"Ohne Dich": Play digital audio from tape in real-time

[Boray]

You can use the album you won in the "Vic-20 game awards of 2014" if you like. Was it "Time for Boray"?

[pixel]

You can use the album you won in the "Vic-20 game awards of 2014" if you like. Was it "Time for Boray"?

Yes, that was the one. Thanks!

[ral-clan]

I used AudioTap to convert, Wavelab for any adjusting, and just recorded on my tape deck. So perhaps there is a degrading of the sound. Here is a video link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PahhRvIVdVM

Spotted a fellow Canadian right away as soon as I heard your accent!

[pixel]

The player is now IRQ–based. One might expect less jitter/noise but that didn't happen. The good thing is, of course, that audio samples could now be played in games.

[pixel]

The player got pushed to the very limits on real hardware. The archive at http://hugbox.org/pixel/external/denial/ohne_dich6k.zip contains all TAPs and WAVs for both PAL and NTSC to play the tunes at 6kHz sampling rate. 6.5kHz would have come with audible distortions. (Boray's track on "Pulse" has been recorded with 5kHz to play safe.)

The WAVs have been generated with the only TAP2WAV converter I trust: mine.

[pixel]

One more thing: this time the recordings start with a test tone which is fading out from maximum volume. If your recorder and your datassette are well–adjusted the bars on the screen should look exactly like they do in VICE.

[pixel]

Oh my. One more thing missing: this time your memory configuration doesn't matter. Your VIC will relocate the code.

[ral-clan]

This piece is supposed to play a tune from tape with about 4kHz sampling rate at four bits on unexpanded VICs. Unfortunately, I can't test it on real hardware.

Wait - something I cannot understand from the original description of this program:

Is it reading analogue audio off the cassette and sampling on-the-fly, or a pre-prepared digital sample file/stream?

i.e. can I put in any analogue audio cassette and have it play, or must it be digitally sampled audio saved as a file to a cassette?

[pixel]

i.e. can I put in any analogue audio cassette and have it play, or must it be digitally sampled audio saved as a file to a cassette?

Oh, you're right. Maybe I took it for too granted. It really doesn't play any audio tape. The samples need to be pulse width modulated to make it through. The player measures the lengths of the pulses and performs some simple statistics to adjust itself.

[ral-clan]

i.e. can I put in any analogue audio cassette and have it play, or must it be digitally sampled audio saved as a file to a cassette?

Oh, you're right. Maybe I took it for too granted. It really doesn't play any audio tape. The samples need to be pulse width modulated to make it through. The player measures the lengths of the pulses and performs some simple statistics to adjust itself.

Okay, thanks, because there is already software out there that will play audio off an analogue cassette through the VIC-20's audio out, so I wasn't sure what you had come up with.

[pixel]

Okay, thanks, because there is already software out there that will play audio off an analogue cassette through the VIC-20's audio out, so I wasn't sure what you had come up with.

Sounds scary. Where can I get that one?

[ral-clan]

Here's some information:

The program TAPE TON at the web page here does it:
http://www.geocities.ws/cbm/bin/tapeton.prg

Here's some more info:
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic. ... e960bf61fe

[pixel]

Oh dear. I guess I can imagine the result already. No C64 set up at the moment. Anyway: you got me hooked on the idea to try something like that out myself. Not as simple as the example on Lemon. Hmm... hmm... tricky.

[ral-clan]

Oh dear. I guess I can imagine the result already. No C64 set up at the moment. Anyway: you got me hooked on the idea to try something like that out myself. Not as simple as the example on Lemon. Hmm... hmm... tricky.

TAPE TON works with the VIC-20. It's bad, yes, but not that bad. I recall it was good enough, in my testing, for me to play a 440Hz tone recorded on analogue cassette to help me calibrate the datasette motor speed.

[pixel]

TAPE TON works with the VIC-20. It's bad, yes, but not that bad. I recall it was good enough, in my testing, for me to play a 440Hz tone recorded on analogue cassette to help me calibrate the datasette motor speed.

I played around with audio recordings last night and didn't get anything usable out of it.