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FamiTracker
i've been recently getting rly interested in the "obsolete" Exx command. noting that NES volume works exponentially in pretty much all cases (F -> E is a far smaller difference in volume to 2 -> 1 for example) i wanted a convenient way to make channels louder or quieter if i feel my mix needs a rework. especially for things like VRC6/7/hi-channel N163 where mix is important!
...the only problem is there's no easy way to do this! shift+mousewheeling the volume channel only changes the volumes linearly and not according to the NES volume table, so it effectively messes up my volume relations. in addition to that it doesn't work outside of the 2A03 chip so the stuff that needs it the most never gets it : (
i'd use expansion audio a lot more if this got implemented!! please :3
lol why does it keep reverting my topic title (its "have "Exx" command stored in memory" just for future reference)
logarithmic volume adjusting w/ shift+wheel would be good but it'd be hard to edit levels on the fly considering you'd lose resolution when scrolling it higher or lower (F E D C B A becomes 7 7 6 6 5 5 on the scroll, becomes... F F E E D D when you scroll it back?)
the Exx command would allow you to keep volume ratios the way you'd have them at "max volume" in the volume channel, while still allowing for easy mixing w/ Exx
So this would be a third layer of volume control on top of the two you already have? (Instrument volume macro + volume column / Exx.)
If my volume column is complicated, I sometimes use the instrument macro to change that instrument's volume globally. To do this effectively it helps to create an instrument for each "voice" as you're writing, and not try and reuse instruments that you differentiate via effects.
I also sometimes do the opposite, i.e. do accents and stuff with instrument changes, leaving a simple volume column that makes it easy to adjust the volume for that pattern.
NES volume is actually very linear. The difference between 2 and 1 is about the same linear difference between F and E, but proportionally they are very different. (We refer to the NES' nonlinear mixing sometimes, but it's a subtle thing, a straight linear mix approximates it quite well, especially on the squares.) The VRC7 and 5B both have exponential volume, where each step is proportionally the same, but the other chips are all more or less linear.
If you're using instruments, you can just adjust the volumes per instrument and do your mixing that way.
If you're using blank, then you can assign a new volume that is less than F to get quieter volumes. I'm not sure I've ever had a case where I needed to GAIN volume in mixing so I'm not sure if that'll be a problem for your workflow
[quote=kfaraday]noting that NES volume works exponentially in pretty much all cases (F -> E is a far smaller difference in volume to 2 -> 1 for example)[/quote]
I thought it was completely linear - exponential volume would be more like the SMS, where F->E divides by two just like 2->1 (each time you decrement volume it halves, which makes 2->1 a much smaller difference audibly than F->E). The reason it's different on NES is because they're the same distance apart, but the ratio is different for each volume change. If you have two apples you have twice as many as one, but if you have 15 apples you have 1.0714 times as many as 14.
Yeah the volume scale is linear in a mathematical sense, which means you can apply the same multiplication/division to all numbers of an envelope and achieve a quieter/louder envelope.
i stand corrected! (in terminology at least, i'll revise 'expontential volume' but the problems in volume [i]proportion[/i] are still as evident)
i'm effectively asking for a third way to control volume as rainwarrior said: currently i could do mixing via changing instrument volume but it gets rather messy when i have more than one instrument per part i want to mix (cumbersome) or more than one part i want to mix per instrument (changes parts of the song i don't want to change). making a new instrument each time i want to experiment with mixing isn't really a part of my workflow
@xyz_39808: the problem with simply specifying a quieter volume if i'm working with blank.fti is that i might have a series of volumes in the column, and making them all proportionally quieter is not a thing i can easily do outside of memorising the volume table
Making things proportionally quieter is a multiply if the volumes are linear. 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1 is a half quiet substitute for 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, for example. If you're finding multiplying in your head this way difficult, you may be trying to put too fine a point on things, as there are only 15 volume levels anyway.
For the log volume chips (5B/VRC7) to keep the proportion the same you just subtract or add the same value from all entries, i.e. 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 0 would be the half quiet substitute for 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. (The logarithm operation turns addition into multiplication, basically.)
Honestly I'm not really a fan of the idea of a third volume state for the engine (adds yet another layer of complication to an already kinda complex volume system), but I can see how one would use it to make broad adjustments later on in the composition process. (For me, composing is slow and laborious in general, so twiddling a bunch of volumes doesn't phase me, so I'm quicker to discount the utility of this kind of thing than most, though.)
As an easier substitute, I wouldn't mind being able to highlight a channel, then clicking something to open a "volume adjust" dialog that lets me set a slider to, say, 67%, click OK, and have it automatically apply this to the volume column in the highlighted area (bonus points if it adjusts as log in 5B/VRC7). Something like this, especially if it was on a keyboard trigger, would let me quickly go through a tune pattern by pattern globally adjusting volume. e.g. if it was CTRL+J to activate, and the slider remembered its previous value so I could just hit ENTER to apply it, the keystrokes would be like:
1. CTRL+A (select column)
2. CTRL+J (volume adjust)
3. ENTER (apply volume adjust)
4. CTRL+RIGHT (next pattern)
5. Repeat
(Would probably also be nice if you could have an option for it to apply to all patterns in that channel in case you want to do the whole tune.)
This also reminds me that relative volume macros would be useful to have for the log volume chips. 5B instruments especially would interact better with the volume column if volume values could apply relatively rather than multiplicative. (Fun fact: earlier versions of Famitracker used relative volume macros, sort of.)
hm... it doesn't seem overly complex to me; i see it as roughly analogous to the "Mxx" (channel volume) command in .it which sees quite a lot of use from me at least
the dialog box might be an interesting solution but it still doesnt preserve the volumes i had there originally! :( plus it'd be nice to give an old command a bit of new life, i've even resorted to using the current Exx on every row when in a pinch in compos
