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1997-07-05
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Sid2Wav 0.70
--------------
Hi! This is my attempt at porting the Sid2Wav/
Sidplayer utilities to the Acorn platform. (About
@%&$*! time, eh?)
This program is based on the portable Sid2Wav
program by Michael Schwendt and others (see the
copyright notice in the "docs" directory). I
changed as little as possible in the program. All
the emulation routines were left completely alone,
I merely added a "direct replay" option and the
code for it.
The software underlies the same copyrights as the
original PC version. The C64Voice module was
written by me. It is *not* PD. You are allowed
to copy and use it in conjunction with this port
of the Sid2Wav software.
The "frontend" is based on the style of the MIDI
replay tool !Timidity, thus the icon is more or
less stolen from it. I hope I'm forgiven. :)
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Lots of memory and lots of speed. :)
As of version 0.70 this program is based on a
newer version of the emulator engine which sounds
a lot better, but is, alas, also quite a bit
slower. On my A5000 it runs reasonably well with
a sample frequency of 11025hz and the filter
emulation turned off, but I'd better not try it in
mode 28 or something like it. To experience the
full quality of the sound, I have to create a Wav
file and play it with !SoundCon. For this reason
I have decided to keep the last version (V0.62)
available for those of us who like to run SID music
in the background in a taskwindow while doing
something else. :) You can find it at my homepage
on the World Wide Web, under the URL:
<http://enterprise.mathematik.uni-essen.de/~bastian/downloads/>
I'd like feedback about the performance of the
program on other machines, like RiscPCs with or
without StrongARM processors.
USAGE:
The way Sid2Wav is preconfigured, doubleclicking
on a file of type &063 (or "SIDSong") will start
the program and attempt to play the song directly.
In the !Boot file the configuration can be changed.
You can choose either direct replay or Wav
generation as the default action, and in the
corresponding Obey files "MakeWav" and "Replay"
you can choose between singletasking or multitasking
in a taskwindow.
Basically all this is just a small front for the
Sid2Wav application - you could delete all of it and
use the program on its own. The direct replay
option requires the C64Voice module to be present.
When replaying, there will be numbers flashing at
the bottom of the window. These show the size of
the Buffer chunk currently being filled. The first
chunk is, of course, the size of the entire buffer
and may take some time to fill, particularly on a
slow machine (like mine). During replay you can
press the number keys from 1-9 and letters from a-z
to choose song 1-35. The "+" and "-" keys cycle
forwards and backwards through the songs. You can
also set the starting song via the "-o" option in
the <Sid2WavR$Options> system Variable.
SYNTAX:
SID2WAV [-<commands>] [<datafile>|-] [outputfile]
commands: -h display this screen
-f<num> set frequency in Hz
(default: 22050)
-16 16-bit (default: 8-bit)
-s stereo (default: mono)
-ss enable stereo surround
-u au output (8000Hz mono 8-bit
u-law)
-o<num> set song number
(default: preset)
-a improve PlaySID compatibility
(not recommended)
-a2 bank switching mode
(overrides -a)
-nf no SID filter emulation
-n enable NTSC-clock speed for VBI
tunes (not recommended)
-m<num> mute voices out of 1,2,3,4
(default: none)
example: -m13 (voice 1 and
3 off)
-t<num> set seconds to play
(default: 60)
-fin<num> fade-in-time in seconds
(default: 0)
-fout<num> fade-out-time in seconds
(default: 2)
Rather straightforward, actually. In direct replay,
the -t option sets the size of the buffer to n
seconds. You should take care that it is set to
something suitable, like 5-15 seconds. The default
of 60 seconds would get rather large (although it
won't grab more than 640k, no matter what the set
time is).
CAUTION:
This is merely a beta release or something like
that. I am far from finished with this thing -
when I am, it will be a fully integrated WIMP task
with lots of knobs on and a better sound system
(four separate channels for the C64 voices, instead
of one mixed one). Handle with care and FOR GOD'S
SAKE don't use it while doing something important.
it may crash at any time - and I would appreciate
bug reports about such times (address see below).
Otherwise I hope you have fun with this - I know I
had.
Sebastian Weinberg
E-Mail:
<bastian@enterprise.mathematik.uni-essen.de>