General Sound - 4channel sample-based music for ZX Spectrum

[TeamMB03+]

The General Sound is a soundcard interface, designed for playback of 4 channel MOD modules (from the Amiga and PC computers) and individual samples (both Amiga signed and PC unsigned samples). MOD Player firmware inside the GS is a full analogue of ProTracker (Amiga) software, it was designed according to source codes of the ProTracker v2.1A.

The advantage of this interface is that it has its own processor with a huge memory and can play music and sound effects independently of the computer, no matter what tasks the ZX Spectrum is doing. The General Sound implemented in the MB03+ has a 28 MHz Z80-CPU and 2 MB of RAM.

You can load MOD file and start the music playing, then escape to the ZX BASIC or use the NMI menu,

and do anything other you want on your ZX spectrum: program in BASIC or use some special software, play games, save and load files to/from the CF/SD cards

- while the General Sound is still playing music.

You can stop the music in BASIC via command OUT 187,50.

To continue the music, use OUT 187,51.

To play the song module again, from the beginning, use OUT 187,49.

A lesser known feature of the General Sound is that it can also play the same way samples and act as...

• 1 channel LPTCovox
• 2 channel Profi Covox
• 4 channel Soundrive
• 4 channel Ultravox

The GS firmware is an open-source now: https://opensourcezx.untergrund.net/e_misc-gs_rom_src.html

Software players for both BSDOS and ESXDOS systems are on CF/SD cards in the Download section, https://sites.google.com/view/mb03plus/download