Making Tracker Music on RISC OS.
Martin Hansen
At the recent Wakefield show I released my !Flicker application which
plays animations with a soundtrack.
This soundtrack is a 'Tracker' file, and so my interest has turned to
how one might go about composing these on RISC OS.
On another platform, I've taken a look at MilkyTracker which is great
fun, has been ported to several platforms, and is the sort of thing I
have in mind.
So, first question: Has anyone ported MilkyTracker (or similar) to
RISC OS ?
I've had a look around and there was a very nice looking Tracker music
maker called Cononiser for the Archimedes and there is even a video of
it doing it's thing on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdz72vccF_8
So, second question: Did this ever get updated to work on the Risc PC /
Iyonix ?
In general, as I suspect that there is not a Tracker music maker that
is being maintained for RISC OS, I'm curious to know if there is any
source code to *ANY* of the old Tracker music makers available.
I'd be willing to try and rescue or update something that's currently
dead in the water, if that's the only option open to me - I don't
particularly mind if it's not multi-tasking or feature rich.
Starting from scratch would be a very big task...
I'm hoping that there is some source code somewhere, that I could pick
up and develop.
I suppose there is also the option of trying to port MilkyTracker to
RISC OS and I'd be willing to get involved with that, if anyone is
similarly keen.
Regards,
Martin.
David
ups.com>
Martin Hansen <m...@shrewsbury.org.uk> wrote:
> Dear all,
> At the recent Wakefield show I released my !Flicker application which
> plays animations with a soundtrack.
> This soundtrack is a 'Tracker' file, and so my interest has turned to
> how one might go about composing these on RISC OS.
> On another platform, I've taken a look at MilkyTracker which is great
> fun, has been ported to several platforms, and is the sort of thing I
> have in mind.
> So, first question: Has anyone ported MilkyTracker (or similar) to
> RISC OS ?
> http://www.milkytracker.net/
> I've had a look around and there was a very nice looking Tracker music
> maker called Cononiser for the Archimedes and there is even a video of
> it doing it's thing on You Tube:
Coconiser. It was super!
--
Dave Wisnia, Leeds, UK
Steffen Huber
> I've had a look around and there was a very nice looking Tracker music
> maker called Cononiser for the Archimedes and there is even a video of
> it doing it's thing on You Tube:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdz72vccF_8
>
> So, second question: Did this ever get updated to work on the Risc PC /
> Iyonix ?
It's Coconizer btw.
Not that I know of. Its authors, Eduard Pfaff and Thomas Albers (aka
Armaxxess), left the RISC OS scene quite some time ago, and I don't
think they made it open source.
Eduard's homepage is here:
http://www.epfarr.de/
Maybe you could just ask him?
I think the best tracker editor was Digital Symphony by Oregan,
IIRC written by (a member of) BASS - maybe you could ask John Tytgat for
details.
There was also !Tracker by The Serial Port IIRC, but this
one is really old. Hugo Fiennes has made some of his software
freely available, but not !Tracker.
I also seem to remember "Desktop Tracker" by IIRC Leading Edge.
Steffen
--
Steffen Huber
hubersn Software - http://www.hubersn-software.com/
Martin Hansen
> [Coconizer's] Its authors, Eduard Pfaff and Thomas Albers (aka
> Armaxxess), left the RISC OS scene quite some time ago, and I don't
> think they made it open source.
> Eduard's homepage is here:http://www.epfarr.de/
> Maybe you could just ask him?
OK - I've sent him an email.
Regards,
Martin.
Andrew Hodgkinson
> I think the best tracker editor was Digital Symphony by Oregan [...]
Meh. Any application that decides to implement its own window tools
mechanism on RISC OS needs its head examined :-)
> I also seem to remember "Desktop Tracker" by IIRC Leading Edge.
Correct - specifically, Jason Tribbeck. It could be a bit unstable but
had an awful lot of really, really nice features. For starters, it used
multiplexing to get up to 16 channels of audio out of the 8 channel 8-bit
sound system and supported up to 4 effects per note per channel.
People often said Digital Symphony was better than Desktop Tracker
because it offered more effects, but they missed the point! While DS had
to offer numerous combo effects due to its one effect per note limit
(which it had in common with the vast majority of other tracker editors,
of which it was little but a clone) DTT's genuinely innovative step
allowed it to combine four effects at any given time without losing any
precision in the effect parameters. The result was something of far, far
greater complexity and subtlety than Digital Symphony IMHO.
I did loads of tracker music on it (mostly 12-channel) back in the day,
but it didn't like StrongARM and in the long run I went to using proper
synths driven by MIDI. To that end I used MelIDI a fair bit with Cubase
for most mastering and mixing. These days I use Logic Studio on OS X.
If you managed to get hold of source code to either Digital Symphony or
Desktop Tracker it would be great, because both are capable packages.
Digital Symphony did have its own set of innovations such as the unusual
way it handled block sequencing within a wider composition and its Amiga
.MOD importer was superior initially (DTT's caught up later). Desktop
Tracker still stands out in my mind because I had never seen the multiple
effects per note scheme on other platforms, so it stood out as something
unique within the genre in a RISC OS application, at least at the time it
was released.
As a footnote, tracker-style composition environments still live on,
usually within wider more professional schemes with proper mixers and
bus(s)-based architectures. These allow much more complex arrangements of
effects and instruments through plugin environments like VST or AU.
Perhaps the best known is Renoise, which in addition to the usual
framework supports arbitrarily variable effects per note.
--
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
Find some electronic music at: Photos, wallpaper, software and more:
http://pond.org.uk/music.html http://pond.org.uk/
Vince M Hudd
> I've had a look around and there was a very nice looking Tracker music
> maker called Cononiser for the Archimedes and there is even a video of it
> doing it's thing on You Tube:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdz72vccF_8
>
> So, second question: Did this ever get updated to work on the Risc PC /
> Iyonix ?
I had Coconizer running on a RiscPC before I added a StrongARM, with which
it isn't compatible.
A quick look on Google shows it can be found here:
http://212.219.56.143/sites/ftp.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/systems/acorn/riscos/sound/coconizer/
Also worth looking at some comments I made on the Iconbar forums when I was
playing with it on VirtualRiscPC:
http://www.iconbar.co.uk/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=10264&page=1
Those comments *might* not be relevant - the problems I encountered might be
to do with it having been transferred several times (intially used on an
A3000 with a floppy drive, then moved to a hard drive, then to a RiscPC,
then to another RiscPC, no longer used when a StrongARM was added, until I
finally transferred it over to VirtualRiscPC), rather than a clean/fresh
installation each time.
[...]
--
Vince M Hudd
Soft Rock Software
Martin Hansen
> I think the best tracker editor was Digital Symphony by Oregan,
> IIRC written by (a member of) BASS - maybe you could ask John Tytgat for
> details.
I grabbed a copy of Digital Symphony off ebay a few months ago. I
wasn't expecting the software to work, as I believe it has some fairly
strong protection around it which I doubted would work with any of the
modern versions of RISC OS. What I was after was after the manual on
the off chance I later got a working copy.
I have dropped John Tytgat an email.
I seem to recall that he didn't work on Digital Symphony itself.
I suppose I could make an effort to try to get my copy of DS working
on one of my old machines, but without the source, I don't see that I
could then do much with it which takes away the incentive even to
invest in exploring what, as it stands, it can do. I am aware that I
might need UniqueID and that, even then, getting even my legal copy to
run might be difficult.
Regards,
Martin.
Martin Hansen
> A quick look on Google shows it can be found here:
> http://212.219.56.143/sites/ftp.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/systems/acorn/ri...
Yes, I have this but the source code is not included so I can't even
begin to look at what is stopping it working with the StrongARM etc...
> Also worth looking at some comments I made on the Iconbar forums when I was
> playing with it on VirtualRiscPC:
> http://www.iconbar.co.uk/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=10264&page=1
OK - It hadn't occurred to me that it might work with VirtualRiscPC.
Now that I think about it, I suppose a strength (virtue?) of Virtual
Risc PC is that it can be used to run pre-StrongARM software at
StrongARM+ speeds.
I will check this out - and your comments...
Regards,
Martin.
Michael Drake
> > I think the best tracker editor was Digital Symphony by Oregan [...]
> Meh. Any application that decides to implement its own window tools
> mechanism on RISC OS needs its head examined :-)
> > I also seem to remember "Desktop Tracker" by IIRC Leading Edge.
> Correct - specifically, Jason Tribbeck. It could be a bit unstable but
> had an awful lot of really, really nice features. For starters, it used
> multiplexing to get up to 16 channels of audio out of the 8 channel
> 8-bit sound system and supported up to 4 effects per note per channel.
You can get Desktop Tracker here:
http://www.tribbeck.com/software/sonor/dtt/
and Jason Tribbeck started on a new one called FahZhi Tracker:
http://www.tribbeck.com/software/fahzhi/
Michael
--
Michael Drake (tlsa)
Theo Markettos
> > I also seem to remember "Desktop Tracker" by IIRC Leading Edge.
>
> Correct - specifically, Jason Tribbeck.
Jason's still around, and reads Usenet occasionally.
firs...@surname.com should suffice if you want to email him.
Theo
Rob Kendrick
Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
Hmm, I tried that a couple of weeks back, on an unrelated matter, and
got no reply. Perhaps I should follow that up.
B.
Martin Hansen
> Also worth looking at some comments I made on the Iconbar forums when I was
> http://www.iconbar.co.uk/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=10264&page=1
> Vince M Hudd
> Soft Rock Software
I took over my daughter's 2004 PC for the evening which has VRPC on
it with the aim of getting Coconizer up and running.
Alas, I got sidetracked by the fact that it reported that the hard
drive was about to fail. Son to the rescue who transfered everything
onto a new 250 GB hard drive (I can't believe this these only now cost
£44.19). Back on task, I only had time to play around with !Flicker on
it for ten minutes. I am surprised at how degraded the soundtrack ( a
tracker file ) seems under Virtual Risc PC, so that's another
distraction from the primary task to look into this evening.
I'm going to try running DigitalCD under the emulator to see what that
sounds like. I need to investigate everything the sound passes
through, although the RISC OS side seems fine - so I need to look into
what windows is doing to it....
Has anyone got DigitalCD working well under emulation or is there a
fundamental problem ?
I was told, at Wakefield, that there are some windows events that
cause the emulator to momentarily freeze (for just a few hundredths of
a second) but I wouldn't have thought you'd be able to hear that...
I'm not intending to remain sidetracked with the emulation issues -
it's just where I've got to in working through the many leads to
follow through from these postings.
Regards,
Martin.
Andrew Hodgkinson
> I am surprised at how degraded the soundtrack ( a
> tracker file ) seems under Virtual Risc PC
When you say "degraded", do you mean it has a buzzing / fizzing quality
to it which RISC OS lacks?
The 8-bit sound in Archimedes series machines was heavily filtered so
that high frequency sounds could not be heard. This allowed low sample
rate samples to be played back without interpolation (8MHz ARM 2s needed
all the help they could get!) and with no buzzy aliasing noise being
audible - without the high frequency filtering, that would've been very
easy to hear and annoying. Amiga machines had better quality filtering
and AIUI hardware interpolation, which is why .MOD files on an Amiga
usually sounded better than the same file played back on a RISC OS
machine. Acorn used a similar filter for Risc PC 8-bit sound; the 16-bit
sound is relatively 'clean', though.
When playing 8-bit sound in an emulator on a typical PC running Windows
or Linux or on Mac hardware, there is no aggressive hardware sound filter
so unless the emulator emulates it (which VRPC seems to not do) you'll
hear all the aliasing noise, just as if you bypassed the 8-bit filter
hardware. You're just hearing a greater range of frequencies because the
sound hardware is of higher quality.
Of course if you have a 16-bit sound card and you're using 8-bit sound
via emulation (i.e. *Status SoundSystem reports "16bit") then all bets
are off; you're running unfiltered sound on the RISC OS side anyway. In
addition, using VRPC Adjust with AMPlayer and various MP3 samples is
revealing. Low sample rates really do sound utterly awful due to the lack
of interpolation, but even 44.1KHz samples (with the host soundsystem set
to match) sound a bit rough / aliased. Maybe this is yet another unfixed
VRPC bug, or maybe there is a sample rate set inside RISC OS which
mismatches (e.g. 48KHz) and something somewhere is doing a very nasty
rate conversion job. I can't remember enough about how the 16-bit sound
system works to investigate further.
I note that DigitalCD (below) has an 'interpolation' switch in its UI
which makes a big difference; if you used the Digital CD player engine
you may well get better results on all platforms.
> Has anyone got DigitalCD working well under emulation or is there a
> fundamental problem ?
No problems under VRPC Adjust with ARM710 or StrongARM CPU cores and
8-bit or 16-bit configured sound. Quite impressive to hear an 8-bit
rendition of a 28-channel FastTracker 2 file! MP3s won't play though -
don't know why - whereas AMPlayer seems happy.
Less luck with Desktop Tracker - it runs and loads files, but aborts
whenever it tries to make any noise (e.g. it'll play a silent, empty file
but won't play anything with real notes in it or let you key in notes
from the keyboard). Pity; I'd really like to get that working although
it'd only be of use if the VRPC sound system were also running properly.
The VRPC 7500FE core emulation appears to be completely broken, with RISC
OS spewing aborts just after reaching the Desktop.
Martin Hansen
> Martin Hansen wrote:
> > I am surprised at how degraded the soundtrack ( a
> > tracker file ) seems under Virtual Risc PC
>
> When you say "degraded", do you mean it has a buzzing / fizzing quality
> to it which RISC OS lacks?
on it.
Thanks for your post, I now understand what some more of the optional
settings are doing and why.
Am off to investigate...
Thanks for your two posts - am struggling to keep up with the
explosion of information to digest but am working my way through it
all.
Regards,
Martin.
Vince M Hudd
> On 20 May, 16:43, Vince M Hudd <s...@softrock.co.uk> wrote:
> > Also worth looking at some comments I made on the Iconbar forums when I
> > was playing with it [coconizer] on VirtualRiscPC:
> > http://www.iconbar.co.uk/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=10264&page=1
> I took over my daughter's 2004 PC for the evening which has VRPC on it
> with the aim of getting Coconizer up and running.
[...]
> I am surprised at how degraded the soundtrack ( a tracker file )
> seems under Virtual Risc PC, so that's another distraction from the
> primary task to look into this evening.
Yes, I found that as well, and mentioned it in the above thread on Iconbar:
http://www.iconbar.co.uk/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=10264&page=2#101453
Not really knowing anything about the hardware, I haven't a clue as to why
that might be, so I'll just pretend I've read the whole of Andrew's post, in
which it looks like he explains this, and fully understood it and say "What
he said".
But I'll also refer you to this item in the above thread:
http://www.iconbar.co.uk/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=10264&page=2#101629
Not particularly relevant to what you're trying to achieve, but it's an
interesting discovery when it comes to 'recovering' old tracker type music.
(I assume the same thing would apply to any old stuff converted in that
way).
--
Martin Hansen
> it isn't compatible.
> playing with it on VirtualRiscPC:
Hi Vince,
I'd be interested to know how you got Coconizer working on
VirtualRiscPC as I've spent the evening fighting with it.
I began by deciding I needed to get NetSurf up and running so that I
could access the internet...
-- The key step was to add the line
Set Inet$Resolvers 192.168.0.1
to the Run File --
Are folks aware they need to do this ?
Anyway, I then upgraded the RISC OS 4 to the latest version of RISC OS
6 - select 5i2.
This lost the 8MB VRAM, which prompted me to grab all of the relevant
upgrades from the Virtual Acorn website.
Alas, this didn't get me back my 8MB VRAM so I ended up having to
manually tell it, via it's Model CFG File, to make back to 8MB.
Somewhere along the line, this sorted out the sound, so Flicker is now
working as it should.
Grabbed a fresh download of DigitalCD - again, this worked fine. There
is still a subtle difference between the sound from DigitalCD on VA
and a real Risc PC - a slight 'skip' is how I can best describe it -
but I am starting to feel quite positive about this emulator.
Finally, onto Coconizer - freshly downloaded - which I tried to get
going under RISC OS 4 as well as 5i2 but no joy. Put the VRAM back to
2MB in case that was an issue but exactly te same responce. It'll load
onto the icon bar, but as soon as I call it, a pattern of small grey
rectangles fills the screen and takes out the emulation. Hard reset
then needed every time.
In the !Boot file it's set up to run from a Hard Disc by default, so
that's not the issue...
Any suggestions...
Looks to me like I've run into what a suspect will be the first of
many brick walls...
Regards,
Martin.
druck
> Of course if you have a 16-bit sound card and you're using 8-bit sound
> via emulation (i.e. *Status SoundSystem reports "16bit") then all bets
> are off; you're running unfiltered sound on the RISC OS side anyway.
There was a configurable interpolation setting for machines with enough
processor power. The 8 bit sound still using applications always sounded
a lot worse on 16bit hardware than they did on 8bit hardware though.
---druck
VinceH
<b02cb08a-4c1c-49c1...@n21g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
Martin Hansen <m...@shrewsbury.org.uk> wrote:
> On 20 May, 16:43, Vince M Hudd <s...@softrock.co.uk> wrote:
> > I had Coconizer running on a RiscPC before I added a StrongARM,
> > with which it isn't compatible. Also worth looking at some
> > comments I made on the Iconbar forums when I was playing with it
> > on VirtualRiscPC:
> Hi Vince,
> I'd be interested to know how you got Coconizer working on
> VirtualRiscPC as I've spent the evening fighting with it.
> I began by deciding I needed to get NetSurf up and running so that
> I could access the internet...
> -- The key step was to add the line
> Set Inet$Resolvers 192.168.0.1
> to the Run File --
> Are folks aware they need to do this ?
I don't remember ever having to do that on mine - IIRC, provided the
host system has an internet connection, it should just work out of
the box.
> Anyway, I then upgraded the RISC OS 4 to the latest version of RISC
> OS 6 - select 5i2.
This is the first difference between yours and mine, then - whether
or not it's significant, I don't know. Mine was running one of the
Select (possibly Adjust?) releases, but not as high as RISC OS 6
(which came out quite some time after I stopped using the emulator).
Unfortunately, I can't be precise about what it was running - I
hadn't used it in about a year, then a few months ago decided to run
it (funnily enough, for the very thing we're discussing here -
Coconizer), but it told me it couldn't run because it didn't have a
valid licence/registration/unlock code (whatever the correct term is
for VRPC). I can't find the original CD and case - in which I believe
the code was written when I first got it off Aaron - so, having
already had a bad day, I just shut it down in disgust and that laptop
is now in the loft.
[...]
> Finally, onto Coconizer - freshly downloaded - which I tried to get
> going under RISC OS 4 as well as 5i2 but no joy.
Ah. Even if RISC OS 6 was a problem, I'd certainly still expect it to
run on RISC OS 4.
> Put the VRAM back to 2MB in case that was an issue but exactly te
> same responce. It'll load onto the icon bar, but as soon as I call
> it, a pattern of small grey rectangles fills the screen and takes
> out the emulation. Hard reset then needed every time.
The amount of VRAM shouldn't matter, given that it runs on pre-RiscPC
hardware. (ICBW, but I don't /think/ there was any kind of update -
in fact, I'm sure there wasn't. For one thing, I'm reasonably sure
that the relocatable modules that can be created with it, which is
what I used in Drop Rock etc, won't work on RISC OS 3.5 and above).
FWIW, I don't think I ever had the problem you described. At this
point, the problem I encountered was to do with the "instruments"
(samples). Coconizer was written when people commonly had floppy
drives, and hard drives were less common - it therefore expects the
samples to be found on a series of floppy drives. Indeed, I
originally used it on an A3000 with no hard drive, then later added a
hard drive and moved all the samples onto it (before then moving to a
RiscPC, and so on), which also involved making it "see" the samples
in their new location - which is done by running a tool that, if not
supplied with it, should be available to download from wherever
Coconizer is.
Looking at what I've said on the Iconbar thread, "The 'instrument'
files are located using a tool contained in a second program, which
on the face of it is there to /play/ existing Coconizer tracks" I'd
guess that program must be in the zip file along with Coconizer
itself (it sounds like it was needed from the outset, even when it
was run from floppy). I usefully didn't give its name - but I've a
vague recollection its called CocoPlayr. Before running Coconizer
itself, you must run that and tell it where the samples are to be
found.
None of which, unfortunately, helps with the problem you described.
I don't suppose it's possible that Coconizer has a particularly
nasty example of an untrapped error condition, causing it to crap out
badly; no samples found when first run? If you haven't already gone
through the above steps to tell it where the files are, I'd be
inclined to do that then try running it again, just in case. I
honestly doubt it will make a difference, but it's worth a try.
A more plausible possibility is that your display doesn't like the
screen mode Coconizer uses - but then I'd expect sensible error
reporting from the system, rather than the running program crapping
out and taking the emulator with it. Are you running VRPC full screen
or in a window?
--
VinceH
Andrew Hodgkinson
> There was a configurable interpolation setting for machines with enough
> processor power. The 8 bit sound still using applications always sounded
> a lot worse on 16bit hardware than they did on 8bit hardware though.
AFAIAA the oversampling option only applies when the sample rate of the
single stream of inbound 16-bit sound data is low. It's possible that
when SharedSound gets involved, individual sound system clients may get
independently oversampled. I'm not sure.
The 16-bit oversampling setting has no effect on the 8-bit sound system's
individual emulated 8 channels, or on samples played back by tracker
module engines into them, of which the OS has no knowledge - it just sees
up to eight streams of "composited" sound data.
The alias noise heard when playing tracker modules incorporating samples
tuned to lower notes than is wise, is a function of the tracker playback
engine. The only place this can be addressed is in the player itself and
that's why things like the Digital CD playback engine offer the feature.
Chris Hughes
> On 20 May, 16:43, Vince M Hudd <s...@softrock.co.uk> wrote:
>> I had Coconizer running on a RiscPC before I added a StrongARM, with which
>> it isn't compatible.
>> Also worth looking at some comments I made on the Iconbar forums when I was
>> playing with it on VirtualRiscPC:
> Hi Vince,
> I'd be interested to know how you got Coconizer working on
> VirtualRiscPC as I've spent the evening fighting with it.
> I began by deciding I needed to get NetSurf up and running so that I
> could access the internet...
> -- The key step was to add the line
> Set Inet$Resolvers 192.168.0.1
> to the Run File --
> Are folks aware they need to do this ?
There is absolutely no reason to do this on a properly configured
machine. All the networking/internet stuff is controlled by the
Windows side not RISC OS you should change nothing except turn on
Access in the networking section of RISC OS in a VRPC set-up.
> Anyway, I then upgraded the RISC OS 4 to the latest version of RISC OS
> 6 - select 5i2.
> This lost the 8MB VRAM, which prompted me to grab all of the relevant
> upgrades from the Virtual Acorn website.
Again that should not really happen, but does for some people.
[snip]
--
Chris Hughes
Andre
"Andrew Hodgkinson" <ahod...@rowing.org.uk> wrote in message
news:GO9Rl.167081$aj5....@newsfe16.ams2...
> Martin Hansen wrote:
>
>
>> Has anyone got DigitalCD working well under emulation or is there a
>> fundamental problem ?
>
> No problems under VRPC Adjust with ARM710 or StrongARM CPU cores and 8-bit
> or 16-bit configured sound. Quite impressive to hear an 8-bit rendition of
> a 28-channel FastTracker 2 file! MP3s won't play though - don't know why -
> whereas AMPlayer seems happy.
MP3 playing will only work with StrongARM CPU if DigitalCD is configured
to use the DiskSample module.
Andr�
Martin Hansen
Just a quick note to let you know that James Lamoard has fixed App2Bas
so that it'll now recover the BASIC source code from the
Coconizer !RunImage file.
The new version of App2Bas (1.16) is available now from
http://www4.webng.com/resurgam/
Regards,
Martin.