::|CONTENTS
- Engines Supported
- See Also
1tracker is a multi-platform music tracker for creating tunes for the ZX Spectrum's beeper. Like
Beepola, it features .tap/.asm exporting, as well as a decent range of beeper engines. Unlike most engines, you don't only get to manipulate just two channels with an extra one for drums—the supported engines allow from three all the way up to nine channels!
The workflow in 1tracker is slightly different than other trackers, and may seem quirky at first glance. Instead of a pattern matrix, 1tracker uses one large continuous pattern; you can use "markers" to organize your song into different sections of arbitrary length. The size optimization of songs may be a problem, though—on all of Shiru's engines, songs are rendered as a one huge pattern. If you're planning to export your song to the .tap format, this may be an important thing to be aware of.
1tracker's backend is also modular. With some knowledge of AngelScript, you can add your own beeper engines without recompiling the software.
Engines Supported
Official
Earth Shaker - A ZXbeep engine made right when the commercial era of the ZX Spectrum was fading out (around 1990).
Lyndon Sharp - Only one year older than the above, this one produces quite an obvious (and loud) "poppy" sound. The drum samples sound pretty powerful, too.
Tim Follin - Used for the man's older works such as Vectron. If you wanna pull off anything like Chronos, Raw Recruit or Agent X—this one is not for you. Oh, and it doesn't feature any drums, sadly.
Octode - The biggest amount of channels on a one-bit speaker since ZX-7, which is eight tone channels and one drum channel. ZX-7 had the same number of tone channels, but without the drums.
Huby - The tiniest ZXbeep engine alive, less than 100 bytes in size! Make sure you don't squish it.
poww - An experimental beeper engine by utz, which has roughly the same functionality as Earth Shaker—albeit with different sounds.
ntropic - Another engine by utz, with two tone channels, one noise channel, and a click drum.
ZX-10 - Another engine by Ján Deák, the author of ZX-7. Four tone channels, no drums.
Stocker - "Pin-pulse" engine with full volume and envelope control, as well as interrupting click drums.
Phaser1 - Two channels of square-wave sound. Channel two has a dual generator which can be used to produce pitching, detuning, and phasing effects. You also have a choice of using either sampled or synthesized drums, which both interrupt tone playback.
Phaser2 - The even more powerful brother of Phaser1. It features dual generators on both channels, different mixing algorithms, and synthesized drums that don't interrupt tone playback.
Phaser3 - Another addition to the "Phaser" engine family. This engine allows customized sample drums from wave files (using PCM-to-PWM conversion), tone slides with four speed rates of sliding up and down, and options to make instruments either regular square waves or those typically found in the "specialfx" and "qchan" engines. There is also an experimental "virtual volume" setting.
OctodeXL - An additional version of Octode that allows for different mixing settings to be applied for bass and treble, alongside different volume configurations for a group of four channels.
prdr - An interesting two-channel engine that makes use of pseudo-random 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 separate drum channel, so you will have to think about channel economy.
ZX-7 - The first eight-channel engine for the system, made by Ján Deák. Global volume, no drums or detuning, just tone.
SNBasic - Very basic
SN76489 engine. No envelopes or effects, just three channels of tone and one channel of noise with volumes and detune. All noise modes supported.
Third-party
Electric Duet by krue - Used to make one-bit music on Apple II computers. It features just two tone channels.
See Also
ZXbeep (format)
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
