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Like LaForge said: Try using Fruity Loops. It come with 3xOsc. Then download the Magical 8bit Plug (there are 2 versions one for mac and another for PC).
I bet it might help you.
=D

At 1/31/12 01:34 PM, Computer112 wrote:

To teh 'true' 8-bit war

What's with the fight over 8 bit musical tools?

People who get upset at others who want true 8-bit don't really get why people want true 8-bit. The fight over tools is because some tools impose the proper restraints of the NES machine while others don't. It's really, really cool listening to what people can do on these restrictions, and even cooler to think about the possibility that these sounds could have been in an NES if the composer was writing NES music back then.

I mean, how can you listen to something like this (which is 8-bit, by the way - made in Famitracker) and not be a little excited at the possibilities?

I'm not against people that want to just have an NES/Megadrive effect in their music (I mean, that's all I ever do, personally - I love that stuff); I just don't like it when it's proclaimed to be '8-bit' since that's a different thing, altogether. Know what you're arguing for/against before you get upset at people arguing for/against it.

At 1/31/12 03:46 PM, Gario wrote:

At 1/31/12 01:34 PM, Computer112 wrote:

To teh 'true' 8-bit war

What's with the fight over 8 bit musical tools?

People who get upset at others who want true 8-bit don't really get why people want true 8-bit.

I rarely make 8-bit with hardware so I never actually have much interactive with full 8-bit music (I do have NES and Super NES, but just for effect system of 32-bit chiptune rendering)

Btw, NES chip only generate 4 bit not 8 bit. Do you mean SNES?

I can understand that some people fight over the 'true' 8-bit or chiptune folks. Both side got good and bad points. For the hardware-adorable folks, I know you adore sweet raw sounds but think about the cost that you are going to waste on. Btw, fuck M-Audio Venom, chiptune musical tool? You kidding me? $300 for a chiptune generator?

I stay neutral since I use both hardware and software chiptune generator. I'm a big chip collector and have various experiments with them.

The fight over tools is because some tools impose the proper restraints of the NES machine while others don't. It's really, really cool listening to what people can do on these restrictions, and even cooler to think about the possibility that these sounds could have been in an NES if the composer was writing NES music back then.

FYI, more like modders used NES for music composition back then. NES is gaming console. In fact without the revolution of chip modding, there would not even be any tracker.

I mean, how can you listen to something like this (which is 8-bit, by the way - made in Famitracker) and not be a little excited at the possibilities?

Awesome track.

I'm not against people that want to just have an NES/Megadrive effect in their music (I mean, that's all I ever do, personally - I love that stuff); I just don't like it when it's proclaimed to be '8-bit' since that's a different thing, altogether. Know what you're arguing for/against before you get upset at people arguing for/against it.

Very well said.

Any LSDJ users know how well it works on a GBA SP? I'm thinking of picking up a flash cart for it

At 1/31/12 05:09 PM, Computer112 wrote:

I can understand that some people fight over the 'true' 8-bit or chiptune folks. Both side got good and bad points. For the hardware-adorable folks, I know you adore sweet raw sounds but think about the cost that you are going to waste on. Btw, fuck M-Audio Venom, chiptune musical tool? You kidding me? $300 for a chiptune generator?

Ahhhh fuck. I thought we were past the Venom at this point. (btw, stop saying there was a fight you guys, there wasn't one. -_-') I'm just here to clear up your false info about the Venom, I don't even like it that much, it's my least favorite synth that I own, but I don't like false info going around. I wouldn't say chiptune is the best term to use, since it's 100% digital emulation of analog synthesizers, where chiptune would refer more to analog emulation of another analog circuit. Also, for $300 (though the price has gone up since) it's a great deal because it has soo many different sounds it's capable of. 8-bit emulation is just one of the things it can do, that's not it's only purpose though. So if you are strictly working 8-bit obviously it's a bad choice, but if you want to work with multiple waveforms with the option of 8-bit it's a nice package. That's it. Please next time actually read what I already said, but just for you I personally summarized it ;D

At 1/31/12 05:09 PM, Computer112 wrote: Btw, NES chip only generate 4 bit not 8 bit. Do you mean SNES?

The NES was an 8-bit console. That's what the '8-bit' stands for, not how many channels it could produce or the bitrate.

SNES and Megadrive are 16-bit, for that reason, even though those use completely different methods of creating music (sampling vs. hardware synthesis). If people wrote in the style of the SMS (Sega Master System) it would also be considered '8-bit', since that was also an 8-bit system.

At 1/31/12 05:54 PM, Gario wrote:

At 1/31/12 05:09 PM, Computer112 wrote: Btw, NES chip only generate 4 bit not 8 bit. Do you mean SNES?

The NES was an 8-bit console. That's what the '8-bit' stands for, not how many channels it could produce or the bitrate.

Sorry, but that's the exact marketing speil they used that we use now to call dual core machines "Virtual Quad". According to wiki the NES sound format is a few fixed oscilators with, at most, 4 bit variable velocity. The 6 bit PCM output is interesting, as it's fairly efficent. There's also a Delta-Sigma out, which is a technique now used for oversampling and basicly involves 1 bit turning on and off really, really fast. However the master output was 7 bit, loosing a bit to encode it I imagine so it could be kept seperate from the video. The video was also 8 bit.

You assholes are getting me interested in this. This stuff is roughly as powerful as the stuff I'm working with now. Except, you know, the 16F88 I'm using costs about a dollar and it fits in my nasal cavity.

SNES and Megadrive are 16-bit, for that reason, even though those use completely different methods of creating music (sampling vs. hardware synthesis). If people wrote in the style of the SMS (Sega Master System) it would also be considered '8-bit', since that was also an 8-bit system.

Again, it's marketing! Most of those are 10 and 12 bit systems, really. It's the computer equivalent of putting LED's behind the tubes in a guitar amp to make them glow more.

If you guys really like this stuff, I seriously recommend trying some programming.

At 1/20/12 06:19 PM, Manwhxre wrote: http://pidelipom.com/boyscout/ Try this, have no idea how it works as chiptune/8 bit doesn't interest me but I thought I google something for you.

I wouldn't suggest this to any beginner (or anyone else for that matter), incredibly buggy and quirky program.

OP, download any half decent DAW (FL studio, Reaper, Cubase, Ableton et.al), any free plugin that can generate simple waveforms from midi and go to town. To get started I'd recommend the Tweakbench plugs.

At 1/31/12 05:52 PM, Trampzy wrote: ...

Thanks for the input, almost busted you off blindly. Sorry.

At 1/31/12 05:54 PM, Gario wrote: The NES was an 8-bit console. That's what the '8-bit' stands for, not how many channels it could produce or the bitrate.

MOS SID is 4 bit. NES shares the same audio chip as CI Commodore 64. http://wn.com/MOS_Technology_SID

I won't repeat whatever Chris-V2 has said. You know it yourself.

SNES and Megadrive are 16-bit, for that reason, even though those use completely different methods of creating music (sampling vs. hardware synthesis). If people wrote in the style of the SMS (Sega Master System) it would also be considered '8-bit', since that was also an 8-bit system.

SN76489 is 12 bit.

I recommend you to do more research on the topics before justifying.

If you still confuse and want to 'fight' on then get yer ass to the nearest geek store for and get both NES/SNES chips to test out.

I think you missed the point of what I said, guys - I was simply explaining why they were called as such (and within that community, the labeling is pretty universal - have you heard anyone talk about 4-bit or 6-bit music lately?). Whether or not the music actually uses said number of bits is completely irrelevant - it's what these things are called, and I'm providing the reasoning behind it. It's pretty much the same thing as explaining why America is called America and not Columbia - it might be wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the reason why we call it what we do.

I'm not arguing specs; I'm explaining the naming convention. What's so hard to follow about that?

Sorry, but that's the exact marketing speil they used that we use now to call dual core machines "Virtual Quad". According to wiki the NES sound format is a few fixed oscilators with, at most, 4 bit variable velocity. The 6 bit PCM output is interesting, as it's fairly efficent. There's also a Delta-Sigma out, which is a technique now used for oversampling and basicly involves 1 bit turning on and off really, really fast. However the master output was 7 bit, loosing a bit to encode it I imagine so it could be kept seperate from the video. The video was also 8 bit.

Yeah, I know most of that. I write and study chiptune music (specifically for the NES), I know how to use it and how it works. Specifically, there are two 'rectangle' oscillators that are variable in timbre, volume and arpeggio programming (as well as employ certain effects, such as fade in/out, pitch bend and the like), one triangle oscillator that can vary in only pitch, one 'noise' channel that can be programmed to make various white noise and a PCM channel, which is a very lo-fi sampler (I don't remember the specifics as to how low the sample rate needed to be). VRC6 added a saw channel and two more rectangle oscillators, as well, but it was rarely implemented on the NES (Castlevania 3 was one of the few games to employ it, and only the Japanese version did so). A shame, since it produced more interesting sounds than the Megadrive or the SNES, imho.

Hence why I specifically said 8-bit did not refer to the bitrate of the sound channels, but to the (advertised) bitrate of the systems. Whether or not the systems are truly 8-bit and 16-bit doesn't really matter, either - that's how they were marketed as, so that's what names musicians have stuck with.

The naming conventions you presented are interesting, though (Delta-Sigma... I didn't know that was the name for that technique; Here's a sexy example of it, by the way - gotta pimp out Silver Surfer, when the opportunity arises). Always something new to learn, eh?

At 1/31/12 09:23 PM, Gario wrote: I think you missed the point of what I said, guys - I was simply explaining why they were called as such (and within that community, the labeling is pretty universal - have you heard anyone talk about 4-bit or 6-bit music lately?). Whether or not the music actually uses said number of bits is completely irrelevant - it's what these things are called, and I'm providing the reasoning behind it. It's pretty much the same thing as explaining why America is called America and not Columbia - it might be wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the reason why we call it what we do.

I'm not arguing specs; I'm explaining the naming convention. What's so hard to follow about that?

Nothing, really, it's just your answer didn't say it. I didn't know, from reading what you said, that you knew.

Yeah, I know most of that. I write and study chiptune music (specifically for the NES), I know how to use it and how it works. Specifically, there are two 'rectangle' oscillators that are variable in timbre, volume and arpeggio programming (as well as employ certain effects, such as fade in/out, pitch bend and the like), one triangle oscillator that can vary in only pitch, one 'noise' channel that can be programmed to make various white noise

Yup, that's about right - though the pulse/rectangle/square oscillators just have a variable duty cycle. 0, 12.5, 25, 50, 75 and 100 if I remember right.

Does the noise channel have filtering capabilities or is it purely a volume sensitive white noise? Can it do polyphony? (can one white noise burst overlap another?)

PCM channel, which is a very lo-fi sampler (I don't remember the specifics as to how low the sample rate needed to be)

The sample rate just has to be a multiple of the clock cycle, the issue is how much memory you have. An 8 bit PCM output can do 44.1Khz perfectly, but after about 0.1 seconds you've 4Kb of memory used. So it just depends how much audio you want and how many spare clock cycles you have.

VRC6 added a saw channel and two more rectangle oscillators, as well, but it was rarely implemented on the NES (Castlevania 3 was one of the few games to employ it, and only the Japanese version did so). A shame, since it produced more interesting sounds than the Megadrive or the SNES, imho.

Timing issues, again. The audio had a limited number of computations per second and they HAD to sync with the video or the system would bug out.

The naming conventions you presented are interesting, though (Delta-Sigma... I didn't know that was the name for that technique; Here's a sexy example of it, by the way - gotta pimp out Silver Surfer, when the opportunity arises). Always something new to learn, eh?

Delta Sigma is also quite cool in that you can probably emulate sampled sounds with it or if it can read tables you might even get some cool waveguide stuff out of it!

At 2/1/12 04:32 AM, Chris-V2 wrote: Yup, that's about right - though the pulse/rectangle/square oscillators just have a variable duty cycle. 0, 12.5, 25, 50, 75 and 100 if I remember right.

Correct.

Does the noise channel have filtering capabilities or is it purely a volume sensitive white noise? Can it do polyphony? (can one white noise burst overlap another?)

Yes, IIRC. I don't believe the system allows for overlap, which holds true for all of the channels. Two channels can overlap each other though, obviously - using two rectangles that had the same oscillation settings and offsetting them by a tick or two you could create reverb of varying intensity. Some games also used the PCM channel as a percussion set (Mario 3 is famous for that, in particular), allowing for more complicated drum lines, or even saving one channel for SFX and the other for the music.

high pitched square waves with a bit of vibrato.

done.

The noise channel in the NES is monophonic but can produce brownian noise as well as white noise, which is a bit of fun! Lately there has also been clever people doing some more advanced hacking with the DPCM channel in order to use it similarly to the wave channel in the Game Boy, which uses 4-bit wave tables.