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The Sound of 1-bit: Musical Creativity on the 48k Sinclair ZX Spectrum (2017)
- devcamcar 6y agoLove the idea of this ... Please lead with the music and then explain it. You lost me after the 7th paragraph.
- tobyhinloopen 6y agoTLDR where is the music
- maverick74 6y agoThat's exactly what i was also looking for :)
- egypturnash 6y agoit's in a new tab when you type something like "sinclair agent x music" into duck duck google
- hansjorg 6y agoSome examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtSRhIM4oaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtSRhIM4oaQ Pretty impressive given the limitations, but not very pleasant compared to e.g. the C64 SID.
- l33tman 6y agoIt's a very interesting article but yes, they need to lead with at least some youtube links to actual examples of what they're explaining otherwise you might as well just put up the PDF and nothing else.
- zserge 6y agoGlad to see this topic getting attention on HN! I just finished a post about 1-bit music a few days ago: https://zserge.com/posts/1-bit-music/ https://zserge.com/posts/1-bit-music/
- JudasGoat 6y agoIn the 1990's I serviced computer printers and monitors. Juki made a daisy wheel printer called the 6100. It was unique in that it used mag-lev to suspend the print head. It came to mind regarding this story because someone had written software to convert the Juki 6100 to a graphics printer, using the Period Key Only. It printed at 18 characters per second, try to imagine how slow that is.
- dcminter 6y agoI hope you had a printer hood! Those things were deafening!
- _def 6y agoSome years ago I actually owned a ZX Spectrum and I managed to run some demos on it loaded via my PC audio out. I'm still searching for that one great track it played. It sounded similar to this tune: https://youtu.be/QZnOd_f9YjQ?t=371 https://youtu.be/QZnOd_f9YjQ?t=371
- ctdonath 6y agoIn high school, I built a 1-bit sound board for the Sinclair ZX-80, programmed in machine code to play musically tuned delay loops for notes. This was inspired by noticing AM radio interference as sounds corresponding to program execution. Highlight was getting it to play “Yankee Doodle” for a science fair. Think I still have it in a box somewhere, will look.
- Zenst 6y agoI managed to get 8 octaves of tones out of a ZX-81 in my youth without any extra hardware. Bit banging the cassette port audio out and running that output into line in worked. Wasn't amazing and boring organ tone at best and would use a fair chunk of the CPU. But like most thinks was a case of fellow school friends boasting about their zx-spectrum with audio, one just don't take that sitting down.
- maverick74 6y agoaaaaahhhhhhhh the GOOOOD OLD TIMES!!! how i miss them!!! No cellphones, no internet... Hey Hey 16K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d8UfQn3BEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d8UfQn3BEg
- 2a0c40 6y agoHere’s a classic by Tim Follin https://youtu.be/u-D24A_N4d4 https://youtu.be/u-D24A_N4d4
- 112233 6y agoFor me technically the most impressive was the title screen of Dark Fusion: https://youtu.be/gXe51IsT2xs https://youtu.be/gXe51IsT2xs They even scroll stars in the playback routine
- Flow 6y agoHere's a SID cover by Linus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shj1_T68SBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shj1_T68SBo
- rob74 6y agoIt's not only the cheapo Sinclair Spectrum that had to make do with this "1-bit" sound, the much more expensive IBM PC didn't have better sound hardware "out of the box" either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_speaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_speaker
- amiga-workbench 6y agoI don't remember it being widely used for music, but some games did a pretty good job with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSvj3Hjxiic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSvj3Hjxiic The 8088MPH demo also sounds surprisingly good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNRO7lno_DM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNRO7lno_DM
- aricz 6y agoHigh quality PC-speaker music https://youtu.be/Xqjs1SPF9KY https://youtu.be/Xqjs1SPF9KY
- Koshkin 6y agoI have never understood why having a 1-bit DAC in a CD player was something to brag about.
- mrob 6y agoBecause controlling timing of signals is easier than controlling level. You can take advantage of the fast and low-jitter clocks already made for digital electronics. If you have a multi-bit DAC, it's difficult to made it linear. With a 1-bit DAC, it's much easier, because you only have two possible output values. And if you run it fast enough, you can apply a simple analog low-pass filter to the output and convert speed to bit-depth.
- elevaet 6y agoThe nice thing about 1-bit music is that you automatically win the loudness war
- odipar 6y agoI always was a Sinclair guy, even developed some cracking (tape copier) software back in `80s (youth crime, I know). I also had friends who owned a C64. Someday, a friend let me listen to another 1 bit sound that was produced by ..... the C64 diskdrive! I was really flabbergasted by that hack!
- incanus77 6y agoThis is great, but man, it could really have benefitted from some inline audio.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bcrl 6y agoPulse width modulation of the PC speaker was also a thing back in the 1990s. ModPlay under DOS could use the PC speaker as an output to play back Amiga MOD files, although it was very quiet. I ended up making a bunch of parallel port DACs in high school for friends so they could play MODs with a higher sound quality. Good times!