It's also why everything looked and sounded better on 8-bit computers that had hardware support for graphic sprites or sound generation, even if they had a less powerful CPU. And it's the untold story behind why 16-bit graphics looked so much better: it wasn't about the CPU as much as it was about having a dedicated video card / chipset with its own memory, a sound card that handled polyphonic sound and MIDI synthesis, etc.
Digital Audio on the ZX Spectrum's 1-Bit Beeper (bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com)
51 pointsby ibobev2 days ago15 comments
socializer 6 hours ago
Doing stuff like this in the 8-bit era was never particularly hard. The difficulty was doing this and then anything else, because you basically need the entire CPU just for audio synthesis. For games, there was a very real trade-off between calculating video, game state, and sound, and sound often took the back seat.
urbandw311er 7 hours ago
I have a memory of a Spectrum game playing some sort of synthesised speech through the speaker that seemed incredibly ahead of its time. I believe the game was called iBall. And the sample said something like “Fight iBall!” Have I misremembered that? Was this a fever dream?
_usefulcat 7 hours ago
You might be right! I had a copy of 'Slightly Magic' which had some speech synthesis. Great game. Never completed it though
flohofwoe 7 hours ago
Another Speccy game with digitized speech is Chase HQ:
https://youtu.be/yjrbcLm78I8?si=GMIqDdL31hq4ik72&t=87
Although tbf apparently that's done via the AY sound chip of the 128k, which is a lot easier than through the on/off beeper of the 48k since the AY can do digitized audio via CPU-driven volume modulation.
UncleSlacky 7 hours ago
There was also "Meteor Storm":
https://spectrumgamesuk.com/index.php?game=Meteor-Storm
I think it said "Meteor Alert!" or something similar, though the quality was terrible.
McDyver 6 hours ago
I remember the "Codemasters Jet Bike Simulator". I always found it impressive
(And there was a "Get ready!" which I didn't remember)
jesuslop 6 hours ago
I remember "Rocman", how hearing a human voice coming from a 1-bit beeper sounded like sorcery: https://youtu.be/iuT0hxjLCzc?t=95
darrenf 5 hours ago
The 128k version of Nodes of Yesod had some speech, albeit I think it was just the name of the game. My older brother told me a kid in his class got paid big bucks - like, I dunno, £50 or something? - for coding it. Almost certainly bollocks.
For high quality speech, you could get the Currah μSpeech! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currah#Currah_%CE%BCSpeech_for...
I swear there was one symbol it pronounced "flea bleep".
dcminter 2 hours ago
For some reason "5", even if constructed as phonemes came out as "frame" - I always wondered why. I've never seen it mentioned in the various short pieces about it online including its contemporary reviews. I wonder now if it was a bug in the particular rom I had and it was fixed early enough to not get much visibility.
stevekemp 4 hours ago
Robocop was another game with sampled speach, not yet mentioned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy8kZcGz98U
There were a few games (in later years) with speach/audio. But Robocop was one that stands in my memory for the good music.
musha68k 6 hours ago
Due to all the constraints the ZX Spectrum is a fantastic system for recreational programming; too bad I missed the latest Spectrum Next batch last year.
ValdikSS 5 hours ago
This reminded me of a recent very detailed video on polyphony implementation on 8052
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49895486
There's also a phone with YM2149
regularfry 6 hours ago
There was a music editor I remember getting on a late Your Sinclair edition cover tape which displayed proper music staves and gave you 4-note chord output. Blew my mind a bit at the time.
2a0c40 6 hours ago
And who could possibly forget Chronos' title music, by Tim Follin?
stackedinserter 7 hours ago
ZX's audio and video systems are two things that I never missed.