15 replies to this topic

[Lord-Chaos]

Most of the C64 users say , that the SID is much superior.

Ok , but they forget,that most of the famous C64 tunes are tunes from games that never appeared on the ATARI because of commercial reasons (and not of technical reasons - if technical reasons were important , almost no games would have been written for the Spectrum ...).

Other game which had music on the C64 , have no music at all on the ATARI.Look at Arkanoid (C64 Music by Martin Galway) , Spellbound (C64 music by Rob Hubbard) , Druid , ...

Other games have only a poor version of the original c64 tune (Last V8 for example , a very poor game on the ATARI).

But there are some Polish demos with great sound , programs like Softsynth or the Soundtracker-players.

What are the best examples of good POKEY music , is there something you can compare to the SID songs or was there just far more technical knowledge on the C64 ?

Because there are far more SID tunes than ATARI music (not counting simple music in BASIC).

BTW which chip is older ? SID or POKEY ? Because although the ATARI 800 is 3 years older , the SID was used in the Commodore 610 computer before the C64.

Thimo

[Sheddy]

From a purely hardware point of view, I doubt anyone could seriously argue that POKEY is better than SID for music. SID is a proper synth on a chip - several different waveforms,( esp. sine), hardware ADSR, 3 (or 4?) 16 bit channels, filters.

POKEY limited to (almost) square waves, 2 channels of 16 bit sound (but 4 of 8bit), awkward filter.

It has been argued by some that POKEY is more effective for sound fx. the "distortion" effects certainly lends itself to some interesting noises, and it can do them on any channels at same time, whereas SID only has one channel for "noise".

POKEY came out 3 years before SID, in 1979. The 610 was also realeased the same year as the C64, by my googling, in 1982. So it has nothing to be ashamed of! POKEY was also used in many Atari coin-ops (but sometimes in conjunction with other sound chips), but I don't know if any were from before 1979.

Still, people have done amazing stuff with both chips. Like any instrument though they have their own unique sound, and strengths; things each is better suited to.

Best place to hear what's on atari is the SAP archive, which was inspired by the Hi Voltage SID collection of tunes (link on the site to that). There are a hell of a lot of tunes you can compare there!


I always liked Warhawk tune, as far as games go. It is similar quality to the C64 version.

You're right that demos have the best examples of what's possible. Check out the Numen demo (not just for the sound). The Taquart guys sure know what they're doing. Sorry can't find the link right now. There were some posts about it here about a month ago though.

[Thelen]

I downloaded the player, and it's very nice !

Then i listened to world of wonders 4..it sounds great(depeche mode), and I searched on the net about it...and found this

http://www.back2root...064/1033346422/

Is it true what he is saying ? I never heard about it.

Thelen

[Goochman]

I am by no means a technical expert on this but in terms of computer/game playing capability the Pokey was a better chip - With 4 voices, good range and excellent noise generation it had more flexibility than SID. Everything I heard on the C64 sounded like it came from a harpsicord - excellent instrument play but most other sounds/noises didnt sound right. The SID had a larger octave range (I believe) but POKEY could cover most everything that humans wanted to hear

POKEY was 3 years older than SID but Arcade developers used POKEY for their stuff vs SID.

If I wanted to hear synth music Id pick SID, all other things I think POKEY can do better.

Sheddy, could SID/C64 handle the 'voice' you have in your Space Harrier demo?

[Sheddy]

That post about Pokey being better than SID looks like a great Troll! Shame there seems to be hardly any posts on that C64 forum. That would have C64 fanatics up in arms!

The post is not really true from what I can tell. POKEY specs are not better than SID. Although I haven't seen the original demo, The World of wonders song is definitely using some kind of sampling, or synthesising a sample real time, rather than some hidden talents of POKEY. You can tell by the "noise" in the sample. (Also on the SAP player notice the interrupt is 4000 times a second, whereas most "normal" tunes are 50 or 100 only ) Playing back any kind of sample on POKEY (or SID) is pretty intensive for the processor. Making the little 6502 processor do stuff 4000 times a second means there is not a lot of time left to do much else, like run a game or whatever.

Goochman - Sure, SID can do speech. Can be done as just a long sound sample. Impossible Mission is just one game I know of that has speech. I never programmed SID, but if anything it looks easier to get a sample playing on SID while other things are going on. Just getting the timing precise on the Atari so the speech doesn't sound slurred while even doing something as simple as displaying the screen is quite tricky. In fact in some progs (like SAM, Mirax Force, Whomper Stomper) you'll notice they just switch most of the screen off while they speak, to make life easy.

[Lord-Chaos]

Sheddy said:

That post about Pokey being better than SID looks like a great Troll! Shame there seems to be hardly any posts on that C64 forum. That would have C64 fanatics up in arms!

The post is not really true from what I can tell. POKEY specs are not better than SID. Although I haven't seen the original demo, The World of wonders song is definitely using some kind of sampling, or synthesising a sample real time, rather than some hidden talents of POKEY. You can tell by the "noise" in the sample. (Also on the SAP player notice the interrupt  is 4000 times a second, whereas most "normal" tunes are 50 or 100 only ) Playing back any kind of sample on POKEY (or SID) is pretty intensive for the processor. Making the little 6502 processor do stuff 4000 times a second means there is not a lot of time left to do much else, like run a game or whatever.

World of Wonders uses Softsynth music.This is something special , a program which allows to create own waveforms like the AMIGA.It´s by a German guy , released in the 80s , it´s now Public Domain.

This way of producing music costs much computing power , so you can only display a few lines of blocky graphics or the sound quality gets very bad.

Most softsynth sounds completely switch of the screen - also in the World of Wonders Demo.

You may find Softsynth in any good PD library.

Thimo

[Goochman]

I know mr SAM very well - had some fun getting 'curse' words to come out of him - The ole Antic off routine was used alot early on to save CPU cycles and do 'talking' type stuff, though it appears this prob wasnt as necessary as new techniques get around that (atleast turning the screen off )

[Lord-Chaos]

Sheddy said:

Goochman - Sure, SID can do speech. Can be done as just a long sound sample. Impossible Mission is just one game I know of that has speech. I never programmed SID, but if anything it looks easier to get a sample playing on SID while other things are going on. Just getting the timing precise on the Atari so the speech doesn't sound slurred while even doing something as simple as displaying the screen is quite tricky. In fact in some progs (like SAM, Mirax Force, Whomper Stomper) you'll notice they just switch most of the screen off while they speak, to make life easy.

I once wrote a program that used timer interrupts for samples on the ATARI - a long time ago.This worked quite well.

For speech or FX , the quality can be lower than for music and so it´s possible to play samples while doing other stuff.The better quality , the less CPU time left.

It´s possible to mix samples with POKEY music and display a screen , just look at music done with the Black Magic Composer.One of these tunes was used for one of the ABBUC magazine´s intros.

Everything is possible , but on the C64 there are far more docs , there is far more knowledge how to do stuff with the SID.

Thimo

[DanBoris]

Goochman said:

POKEY was 3 years older than SID but Arcade developers used POKEY for their stuff vs SID.

The only arcade developer that used POKEY (as far as I know) was Atari, since it was thier chip.

Dan

[Goochman]

I thought Williams also used it?

[DanBoris]

Goochman said:

I thought Williams also used it?

I did a search of the MAME source code and only turned up Pokey in Atari games.

Dan

[Sheddy]

Quote

I once wrote a program that used timer interrupts for samples on the ATARI - a long time ago.This worked quite well.
Thimo

I had a go at using them too. Didn't help with the sample playing at same time as screen display though - still slurred - the timer interrupts seem to be not precise when other DMA (like the screen) is going on, which is a damn shame (like what's the use otherwise?) From what I can tell, that doesn't happen on the C64, and you get much more precise interrupts. Still could be just me, they are buggers to get to work at all.

[Goochman]

So Sheddy, any update on Space Harrier - The initial demo was awesome to say the least

[Sheddy]

Goochman said:

So Sheddy, any update on Space Harrier - The initial demo was awesome to say the least

Thanks but there's not too much new to see at the moment. The past few months have been quite bad for me, and I haven't had the time or the energy to do much on it. There's quite a few changes "under the hood" but nothing particularly visible or newsworthy. I've been messing around on my new 130xe (thanks B&C and APE!) to try and get things looking right though. The site has had a bit of a makeover, and I'll try post some kind of update on it before Christmas - Stage 3 should be done by then, with any luck.

- Chris

[Heaven/TQA]

http://numen.scene.pl is the numen demo...

well... i personally find the SID far better than POKEY... just my opinion... but there are some tunes which are definitly better on atari compared to the c64...

international karate
warhawk

heaven/tqa

ps. sorry that i wasn't active the last few weeks but it's high season in games biz... and we have still to put product out of the door...

[mos6507]

SID is for music lovers, but POKEY is a chip optimized for sound effects, and hence I think it's a better overall chip for games unless you play games primarily for the background or title music.

Engine noises, explosions, crowd white noise, etc.... POKEY does these very well.