• CIPWTTKT&GC v0x13 (v19): Ivy Bridge Edition
    10,002 replies, posted
[QUOTE=inconspicious;35903707]Paper, behind battery, my ZTE Blade did exactly the same thing, its contacts weren't under enough pressure to stay in place.[/QUOTE] I have some old stuff under it but sometimes it is not enough.
I thought I'd ask here: I'm doing a music project on console game music from the 80's (more specifically the first castlevania), and we've analyzed the music in relation to the hardware restrictions. I'm a bit boggled about the five sound channels on the NES - two pulse wave channels with a duty cycle of either 12.5, 25, 50 and 75% (I guess this means that they can only play 1/8, 1/4, halfs and punctured halfs, but I'm not quite sure), a triangle wave channel, one white noise channel and one DPCM channel. Does this mean that it can only play one sound from each channel, or what? Because you can obviously play mono sound (only sound channel) and still hear the whole song, and not just one note at a time or whatever. I mean, how does it work? I'm doing all this research myself, and Wikipedia and the odd site can really only go so long.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35903857]I thought I'd ask here: I'm doing a music project on console game music from the 80's (more specifically the first castlevania), and we've analyzed the music in relation to the hardware restrictions. I'm a bit boggled about the five sound channels on the NES - two pulse wave channels with a duty cycle of either 12.5, 25, 50 and 75% (I guess this means that they can only play 1/8, 1/4, halfs and punctured halfs, but I'm not quite sure), a triangle wave channel, one white noise channel and one DPCM channel. Does this mean that it can only play one sound from each channel, or what? Because you can obviously play mono sound (only sound channel) and still hear the whole song, and not just one note at a time or whatever. I mean, how does it work? I'm doing all this research myself, and Wikipedia and the odd site can really only go so long.[/QUOTE] Considering it is capable of playing back PCM audio, is it not conceivable that some of the channels are composited into this sample? [editline]10th May 2012[/editline] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8smFEnL8D8[/media] Also, get famitracker installed and play some music channel by channel, get an idea of how it is structured. This might help you.
GOSTBUSTRRS! Clearly the best NES soundtrack [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJLJ2TyjJZE[/media]
[QUOTE=inconspicious;35903922]Considering it is capable of playing back PCM audio, is it not conceivable that some of the channels are composited into this sample? [editline]10th May 2012[/editline] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8smFEnL8D8[/media] Also, get famitracker installed and play some music channel by channel, get an idea of how it is structured. This might help you.[/QUOTE] I love retro games. They put so much work into the visuals and music using the technology they had.
[QUOTE=MC3craze;35904022]I love retro games. They put so much work into the visuals and music using the technology they had.[/QUOTE] You had to squeeze everything you could out of the hardware. Monstrously powerful rigs that are common these days don't give developers any reason to optimize properly, nobody writes incredibly efficient or clever programs anymore. [editline]10th May 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Warship;35903978]GOSTBUSTRRS! Clearly the best NES soundtrack [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJLJ2TyjJZE[/media][/QUOTE] Pfft! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFqpDiDXdBc[/media]
[QUOTE=inconspicious;35903922]Considering it is capable of playing back PCM audio, is it not conceivable that some of the channels are composited into this sample? [editline]10th May 2012[/editline] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8smFEnL8D8[/media] Also, get famitracker installed and play some music channel by channel, get an idea of how it is structured. This might help you.[/QUOTE] Really, all the knowledge I've gathered about the technical aspects of sound playback has been gathered from some odd evenings in the last 2 weeks. What impact has the duty cycle got on how the sound sounds? Did I get it right in my above description of it, or am I complete off? And what do you mean with that some of the channels might be composited into one sample?
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35904075]Really, all the knowledge I've gathered about the technical aspects of sound playback has been gathered from some odd evenings in the last 2 weeks. What impact has the duty cycle got on how the sound sounds? Did I get it right in my above description of it, or am I complete off? And what do you mean with that some of the channels might be composited into one sample?[/QUOTE] Well yeah it can play one sound per channel, but you can swap what each channel sounds like at absolutely any time, so for example on both of the square wave channels and the noise channel you can alter the amplitude and frequency at any time, so note and volume. To overcome the inability to generate a sine-wave without samples, arpeggios are often used a lot to simulate strings. I have no idea off the top of my head the length of a sample that the NES can store, but on the Amiga you could store whole chunks of sampled music, so the bass line and lead as well as vocals over the top if you even wanted to. I mean it is composited in the sense that is just a waveform, like a mp3 file, you can have any amount of instruments and sounds in there you like so long as its within the hardware's abilities. I'm assuming you had just enough space to store a small waveform, a few cycles of whatever instrument you wanted, and you can loop it and alter its pitch afterwards. [editline]10th May 2012[/editline] One of the tricks on the Amiga to get extra channels out of it was to not use the hardware synthesizer, but to create the audio in software and dump it to a sample.
Thank you very much Mr. Error, you helped me a bunch. Just continue pouring knowledge on me, if you'd like to!
Honestly, the best thing you can do is fiddle around with a tracker, try a simple drumbeat, see what you can get out of the thing.
[QUOTE=inconspicious;35904623]Honestly, the best thing you can do is fiddle around with a tracker, try a simple drumbeat, see what you can get out of the thing.[/QUOTE] I sadly do not have much time fiddling around, but the program helped me check what played what.
A friend told me to install Unified Xonar drivers. The installer failed, tried to clean my existing Xonar drivers but fucked them over completely. I tried to install the original drivers again but that failed as well. Even driver sweeped crashed on something. So I removed the sound card (ASUS Xonar DG) and plugged the shit back in my motherboard for on-board. I now have sound again, and no shitty Xonar drivers/software. Not going to install Realtek again either. And in fact, I'd swear music sounds better, but that's probably just me.
It's a good idea to backup your school work before formatting your laptop. Well, I've always wanted to try data recovery.
I once (stupidly) had the latest copies of all my coursework on a single USB stick. The bloody memory chip decided to rip itself off the circuit board on one side, leaving the legs on the board, not good. It was one of these buggers: [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/286964/flash1.jpg[/img] I spent hours soldering tiny copper wires to where the legs used to be on the chip. On the plus side it sharpened my soldering skills. Lesson learnt.
[url]http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_670_SLI/1.html[/url] dayum
Going through recovered files. I haven't found what I was looking for yet, but I found a .gif advertising sushi.
[QUOTE=inconspicious;35903203][url]https://twitter.com/#!/Marinmenyo/status/200628420789547010/photo/1[/url] Uh oh![/QUOTE] [url]http://www.fsf.org/news/richard-stallman-speech-in-barcelona-canceled[/url] At least it's not a heart attack.
*sigh* Off to drop my CV into PC World tomorrow, I can't find a bloody summer job anywhere, all of the local computer stores haven't replied to me. There is literally nothing available in the north east of England, hell even ASDA aren't taking anyone on.
[QUOTE=MC3craze;35903753][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/9ExBG.gif[/IMG] welp. time to buy a 670[/QUOTE] You can not believe how tempted I am to order myself a 670, but it would pretty much require a full rebuild to ivybridge. And I am not good at selling spare parts, so I might as well wait until critical hardware failure or when the 675's/770's come out. :v:
[QUOTE=inconspicious;35905823]*sigh* Off to drop my CV into PC World tomorrow, I can't find a bloody summer job anywhere, all of the local computer stores haven't replied to me. There is literally nothing available in the north east of England, hell even ASDA aren't taking anyone on.[/QUOTE] True that, the north east is like a black spot for jobs :s Saying that, I applied for 50+ jobs without success (I have years of programming and electronics experience on my CV, irritating). Then applied for ONE apprenticeship (Through ITEC North east) and was taken on within 3 days. This apprenticeship lead onto a full time job and I've used the money I made to fund my own business venture. There are ways! - I seriously recommend using an apprenticeship as a doorway to a job. I got an interview with PC World. I declined the job in the end as their ethics are questionable at best.
[QUOTE=inconspicious;35905823]*sigh* Off to drop my CV into PC World tomorrow, I can't find a bloody summer job anywhere, all of the local computer stores haven't replied to me. There is literally nothing available in the north east of England, hell even ASDA aren't taking anyone on.[/QUOTE] Here, to get any job that isn't harvesting crops, you need to be in the last year of the university or/and an attractive girl. I am neither. :saddowns: [editline]11th May 2012[/editline] I got a job as a sysadmin last year (nepotism fuckyeah), I was more of a universal-janitor-fixeverything-HVAC guy. I wasn't allowed to touch, modify or even look at the corporate server, which was in the janitorial closet.
[QUOTE=Tezzanator92;35905915]True that, the north east is like a black spot for jobs :s Saying that, I applied for 50+ jobs without success (I have years of programming and electronics experience on my CV, irritating). Then applied for ONE apprenticeship (Through ITEC North east) and was taken on within 3 days. This apprenticeship lead onto a full time job and I've used the money I made to fund my own business venture. There are ways! - I seriously recommend using an apprenticeship as a doorway to a job. I got an interview with PC World. I declined the job in the end as their ethics are questionable at best.[/QUOTE] I agree, I was reluctant to actually apply at PC World, but I would like to get some money together over the summer. As for an apprenticeship, I inquired about it, but with my current college course it is out of the question due to time-table conflicts. I'm really kicking myself for picking a college course over a proper apprenticeship. Classwork is great and all, but it is no substitute for hands on experience.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;35903857]two pulse wave channels with a duty cycle of either 12.5, 25, 50 and 75% (I guess this means that they can only play 1/8, 1/4, halfs and punctured halfs, but I'm not quite sure)[/QUOTE] From my messing around with Famitracker last year, I can say that's not what duty cycle is. It's basically the phase of the wave. You sometimes have situations where having both channels on the same phase is *highly* undesirable - I don't remember the exact situations, think it was something like having one be a full integer multiple of the other, but it basically sounds like complete shit. Having one offset by part of a clock (so the peaks no longer coincide) eliminates it. You can have essentially any "notes" you want - at the hardware level, it's literally "play this note for xxx time, then play this for xxx time". The sound chip itself has no knowledge of tempo or duration. The "channel" refers to a distinct sound generator, capable of generating one tone at one frequency at a time. You can, simultaneously, play two square-wave notes, one triangle-wave note, one type of white noise, and one "wave" sound. So it's actually impossible to play, for instance, a five-note chord.
[QUOTE=Tezzanator92;35905915] I got an interview with PC World. I declined the job in the end as their ethics are questionable at best.[/QUOTE] Elaborate
[QUOTE=latin_geek;35906001]Elaborate[/QUOTE] While working there you are actively encouraged (that is probably too weak a description) to up-sell customers and try to get them to pay for products/services they do not need, their PC repair service is beyond a rip off too.
Whoever designed molex is an asshole.
Ah, so like, every pc repair shop in my country.
[QUOTE=MC3craze;35906025]Whoever designed molex is an asshole.[/QUOTE] Not only that, but manufacturers who make really shitty plugs No power to a fan? Turns out one of the leads on the molex cable is loose and won't make contact with the other lead!
[QUOTE=latin_geek;35906001]Elaborate[/QUOTE] Pretty much what inconspicious said. Their employees are forced to pretty much do whatever is possible to upsell damn near anything. As a customer I have had my card declined at their terminal by the sales assistant's manager (Confirmed by the bank that they stood there and watched me phone!) just because I refused to take Norton and Insurance with my TF101... I drove to the bank and came back with cash. Yeah, let's see you decline THAT. I just couldn't do that to people.
[QUOTE=latin_geek;35906038]Ah, so like, every pc repair shop in my country.[/QUOTE] I've only ever gotten something from PC world and been happy at how cheap it was once. That was just before Christmas when I bought my new sound card, an Asus Xonar DX for £50 beat all the prices online by quite a bit. But unless you are at one of their larger shops, teeside park for example, don't expect to actually find many PC components, they mostly sell shit software, USB peripherals, whole desktops, laptops, apple crap and tablets.
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