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ZX Spectrum: Experimenting with 1-Bit Sound(bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com)
45 points by ibobev 2 hours ago | 13 comments
mdp2021 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I hope everybody knows Tim Follin - or will now come to know his genius.

> Agent X ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE ) or Agent X II ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNc_xczyGLc ) or Chronos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-D24A_N4d4 ) or Raw Recruit ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8dAVybwq8 ) or Future Games ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orEXKOBIv_8 )... // A modern attempt, the ON and OFF album by Rich 'Tufty' Hollins ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nEfO4Yu7Mg )

(Repost originally for submission Furnace - the biggest multi-system chiptune tracker ever made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41609254)

feintruled 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The article ends to a link to a video that shows off the technique and it blows my mind the Spectrum beeper could produce this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cOu32m3wvQ

gxd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I created a program like that back in the day. In my case, I recorded my voice through the "MIC" input and played it back through the TV. A few seconds of sampled audio required the entire available memory. While I fully understood what was going on, I thought it was magical that the Spectrum could "speak with my voice".

louprado an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

More mind blowing, that entry took _second_ place! First place would probably break my brain for the day so I won't look it up.

Release party: DiHalt 2026 summer Compo: Demo Platform: zx spectrum Ranked: 2nd

codazoda 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sounds pretty good. Reminds me of the Demo Scene and the types of music they were able to create.

asdefghyk 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I recall, One bit sound was detailed extensively in Byte Magazine starting in mid 70s. A square wave that has its frequency varied. A google of the words " Generating speech with a square wave wave , Byte magazine " picks up lots links about this technique. Fourier transform show a square wave consists of odd sine wave harmonics. [A more advanced technique (more than one bit) would use microprocessor interrups to generate several sqare waves, output them with more than one IO pin and combine them with a resister network]

This mention of one bit sound made me remember the Lis’ner 1000 project of Steve Ciarca , cira 1984 , WHICH WAS speech recognition system of about 30 words. It used a GI SP1000 chip

geori an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reminds me of an experiment that we did with TI calculators in the late 90s. Someone found that you can put an AM radio next to the calculator and it would beep based on what instructions were run on the Z80. There were some demos that played songs via 1 bit beeps like this, but since games actually have to run instructions, you couldnt reliably play background music during gameplay.

fallat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People may enjoy this too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6f8PURcPEE

End result of it playing 1-bit music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjTihhFG03o

bezko 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Turns out 1-Bit encoding is the most efficient solution, even for the highest end of audio quality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-sigma_modulation

alienbaby an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some apparent links don't appear to work at the start of the page, and I couldn't see any links to listen to the output?

_def 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

reminds me of: https://github.com/protodomemusic/mmml

virgil_disgr4ce an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A friend of mine built his entire career as a composer around 1-bit music (famously in the form of an album that is physically a circuit inside a jewel case) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBUVKNqdsEo

Zardoz84 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It would be interesting if someone could implement or adapt Roman Black's BTC algorithm to model the Speccy beeper. https://www.romanblack.com/BTc_alg.htm