Commodore Free 12/Commodore_Free_Issue_12_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv stone pt1

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 15KB | 429 lines

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The SOASC= Project
http://www.6581-8580.com/index.htm

PART 1

Q - Please introduce yourself

A - My name is Stein Eikesdal a.k.a
Stone Oakvalley, 33 years old, single
for reasons unknown (okey, I live out
in the country near a very small town)
& I have been working as a Graphical
Designer in a maritime display/computer
manufacturer company since 2000. I have
a very creative personal life filled
with composing music, making short
movies, music videos, designing crazy
hardware, co-writing a 300 page black
humor book about Norwegians words with
lots of "puns intended" & then the
latest SOASC= project.

Q - What introduced you to Computing?

A - I was introduced to computing
during a Friday evening where my
father had borrowed a TV game console
at the local gas-station. I guess it
was around 1983/84. To this date I
can't remember what box that was I
only remember a plane going around
vertically & rescuing people & flying
through caves. I also remember some
kind of base & the letters "FUEL"
written somewhere. Later I was
naturally hooked & my sister got an
Atari 2600 for the family (with
PING-PONG, TANKS & the super classic
Asteroid cartridges). The crazy thing,I
found the Atari console at home during
early 2006 & restored it, but my
favorite game Asteroids was gone. Well,
luckily I got to play some PING PONG &
TANKS!

Q - What is your first experience of
C=?

A - During 87 or 88 I finally got my
beloved 64 Breadbox 6581 machine. I was
so amazed about this machine at the age
of 13 14. The first games I had was
Sorcery & Winter Games on tape. But it
was actually more interesting to read
the instruction manual than playing
games, because there was some kind of
PEEK & POKES which really interested
me. So, I started typing in BASIC
programs & really got the hang of it.
At school I would draw sprites on the
grid patterned paper & writing down
BASIC routines just out of the blue &
when I got home type it into the C64
& created animated sprites & even
multicolored sprites. I had a special
interest of pixels really, kinda cool
to see how just boxes of colors could
be drawn to form known objects and
humans floating around on the screen.
And with the low resolution I think I
actually started counting pixels by
looking at demos & games. Then, other
kids at school also got hold of 64's &
then the everlasting era of loading
turbo tapes & watching demos took off
in 1988. I was really amazed about the
concept of demos. Just music, raster
lines, flashing colors & scroll texts
just blew me away. The great experience
came when I heard real sampled drums
on the C64. I could not believe it. I
must have heard that tune for so many
hours day after day. The demo was made
by Lukullus & was named "It's drum
time!". The music was Dulcedo
Cogitationis by Mr. Chris Huelsbeck. To
this date, this is my most favorite
track on the C64. I just love that tune & the drums were great. Luckily for me
I had the 6581 machine, because if that
song was played on the 8580 chip I
would not hear the drums so much & it
would not make the same impression. And
having said that, the 6581 sound is of
course my preferred choice of today.
Funny how just how one moment of music
decide everything for the future. Well
suddenly the Amiga 500 came to town in
1989 & just took my soul. I had the C64
for 6 months after that & sold it to a
friend. And funny as it goes, this guy
is now living in my neighborhood & he
still has the box in the Attic. Some
day I will recapture you - my bread box
friend!

And to add to the final conclusion, in
1992 I missed the C64 so much that I
acquired not only the 6581, but also a
8580 machine including a 1541 drive &
started playing around again during
92-93-94, until CBM died & I sold the
A500 & A1200 in 1997 & bought a yuck
100mhz Pentium PC. But the C64s were
never sold; they were just so precious
so they were stored in the attic.
Amazingly enough readers...those exact
machines were used in the ENTIRE
process of the SOASC= project! I must
have had a evil futuristic & sub-
conscious plan for them..hehe.

The Atari, Nintendo, SEGA & PlayStation
etc etc never captured me in any way... for me it was always Commodore!

Q - Do you still actively use CBM
machines (apart from the SOASC project)

A - From 1997 until ca. 2000 I was not anywhere near the CBM64's. At that time
I was composing music on the PC/midi/
trackers/with my physical instruments
(like TB-303 & Roland JP-8000). The
need for hearing & seeing C64 again
happened sometime during 2003, & at the
end of 2003 I started on a crazy
project called SOMAC (Stone Oakvalley's
Multi Arcade Console 2000) which was at
first intended for MAME games only, but
the project just blew out of its bubble
& today covers 16 different emulation
software & about 26000 games in the
database - all with genre specification
& title screens along with my own 3D
Matrix Core Menu System. And my Arcade
Machine is a huge monster...But during
2006 I came over a comparison on
emulation vs. hardware recordings of
C64 sid music & naturally began the
SOASC= project out of that single
moment. Now, in the aftermath of the
SOASC= project (Mid 2007) I started
actually loading up turbo tapes & play-
ing again for real on the C64. It still
does the magic for me, & I have played
some lovable forgotten games like Fire
Ant & Lady Tut from the past during my
summer vacation 2007. So, I guess I
still will be playing on the C64 again
and try to pick up more on that in the
future. But, naturally the recording
of HVSC updates will also require me
to work on C64 for some time to come.
And..oh.. yeah, just bought the MMC64
too, that is a impressive piece of
hardware & it helps me with those
cranky SIDs that could not be recorded
automatically!

Q - Please tell our reader about SOASC
what does it stand for & what did you
hope to accomplish

A - SOASC= or SOASC stands for Stone
Oakvalley's Authentic SID Collection.
The '=' was put in there to recognize
the C= brand in some way. I know its
copyrighted, so I do not rely so much
on that on the website. Just as a
subtle word/graphic reference. I must
point out the the "authentic" word
really is what the project was about.
My goal was to bring forward the music
just as it is heard on the C64 if you
hooked a unmodified C64 to your telly/
sound system today. It is also a step
back from other ideas like "pseudo
stereo" stereo-sid mix or other non-
natural software processing of the
sound itself like software noise
reduction or any filters done via
software to try & clean up or improve
the sound material. I wanted to keep it
gritty, noisy & of course authentic.
The thing is that these gritty, noisy
factors are just what you remember
(hopefully) on your crappy old TV from
the 80's. When doing test recordings
the noise was naturally very present &
luckily I found a site giving tips
about connecting SID IN pin to GND &
thus eliminating a lot or maybe even
all noise that you could state as
irritating to listen to for longer
periods. I accepted that modification.
The only other processing done was
maximizing volume & adjust bias to 0.0
with DOS software like SOX & Normalize.

But also very important for me was to
provide these MP3 files on a clean web
database interface with no commercial
banners or Google ads. I wanted the
site to be just for the project & ONLY
about the project. I see so much...cr**
these days on other typical sites that
provide historical information or have
databases about games for old
computers. I really want to stand away
from all that & provide the entire
collection just FREE & clean. FREE on
the internet today is a totally messed
up concept & been so for a decade at
least.Its time to put out an example of
what FREE used to mean. Get your stuff
you seek & get out. So simple. Nothing
more. Leave all the bells & whistles to
somebody else.

And so it resulted in the sites we
have today, both my own 6581-8580.com
site & the pathway to the "file
holder" site which holds the core of
the online web database engine. The
interface & background tools were
programmed by Svein Engelsgjerd a.k.a
Waxhead & he is still the maintainer &
network guru for the SOASC= project.

Another important thing is that I
respect the people who have spent so
much of their time on composing SIDs
on the C64 during all these years. I've
always loved the demo-scene community
especially (although I never was a part
of it) & want to show my respect for
those composers & to bring forward/
present their work in a more suitable
music format that we can all share &
enjoy without having to type LOAD
something & wait 30mins for the tape to
finish in the worst case scenario :)

Further it was a crazy project that I
also enjoyed for my own personal
pleasure & the question of..."could I
actually pull it off, or have I reached
the limit of insanity just now?". Guess
not. And not to forget, both chips had
to be recorded. Not, just my personal
favorite 6581. There are people out
there who only remember the 8580 of
Last Ninja forinstance. They would not
have recognized the 6581 version where
for instance ontrack 9 there is a
filter sound present which is not there
on the 8580 :) I just had to support
those 8580 people as well. Further even
two revisions of the 6581chip will be
recorded since there is a clear
difference between R4 & R2 for
instance. 6581R3 will be ignored as far
as I know today.

Q - So these are automated MP3 tracks
recorded live of a REAL machine.

A - Yes, all SIDs & all subtunes/
sounds within the SID files were
recorded in  a automatic recording
loop, which basically goes like; reset
C64, type & load, run, play, record,
reset, create MP3, update current
progress & loop it until the end.

Q - the mp3's are recorded in quite a
high quality 224Kbps why did you select
this.

A - The MP3 & CBR 224Kbps was chosen
because it is in my strongest belief
that this is a format suitable for a
lot of different hardware & OS's just
straight out of the box. DVD players in
the living room, car stereo players,
old MP3 players from 7 years back & a
lot of other peculiar hardware (like
MP3 plug-in for the MMC64) should be
able to play the MP3's just so. The CBR
224Kbps was chosen because I know that
for instance my car stereo player (from
2003) had problems with 320Kbps & also
VBR MP3 files. The MP3 was encoded with
LAME & the command line "-c -h -m m -b
224 -q 2 --tg 52 --id3v1-only". Some
people will disagree about the 224Kbps
& CBR & why not using OGG & FLAC...but
for those who say that, I only ask: Can
all of your hardware equipment play OGG
& FLAC straight out of the box (without
any additional plugins) etc?. No,
generally not so simple.... but also
think of your friends, do they have
THAT exact OGG supported MP3 physical
player in their pocket when you
accidentally give them the classic
sound of the C64 for them to listen to?
Guess not, ey?

And there you have it, my only point &
statement for why choosing CBR 224Kbps
MP3. Of course seen from a preservation
view WAV should be the only right
choice, but the amount of space needed
for that is not that simple to deal
with....yet.

OGG is claimed to have a better quality
of sound vs. file size I really  don't
know. I need a OGG plugin for my WinAmp
maybe, maybe not dont really care about
OGG or FLAC formats. Only playable on
specific software players with the
plugins in place, & do I have hardware
that support it, like DVD players, MP3
players..I have no idea & do not care.
MP3 forvever. And since OGG is a later
format & much more less commercialized,
OGG was early on decided not to be
used. But, I have an experiment on what
frequencies are being cut out from the
MP3 files on my FAQ page, I guess there
are some sound samples for your dog to
listen to.

A quick opinion about the CBR (Constant
Bit Ratio) too. PS, I'm no super expert
on this, but here goes. It's like
watching todays TV satellite streams.
If you watching fast moving images &
especially explosions you will see
boxes of graphics shimmering/glimmering
while the encoder tries quickly to
uncompress the image material. That is
the VBR (Variable Bit Ratio) in action
I just don't trust self adjusting real
-time compression algorithms..I prefer
solid stream of data..even if it takes
200kb for a blank image, I want it. I
have worked with video editing, PJEG,
MPEG compression on computers for 10
years now, so Ive seen the dangerous
settings to avoid. Variable Bit Rates
scares me, so there.

Or, in our case if the MP3 frame is
almost dead silence we would save a few
K of bytes by using VBR instead of CBR.
For a song we would maybe save 300-
900kb using VBR? Maybe more, did not
really check. Well, since most of us
are on broadband today there should be
no argument of why not doing it CBR's
way. The 224kbps was chosen just out of
the hat. I felt that 320kbps was really
overkill, 192 could suffice but lower
would be just a waste of effort. So I
kept the quality just a bit higher to
make sure that if anybody would use the
material for something they would at
least get more quality than needed. I
did not want to skip it down to the
bone & optimize my files. Keep them
good enough for some post-processing or
whatever people would do to the MP3
files in the aftermath.

I guess the meaning of SOASC= is not
that people can have all in one pack.
like the SIDS. If people did some
investigating they would NEVER manage
to listen to all the SIDS anyway. You
know...the length of the entire HVSC
is 2978 Hours of music! People download
their favorite or just picks at random.
After a few hundred songs I guess most
of them stop & just listen to what they
have. Most people would have a problem
(after lets say 5 10 songs) to tell any
difference between 160, 224 & 320kbps.
At first people will try as hard as
they can to identify defects in the
sound material. But, as logic has it
people will soon ignore/get used to the
quality, & just listen to the music
anyway.
Their brain & ears would focus on
other elements like environments or
other thoughts. If another person had
only lets say 128kbps tunes on their
MP3 while jogging they would in just
5-10 minutes after forget about the
quality & their ears would adjust to
the material & from there... it does
not really matter anymore They'd enjoy
the view & the music would in many
cases become subconscious vibes of
sound & not something to analyze to
death or nag about not choosing OGG or
FLAC for the purpose ofSOASC=.

Q- are all the files recorded in mono
or do you plan to have a pseudo stereo
version ?

A - No, recorded as intended by both
CBMand 99% of the composers. Plain
mono. There will be no other versions
recorded or produced.