🚀 go-pugleaf

>   I think what he wants is to calculate the digitized sound in real
>time, like some software for the coco (which had only 6bit sound) did.

There is no way to calculate this in real-time on a 680x0 machine
because there is no constant cycle times.  Besides the obvious point
about some people having machines that don't have a 68070, there can
be extra delays do to ram refresh, video refresh, etc.

However, you can easily do a "fast-as-you-can" calculation into a buffer
and then pass that buffer off to the DMA for accurate timing.


As long as we're on the subject, is there anybody interested in writing
a music program for the MM/1?

If so, I have a huge start on such a project that I'd be willing to donate
to a good cause.

I have a complete and detailed spec for a musical score, library routines
for dealing with this score in memory and on disk, and a start on the play
routine including a super-fast sound generation core.

I think we calculated it to be something like 80kHz over n (when n was the
number of simultaneous voices) though a 68340 should be able to double or
tripple that.  It played sampled sounds at adjusted frequencies so you
could make anything into an instrument.  One other neat feature: It had
the capability to dynamically adjust the sound quality (sampling rate)
depending upon how much CPU time it could get.  In other words, you
could use it as a background music generator for games or whatever.
More powerful machines would automatically give better sound.

Other features:

- 8-bit stereo (still at 80kHz over n) with each voice able to be balanced at
any of 16 positions between left & right

- could play digitized samples with attack, decay, sustain, release

- Versatile editing ability (no editor written) to support any score

This isn't a project I'm likely to finish.  The score handling libraries
are written in Ansi-C (with full prototyping and all warnings fixed) and
the sound generation core in hand-coded 68000 assembly with a 68020 switch
for critical regions.

If anybody is interested in this, please let me know.

These opinions are all                      Brian                 _ /  __/  _ /
mine and you can't have               ( studer@bnr.ca )          / / __ / __ /
any.  So there!                 ( bcwhite@sunee.uwaterloo.ca ) ___/ ___/ ___/
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 The difference between theory and practice is less in theory than in practice.