ACE MIDI and ACE Tracker v2.0 released!

[dhedberg]

Almost 10 years have passed since the previous release of ACE but now it's finally here with a lot of new stuff. New filters, new oscillators and sub oscillators, new mix mode, and much more! Included is also a set of 240 patches to play around with.

Read more and get your own copy at nb.atari.org

[CiH]

Let me be the first to say Wow!!

The original Ace tracker is still in the top five of coolest prods for the Falcon030. Now you've updated it!

[mOdmate]

313373

[cyberish]

Huge surprise! Soooooo lovely! thx a LOT

[nativ]

That's just ....... ACE!

[dml]

Woah... that's great!

Nice manual too. Although I think there is an error in the voice table part. All the entries read N/A

[ThomasNewBeat]

That table needs to be updated but I can't do that until I get my CT60 back. So it WILL be updated asap. Promise!
But to get an idea, you can get up to 16 voices on std Falcon with reverb and delay enabled. Up to 28 voices (ACE MIDI) on CT60 which is more than previous versions.

There are still things to look at - I got a hang crash at Sommarhack this weekend, but havn't been able to reproduce it yet.
There is also some annoying screen flicker from time to time.

[dml]

That table needs to be updated but I can't do that until I get my CT60 back. So it WILL be updated asap. Promise!
But to get an idea, you can get up to 16 voices on std Falcon with reverb and delay enabled. Up to 28 voices (ACE MIDI) on CT60 which is more than previous versions.

That's pretty amazing. It's already worth keeping the DSP free to use it for this (and I like to use the DSP a lot, so its saying something )

Can it import/translate approximately from MIDI files? Just the notes - not worried about the patches. I looked through most of the features but skimmed some bits so I could have missed it.

There are still things to look at - I got a hang crash at Sommarhack this weekend, but havn't been able to reproduce it yet.
There is also some annoying screen flicker from time to time.

[Scarlettkitten]

Fantastic, ACE tracker is my most used falcon music prog, may have to invest in ACE midi now there's a new version

[yerzmyey]

Fantastic, ACE tracker is my most used falcon music prog, may have to invest in ACE midi now there's a new version

A good news indeed.
And I wonder - maybe I should invest in some CT because supposedly the prog utilizes the additional devices.

[ThomasNewBeat]

dml, no, it can't read .mid's, sorry. Btw, what happened with Apex Audio, how far did you go?

ScarlettKitten, makes me happy to hear that people like the program, thanks.

yerzmyey, if you can find a CT6x it's a very nice Falcon upgrade, no doubt. I should however add that the 28 voices on my CT60 Falcon is with bus and DSP acceleration.

There are two new ACE Tracker 2.00 and one ACE Tracker 0.997 modules at DHS Sommarhack 2014 page. Youtube versions aswell, thanks to Evil for that.

[yerzmyey]

Thx a lot for the info, man.

The YouTube track sounds awesome, btw.

[dml]

Hi Thomas,

dml, no, it can't read .mid's, sorry.

That's no problem, not very important for a tracker anyway

Btw, what happened with Apex Audio, how far did you go?

I forgot about that project.

I don't remember very much but there was a sample editor/processing part and a visual modular synthesis part - placing blocks on the screen with inputs/outputs and tying them together to make a patch. The rough idea was to code-generate whatever was needed to produce the signal and cache pieces of signal to mix on demand.

It didn't go very far - some UI work, moving blocks around and a simple test mixing a small selection of builtin waves. Completing it probably would have needed a lot more time/effort than I thought at the time as you can probably imagine... So easy to underestimate how much work is involved with audio and graphics software.

[dml]

I didn't really say it properly - got distracted as usual - but Ace seems to be a real technical feat on Falcon and Atari machines generally so congratulations on this. It is very cool! And so nice to see it being upgraded and maintained.

Best,
Doug

[ThomasNewBeat]

dml, I stumbled accross the Nemesis manual and got reminded of the Apex tools, hence the question. I also had some thoughts in that direction for a while (like a LabView type of interface) but never proceeded.
And thanks!

yerzmyey, I would say that DSP acceleration is as important as CPU acceleration if you want to get alot of voices. So, perhaps a Nemesis (or equivalent) is good enough. I will do some testing as soon as I get my CT60 up and running again... I can run the bus and DSP boost in 030 mode to check... should be the same as a normal bus speeder.

Should also mention that no samples are used in those two 2.0 modules, all sounds are pure DSP realtime! I'm esp. proud of the choir sound as I have wondered since early 90's (when I tried some Juno synth) how they are generated. Now I know. Only took some 20+ years... but it was some kind of relief to finally figure ut out. It's never to late to learn.

[dml]

Should also mention that no samples are used in those two 2.0 modules, all sounds are pure DSP realtime! I'm esp. proud of the choir sound as I have wondered since early 90's (when I tried some Juno synth) how they are generated. Now I know. Only took some 20+ years... but it was some kind of relief to finally figure ut out. It's never to late to learn.

That just adds to the coolness of the whole thing.

I also remember being very interested in how some sounds were made, even before starting on Ataris. Tried to digitize some audio samples from old keyboards using the analog joystick port of a TRS-80 and trying to make sense of the signal Almost completely futile but so were many of my early experiments

Yes, never too late to learn.

[yerzmyey]

ThomasNewBeat:
Thx a lot again, it all is most impressive and surely I will be testing it as soon as possible!!!!!!!

[EvilFranky]

Amazing. Surely the Falcon was best audio computer of the early 90's?

It's just a shame the other half is so under powered

What sort of output resolution and frequency is achieved? Can it output a pure digital signal via FDI?

[nativ]

Amazing. Surely the Falcon was best audio computer of the early 90's?

It's just a shame the other half is so under powered

What sort of output resolution and frequency is achieved? Can it output a pure digital signal via FDI?

Yes ace works with the FDI, on some receiving devices you might need to select a matched frequency 32/32 44/44 ( i have used the TOS link optical out myself )


@ dml You can use ACE Midi as a sound module and playback Midi files from another device. Also I thought a Kaoss Pad type DSP effects studio could be nice, mouse or tablet driven.. my other interest would be seeing the http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=63039 PT1210 make it to the falcon, with mixable Quartet YM MOD and ACE

I guess there isn't the documentation available to make ACE into an E.P.S.S. style Cubase plugin ?

[Eero Tamminen]

Almost 10 years have passed since the previous release of ACE but now it's finally here with a lot of new stuff. New filters, new oscillators and sub oscillators, new mix mode, and much more! Included is also a set of 240 patches to play around with.

Hatari's Falcon emulation (using the WinUAE CPU core) works now fine for it. There are none of the horrible sound issues that I had when I tested Hatari with it few years ago. My host PC could be a bit faster for DSP emulation though.

The patchset is also amazing! Huge amount of great sounds available without any need to load subsets of it separately.

This brings me memories of my own GUI sound editor/creator for ST done with GFA basic + assembly (in early nineties I think). One could give relative weights to higher harmonics of the base (sine) frequency and an envelope for the volume of the whole thing. For some reason all the sounds sounded a little metallic, although I think they should've been more flute-like [1]... Unfortunately the code was lost a long time ago.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic

[Hippy Dave]

This brings me memories of my own GUI sound editor/creator for ST done with GFA basic + assembly (in early nineties I think). One could give relative weights to higher harmonics of the base (sine) frequency and an envelope for the volume of the whole thing. For some reason all the sounds sounded a little metallic, although I think they should've been more flute-like

I used to have a PAiA 8700 analog synthesizer. The triangle wave seemed to be the most musical. My choice of waveform for DSP experimentation would be to sweep from sawtooth to triangle with an option for clipping. Ring-modulating triangle waves give good drum sounds too.

[Eero Tamminen]

I used to have a PAiA 8700 analog synthesizer. The triangle wave seemed to be the most musical. My choice of waveform for DSP experimentation would be to sweep from sawtooth to triangle with an option for clipping. Ring-modulating triangle waves give good drum sounds too.

Doing real-time changes to ring-modulated sounds can produce pretty interesting effects. I did some with SpiralSynth on Linux:
http://www.pawfal.org/SpiralSynth/

Here's a bunch of those sounds:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/tammat/src/sounds.tar.bz2

[Hippy Dave]

I used to have a PAiA 8700 analog synthesizer. The triangle wave seemed to be the most musical. My choice of waveform for DSP experimentation would be to sweep from sawtooth to triangle with an option for clipping. Ring-modulating triangle waves give good drum sounds too.

Doing real-time changes to ring-modulated sounds can produce pretty interesting effects. I did some with SpiralSynth on Linux:
http://www.pawfal.org/SpiralSynth/

Here's a bunch of those sounds:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/tammat/src/sounds.tar.bz2

Very interesting. I spent a couple hours surfing the sites, looking at code, hearing the sounds. I'll compile SpiralSynth when there are a few rainy days.

[iceman]

The quality of the synthesized sound is amazing.

I just wish I had more skill so I could do the software justice!!

Does anyone know the cost of Ace MIDI 2?

[dhedberg]

Does anyone know the cost of Ace MIDI 2?

Have a look at the ACE MIDI registration/purchase page: http://nb.atari.org/main.php?page=ace_midi_registration