Amiga tracker sound on Renoise, is it possible?

Ideas & suggestions
#1

Hi all,

Have recently been playing around with this Protracker 2 emulator, and the sound on it is pretty bang on compared to the original program on the Amiga. I find it amazing that you can literally just drag on a WAV file and it’ll convert to IFF, and sound legit.

One thing I was always hoping for in Renoise was a mode which mimicked the sound of the old amiga trackers, in both the conversion to 8 bit and also the way that playing the sample at diff pitches affects the sound. This pitching sound was always such a big factor of what made the Amiga sound so rugged.
It’s funny if you save a mod file in the pt2 clone, then open it in Renoise, it’s like it’s had all of that rough Amiga charm removed from the samples.

Since the pt2 clone can run on both Windows and Mac, and the clone source code is here on Github I wondered if there would be some way to copy the audio processing qualities into Renoise somehow, maybe as an ‘amiga mode’. I know nowt about coding, but to my mind if it’s possible in this emulator, there must be a way in which those conversion and pitching algorithms can be copied!

Big up all Renoise dev team. If this is possible, I think many many people would love it.

2 Likes
#2

In the song options of Renoise you can set the pitch behavior from “Renoise” to “Amiga” so at least it will scale similarly. Soundwise, you could try turning off any interpolation in the instrument editor sample properties window. Still, it wont sound the exact same as on the Amiga.

#3

Ah yeah I played around with those settings but as far as I can tell all it was changing was the range that’s available rather than the way the sound itself is processed. That super crispy sound you get pitching around on the Amiga is what I’m after.

#4

You’re better off getting a real second hand Amiga imo, Renoise is not designed to be the ultimate oldschool tracker emulating machine and probably will never be. It’s great it can open the old mods though for pimping them, processing with vst etc, remixing the structure into something new.

#5

Linux may not be supported by the developer (@8bitbubsy ?), but seems to compile.

#6

Yeah, I don’t fully support Linux, but at least I try to make it compile properly and work for the most part.

1 Like
#7

A little something worth pointing out (as a rare thing) @8bitbubsy.

I load a module that has a full 20 characters in the song name (for example):

fullname

Rare, yes, but could happen with other programs that don’t fully adhere to 19 characters and a null terminator. If the user doesn’t modify the song name and saves this module, your program can write spurious characters in the file name. So you could get:

mod.this is fullnameBV.mod

As far as I can quickly see Line 129 of pt_module_saver.c (https://github.com/8bitbubsy/pt2-clone/blob/master/src/pt2_module_saver.c#L129) defines a local char filename[128] array. It’s probably getting it from that array as it is not initialized to 0 before use i.e.

memset(fileName, 0, sizeof(fileName));
1 Like
#8

Thanks, I made a commit to the GitHub repo to fix this. I also had to fix it for sample saving, exact same issue. :slight_smile:
Not sure when I’ll release a new version though, might not be until a long while since I don’t have any critical bug fixes yet.

EDIT: I decided to release a new version just from these two fixes after all, because this bug can lead to a crash in some instances. I think it’s important enough.

5 Likes
#9

Amiga mods run partwise good, partwise horrible on Renosie. joyride.mod and Space_debris.mod for instance run horrible.

#10

In my opinion the most important thing about the Amiga sound is the bit reduction to 8 bit. If you run ALL samples in your project through a bitcrusher with the right settings you can get it to sound really close without resorting to use those archaic programs. Octamed and ProTracker have a lot of nostalgia attached to them but really in their essence they are awful to use and navigate.

3 Likes
#11

Decimort VST has a lot of Amiga presets, so perhaps in combination with other tips on here you could try to make it work?

1 Like
#12

I would pay for an easy way to make Renoise sound close to the Amiga.

I love the 90s hardcore rave sound from Red Alert & Mike Slammer and Neophyte for example, but setting up a real Amiga and being limited to the 4 channels, limited memory etc. seems like a bridge too far for me.

#13

8 bit,44,1Khz
No sample interpolation(or maybe linear interpolation,I don’t remember)

Maybe some guitar amps or preamps could emulate the amiga preamps?

1 Like
#14

No sample interpolation…check

FREE “Voxengo boogex”…check

Floor noise…Impossible to reproduce “dynamically”

#15

I have 3 amigas, the short answer is no.

1 Like
#16

I have a “sleeping” stock (commodore,not escom) amiga 1200

I think It’s possible to “approach” his sound

If someone could transcode a part of a modern music to be played on an Amiga,then record the Amiga output,then share the original file (before transcoding) and the recorded file,It could be a good start to find a solution

#17

The thing is that @8bitbubsy already got his Protracker 2 emulation to sound close to the real Amiga.

The readme says: “Has additional audio filters and audio mixer improvements to make it sound close to a real Amiga computer.”

@8bitbubsy , could you perhaps be bothered to explain what you did in some detail?

#18

It’s close as in “close to most people” close. Scientifically, it’s not close, as the analog components in an Amiga makes the sound unique to every single machine. Components have tolerances (like f.ex. +/- 20% in values), and they can change in resistance/capacitance from old age. Amigas are also using PWM to be able to change the amplitude of a waveform, and the PT2 clone doesn’t emulate that either. I don’t think most people really need proper Amiga PWM volume simulation in a PT clone, though…

The PT2 clone has the same filter types as Amigas (1-pole RC low-pass, optional Sallen-Key (Q=Butterworth) “LED” filter, and 1-pole RC high-pass), and it uses BLEP synthesis to band-limit the signal so that it doesn’t have to render at several megahertz of bandwidth to have the same “raw and crisp” Amiga sound. Amigas are rendering waveforms at 3.54MHz (!), which is what makes the sound so iconic.

The filters and BLEP synthesis were coded by another guy (aciddose), not me, so I can’t really explain it in more details than this.

3 Likes
#19

D16 Group Decimort plug in has two C64 preset including C64 PWM, the plug in can be very taxing on extreme qualities but it is a very convincing rendition.

#20

Yes you can totally get this sound natively inside Renoise. No bitcrushing plugins or other unsatisfactory hacks are needed, just some preparation.

TL;DR: convert your samples to 8.363 or 16.726kHz. Turn off interpolation, turn on anti-aliasing. Run your audio engine at 88.2kHz or above.

  1. Collect the samples you want to use in your song.

  2. Convert them in your preferred audio editor to mono and either 8.363KHz or 16.726KHz, depending on how much of the original high end you want to retain, and how much artificial digital crispiness and grain you want. Lower rate = more grain. These rates match the original C2 and C3 playback rates in ProTracker.

IMO conversion to 8 bit isn’t super critical for the sound you want - sample rate is the important factor in getting the digital shine. Convert to 8 bit if you want to hear the quantization noise too, but start without it and you might not want it.

  1. Save them as new WAVs.

  2. Load them into Renoise. In the instrument properties, switch interpolation to None, and turn on anti-aliasing (it’s a little button labelled AA).

  3. Run your audio engine at 88.2KHz or above. This is important - in conjunction with the anti-aliasing button it will prevent unpleasant tones from being produced on high notes which aren’t part of the desired sound and will ruin the effect.

  4. Play your samples down on the low octaves and I think you’ll be pleased with what you hear.