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FamiTracker
Anyone got any tips on how to get the most out of the noise and dpcm channel. I've got a hard time making them sound good when using vrc6. If you have any other tips about using vrc6 please share them as I love the sound you can create with the vrc6 channels but don't know how to use them to the fullest...
Use lower than max volumes for all other channels to make the noise and DPCM louder. Don't forget that DPCM affects to the triangle and noise channel volumes, so make DPCM samples as short as possible. Help the DPCM channel with other channels if necessary (noise for snare drum, triangle slide for bass drum and toms).
Check NESDEV for a WAV to DPCM converter. Fami's sucks. Tepples made a very good one. It converts 8bit wav files to DPCM. You can also (sort of) tell it the sample rate to play back via "oversampling"
The converter inside famitracker is based on tepple's one, so if you hear any difference then there's probably a bug or you're doing something wrong. The quality setting is used to calculate the oversampling factor.
[quote=Shiru]Don't forget that DPCM affects to the triangle and noise channel volumes, so make DPCM samples as short as possible.[/quote]
I don't think making the DPCM samples short is likely to help in that area. In fact, having the noise and triangle channels repeatedly cycling between full volume and reduced volume might be annoying. (I haven't had it happen, though.) In any case, I think the volume of those channels is restored only if the sample ends at or near 0, which will only happen if the sample naturally ends there (after DPCM conversion) or if you explicitly tell FamiTracker to do that when you import the sample, which I rarely ever find the need to do.
On the other hand, long drum samples might put too much 'air' at the end of the sample, which won't sound that great when played through the DPCM channel. I find that having a little there doesn't hurt, though.
tssf: I don't know what's wrong then, unless you're using an older version that had problems with some wave formats. Try using volume level 3 to get the same level as the command line converter. Oversampling is 75 for 44.1kHz files.
I'll play around, jsr. I just noticed a major quality difference when I imported my gated snare sound via FamiTracker as opposed to converting it straight to DPCM via tepple's tool. But again maybe I just wasn't utilizing the settings properly.
Shiru: Good example. Slightly unrelated: You need to get Lazarus for Firefox :P hehe
[quote=Shiru]The forum eaten up my half-hour long post, so instead of typing it again, here is demonstration of the difference between long and short DPCM drums.[/quote]
I think the perceived difference has much more to do with the heaviness of the reverb on the drums (especially the bass drum), which doesn't mesh well with the chip sounds, than the actual sample length. So in that example, the short samples are definitely better, but not for the reason you described. (Actually, I'd probably use the 'short' bass drum and the 'long' snare, myself, since it was really just the bass drum that presented problems as far as I could tell.)
