5 ms·

It's amazing how the PC speaker version has a Melody, but also chords and accompaniment, even though only one frequency can be played at a time. There's so much

by ant6n 5y ago

It's amazing how the PC speaker version has a Melody, but also chords and accompaniment, even though only one frequency can be played at a time. There's so much going on it sounds impossible. I really wanna know how this was done, presumably by offsetting all the various sounds. Maybe very short notes jumping around, perhaps the raggae style off-beats help. There's a big documentary on Monkey island on YouTube, unfortunately it doesn't go much into the music.

Sharlin 5y ago
There even used to be a driver for Win 3.x that allowed playing digitized sound via the PC speaker as if it was a real soundcard. It was (unsurprisingly) very CPU intensive so not useful for games.
Joe_Cool 5y ago
Check out the title theme from Maniac Mansion. Someone at Lucasfilm Games knew what they were doing with the PC Speaker. They had great musicians. The dynamic iMuse music in Monkey Island 2 and Tie Fighter (only in the DOS/MIDI version) was incredible.
Cybotron5000 5y ago
Here’s a great article by Kenneth McAlpine: https://www.gamejournal.it/the-sound-of-1-bit-technical-constraint-as-a-driver-for-musical-creativity-on-the-48k-sinclair-zx-spectrum/ https://www.gamejournal.it/the-sound-of-1-bit-technical-cons... …An interview with Michael Land and Clint Bajakian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EqG6RYn9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EqG6RYn9Y …an article about iMuse (used from M.I.2 I think): https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-Secret-History-Monkey-Island-2-LeChucks-Revenge/9 https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-Secret-... Hope that helps! (this site is amazing btw… :)
duskwuff 5y ago
The PC speaker version is really clever. It's arranged in a way that suggests to the listener that multiple voices are present, but they can only hear the most prominent one that's active at any given time. The arpeggiated chords (marimba on other arrangements) help with this; in other cases, a background note is offset slightly to make it "peek" around the edges of the lead.
- shahar2k 5y ago
  audio dithering?
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
You can play sampled audio out of a PC speaker. All it requires is simulating a 1-bit DAC to control the switching directly.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> It's amazing how the PC speaker version has a Melody, but also chords and accompaniment, even though only one frequency can be played at a time. The PC speaker doesn't play a single frequency, it toggles between “on” and “off”. There's techniqueels to drive so that it looks to be next level of softwarr like it is playing a single frequency, or like it has, e.g., an 8-bit position setting, or...a number of other things. But even those super-basic things are illusions over toggling at appropriate times, not the native function of the speaker
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  Wouldn't toggling off and on 8000 times per second be the same as playing 8KHz?
  - p1mrx 5y ago
    "8 kHz audio" usually implies that each sample is an 8-bit or 16-bit value. In the on/off case it's just a 1-bit value.
    - ant6n 5y ago
      Playing "8KHz audio" is not the same thing as a playing an "8KHz frequency" (which yes in this case is a actually a square wave, so technically its Fourier transform shows other frequencies being played - but the programmer only gets to set the frequency of the square wave).
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Wouldn't toggling off and on 8000 times per second be the same as playing 8KHz? Sure. But its not “tell the speaker to play an 8kHz frequency”. The speaker doesn't inherently play “one frequency”, it just toggles on and off when you tell it to. If you tell it to toggle on and off based on a function driven by the combination of an 8kHz cycle and, say, a 2.5kHz cycle it will do that, too.
    - rob74 5y ago

by ant6n 5y ago

Sharlin 5y ago

There even used to be a driver for Win 3.x that allowed playing digitized sound via the PC speaker as if it was a real soundcard. It was (unsurprisingly) very CPU intensive so not useful for games.

Joe_Cool 5y ago

Check out the title theme from Maniac Mansion. Someone at Lucasfilm Games knew what they were doing with the PC Speaker. They had great musicians. The dynamic iMuse music in Monkey Island 2 and Tie Fighter (only in the DOS/MIDI version) was incredible.

Cybotron5000 5y ago

Here’s a great article by Kenneth McAlpine: https://www.gamejournal.it/the-sound-of-1-bit-technical-constraint-as-a-driver-for-musical-creativity-on-the-48k-sinclair-zx-spectrum/ https://www.gamejournal.it/the-sound-of-1-bit-technical-cons... …An interview with Michael Land and Clint Bajakian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EqG6RYn9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EqG6RYn9Y …an article about iMuse (used from M.I.2 I think): https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-Secret-History-Monkey-Island-2-LeChucks-Revenge/9 https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-Secret-... Hope that helps! (this site is amazing btw… :)

duskwuff 5y ago

The PC speaker version is really clever. It's arranged in a way that suggests to the listener that multiple voices are present, but they can only hear the most prominent one that's active at any given time. The arpeggiated chords (marimba on other arrangements) help with this; in other cases, a background note is offset slightly to make it "peek" around the edges of the lead.

shahar2k 5y ago
audio dithering?

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

You can play sampled audio out of a PC speaker. All it requires is simulating a 1-bit DAC to control the switching directly.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> It's amazing how the PC speaker version has a Melody, but also chords and accompaniment, even though only one frequency can be played at a time. The PC speaker doesn't play a single frequency, it toggles between “on” and “off”. There's techniqueels to drive so that it looks to be next level of softwarr like it is playing a single frequency, or like it has, e.g., an 8-bit position setting, or...a number of other things. But even those super-basic things are illusions over toggling at appropriate times, not the native function of the speaker

pcthrowaway 5y ago
Wouldn't toggling off and on 8000 times per second be the same as playing 8KHz?
- p1mrx 5y ago
  "8 kHz audio" usually implies that each sample is an 8-bit or 16-bit value. In the on/off case it's just a 1-bit value.
  - ant6n 5y ago
    Playing "8KHz audio" is not the same thing as a playing an "8KHz frequency" (which yes in this case is a actually a square wave, so technically its Fourier transform shows other frequencies being played - but the programmer only gets to set the frequency of the square wave).
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Wouldn't toggling off and on 8000 times per second be the same as playing 8KHz? Sure. But its not “tell the speaker to play an 8kHz frequency”. The speaker doesn't inherently play “one frequency”, it just toggles on and off when you tell it to. If you tell it to toggle on and off based on a function driven by the combination of an 8kHz cycle and, say, a 2.5kHz cycle it will do that, too.
  - rob74 5y ago