LittleFM on GBC
February 7th, 2010I finally felt motivated to work a little on LittleFM, and the next feature in the pipeline was (the comparitively small) feature of “real” GBC support, ie support for double speed and colour palettes in LSDj which LittleFM has been lacking so far. (Instead it used the oldschool compatibility mode which didn’t allow LSDj to take advantage of the higher CPU speed found in the GBC)
It works great and flashing takes about half the time when done in double speed mode, however I forgot to clear the secondary GBC bakground map when going from LSDj back into LFM, using the classic sel-start-B-A combo. What this means is that the colour pattern from LSDj will not be erased but remain on the screen. This gave this nice visual bug seen below. As you can see, the pattern resembles LSDj’s screen layout.
I’m going to finish one more feature before I release LittleFM 0.4, loading and saving of individual LSDj files, so LFM can truly replace the builtin file manager that comes with LSDj. I have an almost working version of this feature, but it has wrinkles which I want to iron out before releasing it.
The last picture is shitwave which actually looks marvellous with the backgrounds residue. It gives the vibrations more life and you can see what’s actually happenening rather than just vaguely vibrating lines. It may not be apparent on the still image, but it looks nice live.
Sorry for the long wait, but have patience!
ReBub
January 30th, 2010
Xero commented my track ‘Belsebub Till Frukost’, saying “there’s no such thing (as too much reverb)”. I did this one to try to prove him wrong, of course failing to do so. Turned out rather droney…
Listen to ReBub on chipmusic.org
Red onion macro and photo dump!
January 29th, 2010And now for something completely different…
I made a salad with, among other things, red onion. There were leftovers and I noticed how beautiful the pattern on the onion slice looked. What could I do except pull out my camera and take a picture?
And here’s the real closeup. Gorgeous! I think I’ll make that a top image…
Other random pics from my latest dump:
Read on…
漢字 test
January 28th, 2010Let’s see how this works out…
New track: Nitrojazz
January 26th, 2010Time for some NES-eque and short but sweet Gameboy jazz. Listen at chipmusic.org.
Plastik - Reaktor FM synth
January 23rd, 2010
Plastik is an FM synth (or more accurately phase modulation synth) inspired by the Yamaha OPL chips found in Ad Lib and Sound Blaster soundcards in the 80’s and 90’s, renowned for its plastic sound. It should be noted, however, that even though Plastik was made to produce the same overall qualities as the OPL chips, and even has some of its unique features (the waveforms, the fixed vibrato and tremolo frequencies) it makes no claim whatsoever to be a complete or accurate OPL emulator.
Plastik is still work in progress, so if you find something that’s wrong with it, or you have a feature request, feel free to contact me. (Leave a comment or fetch my e-mail address from the bottom of the page.)
(Not yet) frequently asked questions
Q: .ism?
A: .ism is the file extension for Reaktor instruments. You need Native Instruments Reaktor in order to try Plastik.
Q: How does the signal routing work?
A: There are four FM operators connected in cascade. Operator 1 can modulate operator 2 can modulate operator 3 can modulate operator 4. This is controlled by the PhM->x switch. Apart from that, each operator can also be broken out to the summing bus.
Q: Why doesn’t it sound like an OPL chip?
A: Because it isn’t an OPL chip. (And doesn’t aim to sound exactly like one. It’s an OPL inspired synth, not an OPL emulator)
Q: Dude, where are the filters??
A: There are no filters, use FM to shape the sound. (Or add a filter of your choice, this is Reaktor after all.)
Q: Why is it so ugly?
A: I will add a fancy schmancy skin for 1.1.
Q: Why an instrument (.ism) instead of ensemble? (.ens)
A: If everything needed to run the synth is already in the instrument why distribute an ensemble which is basically just another container in that case…?
Veqtor - Limit Cycle EP
January 8th, 2010
Veqtor is at it again, this time with glitchy ambient/IDM soundscapes generated with MAX4Live. Limit Cycle EP is a four track EP released on Fools’ Forest.
Sparkfun Free Day
January 8th, 2010
For those of you who missed it, yesterday was Sparkfun free day, when Sparkfun would give away $100 to all customers, up to a grand total of $100,000. I didn’t really expect to be one of the winners in the noble battle. As one might imagine the demand for the offer was high, and I expected that the pot would be used up within minutes. The problem however turned out to be quite the opposite. The server was so overloaded that nobody could get through. When submitting a form, the page would load for 5 minutes just to tell me the connection was aborted. I heard a rumour that someone had managed to place the first order order after 30 minutes. So I kept pressing F5 persistently as soon as a page returned an error, and I managed to place my order just in time. At that point things were working relatively well, given the circumstances, (Only had to refresh three times before getting a connection) And as you can see from the remaining time and money counters, $9000 (~90 users) were served over the course of three minutes. I’m guessing people started to give up by then.
My persistence paid off, and unless they mess up the shipping somehow, I’ll soon be the owner of a Spartan 3E FPGA.
Spectral fun
December 19th, 2009
As psilodump once noticed, audio spectrograms can look pretty neat. And it’s worth noting that the more effects of different kinds you throw, the more interesting the spectrum gets, usually. Every little retrig, pitch pitch bend or filter sweep makes the spectrum look cooler. What I especially like about the image above is the pattern that looks like stalagmites/stalactites if rotated 90 degrees.
If you want to know how it sounds, go ahead and click here:
Download
Winter theme with snowflakes
December 12th, 2009Away with the familiar orange colours, in with a new blue theme for the winter. And in with a few snowflakes for good measure. (Alpha channel PNG for the win!) And just like the top image, the motion (gravity and wind) of the snowflakes is randomized, so give a refresh. You can watch the current internal values for the script by clicking any one of the snowflakes.
