::|CONTENTS
- Engines Supported
- See Also
1tracker is a multiplatform music tracker for creating tunes for ZX Spectrum's beeper. Just as
Beepola, it features .tap/.asm exporting, as well as a pretty decent range of beeper engines, only this time, you don't get to manipulate just two channels with an extra one for drums - that's because the whole bunch of supported engine contains from three up to nine (!) channels!
The workflow in 1tracker is slightly different than in other trackers, and may seem quirky at first glance. Instead of a pattern matrix, 1tracker uses just one large continuous pattern. You can use a feature called "markers" to organize your song into different sections of arbitrary length. The song size optimization might be a problem, though - at least on all Shiru's engines, since these are also rendered as a one huge pattern, so take a note on that if you're planning to .tap your song.
1tracker's back end is modular. With some knowledge of AngelScript, you can add your own beeper engines without recompiling the software.
See
zxbeep (format) for more info on what the hell is all about.
Engines Supported
"First-party" (i. e. added by Shiru)
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Earth Shaker - a zxbeep engine made right when the commercial era of ZX Spectrum was about to fade out, i. e. 1990.
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Lyndon Sharp 2ch - only one year older than the above, this one produces quite an obvious (and loud) "poppy" sound. The drum samples sound pretty powerful, too.
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Tim Follin 3ch - used for the man's older works, such as Vectron. If you wanna pull off a Chronos, Raw Recruit or Agent X - this one's not for you. Oh, and it doesn't feature any drums, sadly.
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Octode - the biggest ass amount of channels on a 1-bit speaker since ZX-7, which is: eight (!) channels of tone with one drum channel. ZX-7 had all that without the drums, so that's a relief, I guess. :D
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Huby - the tiniest zxbeep engine alive, less than 100 bytes in size! Make sure you don't squish it.
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poww - an experimental beeper engine by utz, which has roughly the same functionality as Earth Shaker - albeit with different sounds.
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ntropic - another engine by utz, with 2 tone channels, 1 noise channel, and an additional click drum.
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ZX-10 - another engine by Ján Deák, the author of ZX-7. 4 channels, no drums.
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Stocker - "pin pulse" engine with full volume and envelope control, as well as interrupting click drums.
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Phaser1 - 2 channels of square wave sound. Ch2 has a dual generator which can be used to produce pitching, de-tuning and phasing effects. Also, you have a choice of using either sampled or synthesized drums, both interrupt tone playback.
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Phaser2 - The even more powerful brother of Phaser1. Dual generators on both channels, different mixing algorithms, and synthesized drums that don't interrupt tone playback.
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Phaser3 - Another addition to the phaser engine family. This engine includes customised sample drums from wav (using pcm->pwm method), tone slides with 4 rates of slide up/down, options to make instruments both in regular square waves and those typically found in the "specialfx" and "qchan" engines. There is also an experimental "virtual volume" setting.
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OctodeXL - An additional version to Octode that allows for different mixing settings to be applied for bass and treble, alongside different volume configurations for a group of 4 channels.
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prdr - An interesting 2-channel engine that makes use of pseudorandom noise, short periodic noise and tone slides to make more interesting percussive elements and bass sounds similar to the Atari 8-bit era. Channels are set to a different volume. No seperate drum channel, so you will have to think about channel economy. Will you be the first to make a tune in it?
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ZX-7 - The first 8 channel engine for the system made by Ján Deák. Global volume, no drums or detune, just tone.
"Third-party"
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Electric Duet by krue - used to make 1-bit music on Apple II computers, features just two channels of tone.
See Also
A thread on the 1-bit Music Forum on how to properly port the latest version of 1tracker on UNIX systems.
