D i g i t a l R e c o r d i n g On The IBM Compatibles

D i g i t a l    R e c o r d i n g
       On The IBM Compatibles

  Have you ever wondered why the Apple MAC and Amiga Can play
back hi quality sound and generate music that sounds like a $50,000
synthesizer and you IBM PC/clone Only plays Beeps and tones?
  The only reason IBM put a speaker on there pc was because it was
cheeper than using a buzzer. The output is only one bit and Looks more
like they just stuck a speaker on a left over signal line from the keyboard
controller.
  This is not well suited to play back digital recording or music other than
beeps and tones. The task to generating sound on internal speaker is a lot
like trying to turn on and off a light switch fast enough to play music.

    _____           _ ..________         _______              __
   |  . .|         | .  ..  ..  |       | ..    |            |  |
   |.    .         |.     ..  . |       |.  . . |            |  |
   .     .         |.          .|       .      .|            |..|        0 Line
 --.-----.---------.------------.------.|-------.------------.--.----------------
   .     |.       .|            |.  . . |       |.  .       .|  |.  .     .
  .|     | . .    .|            | .. .  |       | .. .     . |  | .. .   .
 ._|     |____.__._|            |_______|       |_____.___.__|  |_____..._
                .                                      ...

 Think of the " . " as the original sound wave.
  The best the Internal speaker can generate is shown by the " __ " and " | " .

 As you can see a lot of the Information in the sound wave was lost when
  you force the different levels in the wave to only two levels (this is
  called a square wave).

This loss in information is heard in the form of noise.
  MOZART.COM and any other Programs that play Sound from the IBM's internal
  speaker use this method. The best attainable sound quality is
   6 DB S/N ratio. (provided the source was not a square wave to begin with.)

  The three computers I mentioned above have a built in d/a converter
(Digital to analog). This allows them to generate all the different
levels in the sound wave.
  The Number of levels that can be reproduces is measured in bits.
    1 bit     2 Levels  6 Db S/N ratio
    4 bits   16 Levels 24 Db S/N ratio
    8 bits  256 Levels 48 Db S/N ratio { MAC AMEGA }{ VGA cards for video }
   10 bits 1024 Levels 60 Db S/N ratio
   12 bits 4096 Levels 72 Db S/N ratio { ISDN PHONE LINES COMPRESSED TO 8BITS }
   14 bits 16 K Levels 84 Db S/N ratio
   16 bits 64 K Levels 96 Db S/N ratio { Compact Disk player }

  There are several company's that sell Digital recording and playback
boards. They range for $395.00 to $8K . Most are 8 Bit some of the more
expensive ones are 12 & 16 Bit.
  The voice mail systems are from $4000. to $20K and up. they are all 8 bit
with some kind of compression to save space.

  I have designed an built an 8 bit digital recorder and player that
Operates through the Printer Port. It is Inexpensive to built .
  I used to to record MOZART.COM with but to make it into a demo form
that can play on a standard MSDOS machine with out the special playback
hardware it is only a one bit recording.
 I have software to convert MAC soundfiles and Tandy 1000 soundfiles
into a format that can then be played back through an
                        IBM PC with NO ADDITIONAL HARDWARE.

 I also have software to play back MAC and tandy 1000 sound files in there
original hi sound quality ( !Sounds great! ).

 I an currently making a better recording utility and play to make a
sound editor ,synthesizer and conversion program.

  If anyone is interested in digital recording or buying
 Some of this software/hardware or just want to see a demo
   feel free to call me at (415) xxx-xxxx.

   I currently don't have any plans to market this but I would like to.
 There is no reason why IBM users have to put up with bad sound any more.

                                            John L. Sokol
                                            6/89

8-bit PCM Audio Player Upload and play raw PCM audio files

samples from : https://github.com/johnsokol/AudioByte/tree/master/sound

Player made by claude ai. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/04b251dd-f000-4113-9da7-2e6ec663e6a4

8-bit PCM Audio Player

 

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/04b251dd-f000-4113-9da7-2e6ec663e6a4

make a sound player where a the users uploads an raw pcm 8 bit digital audio file and they are played by the browser.

I'll create a sound player that can load and play raw 8-bit PCM audio files in the browser.

8-bit PCM Audio Player

Interactive artifact 

I've created an 8-bit PCM audio player with the following features:

Features:

• File upload - Drag and drop or click to upload raw 8-bit PCM files
• Configurable sample rate - Set the sample rate (default 44100 Hz)
• Mono/Stereo support - Choose between 1 or 2 channels
• Playback controls - Play, pause, and stop buttons
• Seek bar - Click to jump to any position in the audio
• Volume control - Slider and mute button
• Time display - Current time and total duration
• Visual feedback - Animated waveform visualization

How it works:

1. Upload your raw 8-bit PCM file (unsigned, 0-255 values)
2. Set the correct sample rate and channel count for your file
3. The player converts the 8-bit data to float32 format for the Web Audio API
4. Use the controls to play, pause, seek, and adjust volume

The player assumes 8-bit unsigned PCM data where each byte represents one sample (0-255 maps to -1.0 to 1.0 in the audio buffer).

Audio files are available from :

https://github.com/johnsokol/AudioByte/tree/master/sound

BLU-TERT.SND   8000 hzCOKEISIT.M11  11 KhzIMF.M11  11,000 hzWC1.SND    8000hz 

Digital Audio Playback - 1987

Digital Audio playback from EPROM , older version for Sound Effects Car Horn

555 Timer, 2x 74LS373 Counters, and 74LS00 quad Nand , 74LS32 quad XOR

Digital Audio playback from EPROM 1987

 

Audio Byte - Parallel Port R2R Audio Adapter, Photos of Prototypes.

http://www.dnull.com/zebraresearch/

https://github.com/johnsokol/AudioByte

  These we 44Khz 8bit digital recorders, the small PCB one plugged in to my home made Eprom programmer and used it Digital I/O lines on my TRS80 Color Computer.

 These were Aluminum jigs I made to hold the 18 resistors in place while we soldered them together without a PCB.  We made 3000 units this way. 

These 18 Resistors formed an R-2R network.  In my case I chose 50K Ohm and 100K Ohm.

AudioByte, Amiga Mod files and Chip Tunes.

It all comes full circle. 

All that stuff  Jesse Monroy and myself did 30 years back,

AudioByte (Originally Sound Byte)

The Original Parallel Port Dongle audio adapter.

Editor and Mod file players in Intel x86 assembly code.

More at:  http://www.dnull.com/zebraresearch/
               https://github.com/johnsokol/AudioByte

   

 Now I stumble on WebAssembly and OpenGL and realize I have more power in a browser tab  than I had on the $250,000 4 cpu SGI workstation at stanford.

Certainly dwarfing the 10 Mhz 286 I had in those days.

Then I found chiptunes. This is super cool. 

https://codepen.io/TinyRSid/pen/xboYmQ

https://codepen.io/gregh/post/recreating-legendary-8-bit-games-music-with-web-audio-api 

These guys are mad crazy about video game emulators and reproducing the hardware faithfully.

 https://github.com/deskjet/chiptune2.js/  

https://deskjet.github.io/chiptune.js/    A player you can drop Amiga Mod files on and play them.

 http://www.dnull.com/mod/files.html   My mod file collection.

 And the new version, not as good.
https://deskjet.github.io/chiptune2.js/#  

But this is WOW!!!!   it's like wow.  A universe unto itself. 

https://mmontag.github.io/chip-player-js/browse/ModArchives?play=ModArchives%2Faws_aq16.xm

Best part it's all open source and hosted free of charge on github. 

https://github.com/mmontag/chip-player-js

--

John Sokol

http://johnsokol.com