Portable speaker api?

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

So long
Thomas–


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/ \
(
/)

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards like
Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded better than speaker and
as good as old SBs :=)
Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the Speaker, but what
is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

CU

“Thomas Krennwallner” schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:20010307191252.A21033 at super-skunk.zenzi.myip.org…> Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

So long
Thomas


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/
(
/)

An SDL_DAC Driver would be cool !!!

CU

“WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew” schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:986042$unp$1 at ftp.lokigames.com…> Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards like

Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded better than speaker and
as good as old SBs :=)
Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the Speaker, but what
is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

CU

“Thomas Krennwallner” schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:20010307191252.A21033 at super-skunk.zenzi.myip.org

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

So long
Thomas


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/
(
/)

On Wed Mar 07, 2001 at 10:53:55AM -0800, the boisterous
WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew
wrote to me:

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards like
Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded better than speaker and
as good as old SBs :=)

don’t laugh, my matura-project was a hardware mp3-player hooked on a parallel
port with some cool linux drivers. But a misfortune killed our uc and the
hardware guy in our project wasn’t able to reproduce his code and the proj. was
running out of time ;-(

Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the Speaker, but what
is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

I know a cool ioctl() named KDMKTONE under linux. Watch
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/console.c ;-). I wasn’t speaking of playing waves
thru the speaker but only for playing some dumb BEEEP ;-)>

CU

“Thomas Krennwallner” schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:20010307191252.A21033 at super-skunk.zenzi.myip.org

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

So long
Thomas


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/
(
/)


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/ \
(
/)

I did something similar when my Mandrake 6.2 did not see my ESS properly. All the sound output was send to the speaker!!

As to how I did it, I think I simply loaded a few sound modules and that was it…

Aurelien> ----- Original Message -----

From: WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew [mailto:wizard@synthetic-crew.de]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 1:54 PM
To: sdl at lokigames.com
Subject: [SDL] Re: Portable speaker api?

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards like
Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded better than speaker and
as good as old SBs :=)
Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the Speaker, but what
is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

CU

“Thomas Krennwallner” schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:20010307191252.A21033 at super-skunk.zenzi.myip.org

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

So long
Thomas


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/
(
/)

I’m not sure it can be implemented properly on all “IMB PC” based platforms,
and most other hardware doesn’t have something like the PC speaker at all.
However, if there is real sound, it shouldn’t be too hard to emulate the PC
speaker using that, for applications/games that just want to beep some,
rather than providing beeper sound as well as real sound…

I’m going to hack something like that emulation as a part of the Project
Spitfire port, just for fun. (The DOS game had only speaker sound, using an
engine playing 60 Hz pitch streams with priority control.) The low level
speaker emulation might come in handy. :slight_smile:

BTW, is there any interest in a “chip style” (SID, AY/YM, OPL etc) style
sound effect engine? Advantage: Very phatt and dynamic sound effects,
unlimited real time control, and incredibly low memory usage; perfect for
modem downloadable games. Sound effect editor + public domain sound effect
library to go with it would be nice.

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 19:12, Thomas Krennwallner wrote:

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

On Wed Mar 07, 2001 at 10:53:55AM -0800, the boisterous
WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew
wrote to me:

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards like
Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded better than speaker and
as good as old SBs :=)

don’t laugh, my matura-project was a hardware mp3-player hooked on a parallel
port with some cool linux drivers. But a misfortune killed our uc and the
hardware guy in our project wasn’t able to reproduce his code and the proj. was
running out of time ;-(

Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the Speaker, but what
is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

I know a cool ioctl() named KDMKTONE under linux. Watch
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/console.c ;-). I wasn’t speaking of playing waves
thru the speaker but only for playing some dumb BEEEP :wink:

I read your text, but i think it is much cooler making a Driver for Speaker or
Parallel Port than only playing sh… BEEPs out of the Speaker !!!

CU> >

CU

“Thomas Krennwallner” schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:20010307191252.A21033 at super-skunk.zenzi.myip.org

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

So long
Thomas


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/
(
/)


/\ Obviously we do not want to leave zombies around.
( ^ > - W. Richard Stevens
/
(
/)

The problem with the “Covox” style DACs as well as PCM-on-speaker drivers is
that they require hard real time scheduling at 8+ kHz to produce anything but
noise. That rules most of the platforms out right away, as they can’t do real
time scheduling.

However, if we accept serious distortion as soon as the hard drive is used,
or during heavy graphics rendering, some other platforms than QNX, RTLinux
and other real time operating systems are still in.

Next, you need to access the PC speaker or parallel port hardware directly.
Also, unless you’re using RTLinux, RTAI or QNX, you have to do it all in
kernel space, in an interrupt handler. That’s not much fun with Win95/98, and
a nightmare with WinNT/2000.

Besides, even though it can be done on some platforms, it’s going to burn
lots of CPU power on nothing, due to the incredibly inefficient IRQ
management of the x86 architecture.

That is, even if it could be done, it’s definitely not something that belongs
in SDL, as it’s a kernel driver regardless of operating system. (Possible
exception: QNX - but you still need to get direct access to the hardware.)

The only target where it would be somewhat viable is DOS, as SDL would
basically have to act as an “operating system” anyway in that case. (It would
have to implement threads, provide sound, video and joystick drivers etc. I
think I heard something about a DJGPP port of SDL - I’d expect to find that
kind of stuff there.)

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 19:53, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards like
Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded better than
speaker and as good as old SBs :=)
Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the
Speaker, but what is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

And as opposed to playing waves, beeping is at least possible to do well
without serious kernel hacking. :slight_smile:

However, I’m not sure how you’d get at the speaker from an X application…
Indeed, X seems to be able to beep, but does it provide a usable API? How
about timing?

OTOH, any application on Linux with root privileges could just grab the
speaker hardware directly and have fun - with decent timing. Even better, we
could use a “speaker server”, which accepts a stream of timestamped commands,
so that applications using won’t have to run as root.

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 20:43, Thomas Krennwallner wrote:

On Wed Mar 07, 2001 at 10:53:55AM -0800, the boisterous
WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew

wrote to me:

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards
like Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded
better than speaker and as good as old SBs :=)

don’t laugh, my matura-project was a hardware mp3-player hooked on a
parallel port with some cool linux drivers. But a misfortune killed our uc
and the hardware guy in our project wasn’t able to reproduce his code and
the proj. was running out of time ;-(

Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the
Speaker, but what is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

I know a cool ioctl() named KDMKTONE under linux. Watch
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/console.c ;-). I wasn’t speaking of playing
waves thru the speaker but only for playing some dumb BEEEP :wink:

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker api
like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

I’m not sure it can be implemented properly on all “IMB PC” based platforms,
and most other hardware doesn’t have something like the PC speaker at all.
However, if there is real sound, it shouldn’t be too hard to emulate the PC
speaker using that, for applications/games that just want to beep some,
rather than providing beeper sound as well as real sound…

I’m going to hack something like that emulation as a part of the Project
Spitfire port, just for fun. (The DOS game had only speaker sound, using an
engine playing 60 Hz pitch streams with priority control.) The low level
speaker emulation might come in handy. :slight_smile:

Okay a speaker is not so good, but a SDL DAC Parrallel Port Driver would be cool,
especially for LAPTOP Users with old LAPTOPs.

BTW, is there any interest in a “chip style” (SID, AY/YM, OPL etc) style
sound effect engine? Advantage: Very phatt and dynamic sound effects,
unlimited real time control, and incredibly low memory usage; perfect for
modem downloadable games. Sound effect editor + public domain sound effect
library to go with it would be nice.

YEAH, YEAH :=) A portable SID Engine or YM or whatever would be GREAT !!!> On Wednesday 07 March 2001 19:12, Thomas Krennwallner wrote:

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Well, yeah, it’s techincally interesting, but it sounds like garbage compared
to any 16 bit sound card (and most 8 bit cards…), and it’s a driver thing
rather than an API thing. SDL does have a PCM audio API already - why not
just use it with existing speaker or “Covox” drivers? :slight_smile:

Besides, I think beeps are more interesting than waves on the speaker (*)
these days - there’s too much crappy, monotonous, or polished but just plain
boring wave sound effects played on real PCM hardware anyway. It’s time
someone did something different instead of trying to do the same thing in
different ways!

(*) goes for analog/hybrid chips as well, although 12 bit wave audio using
pulse waveform PWM on the SID is pretty cool - and sounds very good.

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 21:14, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:

On Wed Mar 07, 2001 at 10:53:55AM -0800, the boisterous
WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew

wrote to me:

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards
like Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded
better than speaker and as good as old SBs :=)

don’t laugh, my matura-project was a hardware mp3-player hooked on a
parallel port with some cool linux drivers. But a misfortune killed our
uc and the hardware guy in our project wasn’t able to reproduce his code
and the proj. was running out of time ;-(

Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on
the Speaker, but what is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC
OS ???

I know a cool ioctl() named KDMKTONE under linux. Watch
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/console.c ;-). I wasn’t speaking of playing
waves thru the speaker but only for playing some dumb BEEEP :wink:

I read your text, but i think it is much cooler making a Driver for Speaker
or Parallel Port than only playing sh… BEEPs out of the Speaker !!!

The config I had enabled me to play Xmms with all the outpu to the speaker. That is my internal speaker would play the mp3…

Even from the console, I could use mpg123 and get output to the speaker. Now the volume was really low though…

That’s it!

Aurelien> ----- Original Message -----

From: David Olofson [mailto:david.olofson@reologica.se]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 3:35 PM
To: sdl at lokigames.com
Subject: Re: [SDL] Re: Portable speaker api?

On Wednesday 07 March 2001 20:43, Thomas Krennwallner wrote:

On Wed Mar 07, 2001 at 10:53:55AM -0800, the boisterous
WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew

wrote to me:

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards
like Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded
better than speaker and as good as old SBs :=)

don’t laugh, my matura-project was a hardware mp3-player hooked on a
parallel port with some cool linux drivers. But a misfortune killed our uc
and the hardware guy in our project wasn’t able to reproduce his code and
the proj. was running out of time ;-(

Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on the
Speaker, but what is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC OS ???

I know a cool ioctl() named KDMKTONE under linux. Watch
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/console.c ;-). I wasn’t speaking of playing
waves thru the speaker but only for playing some dumb BEEEP :wink:

And as opposed to playing waves, beeping is at least possible to do well
without serious kernel hacking. :slight_smile:

However, I’m not sure how you’d get at the speaker from an X application…
Indeed, X seems to be able to beep, but does it provide a usable API? How
about timing?

OTOH, any application on Linux with root privileges could just grab the
speaker hardware directly and have fun - with decent timing. Even better, we
could use a “speaker server”, which accepts a stream of timestamped commands,
so that applications using won’t have to run as root.

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

On Wed Mar 07, 2001 at 10:53:55AM -0800, the boisterous
WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew

wrote to me:

Do you know the old DACs ??? Before the people had digital Soundcards
like Soundblaster they used DACs at their parallel Port :=) Sounded
better than speaker and as good as old SBs :=)

don’t laugh, my matura-project was a hardware mp3-player hooked on a
parallel port with some cool linux drivers. But a misfortune killed our
uc and the hardware guy in our project wasn’t able to reproduce his code
and the proj. was running out of time ;-(

Under Windows you can install a PC Speaker Driver to put WAVE OUT on
the Speaker, but what is with DACs ??? And how is that under LINX, MAC
OS ???

I know a cool ioctl() named KDMKTONE under linux. Watch
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/console.c ;-). I wasn’t speaking of playing
waves thru the speaker but only for playing some dumb BEEEP :wink:

I read your text, but i think it is much cooler making a Driver for Speaker
or Parallel Port than only playing sh… BEEPs out of the Speaker !!!

Well, yeah, it’s techincally interesting, but it sounds like garbage compared
to any 16 bit sound card (and most 8 bit cards…), and it’s a driver thing
rather than an API thing. SDL does have a PCM audio API already - why not
just use it with existing speaker or “Covox” drivers? :slight_smile:

Besides, I think beeps are more interesting than waves on the speaker (*)
these days - there’s too much crappy, monotonous, or polished but just plain
boring wave sound effects played on real PCM hardware anyway. It’s time
someone did something different instead of trying to do the same thing in
different ways!

(*) goes for analog/hybrid chips as well, although 12 bit wave audio using
pulse waveform PWM on the SID is pretty cool - and sounds very good.

Something SID Engine like for whatever speaker, DAC, Soundcard would be very cool.
Is there a portable SID Player out there that could be used with SDL directly or indirectly ???

CU> On Wednesday 07 March 2001 21:14, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

> Okay a speaker is not so good, but a SDL DAC Parrallel Port Driver would be cool, > especially for LAPTOP Users with old LAPTOPs. > > YEAH, YEAH :=) A portable SID Engine or YM or whatever would be GREAT !!!

Seriously lads, get a grip. SDL isn’t a driver layer. If you want to
play audio out through some crappy parallel port dac and out through the
pc speaker then write a proper kernel driver for it.

PS. Learn how to quote.On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 01:02:08PM -0800, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:


Martin

Bother! said Pooh, as he reloaded his AK-47.

Hi guys!

Every game has cool sound thru soundcards. But what about computers w/o
soundcards? Sound is a must for a game. So how about a portable speaker
api like this:

SDL_Beep (float freq, int len);

What do you think of it.

I’m not sure it can be implemented properly on all “IMB PC” based
platforms, and most other hardware doesn’t have something like the PC
speaker at all. However, if there is real sound, it shouldn’t be too
hard to emulate the PC speaker using that, for applications/games that
just want to beep some, rather than providing beeper sound as well as
real sound…

I’m going to hack something like that emulation as a part of the Project
Spitfire port, just for fun. (The DOS game had only speaker sound, using
an engine playing 60 Hz pitch streams with priority control.) The low
level speaker emulation might come in handy. :slight_smile:

Okay a speaker is not so good, but a SDL DAC Parrallel Port Driver would be
cool, especially for LAPTOP Users with old LAPTOPs.

Well, the problem is that anything wave (which is the only thing the parport
DAC can do, as opposed to the speaker) is a kernel driver thing, and cannot
be done at all on the SDL level on any “normal” platform…

BTW, is there any interest in a “chip style” (SID, AY/YM, OPL etc) style
sound effect engine? Advantage: Very phatt and dynamic sound effects,
unlimited real time control, and incredibly low memory usage; perfect for
modem downloadable games. Sound effect editor + public domain sound
effect library to go with it would be nice.

YEAH, YEAH :=) A portable SID Engine or YM or whatever would be GREAT !!!

I’ll start with a PC speaker + sound FX engine for SDL, throw in some DSP
code I have lying around and see if I get some useful design ideas… :slight_smile:

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 22:02, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:

On Wednesday 07 March 2001 19:12, Thomas Krennwallner wrote:

The config I had enabled me to play Xmms with all the outpu to the
speaker.
That is my internal speaker would play the mp3…

Even from the console, I could use mpg123 and get output to the speaker.
Now the volume was really low though…

That’s it!

Well, yes; you were most probably using a Linux sound driver that isn’t (and
never was, I believe) it a official release kernel. The reason is that it’s a
CPU hog, and that it can’t produce reliable output without the use of a hard
real time extension, such as RTLinux or RTAI. (People have hacked such
versions; the original didn’t use anything like that, but just a plain Linux
ISR driven by the RTC, AFAIK.)

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 22:32, Aurelien Marchand wrote:

> Okay a speaker is not so good, but a SDL DAC Parrallel Port Driver would be cool, > especially for LAPTOP Users with old LAPTOPs. > > YEAH, YEAH :=) A portable SID Engine or YM or whatever would be GREAT !!!

Seriously lads, get a grip. SDL isn’t a driver layer. If you want to
play audio out through some crappy parallel port dac and out through the
pc speaker then write a proper kernel driver for it.

But what?s with a portable SID (Player)(Library) using SDL for AUDIO Output ???
Is this such a bad idead ???
SIDs are small, SID sound is nice ( rem. Shades, Turrican :=)

CU> On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 01:02:08PM -0800, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:

PS. Learn how to quote.


Martin

Bother! said Pooh, as he reloaded his AK-47.

Besides, I think beeps are more interesting than waves on the speaker
(*) these days - there’s too much crappy, monotonous, or polished but
just plain boring wave sound effects played on real PCM hardware
anyway. It’s time someone did something different instead of trying to
do the same thing in different ways!

(*) goes for analog/hybrid chips as well, although 12 bit wave audio
using pulse waveform PWM on the SID is pretty cool - and sounds very
good.

Something SID Engine like for whatever speaker, DAC, Soundcard would be
very cool.

Although it would be possible to just rip a SID emulator, I’m more into
extending the design ideas into a virtual “SuperSID”. It would play on any
wave output device - speaker and Covox DAC included, provided you’re on a
platform with a driver for that. (It would not, however, play on a real SID,
such as a HardSID card, as it would rely on more channels, more waveforms,
more powerful filters etc.)

Is there a portable SID Player out there that could be used with
SDL directly or indirectly ???

Well, at least one of these is GPLed, and one already plays C64 tunes on
countless machines running various operating systems:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/5147/resid/

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/5147/sidplay/index.html

However, these are designed to play “SID files” (ie C64 music with included
player in 6510 machine code) as accurately as possible, and they are very
CPU intensive in relation to the sound they produce. This goes for reSID in
particular, which is cycle accurate, and won’t run on anything slower than
233-300 MHz, according to the web site.

The whole idea of emulating half a C64 is just crazy for generating sound
effects for new games - apart from the huge CPU load, you’d have to code
the sound FX engine in 6510 asm, for the SID chip. You’d also have to hack
the emulator to get a direct, low latency connection for sending commands to
your FX engine.

Then again, your sound effects would play on a real C64 with little or no
tweaking. :slight_smile:

Anyway, my idea was to design something that sounds similar, but uses a
simple, clean and efficient design, similar to what you’d find in a modern
soft synth. Basically a callback driven engine that takes commands from a
lock-free FIFO.

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 22:38, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:

“David Olofson” <david.olofson at reologica.se> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:01030723383502.17764 at cutangle.admeo.se

Besides, I think beeps are more interesting than waves on the speaker
(*) these days - there’s too much crappy, monotonous, or polished but
just plain boring wave sound effects played on real PCM hardware
anyway. It’s time someone did something different instead of trying to
do the same thing in different ways!

(*) goes for analog/hybrid chips as well, although 12 bit wave audio
using pulse waveform PWM on the SID is pretty cool - and sounds very
good.

Something SID Engine like for whatever speaker, DAC, Soundcard would be
very cool.

Although it would be possible to just rip a SID emulator, I’m more into
extending the design ideas into a virtual “SuperSID”. It would play on any
wave output device - speaker and Covox DAC included, provided you’re on a
platform with a driver for that. (It would not, however, play on a real SID,
such as a HardSID card, as it would rely on more channels, more waveforms,
more powerful filters etc.)

Understand your idea !!! Only the best for this project :=)

Is there a portable SID Player out there that could be used with
SDL directly or indirectly ???

Well, at least one of these is GPLed, and one already plays C64 tunes on
countless machines running various operating systems:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/5147/resid/

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/5147/sidplay/index.html

Thanks for the Links, aaah the SIDPLAY Homepage.

However, these are designed to play “SID files” (ie C64 music with included
player in 6510 machine code) as accurately as possible, and they are very
CPU intensive in relation to the sound they produce. This goes for reSID in
particular, which is cycle accurate, and won’t run on anything slower than
233-300 MHz, according to the web site.

The whole idea of emulating half a C64 is just crazy for generating sound
effects for new games - apart from the huge CPU load, you’d have to code
the sound FX engine in 6510 asm, for the SID chip. You’d also have to hack
the emulator to get a direct, low latency connection for sending commands to
your FX engine.

Then again, your sound effects would play on a real C64 with little or no
tweaking. :slight_smile:

I now what the SID is ( Sound Interface Device ).> On Wednesday 07 March 2001 22:38, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote:

Anyway, my idea was to design something that sounds similar, but uses a
simple, clean and efficient design, similar to what you’d find in a modern
soft synth. Basically a callback driven engine that takes commands from a
lock-free FIFO.

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Okay a speaker is not so good, but a SDL DAC Parrallel Port Driver would
be cool, especially for LAPTOP Users with old LAPTOPs.

YEAH, YEAH :=) A portable SID Engine or YM or whatever would be GREAT !!!

Seriously lads, get a grip. SDL isn’t a driver layer.

That’s basically what I’m trying say…

If you want to
play audio out through some crappy parallel port dac and out through the
pc speaker then write a proper kernel driver for it.

(There are a few already - and they hog the CPU so much while delivering so
low quality, that they stand no chance of being included in the mainstream
kernel.)

PS. Learn how to quote.

Or tell the mail program to do it; most of them have some fields named
"Phrases" or something, where you’d write something like “On %D, %F wrote:”.
(The example is for KMail.)

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' .- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -'On Wednesday 07 March 2001 22:59, Martin Donlon wrote:

On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 01:02:08PM -0800, WIZARD / SYNTHETIC - Crew wrote: