Support this channel on Patreon / 8bitguy1 In this episode I take an in-depth look at the somewhat rare Commodore SFX Sound Expander and external keyboard.
Almost couldn't believe that sound was even coming out of a Commodore 64! Massive shame about the lack of software that supports it. I would have loved to see some games that support the expanded sound too, though I know that's not the focus of the channel.
I sure hope some talented programmer comes along and hacks some full SFX Sound Expander compatibility into some old C64 classics or demos! I'm sure it can be done. I'd love to hear this chip running in unison with dual SID chips!
what the higher notes of the "space bell" preset are doing is called aliasing. it happens when there's frequencies above nyquist in your sound (for retro tech like this it's pretty much safe to assume the nyquist frequency is somewhere around 22.05 kHz or even lower ). These higer frequencies then get looped around and end up in the lower frequencies because the data is kept (not low passed away) and interpolated wrong.
Even modern "standard" gear doesnt have High sample rates. With modern "standard" gear you actually get a digital signal at 22 KHz Audio because its sampled just in 44,1 K which is too low. Its a 30 year old standard which is long time overhauled....
since accoustic works like frequency interfere with each other ultrasonic frequencys above 20 KHz has an effect on our hearing. There are studys. Cheap speakers go just to 20 KHz, right.
"There are studys [sic]" -- Funny how whenever "there are studies" mentioned in a discussion on the Internet, such studies are never linked to or mentioned by name or anything...
I'm honestly impressed... I would normally not watch something like this, I'm not a music person, but it was really interesting... And you play nicely! :)
This version of the theme song you played is the best in my opinion. I think you should use it for your intro. p.s. who else wanted to hear what the "glock" sounded like?
Hahah.. I actually was going to mention that one, and make some snarky comment about it not sounding like a handgun. But decided to leave that off. Anyway, it actually doesn't sound like a glockenspiel either.. it sounds more like a wooden marimba.
A marimba tends to have hollowed out blocks, that are somewhat loose so that they have a more noticeable reverb echo when struck hard. It's the kind of sound that when played well, gives me the shivers (in a good way of course!)
@@AmyraCarter A marimba is similar to a vibraphone in that both have metal tubes with little rotating "shutters" in each tube to enhance the sound and give it a vibrating effect, not entirely dissimilar to the Leslie speaker one often sees with an Electronic/Hammond organ. The difference being that a vibraphone has metal bars as the "sound generators" whereas, as you correctly pointed out, the marimba uses wood blocks. Buuut... I´m sure you already knew that; I just put this up here for the benefit of the other commenters.
Hey, so the reason why the "Space Bells" instrument sounds weird in the higher notes is because the notes are aliased. The patch itself is quite a complex sounding so the Sound Expander probably can't handle it properly.
The expander just connects the OPL to the C64 pretty much entirely passively. The high notes sounding weird are just the OPL operating normally ... Yamaha's phase-shift "FM" is essentially well-controlled sample aliasing after all. And maybe you actually wanted that sound anyway? If not, you could, in a more sophisticated program (on the level of EG Adlib Tracker II) fiddle with the patch settings somewhat (e.g. reduce the modulation rate) until it didn't go quite as wild at the top end, at the expense of changing the timbre of the lower notes. (Though I think such software, and maybe even the OPL itself or at least some of the later members of the family, actually had the facility to automatically adjust the modulation settings according to how far up the scale you were? ISTR there being mention on a data sheet of something like that, which was initially intended for more accurate piano emulation (as it uses fewer strings for high notes than low ... or maybe the other way round, I forget... so has a timbre that alters in the very highest and lowest octaves vs the midrange) but could certainly be used for special effects, or reducing the strength of aliasing artefacts)
well didn't sega actually used opl2? i mean if it's interchangeable, i don't think there's much difference at all - few internal configurable switches, each with set of parameters. You can config them manually to begin with.
The YM3526 is a 2 op chip. The YM2612 of the MegaDrive is 4 op and part of the OPN not OPL line. OPL2 YM3812 is backwards compatible in a 3526 circuit but because the 3812 has 3 additional waveform types, a 3526 won't necessarily do the role of a 3812.
There are probably hundreds of different gaming consoles, microcomputers, arcade machines, keyboards, etc that used this same sound chip. So it sounds like a lot of things.
The Sega Genesis used a YM2612 (OPN2) as it's primary sound chip and a Texas Instruments SN76489 (plays a large roll in the sound of games like Streets of Rage) as it's secondary sound chip. The SN76489 was also for Master System backwards compatibility. Yamaha FM has a distinctive sound, just as Roland's FM has it's own to my ear. I have always linked the Yamaha "sound" with Sega and the 16 bit era of gaming.
Somehow this sounds way better than most of the actual keyboards you've shown on this channel. I can't believe how such a primitive computer can make sounds like these.
It shouldn't do, though. Certainly, if they're Yamahas, they will have been using one of these at a minimum (or *maybe* an OPLL, which is essentially the same thing but only one of the channels is fully adjustable, the others have to pick from 15 instrument presets that are much the same as those found within the two sound banks shown here... what you actually get depending on the chip revision... I don't know if they ever made anything based on the 2419 PSG, but it would likely have been a kiddie machine), if not something rather more sophisticated. Casio and Roland each went their own unique ways, but had rather less widely commercialised chips that were roughly on a par; particularly, a lot of lower end Roland keyboards were based around the MT32, and later the Sound Canvas chips, which aren't exactly weak performers. And Casio got into the PCM soundfont game quite early-doors.
there was some sampling software for this set up, it was show to us in the mid 80s in school, i clearly remember it sampling our voices and sounds we made in to a composition that using the large keyboard and i think saving it on to a floppy disk. making quite an impact on me, as seeing the set up again has bought back a lot of memorys. cheers Dan
Wow...the C64 never fails to amaze me....hard to believe that a computer from the early 80s can produce such good audio out of it....i mean, you could actually use that to make music today....much better than those PC beeper speakers LOL
technically this isnt the c64 making the music. its using the Yamaha YM3812 chip, the same chip used in early Adlib and Soundblaster cards. Its just interfacing with that chip which the 64 was well known for its ability to interface with everything and anything
Wow, that really sounds amazing, it's crazy to think how many awesome things for the C64 are out there. I wish I never got rid of my 2 old systems, I had the new C64 and then bought a TRS80 with 2 disk drives and about 1000 floppy disks with games and programs, as well as about 100 old computer books with programs and stuff. I still remember most of the old basic programming codes, lol. Will you ever review any old RC cars or RC toys here? I just fulfilled a childhood dream buying a Tyco Fast Traxx in lovely dayglo yellow, cannot wait for my battery to go driving. Im hooked on RC cars now, old cars are brilliant!
Cool, I probably misinterpreted the 80's toys part thinking toys in general but I assume now it's toy organs and keyboards. I actually had a RC robot made by Radio Shack in the 80's which was just a RC base and an inflatable robot that sat on top of it! Wish I still had that
Looking forward to the Roland MT32 video. I wanted one so bad as a kid. I would drool over the ones they had at Microcenter hooked up playing the latest Sierra Online video games that supported it.
Not got an ST hanging around, or an Amiga that could have a serial-to-MIDI interface (which is pretty much a 25-pin socket, a couple of 5-pin DINS, and half a dozen short wires) built for it? Or even a C64 MIDI interface (come on, surely...? :D) or one for a gameboy?
I doubt it would work out, since there is probably very little address conflict handling. Best likely case would be that one of the two would be safely disabled, but there is also the risk of shorting out some signals, would be a shame to wreck such a rare collectors item.
alternatively - dump controller rom, reverse engineer it, map of the board and then throw the whole thing into online as opensource hardware. That way any c64 enthusiast can build one if they had time.
I wonder if the cartridge slot on the expander remaps the second chip select line to the first, maybe, physically preventing any conflict between the two devices? It might even be a deliberate part of the design. After all, what if you plug in a software cartridge that uses the same address? And why put two addresses on the port if there was only ever meant to be one cartridge hanging off the back? Compare the external floppy drives of various old computers. Each one individually thought it was "device 1", but you could daisy chain them (generally either 2 or 4 max) thanks to their passthru ports. Said ports remapping the "device 2 select" coming into them as "device 1 select" on the output (and not connecting dev 2 on the output; or, where appropriate, device 3 = device 2, and device 4 = device 3, with dev 4 on the output being N/C), so that the computer would drive one of the two (four) pins active and select just one, specific drive out of those connected, even though each thought of itself as "#1", and the port interconnections were identical with each drive. Simple but smart. Do the same thing with the cartridge port, with a rule that each connected cart's chip(s) are only ever connected to either CS1, or BOTH CS1 and CS2 (if you have a lot of ROM / multiple devices onboard but no dedicated mapper controlling access to them), never "just CS2", as well as mandating that anything with a passthru only connects CS1 internally, and maps CS2 to CS1 on the output, and you have a recipe for being able to daisychain at least two Sound Expanders. Or connect simple one-chip (or at least one-CS) cards into an expander's passthru port. Of course, anything that uses both lines will suffer malfunctions when trying to use the second chip, and software that's too stupid to try the second address if the first one fails will also be incompatible, but those are fairly minor concerns addressed by unplugging the expander and connecting those fussy cartridges directly. Or having some kind of interposer between both devices and the computer which can switch between sending all CS lines to one or the other without having to disconnect (ie, basically the same as any other multi-cart switch box).
I assume that you mean "Dune 2 battle for Arrakis" because that's what I was thinking. but then I only ever played this game with adlib. and since that has the same chip it's no wonder.
Growing up with C64 I never imagined that there was even "better" sound for it. However the SID can never be beaten. Loved the Sega Genesis "Synth 2" bank
Richard Watts (of Simms Watts amplifier fame) was the designer. I worked with him at Music Sales liaising with Commodore who commissioned four products in total; the FM synth shown here, a Sampler, a Sequencer and a tuition programme. The C64 was very hot at the time.
SFX Sound Expander is a great example why Commodore bankrupted eventually. It got a pretty decent sound chip, and a big keyboard. From hardware perspective it was good, but lacked touch sensitive keys or even some buttons on keyboard itself. From the software point it was simply a disaster. Why they didn't include software on cartridge? It was more expensive, but it would load very quickly and it would allow for way better software: - They could do a full 128 MIDI instruments, like Windows 3.x did on OPL2/OPL3. - instruments, rhythms, and other static data could be read from cartridge itself, leaving almost whole 64 KB of RAM for user content, - instrument creator, allowing user to manually change FM chip state, - simple, multitrack sequencer, - reading/writing MIDI files on tapes or diskettes. This all could be done in software. Without any further hardware costs. C64 + SFX + Keyboard could become a semi-professional composing tool. Way cheaper than other solutions, more powerful than standalone keyboards. But that didn't happened. Commodore released expensive keyboard that required computer, TV and long loading time to even start working. Standalone keyboards were probably cheaper, way more portable, and even had more sounds, rhythms and other functions. I would say, that in whole Commodore history, it's rather uncanny how they managed to build such a great computers like C64 and Amiga.
That's not surprising, seeing as the Sega's 2612 (effectively an "OPNC", or possbly "OPNB-L") and the OPL have a lot of shared heritage. Or more precisely, the entirety of the OPLx and OPNx ranges are essentially based off this chip as a starting point (with the pre-SMD/SG OPNs adding a register-compatible YM2149 core, and in some cases a fairly sophisticated (AD)PCM engine, to the FM part... and one range needing a separate DAC, the other integrating it but I can never remember which is which). The actual FM part works pretty much exactly the same in all cases, just with different features on top of the main 2-operator sine-carrier+single-sine-modulator with hardware ADSR concept (e.g. ability to use 4-op voices, different waveforms either based off rearranging the internal quarter-sine sample to play different ways or just using a wholly different generator, the total number of voices, special effects like multi-part detune, use of the PSG envelope generator, etc). So if you use one of the later chips but don't really push the limits, and just stick to a limited number of fairly straightforward 2-op plus normal envelope voices, it'll sound exactly like the OPL (at the same input clock) no matter which Yamaha FM chip you use. (tell a lie - some will have some minor differences to the overall timbre given the way the actual sound generation works... in all cases there's actually only one operator module that works on each voice, and each slice of a 4-op voice, at a time, which is why the maximum output frequency is so much lower than the input clock... but the more expensive and sophisticated chips store the resulting sample value in a register bank that's then summed and sent to the DAC once per nominal output cycle, whilst the cheaper, cut down ones lack that facility and output the result to the DAC _live,_ using a kind of PWM / timeslice mixing system that relies on intertia within the connected speaker system (or averaging in analogue filters along the output path and/or any digital recorder you might connect to it) as well as the human auditory system to apply a bit of "temporal blur" to the signal exterior to the chip. This is, for example, the source of the famous "ladder effect" bug in the output of the early generation SMD/SG, where quiet tones would acquire a characteristic buzz thanks to poorly matched capacitors on the output stage and thus improper smoothing... which led to several games sounding "wrong" on later revisions that fixed the problem, after composers wrote music deliberately making use of the bug. However, this is something caused in the *output stage* of the chip, rather than the actual FM generation part. The generator itself still works perfectly fine and identical to that of the higher end chips, and if you connected the output of a cheaper chip to a specially-made DAC that incorporated the missing registers and did its own summing to output a clean sample about once every 1/55556th of a second, those simple tones would once again sound identical)
Nostalgic video for me 🙂 I had one of these, with the full size keyboard, and we actually gigged with it in my band back in school circa 1992! Thinking about it, at that gig, we also set up another 64 in a side room selling refreshments, which would display prices on a full screen scrolling message and - completely unnecessarily! - allow the person serving to use it as a cash register, complete with receipts from my Commodore 1520 plotter! 😄
Well.. I could. But about half of the time it is just something I improvised on the spot. The other half of the time it is some song I learned like a game tune or something. People have asked me to put the names on screen.. which I won't do because it would seem weird having names for some songs and not for others. I suppose I could put them in the description field and just mention that anything not listed was just improv.
I would honestly prefer knowing if songs were improv if it meant that I could also know the names of the songs that weren't. Knowing both would be way better than wondering forever though.
8-Bit Keys, Old comment but, I'd love to see the names as well. I am getting into learning some piano as a hobby and I would love to listen to the songs to get them down by ear.
My favourite demo tune on that software is Telstar - I remember this from school... The music room suddenly got a C64, monitor, sound expander, keyboard, an amplifier/speaker unit, and two software packages. One was the software in the video (used it at a concert in school once) and another piece of software could use the keyboard as input if I recall but used the SID chip for sound and had the ability to record. The manual even had some example sheet music I think...
Holy heck man! You are talented on that keyboard! I don't know about anyone else, but there is something about this format of computer music that is very, very appealing. I don't know if its just me being the geek I am and loving the old-skool video games of the past, or if there is something more to it. Either way, cracking vid.
The SFX Sound Expander actually uses the OPL chip, the predecessor to the famous OPL2 chip used on the Ad-Lib and the Sound Blaster, so it's not surprising that it sounds similar.
Which points to a slight mistake on 8BG's behalf - it's not _totally_ interchangable with the Adlib chip. You can swap the two over, but whilst the OPL2 inserted to the Sound Expander will work just fine thanks to it being register-level backwards compatible, the OPL inserted to the Adlib won't work super well... you probably won't see any crashes, but the sound won't come out properly thanks to it ignoring any attempts to write registers that don't exist on the original.
I felt tears coming up my eyes, my beloved C64, so etched onto my core, and still amazing me... Makes me hear sounds I used to hear from my soundblaster, many of the sounds I hear from a variety of pc games, from raptor call of the shadows to lands of lore, dune 2, everything. Thank you for doing this, this is like an ailment to a disease I did not know I had.
Synth 1 or whatever it is called on your keyboard of choice always reminds me of staying up until midnight to watch 1980s episodes of Doctor Who on PBS. They loved using that sound for the music on the show.
I very much doubt they could have survived the pc and playstation juggernaut. According to ex CBM engineers, the AAA chipset in development couldn't really compete against them, the 3d capability just wasn't there. Pity that CBM usa`s mismanagement messed everything up for CBM uk who were actually doing pretty well with the CD32 and A1200. I still think they would have gone bankrupt eventually though, everything was standardising around the pc, the Amiga line had nowhere to go.
I don't think it is as cut and dry as it not having anywhere to go. Basically, if Commodore could have created an 50mhz 030 + decent 3D graphics chip + SIMM slot trapdoor expansion package that could run Doom etc properly, Amiga would have had a chance. People only put up with PCs for gaming because of what they were capable of graphics-wise, which ironically was one of the main advantages of the Playstation.. Amiga could be simple like a console, but also a fully functional machine. Don't forget that circa '94 AmigaOS was still superior to Windows & MacOS and it took WindowsXP & OSX to finally get where Amiga had been all those years prior.
Thanks for the review. I remember I bought both the SFX Sound Expander + Fullsize Keyboard ...AND...the SFX Sound Sampler. I was a bit bummed out when I found out that I could not use my sampled sounds and play them using the fullsize keyboard. Never the less -- it was a nice kit :-)
This is an amazing video. So impressed with the authors keyboarding skills. My only complaint is the review is only 10 minutes. I would have enjoyed an hour review of this hardware device and keyboard. Thanks to the people who donated the hardware. The viewing public appreciates your generosity.
If you know the hardware location you can POKE values into ram for different things in basic. This was how you created music, sprites, changed screen colors etc. on the C64 and many other microcomputers of the time.
There is a guy who made a C64 program that can play DosBox DRO files (which are data dumps of AdLib YM3812 music), on a C64 with a modified SFX Expander (replacing the stock chip with the YM3812 chip). So if he could create such a program in Assembler, anyone with the knowledge of programming could make C64 software or games in Assembler that take advantage of the SFX Expander. You'd just need to find out how the C64 controls it, and work with that.
Absolutely. It would simply be a matter of writing the code to support the FM chip in stead of, or in combination with the SID chip. Like I said in the video, there probably just weren't enough of these on the market to really get game developers interested in writing extra code to support it.
@8-Bit Keys please start modding one of your carts and upgrade it to 3812. Then you could show your audience what a modern DRO player csdb.dk/release/?id=119462 could do. (Wolf3d, Dune, KGB tracks anyone? :) ) And yes, writing a driver for C64 SFX Sound Expander would be as easy as writing an Adlib driver on pc. These chips have only two registers to write to (and read from), everything else is in the programming reference manual.
Absolutely. The only problem really is that it could end up occupying rather more memory and demand more of the total available processor / bus time, to the point that it's impractical to use for anything beyond the simple live-play app shown off here, or maybe a text based tracker. OPL programming isn't exactly super heavyweight, hence its usefulness for DOS games that might have run in less than 512kb RAM, but it's still a grade above that of the SID when you start digging down into all the fine grained functionality. At least, that's the case if you exploit it to the same extreme that a lot of SID programmers did; the unseen advantage with using something like the OPL is that it can actually _reduce_ a lot of the load otherwise placed on the system by coercing the SID into making sophisticated sounds, so long as you program it sympathetically and in the most efficient (rather than most _impressive_ ) way. Most particularly, the automatic ADSR envelope that can be set differently for each channel (and whose settings are retained indefinitely until you next change the voice) requires sending maybe eight bytes to the OPL, which then repeatedly (ie with each new note-start command you send) and without any further data upload produce a volume progression that may have taken four times as many register writes with the SID, each and every time you played a note. And FM voices that give the impression of sounding chorded, or simpler ones literally played as a di-, tri- or tetrachord thanks to the OPL's greater number of simultaneous voices, can stand in place of the arps that would have been necessary to create a similar auditory effect on the SID - again, you only need send 2, 3 or 4 note-on commands for each of those, where with the SID you might have been banging in at least twice as many (apart from the simplest, shortest blip, each arp in an old VGM or chiptune tends to repeat at least twice) or possibly dozens more for a sustained note. It's essentially a tradeoff between how much time (and memory) you can afford to spend setting up your chosen chip before actually playing anything, vs how much is available to throw notes (and patch changes) at it on a live playback basis. Ultimately the overall code for both would probably come out about the same, but the demands of whatever you're running it alongside might favour one or the other. And if you're really canny, you could probably use both in concert playing to the strengths of each, maybe even make an overall saving despite the soundscape being rather richer and more complex.
So many of these sound like they were used in Might n Magic Xeen. All the little tune David plays make me nostalgic for the old games that sounded so similar.
It's great that you had some very generous people donate those units to you. This is pretty cool. I'd imagine the hombrew community could create a demo that utilized the sid+ the Fm expansion for some pretty cool music with 8(3 sid+ 5 FM) channels. I'd love to see something like that. It'd be even neater if it could be utilized in a game. :D
I wish I had something *to* donate and to be able to pay to ship it, I think I may prefer this channel to the main one. You know I'd have happily listened to each instrument!
1:22 I had one of the "Magic Voice" cartridges. used to confuse my parents and grandparents when the computer started to talk. They barely new what a computer was, so didn't really know that all computers didn't do that anyway. Also remember seeing the Sound Expander, but wasn't really into music so didn't get one. many years later someone coded a Macintosh to be able to talk with built in circuitry.
Hey guy this is really cool. I had software that you could copy notes from a song book and play them, I really enjoyed my C128 and C64c. I wanted a set up like this back in the 80s but they where hard to find and you didn't have the internet to find things like you do now. money was tight back then during the recession also with high unemployment. I would have loved to have this set up back then, the commodore was so innovative. Really nice, This is so nostalgic. Thanks for doing this video and project. It was great.
I had the SFX Sound Expander and the large keyboard when I was a kid. Had some jam-sessions with a school-friend in which the tool was used. Must haven been around 1986-87. It was fun, but as you said, the lack of recording and composing capabilities of the software was really an issue.
You make that system sound great! I own a complete Music Expansion System for the C64 including the big keyboard. Thinking of selling it, but seeing your review video of this system I think I will regret selling it. Thanks for the great review!
Pure reminiscence.. I had this set up. Ordered it from UK to DK.. I remember typing in machine code from a german magazine. The result was a very good sequencer. With all of the 4 polyphonic tracks from the 64 chip.lol. started with the Vic 20 color 😎
![АЛАУДИНОВ у Скабеевой: эти их ВСУ нас НЕ ДОГОНЯТ 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/an0anqU4WGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
who else had the idea of him putting the 2nd sfx expander into the 1st one?
Same
and another sfx expander on it, and another one, and another one.
Me too
Me too
me
Good to see some really generous people in the world :)
Adis - Ad Hello 8-ball! Didn't I see you on OSFirstTimer? :D
Ha, Blue Screen of life :P
***** Yes. I love OSFirstTimer and AstralPhaser :D
***** Weird!? Nah, I think people who like Operating systems and retro stuff are pretty cool :)
Adis - Ad Ahh good. My memory didn't fail me. :D
Whoa huge stream of notifications in the space of one minute... :P
Those synth sounds are so unmistakably 80s. I thought I was about to see David Bowie emerge with some skin tight leggings and a baby.
My man I love seeing other UA-camrs drop comments on other channels! It's like a movie cross over or something. It makes you all so much more real.
SCARED FOLKS "What is this, a Crossover Episode?"
the sound is surely from Yamaha old times 70/80es. expecially from Yamagha GX1
Nostalgia Nerd and
it was also donated by one Robert Lazarus...
Almost couldn't believe that sound was even coming out of a Commodore 64! Massive shame about the lack of software that supports it. I would have loved to see some games that support the expanded sound too, though I know that's not the focus of the channel.
Well if there were any games, I would have certainly shown them!
Actually, I did see that.. but my understanding is you have to change the FM chip out to a YM3812.
***** But it's moreso the fact that there's a peripheral that can make a C64 sound like that!
I sure hope some talented programmer comes along and hacks some full SFX Sound Expander compatibility into some old C64 classics or demos! I'm sure it can be done. I'd love to hear this chip running in unison with dual SID chips!
...Of course the sound is really being generated by the Yamaha chip in the expansion board.
There's something magical and ethereal about music made with the C64, and this cartridge adds a new dimension. This was beyond awesome.
SID and this thing are entirely separate things. This is more like a Sound Blaster add-on to C64.
what the higher notes of the "space bell" preset are doing is called aliasing. it happens when there's frequencies above nyquist in your sound (for retro tech like this it's pretty much safe to assume the nyquist frequency is somewhere around 22.05 kHz or even lower ). These higer frequencies then get looped around and end up in the lower frequencies because the data is kept (not low passed away) and interpolated wrong.
well, above 24858 kHz then. My point was that probably super high sample rates weren't a thing with old digital to analog converters.
Even modern "standard" gear doesnt have High sample rates. With modern "standard" gear you actually get a digital signal at 22 KHz Audio because its sampled just in 44,1 K which is too low. Its a 30 year old standard which is long time overhauled....
since accoustic works like frequency interfere with each other ultrasonic frequencys above 20 KHz has an effect on our hearing. There are studys.
Cheap speakers go just to 20 KHz, right.
that are really poor speakers. poor radio quality wich cuts off at 15 KHz in Analogue radio.
"There are studys [sic]" -- Funny how whenever "there are studies" mentioned in a discussion on the Internet, such studies are never linked to or mentioned by name or anything...
I'm honestly impressed... I would normally not watch something like this, I'm not a music person, but it was really interesting...
And you play nicely! :)
I could literally listen to you play with this for like 30 mins.
Yamaha FM chip. Very recognisable sounds. Also Sega Megadrive/Genesis had a Yamaha chip.
Yup, YM2612.
Mine still *has* one, "had" smh haha
The best thing about watching David playing this awesome keyboard is that he makes it looks effortless, I mean, you can tell he's talented.
This version of the theme song you played is the best in my opinion. I think you should use it for your intro.
p.s. who else wanted to hear what the "glock" sounded like?
Hahah.. I actually was going to mention that one, and make some snarky comment about it not sounding like a handgun. But decided to leave that off. Anyway, it actually doesn't sound like a glockenspiel either.. it sounds more like a wooden marimba.
Hooray for marimbas, though I've never heard a marimba.
It looks like a xylophone but sounds somewhat different.
A marimba tends to have hollowed out blocks, that are somewhat loose so that they have a more noticeable reverb echo when struck hard. It's the kind of sound that when played well, gives me the shivers (in a good way of course!)
@@AmyraCarter A marimba is similar to a vibraphone in that both have metal tubes with little rotating "shutters" in each tube to enhance the sound and give it a vibrating effect, not entirely dissimilar to the Leslie speaker one often sees with an Electronic/Hammond organ. The difference being that a vibraphone has metal bars as the "sound generators" whereas, as you correctly pointed out, the marimba uses wood blocks.
Buuut...
I´m sure you already knew that; I just put this up here for the benefit of the other commenters.
Hey, so the reason why the "Space Bells" instrument sounds weird in the higher notes is because the notes are aliased. The patch itself is quite a complex sounding so the Sound Expander probably can't handle it properly.
The expander just connects the OPL to the C64 pretty much entirely passively. The high notes sounding weird are just the OPL operating normally ... Yamaha's phase-shift "FM" is essentially well-controlled sample aliasing after all. And maybe you actually wanted that sound anyway? If not, you could, in a more sophisticated program (on the level of EG Adlib Tracker II) fiddle with the patch settings somewhat (e.g. reduce the modulation rate) until it didn't go quite as wild at the top end, at the expense of changing the timbre of the lower notes.
(Though I think such software, and maybe even the OPL itself or at least some of the later members of the family, actually had the facility to automatically adjust the modulation settings according to how far up the scale you were? ISTR there being mention on a data sheet of something like that, which was initially intended for more accurate piano emulation (as it uses fewer strings for high notes than low ... or maybe the other way round, I forget... so has a timbre that alters in the very highest and lowest octaves vs the midrange) but could certainly be used for special effects, or reducing the strength of aliasing artefacts)
Lot of these voices sound like a Genesis/Mega Drive
that's not a coincidence. The Sega Genesis uses a Yamaha FM chip too.. although the one in the Sega is more advanced.
well didn't sega actually used opl2? i mean if it's interchangeable, i don't think there's much difference at all - few internal configurable switches, each with set of parameters. You can config them manually to begin with.
The YM3526 is a 2 op chip. The YM2612 of the MegaDrive is 4 op and part of the OPN not OPL line. OPL2 YM3812 is backwards compatible in a 3526 circuit but because the 3812 has 3 additional waveform types, a 3526 won't necessarily do the role of a 3812.
There are probably hundreds of different gaming consoles, microcomputers, arcade machines, keyboards, etc that used this same sound chip. So it sounds like a lot of things.
The Sega Genesis used a YM2612 (OPN2) as it's primary sound chip and a Texas Instruments SN76489 (plays a large roll in the sound of games like Streets of Rage) as it's secondary sound chip. The SN76489 was also for Master System backwards compatibility. Yamaha FM has a distinctive sound, just as Roland's FM has it's own to my ear. I have always linked the Yamaha "sound" with Sega and the 16 bit era of gaming.
2:12 Oh my god it's like a tiny little disk drive that is so adorable where did you get that
They sell loads of them on Ebay.
I got it on eeeeeeeBay
Nice H*R picture.
can you put a sound expander into a sound expander?
I think a black hole would swallow the universe if that he did that. Cause the fabric of space time to tear.
Ryan Hanselman Sounds like fun.
Yo dawg.
Let's try it. I can borrow a C64 from my neighbor...
Does it say "Ned"?
Damn dude, you rock! Your channel is awesome!
Somehow this sounds way better than most of the actual keyboards you've shown on this channel. I can't believe how such a primitive computer can make sounds like these.
It shouldn't do, though. Certainly, if they're Yamahas, they will have been using one of these at a minimum (or *maybe* an OPLL, which is essentially the same thing but only one of the channels is fully adjustable, the others have to pick from 15 instrument presets that are much the same as those found within the two sound banks shown here... what you actually get depending on the chip revision... I don't know if they ever made anything based on the 2419 PSG, but it would likely have been a kiddie machine), if not something rather more sophisticated.
Casio and Roland each went their own unique ways, but had rather less widely commercialised chips that were roughly on a par; particularly, a lot of lower end Roland keyboards were based around the MT32, and later the Sound Canvas chips, which aren't exactly weak performers. And Casio got into the PCM soundfont game quite early-doors.
2:12 OHMYGOD is that a SD reader made to look like a mini floppy drive?!!!! AAAAAA THAT IS SO AMAZING
2:12, that card reader is one of the most awesome things I have ever seen:) Functional with style.
there was some sampling software for this set up, it was show to us in the mid 80s in school, i clearly remember it sampling our voices and sounds we made in to a composition that using the large keyboard and i think saving it on to a floppy disk. making quite an impact on me, as seeing the set up again has bought back a lot of memorys.
cheers
Dan
Wow...the C64 never fails to amaze me....hard to believe that a computer from the early 80s can produce such good audio out of it....i mean, you could actually use that to make music today....much better than those PC beeper speakers LOL
technically this isnt the c64 making the music. its using the Yamaha YM3812 chip, the same chip used in early Adlib and Soundblaster cards. Its just interfacing with that chip which the 64 was well known for its ability to interface with everything and anything
So is "Glock" like a Glock 19 or a glockenspiel? I was thinking about dropping my mixtape on C64, and it needs to have lotsa gunshots.
glockenspiel probably, though having a handgun sound effect would be funny. Hey, the first Glock handgun was built in '63. It would work.
I bet it costs more than you make in a month!
Cool - I had both the sound expander and over key keyboard, but had almost forgotten about the software. Nice to see and hear
it again.
Such classic 4 Operator FM sounds (Yamaha DX-100). Ahhh I miss the day. Thanks for sharing!
Wow, that really sounds amazing, it's crazy to think how many awesome things for the C64 are out there. I wish I never got rid of my 2 old systems, I had the new C64 and then bought a TRS80 with 2 disk drives and about 1000 floppy disks with games and programs, as well as about 100 old computer books with programs and stuff. I still remember most of the old basic programming codes, lol. Will you ever review any old RC cars or RC toys here? I just fulfilled a childhood dream buying a Tyco Fast Traxx in lovely dayglo yellow, cannot wait for my battery to go driving. Im hooked on RC cars now, old cars are brilliant!
Sorry.. No RC cars on 8-Bit Keys... Maybe on my other channel if there is some historical significance.
Cool, I probably misinterpreted the 80's toys part thinking toys in general but I assume now it's toy organs and keyboards. I actually had a RC robot made by Radio Shack in the 80's which was just a RC base and an inflatable robot that sat on top of it! Wish I still had that
Looking forward to the Roland MT32 video. I wanted one so bad as a kid. I would drool over the ones they had at Microcenter hooked up playing the latest Sierra Online video games that supported it.
Yep. I need to find an ISA based MIDI card that is compatible so I can demonstrate the MT-32 with sierra games.
wat about the other channel?
oh yeah I like the new intro music
Not got an ST hanging around, or an Amiga that could have a serial-to-MIDI interface (which is pretty much a 25-pin socket, a couple of 5-pin DINS, and half a dozen short wires) built for it? Or even a C64 MIDI interface (come on, surely...? :D) or one for a gameboy?
That was pure magic, can't imagine having that back in '85...oh and your playing was spot on for each instrument!
the guy that sent you the commodore keyboard sure very grateful because it fall into good hand which is appreciate it.
Wow, he can do computing AND music. Now, this is a cool guy
You should plug your second Commodore sound fx to the slot into your first one and then see what it does.
I doubt it would work out, since there is probably very little address conflict handling. Best likely case would be that one of the two would be safely disabled, but there is also the risk of shorting out some signals, would be a shame to wreck such a rare collectors item.
John Doe yeah i guess, it was a decent idea i thought.
alternatively - dump controller rom, reverse engineer it, map of the board and then throw the whole thing into online as opensource hardware. That way any c64 enthusiast can build one if they had time.
I was honestly wondering the same thing the second he held them up together, though.
I wonder if the cartridge slot on the expander remaps the second chip select line to the first, maybe, physically preventing any conflict between the two devices? It might even be a deliberate part of the design. After all, what if you plug in a software cartridge that uses the same address? And why put two addresses on the port if there was only ever meant to be one cartridge hanging off the back?
Compare the external floppy drives of various old computers. Each one individually thought it was "device 1", but you could daisy chain them (generally either 2 or 4 max) thanks to their passthru ports. Said ports remapping the "device 2 select" coming into them as "device 1 select" on the output (and not connecting dev 2 on the output; or, where appropriate, device 3 = device 2, and device 4 = device 3, with dev 4 on the output being N/C), so that the computer would drive one of the two (four) pins active and select just one, specific drive out of those connected, even though each thought of itself as "#1", and the port interconnections were identical with each drive. Simple but smart.
Do the same thing with the cartridge port, with a rule that each connected cart's chip(s) are only ever connected to either CS1, or BOTH CS1 and CS2 (if you have a lot of ROM / multiple devices onboard but no dedicated mapper controlling access to them), never "just CS2", as well as mandating that anything with a passthru only connects CS1 internally, and maps CS2 to CS1 on the output, and you have a recipe for being able to daisychain at least two Sound Expanders. Or connect simple one-chip (or at least one-CS) cards into an expander's passthru port. Of course, anything that uses both lines will suffer malfunctions when trying to use the second chip, and software that's too stupid to try the second address if the first one fails will also be incompatible, but those are fairly minor concerns addressed by unplugging the expander and connecting those fussy cartridges directly. Or having some kind of interposer between both devices and the computer which can switch between sending all CS lines to one or the other without having to disconnect (ie, basically the same as any other multi-cart switch box).
Nothing better than the 8-Bit Keys when looking for awesome music in awesome instruments... like an Adlib-like chip for the Commodore 64!
OH MY GOSH! I search years for this set with the big keyboard and you have it. I hope i can find it any time!
Plenty of those instruments remind me of the intro music from Dune. Now that is one to cover in the future.
I assume that you mean "Dune 2 battle for Arrakis" because that's what I was thinking.
but then I only ever played this game with adlib.
and since that has the same chip it's no wonder.
"Alien" reminded me of Dune II's soundtrack, by Frank Klepacki, which I assume was adlib synth on PC.
Growing up with C64 I never imagined that there was even "better" sound for it. However the SID can never be beaten. Loved the Sega Genesis "Synth 2" bank
Richard Watts (of Simms Watts amplifier fame) was the designer. I worked with him at Music Sales liaising with Commodore who commissioned four products in total; the FM synth shown here, a Sampler, a Sequencer and a tuition programme. The C64 was very hot at the time.
SFX Sound Expander is a great example why Commodore bankrupted eventually. It got a pretty decent sound chip, and a big keyboard. From hardware perspective it was good, but lacked touch sensitive keys or even some buttons on keyboard itself.
From the software point it was simply a disaster. Why they didn't include software on cartridge? It was more expensive, but it would load very quickly and it would allow for way better software:
- They could do a full 128 MIDI instruments, like Windows 3.x did on OPL2/OPL3.
- instruments, rhythms, and other static data could be read from cartridge itself, leaving almost whole 64 KB of RAM for user content,
- instrument creator, allowing user to manually change FM chip state,
- simple, multitrack sequencer,
- reading/writing MIDI files on tapes or diskettes.
This all could be done in software. Without any further hardware costs. C64 + SFX + Keyboard could become a semi-professional composing tool. Way cheaper than other solutions, more powerful than standalone keyboards.
But that didn't happened. Commodore released expensive keyboard that required computer, TV and long loading time to even start working. Standalone keyboards were probably cheaper, way more portable, and even had more sounds, rhythms and other functions.
I would say, that in whole Commodore history, it's rather uncanny how they managed to build such a great computers like C64 and Amiga.
This Sounds A lot Like The Sega Genesis!
Dynamite Headdy or Megadrive.
That's not surprising, seeing as the Sega's 2612 (effectively an "OPNC", or possbly "OPNB-L") and the OPL have a lot of shared heritage. Or more precisely, the entirety of the OPLx and OPNx ranges are essentially based off this chip as a starting point (with the pre-SMD/SG OPNs adding a register-compatible YM2149 core, and in some cases a fairly sophisticated (AD)PCM engine, to the FM part... and one range needing a separate DAC, the other integrating it but I can never remember which is which).
The actual FM part works pretty much exactly the same in all cases, just with different features on top of the main 2-operator sine-carrier+single-sine-modulator with hardware ADSR concept (e.g. ability to use 4-op voices, different waveforms either based off rearranging the internal quarter-sine sample to play different ways or just using a wholly different generator, the total number of voices, special effects like multi-part detune, use of the PSG envelope generator, etc). So if you use one of the later chips but don't really push the limits, and just stick to a limited number of fairly straightforward 2-op plus normal envelope voices, it'll sound exactly like the OPL (at the same input clock) no matter which Yamaha FM chip you use.
(tell a lie - some will have some minor differences to the overall timbre given the way the actual sound generation works... in all cases there's actually only one operator module that works on each voice, and each slice of a 4-op voice, at a time, which is why the maximum output frequency is so much lower than the input clock... but the more expensive and sophisticated chips store the resulting sample value in a register bank that's then summed and sent to the DAC once per nominal output cycle, whilst the cheaper, cut down ones lack that facility and output the result to the DAC _live,_ using a kind of PWM / timeslice mixing system that relies on intertia within the connected speaker system (or averaging in analogue filters along the output path and/or any digital recorder you might connect to it) as well as the human auditory system to apply a bit of "temporal blur" to the signal exterior to the chip. This is, for example, the source of the famous "ladder effect" bug in the output of the early generation SMD/SG, where quiet tones would acquire a characteristic buzz thanks to poorly matched capacitors on the output stage and thus improper smoothing... which led to several games sounding "wrong" on later revisions that fixed the problem, after composers wrote music deliberately making use of the bug. However, this is something caused in the *output stage* of the chip, rather than the actual FM generation part. The generator itself still works perfectly fine and identical to that of the higher end chips, and if you connected the output of a cheaper chip to a specially-made DAC that incorporated the missing registers and did its own summing to output a clean sample about once every 1/55556th of a second, those simple tones would once again sound identical)
@@mspenrice underrated comment this shit educational asf
Nice video of some extremely rare hardware. I could listen to you dink around on it all day. Well done!
I loved playing this keyboard back in the eighties. And I still have it complete with the software and my good old C-64.
So when can we expect an update that will give Planet X2 Sound Expander support?
9:54 Synth 1 sounds like something straight out of Oneotrix Point Never. love it!
This is so awesome. That Synth 1 sound is beautiful.
man I could listen to these instrument demos all day!
The C64 already sounds awesome by itself.
Put the two together...
You should use the sound version of the intro that you just played with the commodore.
Dude, your best video yet. Your demo on the keyboard was awesome. I like this channel. Takes me back to the good ol days
Nostalgic video for me 🙂 I had one of these, with the full size keyboard, and we actually gigged with it in my band back in school circa 1992! Thinking about it, at that gig, we also set up another 64 in a side room selling refreshments, which would display prices on a full screen scrolling message and - completely unnecessarily! - allow the person serving to use it as a cash register, complete with receipts from my Commodore 1520 plotter! 😄
Roland MT-32? My goodness! You'll have to rename yourself 15-Bit Keys.
16
+MarioStar13 no, the MT-32 is indeed 15 bit
MarioStar13 You tried to be smart and failed hard rofl
The original model was 15-bit, but the newer one was 16-bit
I wish you'd list which songs your play in the description. Some are so familiar and I just can't remember them.
Yeah, thats what I used to keep saying before I realized its pretty much a lost cause
Well.. I could. But about half of the time it is just something I improvised on the spot. The other half of the time it is some song I learned like a game tune or something. People have asked me to put the names on screen.. which I won't do because it would seem weird having names for some songs and not for others. I suppose I could put them in the description field and just mention that anything not listed was just improv.
I would honestly prefer knowing if songs were improv if it meant that I could also know the names of the songs that weren't. Knowing both would be way better than wondering forever though.
8-Bit Keys, Old comment but, I'd love to see the names as well. I am getting into learning some piano as a hobby and I would love to listen to the songs to get them down by ear.
One was definitely the Harry Potter theme song
My favourite demo tune on that software is Telstar - I remember this from school... The music room suddenly got a C64, monitor, sound expander, keyboard, an amplifier/speaker unit, and two software packages. One was the software in the video (used it at a concert in school once) and another piece of software could use the keyboard as input if I recall but used the SID chip for sound and had the ability to record. The manual even had some example sheet music I think...
Holy heck man! You are talented on that keyboard!
I don't know about anyone else, but there is something about this format of computer music that is very, very appealing. I don't know if its just me being the geek I am and loving the old-skool video games of the past, or if there is something more to it. Either way, cracking vid.
Alien sounds like Ecco the dolphin. Pretty cool.
Oh my gosh it does
J was literally going to comment that
It is virtually the same sound, both chips (YM2612 and YM3526) have many similarities ;)
Can you put the 2nd sound expander in the expansion slot of the first one?
I could watch an entire hour of you playing melodies on various synth voices!
Best regards from germany!
You got the old intro back, loved it!!
The flute sounds like a MS-DOS Ship Simulator that i could create.
Is this for "sail"?
Yes
The SFX Sound Expander actually uses the OPL chip, the predecessor to the famous OPL2 chip used on the Ad-Lib and the Sound Blaster, so it's not surprising that it sounds similar.
Which points to a slight mistake on 8BG's behalf - it's not _totally_ interchangable with the Adlib chip. You can swap the two over, but whilst the OPL2 inserted to the Sound Expander will work just fine thanks to it being register-level backwards compatible, the OPL inserted to the Adlib won't work super well... you probably won't see any crashes, but the sound won't come out properly thanks to it ignoring any attempts to write registers that don't exist on the original.
Waiting for continuation of double Sid chip video.
I felt tears coming up my eyes, my beloved C64, so etched onto my core, and still amazing me... Makes me hear sounds I used to hear from my soundblaster, many of the sounds I hear from a variety of pc games, from raptor call of the shadows to lands of lore, dune 2, everything. Thank you for doing this, this is like an ailment to a disease I did not know I had.
I have never heard of that one. Don't think I have even seen an ad for it back in the day. Pretty cool.
2:40-2:43 sounds like heathens by twenty one pilots
Aww! You didn't put a review of the Sound Expander on your website?
Oh yeah... Greensleeves always a classic with the flute;) Synth 1 sounds totally rad!:)) Nice video. Thanks!
Synth 1 or whatever it is called on your keyboard of choice always reminds me of staying up until midnight to watch 1980s episodes of Doctor Who on PBS. They loved using that sound for the music on the show.
3:59 Harry Potter????
Yep.
This is EPIC LOL
So awesome.
Thumbs up for the donators.
If only commodore didn't " died" I wonder how 2016 would of been :)
I very much doubt they could have survived the pc and playstation juggernaut. According to ex CBM engineers, the AAA chipset in development couldn't really compete against them, the 3d capability just wasn't there. Pity that CBM usa`s mismanagement messed everything up for CBM uk who were actually doing pretty well with the CD32 and A1200. I still think they would have gone bankrupt eventually though, everything was standardising around the pc, the Amiga line had nowhere to go.
I don't think it is as cut and dry as it not having anywhere to go. Basically, if Commodore could have created an 50mhz 030 + decent 3D graphics chip + SIMM slot trapdoor expansion package that could run Doom etc properly, Amiga would have had a chance. People only put up with PCs for gaming because of what they were capable of graphics-wise, which ironically was one of the main advantages of the Playstation.. Amiga could be simple like a console, but also a fully functional machine. Don't forget that circa '94 AmigaOS was still superior to Windows & MacOS and it took WindowsXP & OSX to finally get where Amiga had been all those years prior.
Thanks for the review. I remember I bought both the SFX Sound Expander + Fullsize Keyboard ...AND...the SFX Sound Sampler. I was a bit bummed out when I found out that I could not use my sampled sounds and play them using the fullsize keyboard. Never the less -- it was a nice kit :-)
wow, the sounds on this thing are lovely
What song is being played on the electric piano (4:28)
FF7?
YES!
What is the song on Synth2 at 5:00 ? :O
The song on Synth2 is "Watermark", also by Enya.
+InceRumul Thank you 💖 i could never remember something so far in my memory
2:39 what song was that?
my favorite channel uploads on my bday! keep these vids coming!
Aww man, I always wanted that little keyboard expansion for the C64! Cool stuff.
AdLib sound player for the C64's SFX Sound Expander module if upgraded to the YM3812 OPL2 chip.
csdb.dk/release/?id=119462&show=review
Can anyone please tell me what's the song on 2:39? :)
I don't think anyone knows.
Sawr Kasmm rip
from 2:40-2:43 is heathens from twenty one pilots but the rest of it is different.
spelunker title screen
A man of many talents ! That expander is excellent....
This is an amazing video. So impressed with the authors keyboarding skills. My only complaint is the review is only 10 minutes. I would have enjoyed an hour review of this hardware device and keyboard. Thanks to the people who donated the hardware. The viewing public appreciates your generosity.
Were did you find the software
Mr10616LC he got it online
I'm sure you can find it from a simple google search.
@@dedpxl no you cant because its rare
He's keeping it secret!!
In theory, could a game be made for the c64 that used that device to play its music?
If you know the hardware location you can POKE values into ram for different things in basic. This was how you created music, sprites, changed screen colors etc. on the C64 and many other microcomputers of the time.
There is a guy who made a C64 program that can play DosBox DRO files (which are data dumps of AdLib YM3812 music), on a C64 with a modified SFX Expander (replacing the stock chip with the YM3812 chip). So if he could create such a program in Assembler, anyone with the knowledge of programming could make C64 software or games in Assembler that take advantage of the SFX Expander. You'd just need to find out how the C64 controls it, and work with that.
Absolutely. It would simply be a matter of writing the code to support the FM chip in stead of, or in combination with the SID chip. Like I said in the video, there probably just weren't enough of these on the market to really get game developers interested in writing extra code to support it.
@8-Bit Keys please start modding one of your carts and upgrade it to 3812. Then you could show your audience what a modern DRO player csdb.dk/release/?id=119462 could do. (Wolf3d, Dune, KGB tracks anyone? :) )
And yes, writing a driver for C64 SFX Sound Expander would be as easy as writing an Adlib driver on pc. These chips have only two registers to write to (and read from), everything else is in the programming reference manual.
Absolutely. The only problem really is that it could end up occupying rather more memory and demand more of the total available processor / bus time, to the point that it's impractical to use for anything beyond the simple live-play app shown off here, or maybe a text based tracker. OPL programming isn't exactly super heavyweight, hence its usefulness for DOS games that might have run in less than 512kb RAM, but it's still a grade above that of the SID when you start digging down into all the fine grained functionality.
At least, that's the case if you exploit it to the same extreme that a lot of SID programmers did; the unseen advantage with using something like the OPL is that it can actually _reduce_ a lot of the load otherwise placed on the system by coercing the SID into making sophisticated sounds, so long as you program it sympathetically and in the most efficient (rather than most _impressive_ ) way.
Most particularly, the automatic ADSR envelope that can be set differently for each channel (and whose settings are retained indefinitely until you next change the voice) requires sending maybe eight bytes to the OPL, which then repeatedly (ie with each new note-start command you send) and without any further data upload produce a volume progression that may have taken four times as many register writes with the SID, each and every time you played a note. And FM voices that give the impression of sounding chorded, or simpler ones literally played as a di-, tri- or tetrachord thanks to the OPL's greater number of simultaneous voices, can stand in place of the arps that would have been necessary to create a similar auditory effect on the SID - again, you only need send 2, 3 or 4 note-on commands for each of those, where with the SID you might have been banging in at least twice as many (apart from the simplest, shortest blip, each arp in an old VGM or chiptune tends to repeat at least twice) or possibly dozens more for a sustained note.
It's essentially a tradeoff between how much time (and memory) you can afford to spend setting up your chosen chip before actually playing anything, vs how much is available to throw notes (and patch changes) at it on a live playback basis. Ultimately the overall code for both would probably come out about the same, but the demands of whatever you're running it alongside might favour one or the other.
And if you're really canny, you could probably use both in concert playing to the strengths of each, maybe even make an overall saving despite the soundscape being rather richer and more complex.
This is very cool! I didn't know there was a full size keyboard add-on for it.
So many of these sound like they were used in Might n Magic Xeen.
All the little tune David plays make me nostalgic for the old games that sounded so similar.
I'm early better make a joke
I'm using internet explorer, hope this message gets here on time, Happy newyear 2010
TheSomeoneXD he should have posted that in like 2004 lol
4:28?
Also 5:48
Strong sound-alike to "Anno 1606 - Greensleaves"
There *was* a sequencer that worked with the sound expander ...I spent many an hour as a youth composing/arranging on that thing
That really is excellent. The Harry Potter theme sounded great on it. I like how with the C128 it fits without sticking out the side.
the harry potter music 😂😂
That's very cool. I'm amazed that a person could do that back when I was a kid. Great vid. Your collection must be awesome
It's great that you had some very generous people donate those units to you. This is pretty cool. I'd imagine the hombrew community could create a demo that utilized the sid+ the Fm expansion for some pretty cool music with 8(3 sid+ 5 FM) channels. I'd love to see something like that. It'd be even neater if it could be utilized in a game. :D
I wish I had something *to* donate and to be able to pay to ship it, I think I may prefer this channel to the main one. You know I'd have happily listened to each instrument!
Thanks for doing this video, I have always wondered about the Sound Expander. I have always liked the FM sound chips so this was great!
the first NIN album was recorded on a Commodore 64 for the synth sounds
1:22 I had one of the "Magic Voice" cartridges. used to confuse my parents and grandparents when the computer started to talk. They barely new what a computer was, so didn't really know that all computers didn't do that anyway. Also remember seeing the Sound Expander, but wasn't really into music so didn't get one. many years later someone coded a Macintosh to be able to talk with built in circuitry.
Hey guy this is really cool. I had software that you could copy notes from a song book and play them, I really enjoyed my C128 and C64c. I wanted a set up like this back in the 80s but they where hard to find and you didn't have the internet to find things like you do now. money was tight back then during the recession also with high unemployment. I would have loved to have this set up back then, the commodore was so innovative. Really nice, This is so nostalgic. Thanks for doing this video and project. It was great.
Dang, that background color change metronome is dope AF.
I had the SFX Sound Expander and the large keyboard when I was a kid. Had some jam-sessions with a school-friend in which the tool was used. Must haven been around 1986-87. It was fun, but as you said, the lack of recording and composing capabilities of the software was really an issue.
@8bit keys. You are an amazing human being.
You make that system sound great! I own a complete Music Expansion System for the C64 including the big keyboard. Thinking of selling it, but seeing your review video of this system I think I will regret selling it. Thanks for the great review!
WOW the 64 keeps impressing us in 2016! Amazing sound!
Pure reminiscence.. I had this set up. Ordered it from UK to DK.. I remember typing in machine code from a german magazine. The result was a very good sequencer. With all of the 4 polyphonic tracks from the 64 chip.lol. started with the Vic 20 color 😎
wow i knew u were a smart guy when it comes to computers and programming, but i had no idea you were such great musician! i’m super impressed!
Dude, you really need to make a channel of you playing random songs. The songs you play when testing the pianos are epic.