"Hushrush" by 505 / checkpoint^paradox
entry for the oldschool music compo
at Outline 2011
platform: Atari STE (native mode)
done in gwEms Maxymiser
SND Player v1.5
May 12, 2001
1. Info
SND Player is a program to play SNDH-format audio files.
These are using the YM2149 synthesizer chip found in all
ST/STe/TT/Falcon and most TOS-clone machines.
The SNDH files can include any kind of YM-2149 playing
routine. Including SIDvoices, Syncbuzzers and Digidrums.
People who enjoys the music from old ST-Games will feel
at home directly with SND Player as most gamemusic from
the popular composers are converted to SNDH format.
In later years, the YM-2149 songs have grown from one
strength to another by pushing the YM-synth to it's real
limits. Escpecially Tao of Cream/ACF and Mad Max of TEX
have pushed the YM forwards the last couple of years.
Sounds you never thought was possible on the YM now are.
Unfortenly, these songs have always had problems to run
cleanly together with an OS due to heavy use of several
interupts and VBL. However, Tao of Cream have re- coded
his replayers to be perfectly systemfriendly and still
able to play all the special effects. The same for the
tripple- sidvoice songs from Sid Sound Designer editor.
The replayer has been modified to run happily together
with the OS.
For these changes to have ny real effect, a slight re-
design of the SNDH format had to be done, and some other
additions to SND Player had to be made. That's why the
SND Player has been updated to v1.1 and onwards.
Naturally SND Player v1.1+ can still play the SND files
made for the older versions of the player.
2. Using SND Player
That is quite simple. Just doubleklick the prg file and
load the prefered SND file.
If it is a non -vbl depending SNDH file, it will begin
playing on the fly. Most SND files are non-vbl. If you
manage to hit a song that want vbl, an alert formular
appears on screen where you select if you want to run it
from vbl or force it to timer-c. If you have a 50Hz
resolution, the VBL might be the best option to choose,
otherwise timer-c will probably give the best result.
Stop / Play / Pause buttons are quite obvious, however
the "ffwd" button serves two functions; if pressed down
the player will fast forward the current song. But when
the button is quickly "clicked" at, it will jump to the
next snd file in the current directory.
Some snd files have multiple songs in them, to toggle
between these you have the '+' and '-' buttons.
On the title-list of SND Player you can now (from v1.5)
open two new windows: VU-meters and Spectrum Analyser.
SND Player has commandline support for the startup song.
It also have AV/VA start drag/drop support.
The SND Player look is a bit different from other GEM
programs, which we hope won't cause any difficulties.
The GEM library used allows the colour icons to be shown
on a plain ST with TOS 1.0.
The main window now shows which type of interupt is
being used to replay the song, and at which frequency.
TA=Timer-A, TB=Timer-B, TC=Timer-C, TD=Timer-D. If there
is a "*" before, it means that no desired interupt was
mentioned in the SNDH header, and that the current type
of interupt was selected as default.
3. Known bugs.
The VU / Spectrum analszers sometimes doesn't reset
completely when you stop a song. And if you play music
on the YM-chip from some other player, SND Player VU-
and Spectrum analysers will still react on those.
4. Contacting us.
Odd Skancke
ozk@atari.org
Anders Eriksson
ae@dhs.nu
SND Player homepage
http://sndplayer.atari.org/
Happy chipping!
eof