ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
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ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#2The Spectrum, along with the C64, NES, SNES, etc is still on my to-do list of catching up with computing/gaming history by devving some games for the platforms that started it all ;")
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#3The Spectrum, along with the C64, NES, SNES, etc is still on my to-do list of catching up with computing/gaming history by devving some games for the platforms that started it all ;")
Depending on your country you might be able to buy a ZX spectrum for a reasonable price. Their through-hole circuit boards are very repairable and there's a some videos on YouTube explaining how to properly troubleshoot them.
I've personally had a lot of fun repairing one I bought on catawiki.
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#4This massively understates what you could do with the basic 1-bit arrangement. People managed to get music playing during gameplay (I think Manic Miner was first) and even managed to play music with two channels and percussion (Robin of the Wood IIRC).
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#5This massively understates what you could do with the basic 1-bit arrangement. People managed to get music playing during gameplay (I think Manic Miner was first) and even managed to play music with two channels and percussion (Robin of the Wood IIRC).
Some games even used it for (attempted) speech synthesis:
https://spectrumgamesuk.com/index.php?game=Meteor-Storm
"...possibly the first game with speech synthesis, albeit sounding like an unintelligble gargle."
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#6The Spectrum, along with the C64, NES, SNES, etc is still on my to-do list of catching up with computing/gaming history by devving some games for the platforms that started it all ;")
Depending on your country you might be able to buy a ZX spectrum for a reasonable price. Their through-hole circuit boards are very repairable and there's a some videos on YouTube explaining how to properly troubleshoot them. I've personally had a lot of fun repairing one I bought on catawiki.
> Depending on your country you might be able to buy a ZX spectrum for a reasonable price.
Bought one at a garage sale for 5 EUR. I'm pretty sure it does not work. Haven't tried it: I still have a good old CRT TV so I could.
But when people talk about coding for these 8-bit machines, they usually mean they'll target an emulator.
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#7This massively understates what you could do with the basic 1-bit arrangement. People managed to get music playing during gameplay (I think Manic Miner was first) and even managed to play music with two channels and percussion (Robin of the Wood IIRC).
Some games even used it for (attempted) speech synthesis: https://spectrumgamesuk.com/index.php?game=Meteor-Storm "...possibly the first game with speech synthesis, albeit sounding like an unintelligble gargle."
I could never understand what it said when I played that game back in time, but today I learned that it was "Meteor Alert! Meteor Alert!"
Quicksilva later improved their speech engine. QS Chess, for example, clearly said "This is the Chess Player".
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#8This massively understates what you could do with the basic 1-bit arrangement. People managed to get music playing during gameplay (I think Manic Miner was first) and even managed to play music with two channels and percussion (Robin of the Wood IIRC).
It was possible to connect the MIC or EAR connector (I don't remember exactly which one, as this was 40 years ago) to a cassette recorder and start recording, which caused the cassette recorder to amplify the Spectrum's sound.
And when I'm mentioning cassette recorder - I had a neighbour in my building who also had a Spectrum and whose window was some 12 meters away from my window and once we connected our computer with audio cables (MIC to EAR and vice versa) so one types some short program (or just REM message) and enters SAVE while the other one enters LOAD and gets the message. Our networking adventure started bad as it turned out that cable had large signal loss so it seemed that this brilliant idea failed but then we connected cassette recorders between computers that hugely amplified signal and thing actually worked.
Experiment ended when a party-line neighbor started complaining that his phone line was unusable for hours - we used phones as yelling through the window while trying to synchronize wasn't producing satisfactory results.
Fun times.
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#9This massively understates what you could do with the basic 1-bit arrangement. People managed to get music playing during gameplay (I think Manic Miner was first) and even managed to play music with two channels and percussion (Robin of the Wood IIRC).
> and even managed to play music with two channels and percussion (Robin of the Wood IIRC)
You think two channels is the limit? Have you heard title music from Chronos? Full multi-channel polyphony, without relying on sound co-processor. I'm not sure where to find the game itself these days, but I found the music itself here [0] on position 31.
Re: ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound
#10The Spectrum, along with the C64, NES, SNES, etc is still on my to-do list of catching up with computing/gaming history by devving some games for the platforms that started it all ;")
The Retro Games TheSpectrum is not a bad starting point [1], it's very close to the original and you can use HDMI video output and USB power.