Plogue chipsynth C64

[Drew64]

Hi Charlie, thank you so much! A response within twenty minutes and explaining perfectly what needed to be done (would never have thought of trying "Alias" - I’d managed to completely miss that tool). To say this is a game changer is an understatement - I can finally use CS64 like a real C64!

[Charlie Firpo]

David, the included Arpeggiator (fx) is very nice. But i miss a legato mode where the notes aren't retriggered. Is this user error by me? And if not, maybe a feature request.

[davidv@plogue]

David, the included Arpeggiator (fx) is very nice. But i miss a legato mode where the notes aren't retriggered. Is this user error by me? And if not, maybe a feature request.

The arpeggiator is a 100% independent MIDI preprocessor and doesn't know a thing about what the target engine is doing (always was in all our products). It basically sends NOTE ON/OFFs.
It would mean a total redesign of it to have it arp say the elements of a MATRIX table.

[petervh]

hi there!

i'm a new user thanks to the great sale sale this week.

i've got a quick Q regarding the emulator section, SID file playback, and playlists:

i've loaded in the HVSC collection to the user folder. it seems to me that when i play a .sid file, it just continues to play in loop, without jumping to the next file in the list. hitting the ">|" button, which i imagine to be "next song", appears to be more like a "fast forward" button. is there any possible way to setup a folder of songs, or ideally create a playlist, and have chipsynthC64 perform the songs in sequential order? i haven't been able to find any info on this topic in the manual.

i understand well that the emulator is just a fun addition from the developer and the fact that it can play .sid files at all is already an extra treat for the user, so i've got no expectation on this topic! but i'm hopeful given the great sound quality of the instrument.

thank you:)

peter

[davidv@plogue]

i've loaded in the HVSC collection to the user folder. it seems to me that when i play a .sid file, it just continues to play in loop, without jumping to the next file in the list. hitting the ">|" button, which i imagine to be "next song", appears to be more like a "fast forward" button. is there any possible way to setup a folder of songs, or ideally create a playlist, and have chipsynthC64 perform the songs in sequential order? i haven't been able to find any info on this topic in the manual.

Are you sure you have loaded .sid files and not wrapped .prgs (which I suggest doing only if there are playback issues with the former?) Hitting >| does indeed skip to the next song here.

The folder-as-playlist however would be a big code undertaking here though. Our other products have playlists kind of working if many songs are in the same compressed file (zip/rar) etc.

[petervh]

Are you sure you have loaded .sid files and not wrapped .prgs (which I suggest doing only if there are playback issues with the former?) Hitting >| does indeed skip to the next song here.

i'm running the latest version of HVSC which i am under the impressions is using "PSIDv2NG" format. although i am having difficulty to determine if this is a 'wrapped .prg' format or not.

when i hit "random song", it does correctly jump to a random song in a loaded folder. when i hit ">|", it seems to jump to a different position in the loaded song. this is on macos sonoma. here is an animated gif that helps to show the behaviour:

c64_synth_switch_song.gif

it would certainly be cool if i could load in a folder, and have it play the files through in sequential (alphabetical?) order. BUT i perfectly understand that SID file playback is only an extra fun addition, and not necessarily an expected feature in the context of a VSTi synth plugin. so i don't want to occupy your time with this small issue.

thank you David !

[davidv@plogue]

Both 05-09-87 and Noisy Pillar and 1-song only .sid files so thats normal. (Pressing the button just resets the song in those)

Alloyrun does have 3 sub songs and your animated png does show the Song go from 1/3 to 2/3 and 3/3. You are not hearing those change? On windows now, but I doubt it matters.

[petervh]

Both 05-09-87 and Noisy Pillar and 1-song only .sid files so thats normal. (Pressing the button just resets the song in those)

Alloyrun does have 3 sub songs and your animated png does show the Song go from 1/3 to 2/3 and 3/3. You are not hearing those change? On windows now, but I doubt it matters.

thank you David !

i'm not a SID music aficionado exactly.... i'm just a person curious to listen and see if there is anything particularly culturally interesting amongst the enormous pile of tunes in the HVSC. so... the subsongs was not a function i expected or understood.

anyway, things are working as expected. i guess then my question was more like a feature request which would be: allow a folder of sid files (or "playlist") to be loaded, and have them play sequentially one after the other (alphabetical order). currently, if there is only one song in a sid file, when i hit the ">|" button, it returns to the beginning of the song. + at the end of the song, it returns to the beginning. it would be neat if the ">|" button could move to the next song in a folder or playlist, and if the next song would playback upon the current song finishing.

however, i completely understand that this feature is quite unlikely to be made, given the expected complexity of implementation, and also that it may be rather out of scope of the whole idea of the plugin.

all for now + thanks for the synth.

[davidv@plogue]

i'm just a person curious to listen and see if there is anything particularly culturally interesting amongst the enormous pile of tunes in the HVSC.

So many to count!

however, i completely understand that this feature is quite unlikely to be made, given the expected complexity of implementation, and also that it may be rather out of scope of the whole idea of the plugin.

Thanks for the suggestion. It would work to an extent as SID files do not contain song time info and I can't really query the emulation state to know if it looped by itself already (for songs that play forever). - unless I drilled inside and did some per-6510-player-specific hints

In the day you really just either play the current song until you were tired of it or there were game related events (or key strokes) that would have allows your to skip them.
Even with songs that do not seem to play notes anymore the emulation state (and song engine) still runs but do nothing interesting. I would need to add an heuristic to check if no events or GATE ON messages have been sent to the chip in 'a while' -> but then it might get some false positive. ANYWAY

[synworks]

David, the included Arpeggiator (fx) is very nice. But i miss a legato mode where the notes aren't retriggered. Is this user error by me? And if not, maybe a feature request.

The arpeggiator is a 100% independent MIDI preprocessor and doesn't know a thing about what the target engine is doing (always was in all our products). It basically sends NOTE ON/OFFs.
It would mean a total redesign of it to have it arp say the elements of a MATRIX table.

I agree with Charlie that an arpeggiator in a chiptune plugin really should allow playing the arp with tied notes. IMO it does not necessarily need to know what the underlying engine is doing. All it has to do would be to delay each note off a little bit after the note on of the next arp note. The actual engine behind would have to be set to auto-glide with glide time=0 of course.
When looking at all the deep effort spend on emulating stuff exactly this looks like a rather simple extension task to be fair.

[Ah_Dziz]

David, the included Arpeggiator (fx) is very nice. But i miss a legato mode where the notes aren't retriggered. Is this user error by me? And if not, maybe a feature request.

The arpeggiator is a 100% independent MIDI preprocessor and doesn't know a thing about what the target engine is doing (always was in all our products). It basically sends NOTE ON/OFFs.
It would mean a total redesign of it to have it arp say the elements of a MATRIX table.

I agree with Charlie that an arpeggiator in a chiptune plugin really should allow playing the arp with tied notes. IMO it does not necessarily need to know what the underlying engine is doing. All it has to do would be to delay each note off a little bit after the note on of the next arp note. The actual engine behind would have to be set to auto-glide with glide time=0 of course.
When looking at all the deep effort spend on emulating stuff exactly this looks like a rather simple extension task to be fair.

I'd guess there's a mono legato mode for the synth, and a gate setting for the arp. With those two things you can do what you want.

[EvilDragon]

Gate parameter in Plogue synths doesn't extend note length beyond arp rate, so you cannot do note overlapping.