OctaMED Sound Studio Install Issues & Advice.

[golem]

@Karlos

Really great tunes. The second two sound very professional and I'm amazed that you got some of those sounds from Amigas.

[Karlos]

@Karlos

Really great tunes. The second two sound very professional and I'm amazed that you got some of those sounds from Amigas.

I was quite pleased with the first one myself. Getting a proper tone generator to sound like a specific old 4-channel mod only without the hard panning and dubious fidelity was no small task

[golem]

I was quite pleased with the first one myself. Getting a proper tone generator to sound like a specific old 4-channel mod only without the hard panning and dubious fidelity was no small task

Trust you to get a perverse pleasure from that! )

[Karlos]

Trust you to get a perverse pleasure from that! )

Actually, it started out as an experiment. 4-channel mod files have a particular feel that is as much of a product of their 4-channel limitation as it is anything to do with Paula's non-linear 8-bit and other sample-specific issues. A good 4 channel mod always seems to give the impression of something more complicated, rapidly switching between instrument sounds on the same channel, use of chord samples and so on. Once you recognise how they are sequenced, you notice these effects in the music.

With a normal musical instrument, you don't have those limitations and end up just building music with layers of sound. I thought it might be interesting to apply the mod style approach and the most obvious way to do that was to try and recreate something. That tune originally started as a MIDI remake on my old FM keyboard after I'd been playing the game for a touch of nostalgia. When I got my current tone gen, I dug out the OctaMED project and reworked it for that.

-edit-

Good old youtube. Just found the original music: here...

[Arkhan]

shit son, you may have made me retry Octamed, as it looks like something akin to what I am doing right now with Fluity Roops.

[XDelusion]

Here's my latest work in progress. I intend to add in some of OctaMED's effects and what not in time as I re-learn those things I've forgotten.

Now how would I go about saving this into a 16-Bit wav on my Amiga?

[Karlos]

I can't check it just now (at work) but to render this to a 16-bit track, all you need to do is choose "Disk 16-bit" as your mixer output. After selecting this, increase the mixing frequency to 44100Hz and you might also want to increase the mix buffer to a larger amount (say 4096 or so). You might also want to enable the smoothing option here, but beware it can make your track sound very dull if you are using low fidelity samples to start with. It also takes much longer to render.

Then hit play. A progress window will open as your track is rendered and the various player windows update as usual (only slower if your CPU power is insufficient) so you can see which block/line it is up to.

A note of caution, it will keep rendering indefinitely or until you manually stop it if your song doesn't have a stop instruction at the end somewhere.

[XDelusion]

Thankx again Karlos! Your a well spring of information.

Stop Instruction, that's another thing I used to know but forget. What command do I use for that again?

[Karlos]

Thankx again Karlos! Your a well spring of information.

Stop Instruction, that's another thing I used to know but forget. What command do I use for that again?

I can't remember off the top of my head for sure, but I think it's 0FFE. It's in the online help under player commands anyway.

[XDelusion]

Well I managed to get the HELP to load finally, and sadly the STOP SONG command is not in the list. In fact a lot of times it tells me to refer to the owner's manual which I don't nor did I ever have. Other times it tells me that certain files of the HELP system can't be loaded.

As for the 0FFe command, that just makes my Amiga lock up and reboot.  Nice trick!

[Karlos]

As for the 0FFe command, that just makes my Amiga lock up and reboot.  Nice trick!

It stopped the song though, didn't it? :lol:

I'll have a look later. I'm sure that was the correct player command though.

[XDelusion]

That it did.

So is that a bug, or a just a cruel joke the programmer threw in there?

[Karlos]

That it did.

So is that a bug, or a just a cruel joke the programmer threw in there?

No, really, FFE is the stop instruction (just confirmed). It should be "right justified" in the column, eg:

--- 00FFE

If I was aware of a bug that would reset it without warning for invoking a command, I'd certainly not tell you to do it, you could lose your work. That'd make me a complete douche

Is this a repeatable bug or do you only get it in a particular set of circumstances?

[XDelusion]

That's how I typed it in, and yes it manages to crash my A1200 and WinUAE just the same.

[Karlos]

That's how I typed it in, and yes it manages to crash my A1200 and WinUAE just the same.

Does it make any difference what mode you are using? Mix mode v 4 channel mode etc?

It works fine on my A1200 and A1. Haven't installed in UAE yet to try it there.

[trilobyte]

@Karlos:  

Great diagrams!  What'd you use to make them?

Also, where can a guy find this "MIDI In" program?  It isn't from Jack Deckard's aminet:mus/midi/MIDITools.lha package is it?

I tried many years ago using Sample-X from Sheun Olatunbosun, and it worked *great*, but was crippled shareware and could not be registered... man there were times I was dying for the author to make that thing freeware, or let me pay for it at least!!  Eventually I went down the long, horrifying road of hardware samplers... to think I could've stopped at Sample-X (or "MIDI In"?) and saved myself so much cash, time, and headaches!

ah life
- t