Audio Overload for Catalina

Richard Bannister

I’m pleased to report that Audio Overload for Catalina is now ready for beta.

There are two known issues in the current code that I will resolve before a release:

- There’s no way to close a file after you open it.
- Export to WAV is not available.

If you notice any problems with this other than the above please let me know. Steps for reproduction would be very much appreciated also.

Changes over the last public release eleven years ago are:

- Rewrote the Mac front end using Cocoa/Objective-C. AO now works on macOS Catalina.
- Overhauled the Orchestra-90 playback code. The result isn't perfect yet but it's much closer to the real thing than in the past.
- Various improvements to the VGM playback code:
* Added support for the AY8910 (CPC, MSX, ZX Spectrum, some arcade titles)
* Added support for a second SN76496 PSG (some arcade titles)
* Added support for file formats >1.10. Please note that AO currently only supports
AY8910, SN76496, YM2413, and YM2612 chips for VGM files – files using other chips
will display a warning and are unlikely to do anything.
- Updated to zlib 1.2.8.

You can download this here:

https://www.bannister.org/ao-21b2.zip

Feedback welcomed.

Richard Bannister

Newer build:

https://www.bannister.org/ao-21b7.zip

Squirrel

Keyboard playback controls are not working. Specifically using space to pause/unpause a track and enter to start playing the highlighted track. Using the arrow keys to highlight different songs and expand/collapse archives works fine. These issues don't appear in v2.0.

I ran into some odd PSF issues. One where tracks take 10 seconds before they start outputting any music and the second where tracks wouldn't play at all. I'm too tired to look into this in detail, so expect an update tomorrow.

This was all on the 2.1v7 build on High Sierra.

Squirrel

PSF issues! First off, these issues are present on the v2.0 release and can be encountered on both PPC and x86.

The following tracks have a delay outputting any audio if they are not the first track played after launching AO. The playback timer starts, but no sound or oscillator activity is heard for around 6-10 seconds. The options that deal with the volume levels have been shut off:
Legend of Mana: 102, 222, 227

The following track sometimes won't play at all:
Final Fantasy 9: 417

SPC and VGM (Genesis) music plays great.

Richard Bannister

I'm not worried about issues that existed in 2.0 – fundamentally all this release is generally intended to be is a Cocoa rebuild of code that was last looked at properly almost a decade ago :)

That being said, I've hooked up a bunch of additional chips to the VGM engine this evening - a few of the YM-series FM chips as well as the HuC6280 - which will help those downloading from https://vgmrips.net/

Keyboard input should now be sorted.

https://www.bannister.org/ao-21b8.zip

Squirrel

Keyboard functionality has indeed been fixed.

I tried some random YM chip music, and most of it was fine.

When I tried out Magical Crystals (Arcade), which uses an OKIM6295 and 2x YM2149 chips, AO told me it didn't support the OKIM chip. After clicking OK it then crashed. Some tracks from this game crash (1 and 4) and some tracks actually play the audio AO supports (2 and 3). AO 2.0 doesn't give a warning about unsupported chips, and just stays silent while the counter ticks on.

Richard Bannister

Squirrel wrote:
When I tried out Magical Crystals (Arcade), which uses an OKIM6295 and 2x YM2149 chips, AO told me it didn't support the OKIM chip. After clicking OK it then crashed. Some tracks from this game crash (1 and 4) and some tracks actually play the audio AO supports (2 and 3). AO 2.0 doesn't give a warning about unsupported chips, and just stays silent while the counter ticks on.

Good catch – that was an interesting bug. I've fixed it for the release.

Richard Bannister

The final release of Audio Overload v2.1 is here:

https://www.bannister.org/ao-21.zip

This will be made available to the public tomorrow my time provided no last minute issues are found.

Changes:

- Fixed a divide by zero crash in MOD play back.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if a series of VGM files had unsupported chips.
- Added support for YM3512 and Y8950 sound chips in VGM files.
- Added support for closing a file using the delete key.

Thank you all for your assistance over this beta period.

Richard Bannister

And it's now live:

http://www.bannister.org/software/

Now back to the emulators.

Squirrel

Looks good!

I only found one more issue:

When trying to play Out Run (Arcade) track 10 I get a message that tells me AO doesn't support 9 of the requested chips, and then give me the spinning beachball cursor for a minute, then another beachball cursor, etc.

Granted, none of the tracks in this set are fully supported by AO, but some of them do output some sound (tracks 1-6). Track 7 actually plays for a second before starting the beachball routine.

Richard Bannister

Squirrel wrote:
When trying to play Out Run (Arcade) track 10 I get a message that tells me AO doesn't support 9 of the requested chips, and then give me the spinning beachball cursor for a minute, then another beachball cursor, etc.

Thanks, I've fixed that for the next release. FWIW the file doesn't use most of those chips at all - it has a malformed header.

Squirrel

Richard Bannister wrote:
FWIW the file doesn't use most of those chips at all - it has a malformed header.

I was actually wondering about that being a possibility. Thanks!

What was the cause of the beachballing?

Richard Bannister

Squirrel wrote:
Richard Bannister wrote:
FWIW the file doesn't use most of those chips at all - it has a malformed header.

I was actually wondering about that being a possibility. Thanks!

What was the cause of the beachballing?

I wasn't skipping commands for unsupported chips properly. It would eventually unbeachball if you left it long enough, though you wouldn't get any useful output.

Richard Bannister

Audio Overload 2.2 is now on the Mac App Store.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1512000244

jetboy

Richard Bannister wrote:
Audio Overload 2.2 is now on the Mac App Store.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1512000244

Thanks for that. Just downloaded and I'm just listening to some of my favourites from the Shenmue + Skies of Arcadia soundtracks.

FWIW I hear a fair bit of cracking at one point with a dsf file. Is this likely to be due to a dud file? Other than that like... it's accurate. Loving it!

Will give it a go with Rayearth for Game Gear and Saturn a little later (and Landstalker for Mega Drive). Sunday's gonna be fun!!! :D

Squishy Tia

Meowrs :)

I noticed that the key mappings changed from the arrow keys to the < and > keys, and there is no longer any key mapped to "restart track" (you have to click it with the mouse now). Any chance of getting those arrow keys back, or at least the "/" key that used to restart tracks? I like that this version fixes the open file window not remembering the last used folder. So many OS X apps got broken in 10.12+ with that (especially DVD Player, which won't remember the last used folder unless you access the open file window while the app is not using fullscreen mode).

Richard Bannister

Squishy Tia wrote:
Meowrs :)

I noticed that the key mappings changed from the arrow keys to the < and > keys, and there is no longer any key mapped to "restart track" (you have to click it with the mouse now). Any chance of getting those arrow keys back, or at least the "/" key that used to restart tracks? I like that this version fixes the open file window not remembering the last used folder. So many OS X apps got broken in 10.12+ with that (especially DVD Player, which won't remember the last used folder unless you access the open file window while the app is not using fullscreen mode).

The arrow keys are reserved for moving up and down the playlist.

I've just hooked up the '/' key to restart tracks. That'll be in the next update.

FWIW, I am currently looking for a new job (damn COVID-19) and while I do that my focus is on projects with revenue potential. If anyone reading this fancies some retro game remakes, I've put out a bunch of them with more in gestation even as I type this:

https://www.bannister.org/software/

Squishy Tia

Damn, I was hoping COVID-19 hadn't screwed you over. The good news is that the type of work you're really good at can almost always be done at home where necessary. The bad news is obviously - you have to land the job first. :(

As for the arrows, up and down still leaves the left and right arrows free, does it not? Your older versions handled up/down in the playlist and LA/RA and / for the track navigation. :)

Richard Bannister

Squishy Tia wrote:
As for the arrows, up and down still leaves the left and right arrows free, does it not? Your older versions handled up/down in the playlist and LA/RA and / for the track navigation. :)

No. Left and right are used to navigate in and out of zip files. It's an OS default, and I don't fancy overriding it :)

Squishy Tia

I wonder when that got put into the OS as the default. Oh well, we'll have a fully mapped set of buttons again so it isn't like I can really complain. Thank you for adding that last one back in. It's a shame M1 isn't following along, but I can't really blame you for not wanting to basically rewrite the whole thing for nothing (it isn't going to generate revenue when you need it most).

Thankfully I'm still tied to 10.12.6 due to a combination of having a 1080 Ti in this hackintosh and a need for the built in FTP server that got removed in 10.13+ (Apple did that purely to screw the Android users that were FTPing into their Macs as an alternative to Android File Transfer, which has always been broken on OS X and OS X has no MTP drivers to speak of).