WYSIWYG Wave Sound Generation Tool

[ccovell]

Hi, folks.  I had an idea for a fun tool that didn't quite exist yet, so I spent a few hours of my free time this week making it.  Let me know if you find it useful for your audio/music projects.  It's still at an early stage, and doesn't have controls for frequency, panning, etc, but hey.



Contains waveforms from the System Card, Gunhed, and Ankoku Densetsu too.

Download: chrismcovell.com/data/Waveform_Tool.zip

[Arkhan Asylum]

Cool.  Now all the people can stop bitching at me to make something like this for squirrel, lol.

Solid.   I like it.

[ccovell]

I'm open for naming suggestions.

WYSIWSG is one.   Extra Crunch is another...   

[Arkhan Asylum]

I myself, would call it WaveDiddler, but my wordings for things is... yeah.

Once I release the new Squirrel stuff, I'll be sure to link to this for people to use along with it. 

[grahf]

PCM Engine
or
PCMgine

[esteban]

Pulse-Cacophony Modulation

[touko]

All sound stuff are cool . 

[OldRover]

PCMgine

^^^ that.

[_Paul]

PCMgine

^^^ that.

Seconded

[Arkhan Asylum]

awww noone likes WaveDiddler?

[ParanoiaDragon]

PCMgine

^^^ that.

Seconded

Thirded

[FraGMarE]

This is fascinating to use!  Though I have no idea wtf I'm doing lol

[ccovell]

Finally, a comment on the actual program!

Play around with it; the top window is basically a scratch area for building custom waveforms, and the bottom window has presets from Hudson, Compile, etc. :-)

The ADSR is totally primitive, but does make a big difference as some instruments sound better as continuous tones, while others work better with simple linear fades or sine-shaped crest-and-fade, or even a hold@1F-drop-and-hold@0F for an echo effect.

[spenoza]

Now, you are editing the waveform and not the envelope for a set waveform, right? With this proggie, I mean... I know, I don't know enough about chiptune generation...

Ah, methinks the ADSR is the envelope. I suck at this. Good note generation is damn hard. This is still a cool program. What would be even cooler would be an emulated (via Mednafen, most likely) PSG engine with a Windows interface. Then you could tweak shit using a modern interface and hear actual (well, nigh-actual) PSG results.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Ah, methinks the ADSR is the envelope.

Yep.  It's been an envelope since before PCE existed ;3.  Though, I don't think it's THAT primitive.  It functions about on par with my Roland SH-101, and that thing is awesome.

What would be even cooler would be an emulated (via Mednafen, most likely) PSG engine with a Windows interface. Then you could tweak shit using a modern interface and hear actual (well, nigh-actual) PSG results.

Yeah. People have been saying that since like 2005.  Maybe even earlier.  It'd be easier to just use this since it works already and quit dreaming of what would be cooler since it'll probably never happen. -_-;


And what ccovell said is infinitely true.  Some waves sound like complete ass if you apply no envelope to them.  They come out harsh/abrasive, and lack any real character.   I first discovered this when I did that Splatterhouse cathedral tune, and realized it 100% when I did the Shadow of the Beast tune.

The right wave + envelope is how you get a nice bass tone.  Protocard recipients will see this when they get their cards.

With this program, you guys can actually grab the values, and punch them in as custom waveforms for Squirrel.  Same for envelopes.


Ccovell: My only complaint, and it's a foofoo complaint, is the palette.  Any chance you'd want to put in a palette-swap button for green/teal/yellow/orange/etc on black? 

and, would you be against me packaging this tool in with Squirrel 3.0 when it gets released?  With reference/link/etc, of course, so people don't think Aetherbyte wrote it.

[Nando]

whoah, very cool. Opened it up in Ootake, the mute doesn't quite mute it if the cursor is on the wave part, could be just my end, just messing around with the forms, I think I got a Pong like sound. Not sure what all I am doing either but it seems simple enough to use.

as for a name how about

PCwavE <- imagine a snazzy logo ;)

[ccovell]

Okay, a little bit of coding every day, and I have a newer (beta) version of the tool.  I incorporated a few of your requests and also added a 2nd control panel to do all the messy per-channel stuff.  If the channel control panel is too confusing, ignore it, and just play with the waveforms and ADSR (envelopes.)



I even added a handful of palettes for you aesthetes.



chrismcovell.com/data/Waveform_Tool.zip

[Arkhan Asylum]

yay palettes.     

I see you went with PCMgine for the name

[esteban]

I see you went with PCMgine for the name

No, he's going to change it to "Pulse-Cacophony Modulation" in the next update.

[ccovell]

No, he's going to change it to "Pulse-Cacophony Modulation" in the next update.

The screen is only 43 characters across, so... no.

[esteban]

No, he's going to change it to "Pulse-Cacophony Modulation" in the next update.

The screen is only 43 characters across, so... no.

Oh! I can fix that.

Now, 42% more characters: "Pulsatingly-Cacophonous Modulationism"

This will give you ~5 spare characters on the screen.

[grahf]

Yay, I actually came up with a name people liked

I'm really looking forward to gameofyou's low-cost flash card project to hit production, so I can play around with this awesome tool on real hardware. First Squirrel 3 comes out, then this. Looks like a PCE audio revival in 2012

[ccovell]

Hmm... so no questions or comments about the program itself, eh?  Hmm....   

Anyway, as I was playing around with PCMgine, I found some sound settings that I liked, so here are some Mednafen 0.8.D save states for some of them:

https://www.chrismcovell.com/data/WavTool_Mednafen_States.zip

Put the *.nc0 - *.nc6 files in Mednafen's "mcs" folder.
Then launch the waveform tool (PCMgine) beta version in Mednafen * 0.8.D *.
Pressing 0-6 inside Mednafen will choose a save slot. 
Then press F7 to load the saved state.

Example 0: "Echo" ADSR example.  Good for echoey digital-sounding beeps.  Play around with the attackand fade levels for different effects.

Example 1: Voice with vibrato.  LFO is on WF 2, a sine wave, to give a simple vibrato effect.
Note: when LFO is on, Channel 1's volume (L/R) should be set to 0, otherwise nasty sounds WILL leak out of the channel on actual hardware!

Example 2: SID-style square wave pulsewidth cycling (via WF cycle).

Example 3: "Growling man".  WF cycling using Bloody Wolf's "voice" waveforms, plus LFO is on.
Mednafen has a bug, apparently.  It doesn't save the full audio state, so when you load this one, change Channel 0's frequency right away to correct it.  Play with the frequency anyway.  :-D

Example 4: Simple 2-channel phasing.

Example 5: Deep, Low-frequency 3-channel growling-rumbling-phasing. In stereo. :-D

Example 6: Detuning Ch.0 by using the LFO.  Makes a chord with Ch.2 while the player is on.
Sounds a lot like Mappy & Metro-Cross' WSG instruments.  :-D

[spenoza]

For those of us not using that Mednafen revision, could you post some screen shots so we can recreate your results visually?

[grahf]

Man, I really gotta set up an emulator on my PC. I really want to play with this on real hardware though.

[ccovell]

For those of us not using that Mednafen revision, could you post some screen shots so we can recreate your results visually?

Or, you could petition the Mednafen authors not to force save states to work only with a particular version of the emulator, with only a single version of a game ROM, with an exact CRC, on a Thursday, and only in leap years...

That's terrible programming.  When doing ROM hacking, game translation, graphics hacking, or even PCE programming, making one small change invalidates all your savestates.  How dumb.  That means, say you're working on a translation, you're deep into the game, notice a typo, and fix it.  How are you supposed to get back to that spot again quickly?  By using a different emulator, naturally.
         etc.

But anyway, back to your question, simply posting one screen doesn't help with all the settings.  Each RAM WF and ADSR WF has particular contents alluded to in my post, so savestates make it a bit easier than posting lots of screenshots.

If you have the ability to, just download Med. 0.8.D from their homepage.  Or wait 1 day or 2 since I'm back at work and can't do any file uploading anyway...

[Mednafen]

0.8.x setting: dfmd5
0.9.x setting: filesys.fname_sav and filesys.fname_state

[esteban]

0.8.x setting: dfmd5
0.9.x setting: filesys.fname_sav and filesys.fname_state

Such an elegant, concise reply .