Commander X16 audio capabilities

[xanthrou]

5 minutes ago, SlithyMatt said:

but maybe add "at a fraction of the cost". The NG home console retailed at $650 in 1990, which would be the equivalent of $1287 today.

I apologize. I totally forgot the possible cost of X16.

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A lot of folks have proposed concepts for co-processor expansion cards, but I agree, it's unlikely anything will get widespread support like the AdLib and SoundBlaster standards did for PCs.

Due to X16 having exceptional sound and graphics. (Unrelated to the topic, but it might be likely for expansion cards with 3D polygon rendering to have a bigger attention to X16 power users/overkillers than the rest of expansion cards)

[m00dawg]

I think someone is going to made a SID card, just given how often it gets mentioned. I think while the X16 might be underpowered for something like an SB16, a GUS style card is something I expect to see as well. Namely a card which has its own RAM and hardware playback capability so all the X16 has to do is load samples, and then trigger them. I was always fond of the GUS (and co-processor / hadware accelerated solutions in general). That being said, I am indeed excited about the onboard sound the X16 will have since it turns it into a really nice modern chiptune tracker, or so is my hope. I am a bit worried about the CPU requirements to get the most out of the VeraSound but we'll see!

Another card I'm sure we'll see is one which offers MIDI support. That'd be another route to high quality audio (albeit externally) though I'm mostly excited about it for the possibility for MIDI sync, allowing me to integrate the X16 into my growing collection of "chiptune synths" as it were (MB SID, MB FM, GB, and NES currently).

[SlithyMatt]

I really like the idea of a GUS-like card. It would be ideal if the X16 sound system accepted an internal aux input, but the card could just have a built-in mixer and the X16 audio output could be patched in externally. That's definitely something I'd consider supporting in XCI, letting the developer specify longer and higher fidelity samples for their sound effects for GUS support.

[xanthrou]

1 hour ago, m00dawg said:

I think someone is going to made a SID card, just given how often it gets mentioned. I think while the X16 might be underpowered for something like an SB16, a GUS style card is something I expect to see as well. Namely a card which has its own RAM and hardware playback capability so all the X16 has to do is load samples, and then trigger them. I was always fond of the GUS (and co-processor / hadware accelerated solutions in general). That being said, I am indeed excited about the onboard sound the X16 will have since it turns it into a really nice modern chiptune tracker, or so is my hope. I am a bit worried about the CPU requirements to get the most out of the VeraSound but we'll see!



Another card I'm sure we'll see is one which offers MIDI support. That'd be another route to high quality audio (albeit externally) though I'm mostly excited about it for the possibility for MIDI sync, allowing me to integrate the X16 into my growing collection of "chiptune synths" as it were (MB SID, MB FM, GB, and NES currently).

The GUS is a great idea (plus I would like to add a speech synthesizer chip in there, just in case), but how would the X16 have a SID card? I mean, isn't VERA PSG based on that? If we added SID, it's basically VERA with 19 channels instead of 16.

[BruceMcF]

6 minutes ago, xanthrou said:

The GUS is a great idea (plus I would like to add a speech synthesizer chip in there, just in case), but how would the X16 have a SID card? I mean, isn't VERA PSG based on that? If we added SID, it's basically VERA with 19 channels instead of 16.

I know that the SID has analog filtering and ADSR settings, while the PSG is all digital & has no ADSR unless emulated at a CPU cost by manipulating the volume.

I'm not a SID enthusiast by any stretch, but I know that SID enthusiasts reckon that it is not just a generic chiptunes sound chip.

[xanthrou]

Just now, BruceMcF said:

I know that the SID has analog filtering and ADSR settings, while the PSG is all digital & has no ADSR unless emulated at a CPU cost by manipulating the volume.



I'm not a SID enthusiast by any stretch, but I know that SID enthusiasts reckon that it is not just a generic chiptunes sound chip.

Well, that makes sense.

[m00dawg]

Bruce beat me to it and more succinctly but just to share my thoughts on how you'd add sound.

The SID would have to be housed on an expansion card which would need to include some means of buffering communication from the SID to the X16 system bus. This is because the SID cannot run at 8MHz (and is at least one of the reasons why there isn't an on-board SID option). The current proposal for expansion card communication is by way of memory addresses, much like how one interfaces with the VERA and YM2151.

While I'm not a devout SID fanatic, I would say that VeraSound is definitely not a SID and is fairly far removed from it in my opinion. Verasound lacks an analog filter and envelopes. SID only has 3 channels of course and the Vera's 16. Vera is sort of its own thing - I don't think it really is comparable to any sound chip. As Bruce mentioned, it is actually pretty simple and will require a lot more CPU horsepower than the SID would otherwise required. The 16 channels is exciting! But the flexibility may be limited to software support, at least as of the current design.

[xanthrou]

32 minutes ago, m00dawg said:

Bruce beat me to it and more succinctly but just to share my thoughts on how you'd add sound.



The SID would have to be housed on an expansion card which would need to include some means of buffering communication from the SID to the X16 system bus. This is because the SID cannot run at 8MHz (and is at least one of the reasons why there isn't an on-board SID option). The current proposal for expansion card communication is by way of memory addresses, much like how one interfaces with the VERA and YM2151.



While I'm not a devout SID fanatic, I would say that VeraSound is definitely not a SID and is fairly far removed from it in my opinion. Verasound lacks an analog filter and envelopes. SID only has 3 channels of course and the Vera's 16. Vera is sort of its own thing - I don't think it really is comparable to any sound chip. As Bruce mentioned, it is actually pretty simple and will require a lot more CPU horsepower than the SID would otherwise required. The 16 channels is exciting! But the flexibility may be limited to software support, at least as of the current design.

While I am not an expert in hardware, nor do I have resources for all that, I made a rough draft/sketch of how our expansion card would look like. I would some day show you how would it look like.

So, we have GUS-like setup for playing back samples, sound effects and voice samples, a speech synthesizer chip, a Z80, dedicated sound RAM and a SID. (with a middleman chip to talk to with 65C02)

On non sound-related features, I might add CP/M compatibility (which is what Commodore did with 128, so several KayPro and Osborne files would be read and write to from X16) and some BASIC enhancements, mainly commands for graphics. (a la C128)

How does it sound?

[kliepatsch]

One thing that I want to add to the SID vs. Vera PSG discussion is the fact that AFAIK the SID used analog(ish) oscillators. At least I can tell that they sound decent even at high pitches. Whereas the Vera PSG suffers from pretty bad aliasing when playing high pitched sounds. It's less noticeable for triangle waves than for pulse waves, fortunately. The PSG offers qualitatively much less than a SID (apart from direct volume control which the SID didn't have in that form) but quantitatively much more!

[rje]

48 minutes ago, m00dawg said:

Verasound lacks an analog filter and envelopes. 

I'm not an expert on sound AT ALL, but I do remember that the SID envelopes made things like gunshots and explosions very easy.