, but as a simulation, it'll do just fine. and make sure every note you play on a channel is entirely monophonic (unless you want to sample full chords or layer stuff)
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yep! last two notes. I mean, they work but they don't sound great. With everything else running, bitplanes, copper, CPU etc., it misses DMA slots and starts sounding grainy. Not sure if this behaviour is emulated in WinUAE. It's defo NOT emulated in the PT clone.
Yeah, I don't know how to simulate this in a sensible way, really, but I have thought about it earlier.
Regarding the DMA underrun: Basically, rates higher than 28836Hz (A-3 finetune +5 in ProTracker) are not guaranteed to play right. The very first channel can do slightly higher rates (~30-31kHz or so), then it goes down from there. Last channel can not do higher than 28836Hz, so that is the highest safe frequency. This may sound absurd, but try it on a real Amiga and see. It's quite WTF indeed. :-)
