New trackers in 2021

General Discussion
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Probably with something like Elektron sidstation or another synth with soundchips in it, it would be possible to reverse engineer it and make a handheld in a similar way to the way it was put together. You could download the code which was stored on the EPROMS and find out how they wrote the sequencer, the operating system and how the code addressed the hardware components inside. Probably its machine code or assembly, something like that (I have no idea about coding).

You can get so many EPROMS from DTECHs website (can also rip single cycle waveforms from them by loading them into renoise 8bit unsigned).

http://dtech.lv/techarticles_yamaha_chips.html

Also this guy Acreil was researching Yamaha and Casio chips amonst other things so there is some good information on actual chip design too.

Acreils youtube page is excellent too, loads of great songs with old casios, yamahas etc, sampled and sequenced.

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Hello! Thought I’d chime in- I am the creator of M8. It’s been almost a year long project for me and probably months down the road to production units as this is my first major “product”.

I have a long long history with trackers including my love for Renoise. I also have been active in the community albeit behind the scenes for the most part. I maintain Chipmusic.org as well as in the long long ago I hosted arguru.com

It’s quite amazing that all these products are coming out around the same time. I think it’s somewhat coincidental as well as uCs getting quite powerful. I actually started my base tracker code back in 2013 just for MIDI- Little did I know a year ago how much time dusting off an old project would consume.

I hope to get a Polyend Tracker at some point when I have more free time (that price and quality is crazy good!) and I am also eagerly awaiting the arrival of NerdSEQ Portable. As a creator I love the options we have access to and they are worth celebrating. :slight_smile:

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Hi Tim,

Really looking forward to getting a M8 when it’s out. I always wanted something like LSDJ but with ‘regular’ sounds as well as chip. From what i’ve heard from your clips you’ve done a great job on it.

It’s cool to see people from the golden days of LSDJ yahoo group like you and firestARTer still keeping the faith! I don’t think i’ve ever enjoyed any piece of music gear as much as using LSDJ on a DMG brick.

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Will M8 have true ‘BPM’ timing, LSDJ and nanoloop dont have it, they have framerate based ‘speed’, although its labelled as BPM I think…makes it difficult to sample into renoise without arduino midi sync thing, or some special cable you have to build yourself.

NERDSEQ portable looks cool…(sampler/sequencer with single cycle wavetables).
Also Deflemask android looks pretty cool (dont know if it has true BPM though because it emulates old chips).

King of portable trackers right now has to be Sunvox in my opinion, although it doesnt have gamepad controls like these ones do.


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LSDJ tries to be as accurate as it can be, and it’s pretty close to accurate. All timing is based off a timer. :wink: It sounds like you’re comparing LSDJ & Nanoloop to Famitracker, which is based off of a framerate based ‘speed’. M8 is not emulating anything. Its timing is also as accurate as it can be. Stays locked to Ableton / other hardware for as long as I’ve tested it for. I am sure it will fall out of sync if not in hours, days perhaps. I have not tested it more than necessary.

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281a8b220c634a1a8a895de330866290_original

Nanoloop FM

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I just did a reverse image search for this 3rd screenshot and learned it’s called DefleMask – I’ve never heard of this one before. Anyone ever used it? It’s $6.99 in the Play store. The interface looks a little less ahem unusual than SunVox’s.

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It’s free for desktop use, and I tried it on my Mac. Crashed repeatedly. Worked once or twice, and only seems to do the chiptunes style of music well, as far as any demo goes - that’s ALL they make with it. Because it crashed so often and so easily, I was unable to really test much of it at all. They are constantly updating the software, so maybe now it works? Who knows.

Renoise, on the other hand, works perfectly :smiley:

Deflemask is great for chiptune, I suppose, if it works.

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Good to know – I’m on Mac & Android currently and I really like the idea of a tool that can effectively bridge both. With that said, I struggle using a tracker interface on my smartphone – SunVox’s mobile UI is pretty challenging to work on and not as efficient/enjoyable as Renoise’s (though there’s something about the sounds you can get in SunVox…)
I don’t think of the style of music I do as chiptune, but I’ve recently been discovering a love for lo-fi single-cycle samples like AKWF. They can be super lush with the right kind of processing. Working in Renoise kind of connects us to those older ways of working, which adds a lot of dimension to the stuff I actually do create.

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This is great news. Sounds like it will be a really cool device.

On a phone it is a little challenging but on a tablet 8" or above its excellent.
Honestly, I love sunvox’s interface. After a while getting used to where everything is its like using some kind of hardware. You can get your left hand and right hand involved with the two main drop down menus and with editing patterns and parameters.

Sunvox is seriously excellent. Whenever I see people saying its no good, I know they havent tried it for long enough. Sunvox is king of ‘synth/sequencer’ trackers, Renoise is king of ‘sampler/sequencer’ trackers (although its good for vsti too).

I cant wait for sunvox as a vst inside renoise. It will be the perfect setup.

As for deflemask. Im not that familiar with it but it looks pretty good for emulating actual chips, although Im not sure how perfect the emulation is.

For the old school opl3 peeps…adlibtracker 2 is pretty damn good, although difficult and only keyboard based…it will do 4op fm with ‘paired tracks’. The emulation of the opl3 is pretty good in sdl version. The ‘tables’ seem like they are much more in depth than LSDJ and LGPT because they will do FM parameters as well as transpose and pitch, timing based effects.

Id love to see a vsti or handheld adlib tracker 2. (its open source, programmed in pascal)

Also be aware that the AKWF waveforms are not properly tunable (try tuning them with freeware tuner GTUNE and you will see).

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Yeah no hate on SunVox – I’m actually crazy about the sounds it produces. I agree that the ideal would be to have it as a VST or ReWire so I could keep the same Renoise workflow but get them SunVox soouunds. There’s something hauntingly grainy and organic about them. Honestly I haven’t taken the time to learn its workflow because I’ve spent so much time and energy getting familiar with Renoise. I have it on the desktop where all the modules are visible, so it might be time well spent to get comfortable sequencing in it.

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Defflemask emulation is ok, but the point is when your song is complete you end up with a ROM that contains it which you can play back on the original hardware.

(and in the case of Megadrive, remix on the fly with a 3rd party ROM & DIY hardware controller)

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I think in the latest update it is already possible to use sunvox as an ‘audio unit’ for mac or ios, so if you have a mac you should be able to load sunvox as an audio unit for use in renoise already. I think ‘sunvox as a vsti’ is in the to do list and will be coming soon probably.
Otherwise if you have an ipad pro with cubasis, that would be a good option for loading sunvox as an audio unit too.

Check out the ‘sunsynths’ by sawzer on the sunvox forums and you will see how crazy the sunvox sound design can get. Sunvox is a modular synth, although some would say semimodular i guess…it gets complex as fuck, probably some of those guys are studying sound design or music technology at berkley or some other university that specializes in music. But anyway, sunvox is not an old school chip tracker. Its really got some amazingly cool features, very modern, although its perfectly suited for chip music as well (‘fakebit’ i guess, because it not actual chips).

sawzer pwm sunsynth
https://warmplace.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3784

sunvox modules page
https://warmplace.ru/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

Where can I see this?
You have to burn the deflemask song onto an EPROM chip, solder or socket it into a megadrive cartridge to play back the song?

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Nah you just need a flashcart that people use to play their ROM collections, there’s some about that are SD card adapters. The DIY part is to be able to connect a MIDI controller into the joypad port.

(Not my vid)

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that looks pretty great. I see you have to compose your music in deflemask first, before playing it back clip launching style on the actual megadrive. Its a little like renoise phrases in a way.

Megadrive has so much potential as a creative instrument. The combination of grainy, low quality samples, coarse sounding FM from the YM chip and normal waveforms from the PSG chip. A lot of possibilities for interesting voices. ‘mixed media’ kind of thing.

Id like to see a real live set like actual pad drumming an entire composition live on launchpad x or one that has velocity sensitve pads (not just clip launch buttons), maybe a few phrases, but short ones (maybe some table based textures with a decay, something like that, or just a bassline). Something interesting to watch live like a set with two megadrives, two 80s CRT televisions miced up and two launchpad x…for the totally live pad drumming megadrive bonanza to post on youtube.

I imagine it would take a lot of time to set up per song though. Its definitely for those people whose instrument is megadrive only, 100% megadrive focused. time waits for no man. Better be on point to acheive megadrive greatness. Logically thinking the whole thing out in deflemask first, and it may sound slightly different once you get it all into the MD.

I guess its always possible to sample it out again into renoise, then you could have sample fx chain and modulation sets for the live pad drumming setup, but unless it has midi BPM timing…the framerate based speed wont be any good for sequencing the phrases, first written in deflemask, then sampled out from real megadrive, in renoise.

If there is a trick with getting the right one PAL or NTSC, with framerate at 60Hz, there may be some ‘speeds’ which are ‘true BPM’…the one that is 50Hz…I think it cant be done.

Looks excellent though, its great to be able to make something like that, so props/kudos to whoever created it. Id love it if there was a native megadrive tracker that came on a cartridge, input being control pad, and could be midi synced (for sampling out at true BPM) or sequencing it directly from renoise.

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Yes that’s correct unfortunately. Although it’s emulation is ok there are differences even between the different models of console.

When you write for a console, either PAL or NTSC ( Never The Same Colour ), you can use the similar technique of changing speed every few lines that you might use to make swing, to instead keep in sync with a BPM clock. That technique looks like this in Famitracker.

Anyway, has anyone here got hold of a Polyend Tracker? I am really excited by the idea of it, but heard its ability to sync with other gear was a bit buggy. Any opinions?

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I’ve mostly used Polyend Tracker as a standalone but did a quick test with Analog Four and the sync seemed working okay, controlling the playback and tempo changes from Polyend Tracker and Analog Four reacting to those as expected. I also heard about the MIDI problems with it before I bought it but the latest firmware supposedly improved on MIDI timecode and ext. clock optimisations.

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RE Polyend Tracker, while the idea seems cool to have a piece of equipment with tracker workflow, I feel like it doesn’t have as much of a reason to exist compared to other physical hardware like drum machines and synths. It kinda feels like it’s neither here nor there, offering more limitations compared to f.e. a laptop running Renoise without any of the haptic advantages of physical hardware. That being said, I haven’t tried using it yet.
Really the ideal would be something as portable as, say, one of those old Sony Vaio netbooks with sufficient hardware to run Renoise (with plugins). Hell, just make a Renoise OS and we’re good

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