Chiptunes And Beyond

[Ropeburn]

Awesome Mega Drive / Genesis demo:

Can't decide what I'm more impressed by, the graphics or the music. Strobe/TiTAN (an old buddy btw) really squeezed the last bit of juice out of the sound engine. The Mega Drive has a whole additional sub-computer just for sound: Yamaha YM2612 (6-voice 4-OP FM synth with PCM playback on channel 6 and integrated DAC) plus a Texas Instruments SN76489 clone on the VFX chip, both controlled by their dedicated Z80 CPU.

 

[Ibofobi]

Awesome Mega Drive / Genesis demo:

Can't decide what I'm more impressed by, the graphics or the music. Strobe/TiTAN (an old buddy btw) really squeezed the last bit of juice out of the sound engine. The Mega Drive has a whole additional sub-computer just for sound: Yamaha YM2612 (6-voice 4-OP FM synth with PCM playback on channel 6 and integrated DAC) plus a Texas Instruments SN76489 clone on the VFX chip, both controlled by their dedicated Z80 CPU.

That's high quality stuff!

 

[Ibofobi]

While the early ZX Spectrum models only had a beeper, the later ones had an AY-3-8910 chip (similar in capabilities to the sound chip of the Atari ST) giving it a nice and crisp sound.

C-jeff - Another Side Voyages (ZX Spectrum 128K, 2004)

 

[Ropeburn]

Dude is good, and clearly having a blast:

 

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[Count Arthur]

Where applicable, would members please display the Jazz Warning, when posting music videos.

 

[stalepie2]

Where applicable, would members please display the Jazz Warning, when posting music videos.

View attachment 475111

 

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[Ibofobi]

Here is music from the classic games Xenon and Xenon 2 Megablast, available on a multitude of platforms.

First, a chiptune from Xenon, from 1988, on Atari ST, composed by David Whittaker:

And then, music from a patched Atari STE version of Xenon 2 Megablast, from 1989, streaming 25 KHz sampled music directly from the harddrive. This would not have been feasible with the limited size of the 720 KB floppy disks in use at the time. This music is by Bomb The Bass / David Whittaker:

Did you notice by the way that many old chiptunes run in specific tempos like 125 bpm, 107 bpm, or 93 bpm? The Atari ST for example can operate in PAL (at 50 Hz) or NTSC (at 60 Hz) TV mode. The way a chiptune commonly was replayed was to hook up its replay routine to the screen refresh, calling a function in the replay routine every time you also updated the graphics on the screen. At 50 Hz refresh rate this happens at 20 ms intervals. Using 6 screen refeshes (120 ms) for each 1/16 note in the tracker results in 125 bpm. Using 7 screen refeshes (140 ms) for each 1/16 note results in 107 bpm. Etc...

I don't know what use you'll have of this knowledge, but perhaps you can drop this bomb of exciting information at some boring party to get it started?... ;-)

Documentary clip from early 1989 featuring David Whittaker. Also in the video is The (three original) Bitmap Brothers examining a Xenon II level (that wasn't included in the final version of the game).

 

[Ibofobi]

Rob Hubbard & Ben Daglish - Auf Wiedersehen Monty (C64, 1987)

 

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[Ibofobi]

H0ffman - 8-Bit Jungle

A full album made with Protracker on the Amiga.

 

[Ibofobi]

BOOKOVSKI - CASIOpeia

Album from 2025 sequenced on an Atari ST using Cubase 2.1, featuring various Casio synths such as CZ and SK-5.

CASIOpeia, by BOOKOVSKY

2 track album

bookovsky.bandcamp.com