OhBoy
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
I’ve got an odd question. Is anyone aware of a VSTi or AU instrument that emulates the GameBoy audio hardware? And I don’t mean some dumb-ass SynthEdit sample-fest, either; I mean a VSTi that uses the audio engine from one of the many emulators, or perhaps one of unique design, and the audio is done in DSP, not with samples.
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Gameboy artist Trash80 did a Reaktor-Ensemble emulating the Grey Guy, but his site is rather down at the moment.
But Nanoloop 1.3 (running on the original GB) is announced for october.
http://www.nanoloop.com/
not quite VSTi/AU, I admit...
I've been thinking along the same lines except for C64/sid, Atari 2600, or NES emulators. The GameBoy did always have nice sound. I think the big thing was the cool stereo effects. Please post if you find something.
I'll tell you what; if one determined the mechanism whereby one could utilize the audio emulation of a particular emulator as a synth, one could conceivably do this with all the GPL emulators.
Any MAME devs out there? There must be a common interface layer betwixt the ROM itself and the various and sundry audio hardware emulations I see in the MAME source code. Now, that would be a cool instrument. Just choose a hardware machine to use as a synth.
-CR
ive run a gameboy emulator on my mac, running an image of nanoloop, and recorded the audio, but as far a multiple instances responding to midi clock and cc's, i dunno - i think the reaktor ensemble okicomputer is based on emulating a 8bit synth source...
Just the thought of running a Reaktor ensemble at all makes me break out in hives. And since it's not an open system, anything of this ilk that is running in Reaktor is gonna be either samples or something imaginary using bit-reduction blocks.
I found a series of posts on the LSDJ Yahoo group made a few years back where a guy said he did exactly what I'm talking about: he used the audio engine from an open-sourced Gameboy emulator to be the basis for a VSTi. I wrote this guy but I doubt the message will get to him, due to the stupidity of Yahoo Groups' lame-ass back end.
-CR
If you're a Max user, you can get externals for most of the good VG chips at http://www.mmonoplayer.com/ . Unfortunately, the gameboy modules there have not been VST-ized yet, but everything there works great in Max.
Closest you'll probably find, but likely not the answer you want, are the MSP externals found here: http://www.mmonoplayer.com/projects.html
I swear that previous message wasn't there when I was typing.
You could try that
http://www.ymck.net/j/download.html
The site is in japanese and I haven't test it but their music sounds quite 8bit (and nice too)
I tried out the Japanese one. I can't read the site, but I'm pretty sure that one is sample-based.
I am working on an NES 2A03 emulator with a MIDI front end. Not sure where the project will end up going -- but I was interested in finding out what the 2A03 it would sound like when controlled by my MIDI keyboard.
The software is very rough alpha -- MIDI features not implemented yet. I basically have the 2A03 running with notes activated by typing. Patch editing very minimal. But it can give you some idea of what fiddling with a 2A03 sounds like.
Anyone interested in a copy can find it at:
http://manfreda.org/LordFrito/2A03.exe
Feedback and comments appreciated.
For those interested, the reason I haven't created VST implementations for the GameBoy sound chip is that the NES chip is almost exactly the same (with some slight pitch differences). The NES VSTs are available.
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