Williams Pinball VSTi?

[androidlove]

Is there a virtual synth that can make these sounds?

I started working with the Williams sound board on
the pin "Lazer Ball". On this game the memory was only 512
bytes for all program and data. It was this extreme memory
crunch that inspired the Gwave wave table synthesizer. By
storing a waveform (sine, square, triangle,etc.) in 4-64 bytes,
and then a frequency table of 10-20 bytes, a sound could be
characterized by a few bytes. To get further mileage, echo,
distortion, LFO,and white noise systems were also
employed at a cost of only a few extra bytes. Being the
creator of Gwave, I was able to make some really cool
sounds, but as skilled as I was, I was stunned to find out
that the most brilliant sounds were often created by typing
in random numbers for the parameters. Often incredible
sounds were generated by inputting mathematically
undefined values, such as echoing a sound "0" times. The
crudeness and lack of bounds checking of the program
allowed for mathematical wraparound and error accumulation
that sounded ethereal. For Firepower, I also
constructed a parametrically driven pulse width modulation
synth

Thanks

[Examigan]

Is there a virtual synth that can make these sounds?

I started working with the Williams sound board on
the pin "Lazer Ball". On this game the memory was only 512
bytes for all program and data. It was this extreme memory
crunch that inspired the Gwave wave table synthesizer. By
storing a waveform (sine, square, triangle,etc.) in 4-64 bytes,
and then a frequency table of 10-20 bytes, a sound could be
characterized by a few bytes. To get further mileage, echo,
distortion, LFO,and white noise systems were also
employed at a cost of only a few extra bytes. Being the
creator of Gwave, I was able to make some really cool
sounds, but as skilled as I was, I was stunned to find out
that the most brilliant sounds were often created by typing
in random numbers for the parameters. Often incredible
sounds were generated by inputting mathematically
undefined values, such as echoing a sound "0" times. The
crudeness and lack of bounds checking of the program
allowed for mathematical wraparound and error accumulation
that sounded ethereal. For Firepower, I also
constructed a parametrically driven pulse width modulation
synth

Thanks

Not pinball sounds, but the Chiptunes soundset for ElectraX

is pretty cool and might get close to some of those sounds.

[davidv@plogue]

Is there a virtual synth that can make these sounds?

In my long term todo list is that Willams Engine, though lots of similar sounds can already be made using chipsounds.

[androidlove]

Not pinball sounds, but the Chiptunes soundset for ElectraX

is pretty cool and might get close to some of those sounds.

Thanks, but I'm not looking for those sounds.

I'm looking for sounds like Fire Power pinball. Those sounds were also used in the Defender cabinet video game. There's a "leaving the Matrix" feel to those Williams sounds.

My GF calls those kinds of sounds "seizure sounds" She was surprised that I agree. I tense up at a dubstep drop like I'm having a seizure. It's a most enjoyable workout.

[ENV1]

Ah...the good old Williams System 6/7 sounds. Some of the finest synthesized sounds ever to come out of a loudspeaker. Believe it or not, but they are directly co-responsible for my love for synthesizers.


As for the question; no VSTi as far as i know, but all Williams machine ROMs are perfectly emulated, (including speech), and can be 'played' via PinMAME. So if you need any sounds from say the Defender/Joust/etc ROM, (these sounds were used in a lot of games, even non-Williams machines such as Zaccarias PinballChamp), you can trigger them in PinMAME, record them to samples and there you are. Same goes for Bally, STERN, Zaccaria, etc games, which had a lot of cool ones too.

[UltimateOutsider]

(subscribing to thread)

But yeah, Plogue Chipsounds was the first thing that came to mind. Might not have the sounds out-of-the-box, but many could be simulated there.

[androidlove]

you can trigger them in PinMAME,

Yea, I'll probably do that. I was looking for some direct control.

[xoxos]

you may enjoy my "event generator" vst. it's not a specific emulation. one oscillator with a parameterised counter module, to produce rapid pitch sequences that imo resemble the sounds you hear from coin operated devices.

[Examigan]

Here are some chip sounds that are similar. Maybe not exactly like the Williams sounds..but still nice old school stuff. I used the "GameHall MF" preset in Saurus for this:

https://soundcloud.com/examigan/saurus-chip-sounds

[Meffy]

Hm, I've still got a set of Fire Power ROMs somewhere. Not sure where I packed away ROMs from when I used to repair pinball tables and video games. Doesn't signify, I couldn't reproduce the engine or hack it myself, and it would violate copyright to publish the ROM contents.

[highkoo]

Im totally unfamiliar with this system, but these do sound somehow different to regular old chip sounds.
I wish the sound was direct in that video.

Id guess Chipsounds could do it somehow.
Im interested to see what the trick might be though.

[davidv@plogue]

Im interested to see what the trick might be though.

Its essentially an early VI. Really a dedicated CPU driving a DAC.

[Sendy]

The pitch drops sound like a lofi wavetable where they're playing from the beginning one sample, then two, then three, etc. Essentially it's like a pitch bend but with a fixed formant (a bit like the sound you get when you pitch-bend the master of a synced master-slave pair).

The xoxos instrument mentioned is perfect for this. If you were to run it through a sample and hold to simulate the low resolution wavetable I'm sure you could get very similar sounds.

I'm still hoping for a variable-length, variable quality, modulatable wavetable to appear in Chipsounds or some other product, so you could make amiga-style synthsounds like Octamed could do. Yep, even the Amiga had softsynth support

In fact, there was a tracker called Digital Mugician (or something like that) which could create very complex synth sounds. Sadly I never got a chance to learn it. There's a game called HOI with a really cool soundtrack which I believe used it (and came from the same creative mind).

[androidlove]

you may enjoy my "event generator" vst. it's not a specific emulation. one oscillator with a parameterised counter module, to produce rapid pitch sequences that imo resemble the sounds you hear from coin operated devices.

Wow. I'm running it through Degrade-Fx, What do I owe you?

[ENV1]

I was looking for some direct control.

Who isnt?

I believe the first time i expressed that wish was ten years ago. At the time we still had sporadic contact with some of the Williams devs via a board which unfortunately closed a few years ago. Since the hardware was already more or less perfectly emulated at that time it just seemed, considering the excellence of the synthesizer, like a brilliant idea to have some sort of user interface which would allow to feed it any control data you want so we would no longer be limited to what little happens to be stored on the various game ROMs. But unfortunately it never went anywhere, and hasnt to this day.

But on the positive side; its generally possible. Since the soundboard emulation can interpret the control data stored in the ROMs, it could of course interpret other data just as well. Its all just a matter of feeding the various parameters new values, and devising a means to control it all in real-time. In other words the synthesizer itself is already there, all thats missing is something to control it with. The thing is only, since MAME emulations / their sources can not be used for commercial purposes, (never, ever, under no circumstances), whoever tackles the project would have to do it for free, plus, (to the best of my knowledge), they would have to make their code public, too. Obviously not very tempting for those who are in it for the money, so our only hope would be an enthusiast with skills in application coding and a lot of spare time on their hands. Wouldnt exactly bet on it that it will ever happen, but maybe, one day, in a galaxy far, far away...