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PC Speaker To Eleven

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Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#11

Post by jchw »

httpsterio wrote: post #3
justtopost wrote: post #2

This is cool, but doesent even seem to mention the ScreamTracker pc speaker hack. Maybe it was done the same way, but it was able to output about 8khz bandwidth, 1 bit rendered and anti-aliased from 8 or 16 bit sound samples to the pc speaker. It worked so well I still have tape recordings I made with a hacked up rca plug attached. The paralell port adapters sounded better, but had their own neat lofi sound. About th…

Is this the same used in the 8088 mph demo productions end credits? https://youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y

IIRC 8088 mph has to go to great lengths for the timings to line up, using cycle counting instead of interrupts for timing, among other hacks/shortcuts. I'm guessing that typical 386/486 CPUs were powerful enough to not need this level of optimization.

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#12

Post by pdpi »

userbinator wrote: post #8

The most amazing thing I've heard done with a PC speaker is in the last part of this equally amazing demo (starts at 6:37 --- the parts before have more "normal" beeper music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y Explanation here: https://www.reenigne.org/blog/8088-pc-speaker-mod-player-how...

To be fair, that whole demo is a technical tour de force. Some more information about it: https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-al...

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#13

Post by [deleted] »

userbinator wrote: post #8

The most amazing thing I've heard done with a PC speaker is in the last part of this equally amazing demo (starts at 6:37 --- the parts before have more "normal" beeper music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y Explanation here: https://www.reenigne.org/blog/8088-pc-speaker-mod-player-how...

[deleted]

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#14

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Although the engineering behind getting a good sound out of the PC speaker is fascinating. Still wishing the PC standard from the get go had included sound as a first class citizen.

I think this decision back then still ripples through the machines today and sound never truly feels like an integral part of the machine on Windows (Realtek audio driver) and you'll never have the feeling of a built in boot sound on your machine which felt so good on Macs till it was disabled recently.

It's not like computers didn't have good sound back then either compare the Lotus III example [0] from the article with the same on the Amiga hardware from around the same time [1]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72vZ1asBIXQ

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgGSBoivBIY

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#15

Post by dekhn »

to learn assembly I wrote a "PC speaker clicker" that just strobed the click register and had a small timing loop to play A440.

A person in the room spoke up when I played it- "that's not A440, it's off slightly. Oh, and I have perfect pitch- it's about 439".

I had a small bug in my timing routine that made the pitch slightly lower, which I fixed.

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#16

Post by grenoire »

dekhn wrote: post #15

to learn assembly I wrote a "PC speaker clicker" that just strobed the click register and had a small timing loop to play A440. A person in the room spoke up when I played it- "that's not A440, it's off slightly. Oh, and I have perfect pitch- it's about 439". I had a small bug in my timing routine that made the pitch slightly lower, which I fixed.

I'm surprised that he did actually have perfect pitch.

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#17

Post by ttul »

dekhn wrote: post #15

to learn assembly I wrote a "PC speaker clicker" that just strobed the click register and had a small timing loop to play A440. A person in the room spoke up when I played it- "that's not A440, it's off slightly. Oh, and I have perfect pitch- it's about 439". I had a small bug in my timing routine that made the pitch slightly lower, which I fixed.

I sang in a children’s choir growing up. There were several kids with perfect pitch over the years. It’s an incredible skill; they really do get the pitch exactly right - even better than the piano.

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#18

Post by dekhn »

grenoire wrote: post #16
dekhn wrote: post #15

to learn assembly I wrote a "PC speaker clicker" that just strobed the click register and had a small timing loop to play A440. A person in the room spoke up when I played it- "that's not A440, it's off slightly. Oh, and I have perfect pitch- it's about 439". I had a small bug in my timing routine that made the pitch slightly lower, which I fixed.

I'm surprised that he did actually have perfect pitch.

me too. I can't even hear any difference between 1hz intervals around 440.

Re: PC Speaker To Eleven

#20

Post by Jaruzel »

micheljansen wrote: post #9

I remember playing a Golf game called World Class Leaderboard on my 386 and being absolutely amazed by the sound coming out of my PC speaker. It used RealSound to play the sounds of birds on the title screen and realistic golf sound effects and voices during gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21a_bbajmjQ

I was about to comment exactly the same thing.

The commentary that still resonates with me even now, is 'He can't be happy with that one!' and the crowd 'ooohs' and 'ahhhs'

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