
Chiptune - karlzt
http://chiptune.com/
======
l33tbro
I remember 10 years ago Malcolm McLaren thought Swiss chip music would be the
next punk rock.

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/mclaren.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/mclaren.html)

~~~
bane
It still might. Chip music and Demoscene/Trackerscene music is an unusually
vibrant and prolific music scene that has almost no commercial ties to the
music industry. It's sort of the most "indie" kind of music you can find, with
people doing whatever they feel like for the most part, yet still has some
recognizable cultural threads.

~~~
jackmoore
That was a beautiful response.

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derefr
Is there a way to actually play chiptunes within the shell, or can you only
download them? Seems like it's sort of missing its core competency if there's
no WebAudio implementation of a tracker.

~~~
ianremsen
I'm currently working on a web tracker, and it turns out that it is /much/
easier said than done. You have all the problems of making a web app, coupled
with all the problems of making a tracker (of which there are many). Plus, you
seem to be suggesting a one-stop allgear tracker, which makes it ten times
worse, since one doesn't seem to exist even for desktop yet.

And, a shoutout to, IMO, one of the coolest quasi-demoscene places on the
internet, [http://battleofthebits.org](http://battleofthebits.org). Without
them, I would never have gotten my feet off the ground with coding.

And, if anyone's curious (it's still in its incredibly early stages),
[https://github.com/ianremsen/lunartracker](https://github.com/ianremsen/lunartracker)

~~~
derefr
Admittedly, it'd be easier to just render all the audio to MP3, stick it on S3
(6000 chips = ~70GB of music?), and create a tracker _interface_ that actually
just streams those MP3s. Costly on bandwidth, though.

~~~
vidarh
As a showcase for the MP3 approach, for C64 music there's this [1] that has
more than 50000 tracks recorded from actual SID chips (because the emulators
are still not perfect, apparently...). That includes a lot of pointless stuff,
though (they've played back every track available, which includes game over
jingles and sound effects in many cases).

[1 [http://www.6581-8580.com/](http://www.6581-8580.com/)

~~~
exDM69
> (because the emulators are still not perfect, apparently...)

The SID chips contain analog synthesizers that have a very distinct tone which
is difficult to emulate in digital signal processing. There was also a lot of
variance in the semiconductor manufacturing process, so no two SID chips sound
exactly the same.

The SID emulators are actually very different from your typical audio synths,
they don't run at the "native" output sample rate (ie. 44.1 or 48kHz) but do
their processing at a much higher (closer to MHz) sample rate to better
emulate some of the analog phenomena going on in the chip.

So, no, SID chips are still not "perfect" and will probably never be :)

------
to3m
One thing to note if you've never used an Amiga is that you can pick up the
white bar at the top and drag it up and down to reveal a screen behind it.
This was what passed for entertainment in those days.

~~~
hippiefahrzeug
I'm not sure what you mean by the last sentence. That wasn't entertainment.
That was an ultra handy feature which I miss to this day. You could have
several fullscreen applications, switch between them easily or just have a
peek onto what's going on by dragging the screen down a little bit. It's like
a tiled desktop on steroids. Amiga's Multitasking was great (considering the
resources).

~~~
to3m
Oh, just an admission that when you pull the workbench down, what you find
might not be very exciting :)

------
alexbecker
I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Hints?

~~~
moe
A pretty good emulation of AmigaOS ~1.3 from the late 1980s.

This site has been around for a long time and is related to the oldskool
demoscene ([http://pouet.net](http://pouet.net)) and chiptune music scene
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH7eUlri4yM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH7eUlri4yM)).

Unfortunately, apart from the neat OS emulation, it does a rather poor job at
communicating what it is about or linking to interesting samples of the art.

~~~
boyaka
Awesome compilation! Thanks for the link. I randomly went on a chiptune binge
on YouTube a week ago to see what I could find. I made a submission [1] of a
video (Black Light Machine [2]) I found because I thought the visualization
was really interesting, and the music was really well composed. It's a
fascinating genre of music. One of the original sources where I discovered it
was on Linus Akesson's website [3].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8873614)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik8Bv8KMk7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik8Bv8KMk7E)

[3] [http://www.linusakesson.net/](http://www.linusakesson.net/)

------
lportion
I just noticed the Shadow of the Beast demo (SOTB), this is one of the
quintessential Amiga games. Wonderful art and music (also rock-hard
difficulty).

Not long ago the game was ported to popular modern formats, for anyone
interested: [http://www.indieretronews.com/2014/10/shadow-of-beast-
legacy...](http://www.indieretronews.com/2014/10/shadow-of-beast-legacy-
popular-remake.html)

~~~
abrugsch
unfortunately, since that article was written, the guy doing the porting has
slowed right down. The most up to date info can be found in the EAB forum
thread

[http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=74013&page=11](http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=74013&page=11)

------
nickstinemates
This website brings back so many memories, both of first discovering it, and
before that my time on the Amiga.

------
sushimako
F11 your browser, open 'Starfield' from Demos, resize window to fullscreen,
travel through space:
[http://i.imgur.com/twSrcy0.png](http://i.imgur.com/twSrcy0.png)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Mousewheel appears to control speed. Wouldn't've thought the Amiga had a
mousewheel...

------
j-b
So much nostalgia, just spent the rest of the morning listening to various
chiptune's on Spotify.

------
MrDosu
Check out radio Nectarine if you like this kind of music!

~~~
Syssiphus
or Slay Radio -> [http://www.slayradio.org](http://www.slayradio.org) or the
Bitjam Podcast ->
[http://www.bitfellas.org/page.php?100](http://www.bitfellas.org/page.php?100)

~~~
MrDosu
awesome, thx!

