Mercurial > hg > xmms-sid
view FAQ @ 69:bf6a524cf7ca dev-0-8-0a1
Fixes, cleanups, etc.
author | Matti Hamalainen <ccr@tnsp.org> |
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date | Mon, 30 Jun 2003 17:16:02 +0000 |
parents | 66f8d711cb95 |
children | 7047a6390b08 |
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XMMS-SID - Frequently Asked (and other) Questions ================================================= - So what IS the SID and/or what are SID-tunes? - Where to get SID tunes? - Why isn't the sub-song control window skinnable? - When using XMMS-SID with the OpenGL Spectrum Analyzer, - Can I make my own SIDs??? How?? - XMMS-SID plays some tune badly! - What about SIDPlay 1 & 2 support? >--- Q: So what IS the SID and/or what are SID-tunes? A: SID is abbreviation for the sound chip that was used in many of the old 8-bit home computers manufactured by Commodore Inc. in 1980's. Best known of those was the Commodore 64 home computer (aka C64 or CBM64, also known as VIC-64 in some countries). The Sound Interface Device (SID), based on waveform modulation and synthesis, was designed by Bob Yannes and is considered one of the most advanced sound chips at the time. It's capabilities surpassed all of the other chips on the 8-bit home computer market and even most of the ones used in arcade game systems. Thousands of games were produced for C=64 in 1980's and beginning of 1990's, many of them having excellent musical score. Best of those tunes are still regarded as legendary - such as songs by Martin Galway (for games Arkanoid, Green Beret, Yie Ar Kung Fu 1 and 2, Parallax...), Rob Hubbard (Commando, Auf Wiedersehen Monty, Monty on the Run, Warhawk, Sanxion, Delta...), Ben Daglish (Jack the Nipper 1&2, Way of the Tiger, Cobra, Avenger) and numerous other famous composers. Some of them quit their composing quickly after the 8-bit period, but some are still working in the computer music business. (Including Maniacs of Noise, Chris Huelsbeck, Richard Joseph and Charles Deenen who worked with Fallout 1 & 2's musical score) Today, years after the 'decline' of 8-bit computers, many composers (mainly from C64 demoscene) continue to compose tunes for SID and get most amazing things out of it -- things that the designers of the SID didn't even imagine. For example: SID has only three sound channels, but there are tunes that use special techniques to "multiplex" them to sound like four or even six channels. Also these three channels are "limited" to synthesized sounds, kind like the FM sounds produced by old Sound Blaster cards on PC. But again, using a certain 'bug' in SID chip, composers were able to push the limits farther ... Martin Galway's very famous piece on Arkanoid game was the "first" (later it has been proven that Chris Huelsbeck's Bad Cat was the first but was released later) to feature DIGITIZED SAMPLES like speech, etc. ... The "SID tunes" are usually understood to be the files that contain the C64 machine code and data that plays the music. SID players (or emulators) are programs that emulate the SID chip capabilities and other parts of C64 hardware to produce almost authentic re-creation of the original music. SID-files (aka SID tunes) can be created by ripping the music routines and data from some game or just composing the music with some editor. XMMS-SID is interface for one of those emulators, libSIDPlay by Michael Schwendt. >--- Q: Where to get SID tunes? A: There are many collections of SID tunes on the Internet, but probably the best one and best known one is the High Voltage SID Collection aka HVSC. It is available at: http://hvsc.c64.org/ HVSC contains the tunes ripped from all legendary C64 games, loaders, etc. And more. There are over 15,000 tunes in the HVSC version 4.0 and more are coming. HVSC also contains the STIL database (SID Tune Information List) that contains lots of information about many of the tunes included in HVSC. XMMS-SID supports the STIL database and info about the selected tune can be viewed with the "XMMS fileinfo" window (CTRL+3). STIL information can contain comments from composers, notice if the tune is a cover and historically interesting facts about games, etc... >--- Q: Why isn't the sub-song control window skinnable? A: Because the XMMS's code for skins is not exported to plugins. And besides, you would need new skin(s) anyway. Things would be overly complicated if I added a skin support and I'm not interested, at least for now. >--- Q: When using XMMS-SID with the OpenGL Spectrum Analyzer, the sound becomes distorted! A: This is a known problem and occurs usually with NVidia cards and drivers. It is not directly related to XMMS-SID. With certain combinations of hardware, this problem presents itself with all input-plugins (mp3, mod, ogg..) of XMMS. Workaround: Upgrade or downgrade your NVidia drivers. Try lowering your systemload. Close some unnecessary CPU-consuming applications. Buy faster hardware. >--- Q: Can I make my own SIDs??? How?? A: Yes you can. You need a real C64 or emulator like VICE and a composing program. There are many available, I know only few of them: - JCH's editor (search with google) - Cybertracker (http://noname.c64.org/) - GoatTracker (http://covertbitops.c64.org/) Some of the mentioned tools can be found from Lemon's collection which is an excellent place to look for info on games and other Commodore-related software. The URL is: http://www.lemon64.com/ You should also check http://www.c64.com/ Besides the above, you'll need some skill in using the programs and hardware, understanding of music in some level and good ideas for tunes. :) Rest of that is out of the scope of this document, please don't ask me about this. >--- Q: XMMS-SID plays some tune badly! A: Please read file "README.bugreport". In general this might be a bug in emulation-library or some other component. Or it might be in XMMS-SID. Report and I'll see what can be done. >--- Q: What about SIDPlay 1 & 2 support? I saw some screenshots from 0.8beta that had selectable support for v1 and v2 in the configuration! A: The runtime selection in betas 0-4 was based on patched libsidplay2 that changed the namespace to not to clash with libsidplay1. I don't think it is worth of the trouble because a) it would break other apps using libsidplay2 unless the patched version was statically linked to XMMS-SID and b) I would have to manually create the patches for every libsidplay2 update. Too much work, so it's not going to happen. Only "feasible" (but also not worth of the trouble) way to achieve runtime-selectable support would be to create a dynamic plugin- architechture into XMMS-SID to on-demand load support for emulation engine(s). I might do this if you are willing to pay 2000 EUR for it :-P >---