8 ms·
Canyon.mid
- layer8 1y agoThe Zip drive in the picture feels slightly anachronistic though. Technically it isn’t, having been release a few months before Windows 95, but still.
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoI had a Zip drive before I had a Windows 95 PC.
- cluckindan 1y agoThe video shows Windows 3.11 though.
- layer8 1y agoMy point is that while there is a small time window where Zip drives were available and Windows 3.11 was still the latest consumer Windows (ignoring NT here), Zip drives feel more like Windows 95-era. A stack of 3.5” floppy disks would have felt more authentic.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoIt's a very "borderline between eras" picture. The 1000 RSX was a late Tandy model. It has a 386 CPU and VGA graphics, which makes it a pretty reasonable Win 3.11 machine. It's a system that could technically run Win 95 but it'd struggle with that CPU and limited RAM capacity. You really wanted a 486 or Pentium for Win 95. The monitor is the standard Tandy VGA monitor of the system's era. The styling on the speakers feel newer than the RSX's 1991 launch, they're more what I'd expect from the mid to late 90s. You had to upgrade the VGA chip's BIOS to use Win 95 on it: > The ACUMOS VGA graphics can be software-updated with Cirrus Logic BIOS (via MS-DOS driver) to allow VESA/SVGA to function in Windows 95, as the Windows 3.xx Tandy VGA drivers are insufficient for Windows 95. ref: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Tandy_1000_R-Series https://gunkies.org/wiki/Tandy_1000_R-Series I think the background image is probably authentic, it has the feel of a mid-late 90s digital camera picture. It reads to me as the desk of someone who is trying to keep that system alive long past its prime years. Which were arguably over before they started, given 486 systems had been available for a bit when this launched. We end up with an early 90s system with a handful of mid-late 90s peripherals. The bigger problem to me is this sounds like MIDI played back on a sound card with FM synthesis. The 1000 RSX had the poorly supported Tandy 3 tones + DAC sound hardware. You could install an AdLib, Sound Blaster, or other card to give it MIDI FM synth capability, but the base system can't do it. Alas, we can't see the back to see if it has such an upgrade...
- cluckindan 1y agoI think the picture was taken using a film camera. The resolution is way too high for 90’s digital cameras.
- seba_dos1 1y ago> was still the latest consumer Windows When I was a kid, I was using Windows 95 for a while when Me was already a thing - newer versions could technically run, but the experience wasn't great on that hardware. You could even still find Windows 3.11 computers at my school at the time. Computers don't go die at the exact moment a successor becomes available on the market.
- lbschenkel 1y agoAs a data point/anecdote, I had a parallel-port Zip drive with a 386 and Windows 3.1. I remember quite clearly that I had to load a SCSI driver in CONFIG.SYS. I didn't understand back then why I had to load a SCSI driver for a parallel port device, years later I found out that the parallel port version was actually the SCSI version but it tunnelled the SCSI protocol via the parallel interface...
- enneff 1y agoCANYON.MID was shipped with Windows 3.1 IIRC.
- layer8 1y agoYes, hence it predates the availability of Zip drives, which are more of a Windows 95-era thing.
- Dwedit 1y agoZip Drives began as Parallel Port devices, and PCs had parallel ports since the beginning. It's not like it's a USB device or something like that.
- layer8 1y agoI don’t think that’s a good counterargument. For example, an Olympus P-330 dye-sublimation photo printer from 1998 also uses a parallel port, but would nevertheless seem out of place for the Windows 3.11 era.
- MPSimmons 1y agoI mean... to be super honest, I was there, and 1998 was ALSO Windows 3.1 era. The future is not evenly distributed and a TON of people in 1998 still had Windows 3.1 as their daily driver. Windows 95 was a big big thing but a lot of people waited out of choice or necessity. 4MB of RAM was hard to come by for a lot of computers.
- ksherlock 1y agoThe Tandy 1000 RSX had a 386SX. The 386SX was a lower cost, 16-bit data bus version. Windows 95 minimum requirements were a 386DX (32-bit data bus) or better with a 486 recommended. Here's an excerpt from the comp.sys.tandy FAQ. If nothing else, read the second paragraph. * III.C.1. Can I run Windows on my 1000? ... The RLX's can run Windows 3.1 in standard mode only, if they have the RAM upgraded to 1M. The RLX just barely meets the minimum hardware require- ments for Windows 3.1, however, and performance will be poor. Windows will not recognize the built-in mouse (see section II.G.2.). One user says of Windows 3.1 on the 1000RLX: Windows' performance is tolerable on a 486DX2/66. I like it on the RLX because I can start a program, go to the bathroom, and when I come back only have to wait a few minutes before I can actually use the #@$% thing. The RSX's can run Windows 3.1 (or 3.11) in 386 enhanced mode if the memory has been upgraded to 2M or more. There is a Windows sound driver for the RSX's built-in sound at my ftp/WWW site and at Tandy's support WWW site (see sections IV.B.1. and IV.B.2.). Tandy does not officially support the use of Windows on any model of the 1000-series. The RSX's could theoretically run Windows 95, but Microsoft does not recommend Win95 for 386's.
- raydev 1y agoDoesn't feel anachronistic for me, as people kept items from different eras on their desks in the 90s.
- mal10c 1y agoThis brought back a lot of memories!
- Disposal8433 1y agoYou remind me that I didn't have a sound card at the time and I played all my games (mostly LucasArts) with the PC speaker. For me, the MIDI versions are too boring as they lack the "raw electric power" of the speaker that I loved for years.
- pixelpoet 1y agoI can still perfectly hear the twang of the Monkey Island theme song on PC speaker, and vastly prefer it to generic MIDI renditions. My, where did the years go...
- p1mrx 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ
- pixelpoet 1y agoGlorious!!! Even the channel name is too perfect :)
- RajT88 1y agoI went through a phase in high school of MIDI arrangements of songs I liked. Including crazy guitar solo music. Good times.
- Agentlien 1y agoAt first I couldn't understand this sentiment; pc speaker always sounded so abrasive to me. Then I followed the link below and a wave of nostalgia washed over me.
- sotix 1y agoWhat exactly was the difference between PC speakers and MIDI? Why do we no longer need a MIDI device today to play the “correct” sound?
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- dist-epoch 1y agothe better one, clouds.mid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TLtg4KfyL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TLtg4KfyL4
- p1mrx 1y agoI'm slightly impressed that the video (3.4 MB) is only 100 times larger than the original MIDI (33 kB)
- rtkwe 1y agoThat's probably mostly audio too given the vido is a 95% static screen. That has to encode to basically nothing.
- seba_dos1 1y agoIt's 2/3 audio and 1/3 video - 1.1MB. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, most video codecs aren't tremendously efficient with static screens.
- jl6 1y agoThe codec can be tuned to use a very long keyframe interval (e.g. ffmpeg’s -g option), but whether that’s worth the effort is another question.
- rtkwe 1y agoI'm not surprised. Generally the default number of frames between key/I-frames is set pretty low because too many I frames in a row tend to look bad on video content that isn't static and also if you jump to a point between 2 I frames the video can look really weird becasue it hasn't updated the I frame the P frames are manipulating.
- brudgers 1y agoIf you want Midi to render consistently across devices, you are “Significantly Out of Luck.” The audio sounds like it sounds because Microsoft Licensed Roland’s GS Wavetable. Without that you lose timbral information.
- Kwpolska 1y agoThat’s not the Microsoft/Roland sound.
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- fishgoesblub 1y agoPlease please please NEVER disable video player controls. Like a fool I didn't lower my system volume, and got blasted with maximum volume of the YouTube video.
- pixelpoet 1y agoIf your YT/Winamp/whatever volume isn't at 100%, then what you're doing is: 1. generate audio signal 2. reduce volume of that signal, losing information because it's quantised 3. take that volume-reduced signal and boost it right back up again, but now with the lower bits destroyed You can make this effect as bad as you like, e.g. turn it down to 1% and then amplify by 100x... but why?
- api 1y agoApps shouldn’t even have local volume controls. It’s an OS function.
- weiliddat 1y agoWell sometimes you want Spotify running at a lower volume than your 100 people Teams meeting, or maybe the other way around ;)
- Brian_K_White 1y agoI do not want to have to go hunt down the app in a list of all currently running apps in some os-level mixer to turn down or up one app. It is absolutely both an os and an app function. Both are needed.
- echelon 1y agoIt's a problem because the OS doesn't mandate control. If every app had to function via OS volume controls and APIs, the world would be a wonderful place. Truly first-class audio with sublime control plane ergonomics. That'll never happen since any random app developer can just multiply audio volume by a float in whatever API and attach their own unique take on a slider. I'll merit the cases where you need to have individual level and channel controls, such as editing software and professional music tools, but most apps are not these. It's times like this when I do appreciate Apple's dictatorial take on things, though even they could not win this fight.
- Dwedit 1y agoYes, I know it's just a "retro looking computer" to frame a YouTube video but... I had to look up the Tandy 1000 RSX, because it seemed very wrong to have 16-color VGA graphics coming out of a computer labeled as "Tandy 1000". Tandy 1000 RSX was the last model from 1991, and it had Super VGA rather than the famous "Tandy graphics" that originated with the IBM PCJr. It did not come with an Adlib or Sound Blaster card, which is what was depicted in the YouTube video. But the computer did have one ISA slot, and an Adlib or Sound Blaster compatible card could have been installed. It also had a 386 processor rather than the 286 normally found on Tandy 1000 computers, and 1MB of RAM.
- vikingerik 1y agoVGA on a Tandy 1000 wasn't all that unusual. Most if not all of the earlier Tandy 1000 models that had ISA slots could take a VGA card in them. The hardware worked fine (it's just memory bus accesses under 1mb and I/O port instructions), it just depended on software support to do anything with it. Tandy's magazine PCM often listed and rated add-in VGA cards. I remember reading of a later version of DeskMate that supported VGA resolution.
- Mountain_Skies 1y agoThe late Lonnie Falk would have been happy to see that PCM did such a good job of covering Radio Shack's computers that it is thought of as Tandy's magazine. Falsoft's line of magazines covering that area probably added at least a few million to Tandy's bottom line.
- Trixter 1y agoMost Tandys with 8-bit ISA slots could not take a VGA card because the internal graphics chip could not be disabled. It was only the later series where that became an option.
- Trixter 1y agoWhile the picture isn't technically incorrect for an MPC level one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC) system, it borders on anachronistic because, as you note, many hoops would have to be jumped through. Any 386dx-33 or 486 clone would be much more period-correct.
- zkmon 1y agoWhy did we kill all that beautiful minimalism? Computers had enough gaming, entertainment and productivity back then. But the definition of "enough" kept changing. Like a carrot tied to stick attached to an animal.
- echelon 1y agoThis is a silly question. It will never be enough until we can manipulate the fabric of space and time directly as gods and create entirely new universes and physics and live forever for an infinity infinities. The ratio of our infinitesimal, geologically small existence to the whole of the light cone and the observable universe - it is just a glimpse at the fractal of what will be enough to satiate our curiosity and desire.
- whoisyc 1y agoThis. The same drive for betterment that made our species “kill such beautiful minimalism” was the one that lifted billions out of subsistence farming and 50% infant death rate, and will be the one to escape the destruction of planet earth by sun’s evolution. You cannot have one without the other.
- smolder 1y agoThere is societal improvement and then there is the huge amount of ego driven waste and externalized harm. Ideally, theoretically, we could have a lot of the former without a lot of the latter. In practice this ratio seems to be getting worse. Me-first attitudes are way up, profit is misunderstood as merit.
- bitlax 1y agoI don't think OP is asking whether we should give up looking for advances in astrophysics. OP is asking "why did we add all of these freaking popups and theme tweaks? They're distracting me from using my computer to make advances in astrophysics!" I'd say try Linux. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8T5pyGiTPdE https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8T5pyGiTPdE
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- xanderlewis 1y agoMy personal favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV9BtuPpW9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV9BtuPpW9w.
- seba_dos1 1y agoThat iframe really needs some CSS filters.
- Hackbraten 1y agoFor some reason I don't understand, CSS filters sometimes make webpages completely unresponsive and unusable on my Librem 5.
- seba_dos1 1y agoIf you're using Firefox, that'll be because it's limited to software rendering until etnaviv catches up with GLES3 support.
- tgv 1y agoIf you like that kind of thing: manufacturers used to create demo songs for synth keyboards and modules: * Emu Proteus 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5FffG_0sqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5FffG_0sqw * Emu Proteus 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4KW9uWCY3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4KW9uWCY3A * Roland MT-32: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdSKg5G9MPc&t=22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdSKg5G9MPc&t=22s * Roland D-10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXGdyp7Ml-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXGdyp7Ml-Y * Roland SC-33: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as_jVNIvleI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as_jVNIvleI (complete with MIDI animation) * Yamaha MU100: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BL_RzeWDxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BL_RzeWDxg (1 hour!) Etc. Don't know if they still do, but it was a thing when these "romplers" came on the market.
- MrBuddyCasino 1y agoThe Roland SC-33 one slaps.
- eminence32 1y agoI remember this media player from back in the day :) Looking at it now, I love how they used a scroll bar as the UI widget to represent playback progress.
- theletterf 1y agoThe creator of Canyon.mid, George Stone, was interviewed here: https://pixelatedaudio.com/canyon-mid/ https://pixelatedaudio.com/canyon-mid/
- zuminator 1y agoThanks for that info. I was wondering if it was some undercover Dave Grusin contract work.
- kristopolous 1y agohis story reminds me of Elwood Edwards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfrrif_sUOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfrrif_sUOI
- opello 1y agoIn the side bar was 'You've Got Mail' Voice Elwood Edwards Dies at 74[1] from 7 months ago. Among all the nostalgia from the MIDI sounds in here that was a bit of a downer. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ7EkDFl_3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ7EkDFl_3s
- kristopolous 1y agoyep, that made the front page here when it happened. Not black bar but it was I think in the top 5.
- Boxxed 1y agoAnyone have the other SoundBlaster era demo .MIDs at hand? I think there was...Self Control? rhythm.mid? A couple others that I can't remember?
- Dwedit 1y agoThese are 1992-era MIDI files that came bundled with MIDISoft Recording Session. Note that they contain both "Base" and "Extended" tracks in the same file, so there will be piano notes on channel 16 that are supposed to be percussion. A MIDI player such as Falcosoft Soundfont MIDI Player will detect those kinds of songs and automatically mute channel 16. (There is actually a way to mark channel 16 as a percussion channel, but the people who made those midis in 1992 didn't know about it) https://www.dwedit.org/files/session_midi.zip https://www.dwedit.org/files/session_midi.zip https://www.dwedit.org/files/session_midi_2.zip https://www.dwedit.org/files/session_midi_2.zip
- fortyseven 1y ago"Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot." Super cool, YouTube.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoHopefully no one does this. Enabling them gets us further into this mess.
- fortyseven 1y agoProblem is, I'm already signed in. I'm never NOT signed in. But for some reason playing video anywhere not started on YouTube.com now hits me with that garbage.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoNote: It sounded differently on different sound cards because their wavetable/sound fonts/MIDI chips were different, so there was no canonical, universal rendering of MID files.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoSome previous discussion in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779729
- lutusp 1y agoAhh ... retro. The many ways by which the past beckons us. All right. Apropos the retro theme, here's a Web page dedicated to my Apple II program "Electric Duet": https://arachnoid.com/electric_duet/ https://arachnoid.com/electric_duet/ The gory details: the Apple II had a simple TTL output connected to a speaker -- crude, not meant for music, and certainly not with two voices. Did this stop me? Read on. I created an assembly-language player that switched the TTL speaker driver's output at 8 kilohertz, then created two musical voices by controlling the pulse width of the 8 KHz clock. So two voices, two notes at once, from a TTL driver. Here's a sample of the music Electric Duet created, on an Apple II, in 1981: https://arachnoid.com/electric_duet/music_tracks/prelude.mp3 https://arachnoid.com/electric_duet/music_tracks/prelude.mp3 -- press the play button. That's retro defined.
- glimshe 1y agoI didn't like canyon.mid back in the day. I'd much rather play popcorn or axelfoley!
- crtified 1y agoI agree - to me, canyon.mid (while technically neat) has a very Corporate 1990's Advertisement sound and feel. Not surprising since, in a way, that's exactly what it is! So that particular track never gelled with me. I listened the heck out of some of the other included sound and MIDI sample material however, back then. As one did, with sources being so comparatively limited in the pre- and early- Web years.
- kelvie 1y agoCould media player actually just play midi dumps like this back in the day? I've been on Linux for so long now, that being able to just play a MIDI file without making a bunch of decisions about soundfonts and synthesizers [1] just seems mind-blowing to me now. Part of me wishes that just by default, mpv or something would just pick a softsynth and just play it (like WMP here) rather than have me install a separate program, pick a sound font, invoke it in some weird way to let it know what soundfont I want, and not even be able to seek back and forth. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MIDI#List_of_SoundFonts https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/MIDI#List_of_SoundFonts
- dleslie 1y agoYes, and sharing midi files was commonplace before mp3s took over. Mid and mod, what an era.
- tripflag 1y agomods are still alive, and crazier than ever -- proof that 4 channels is all you need! https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=ma-205456 https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=ma-205456
- Intermernet 1y agoOh that's beautiful. You made me a happy person.
- saint_yossarian 1y agoYes, there was even a <bgsound> HTML tag to play MIDI files, which was heavily used in places like Geocities.
- TazeTSchnitzel 1y agoWindows and macOS have both bundled similar low-quality licensed versions of a Roland GS sample set and low-quality software synthesisers since the late 1990's. Neither of them are as good as even the lowest-end dedicated hardware General MIDI synth from Roland was, but they're still better than nothing. You're unlucky because you happen to be using Linux. unfortunately the best in that field was and remains proprietary so this will probably never be solved on that platform.
- pjbk 1y agoNow do Brian Orr's clouds.mid for Windows 95. https://www.brianorr.com/blog/2010/01/14/windows-95-easter-egg-song-clouds-mid https://www.brianorr.com/blog/2010/01/14/windows-95-easter-e...
- butz 1y agoRemember the times when websites were able to play MIDI files?
- joe91 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWFNgKE4uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWFNgKE4uw
- llimos 1y agoHeard it in my head as soon as I saw the title on HN
- jonhohle 1y agoI can hear that Model M just be looking at it. The break on the buckling springs is still one of the best you can get.
- ndiddy 1y agoThat's a Tandy lookalike of the Model M, it's a rubber dome keyboard.
- encoderer 1y agoWhat a wild ride we have taken with computing over the last 40 years. I’m 43 and my first computer looked even older than this - one color display, dual floppy disks and no hard drive. Now we have AI deploy to gigaclouds and monitor it with pocket computers.
- pimlottc 1y agoGet a load the big shot over here with two floppy drives! No mid-game disks changes for you!
- charlie0 1y agoIs that an iomega drive in the background!?
- erickhill 1y agoYes, indeed. Likely a parallel-port version unless that machine has a SCSI card.
- nice_byte 1y agoPersonally I prefer onestop.mid :)
- guardian5x 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlUzgM6TiI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlUzgM6TiI4 I had forgotten this one. It's awesome.
- pyromaker 1y agoFor those who remember... :) man I miss when things are simpler, slower, maybe more manual, more tedious, but more configurable, more buggy, but more creative. I understand we got here through multiple step changes of improvements, but I'm just nostalgic - good memories!
- jasonb05 1y agoI played the hell out of this midi file when I got my soundblaster 16 in the early/mid 90s!
- esafak 1y agoI remember some of the songs that came with the Sound Blaster, like this one: https://youtu.be/eqU4CkbK1X0 https://youtu.be/eqU4CkbK1X0 What a step up it was over the bleeps that came out of the PC. Like going from B&W to color TV. Advances like that were commonplace back then.
- b112 1y agoWow, almost a match for the C64. I miss early PC wars. Now it's all just the same. Maybe we'll have fun again with quantum computing.
- Intermernet 1y agoI can imagine some 14 year olds in the playground: "The Qamiga has 16 qubit sound dude!" "Yeah, but it uses quantum annealing! You can hear the entropy loss in the higher frequencies!"
- b112 1y agoThis is quite amusing to me, considering the Amiga had a low pass audio filter, you could toggle on and off via software (not sure if you intended this parallel, but it's amusing)
- fitsumbelay 1y agoThe Zip Drive on the table to the right, tho ...
- hliyan 1y agoThis reminds me of the demo tape that came with old Sony cassette players. It had Entertainer on side A, and another instrumental called Andalusia (or somehting similar) on side B, which I have never been able to track down.
- andybak 1y agoMy parent's Thorn music centre came with a cassette with Herb Alpert's Taste of Honey (although probably not the original). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRGOm071sE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRGOm071sE0 And I still love that tune.
- __alexs 1y agoDisappointed this isn't an actual VM running Windows 3.1 in the browser.
- simondotau 1y agoCanyon.mid played using modern virtual instruments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfVobqrIymc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfVobqrIymc Canyon.mid played using modern real instruments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QN3ToFCv_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QN3ToFCv_s
- nmeofthestate 1y ago"You bolt awake on the NY subway. You are not online. It is 1987 AD. You are Judge Reinhold, and are an office worker in a comedy movie. The future cannot come to pass. Rome must burn."
- torcete 1y agoI really like the windows 3.1/3.11 GUI. Simple, clear and snappy. I feel like anything else that has come after it is just inferior and bloated.
- Koshkin 1y agoMORICONS.DLL has always read 'Morricone' to me...