Yeah, some of those synthesizers are quite impressive. I still wonder which was the first qualified integrated sound chip, and whether any of those expansion cards use such. From what I gather, the General Instruments AY-3-891X should've been available at least by 1979, perhaps earlier. Assuming POKEY is present in Atari 400, it should be of the same vintage. The VIC-I chip later used in VIC-20 is said to have existed around 1976/77, but Brian Bagnall's most recent book suggests that Commodore redesigned the chip quite a lot by 1980. I don't know about the TI SN76477 and SN76489 etc.
RCA Cosmac VIP System said:
Music is encoded from sheet music with note pitch and duration being described with a single 8-bit byte.
That is even more amazing. Assuming they use a note table and the synth has a range of about 2.5 octaves (32 values, 5 bits), it would leave three bits to encode eight different durations. I've done something similar on the VIC-20, but I assigned one duration as an escape code to get longer or more exact durations using another byte, total 16 bits. If I understand correctly, each note on the Cosmac system is divided into 16 segments and one could in real time adjust amplitude to get envelope control.
> This is amazing, these songs from 1978 and 1979 sound > as good as newer midi music.
Why ain't I suprised to see this in the Vintage Computer Music site:
Lennon & McCartney/Hey Jude Andrew Modia 1:43
Many years ago - somebody sent in a CPC type-in of this song. I always thought it was translated very nicely - so perhaps they got the right notes & produced the tune. Think it went for a bit longer though - over 3 minutes. Still well done - the CPC had 3 channel sound thingo - so I guess it more than enough to cope!
Somebody did a very nice digital translation of Greensleves (in 10 line of BASIC! ;-) Not sure if this midi stuff is what started it?
