2019-05-17 16:57:39 +00:00
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PT3_Player Frequently Asked Questions
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Q: Will this play on any Apple II?
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A. Yes, though you need a Mockingboard in Slot 4 to hear the music.
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You probably need 48k of RAM too.
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2019-05-18 15:12:16 +00:00
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Q. Why does the audio sound scratchy on some songs (on real hardware)?
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A. I've spent a lot of time trying to track this down.
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In the perfect world of emulators, chiptune music on the Mockingboard
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sounds great.
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However, on real hardware, it doesn't. It's almost that some combination
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of writes to the register cause a timer to wait 2^16 cycles before
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updating, leading to glitches in the music. Possibly it's easier
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to trigger this on the 1MHz Mockingboard than on the 1.77MHz
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Spectrum (or the 2MHz ST) a lot of the music was written on.
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The problem is more noticible on some songs than others.
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Also I think some audio amplifiers have more trouble amplifying the
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square wave signal put out by the AY-3-8910.
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2019-05-17 16:57:39 +00:00
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Q: Can you fit more than 18 songs on the disk?
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A: Yes, it depends on how complex the PT3 files are.
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Also, PT3 files compress nicely and I could fit even more if I LZ4
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compressed them, it's just that would make it harder for other
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people to use the player.
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Yes, I could write code that automatically decode in LZ4 encoded,
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but that gets tricky for various reasons, and you also need
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some RAM to decode the image into.
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