[sdiy] WHICH PIC/UCONTROLLER should I buy today

[Rainer Buchty]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Olivier Gillet wrote:

> I don't think early 80s video games used 8 bits sampled sounds - more 
> 1 bit or 4 bit and this was with dirty tricks modulating the noise 
> channel on a SID, Pokey or 6502...

On the SID, samples are played back through 3 different methods:

(1) 4-bit playback abusing the volume register
(2) 8/12-bit playback using PWM (with nasty carrier beep-through...)
(3) stepping the triangle waveform using test bit (reset) and
     incrementum (reaching the destination value within 1 sample)

The latter is a rather novel technique first presented in the "Vicious 
SID" and "Fanta in Space" demos, also demonstrating how this technique 
even outperforms the Amiga's sound capabilities (by being able to fully 
modulate the sample using ADSR, multimode filter, and final VCA -- plus 
having two SID voices in addition to the sample).

For those interested:

Vicious SID:
 	http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=72678

Fanta in Space:
 	http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=72563

If you run them on the VICE emulator, make sure to switch the reSID 
engine to floating point, otherwise you won't hear much...

Rainer