But report: right clicked to access context menu, but it kept playing a short buffer instead of progressing through the song. Closing the context menu goes back to normal.
And like nearly all audio players on the web it’s tiny. I don’t know what it is that causes all these players to be so tiny. They are often the central thing on their page – the thing people come to the page for – but they are nearly invisible. Practically all podcasters are especially egregious offenders.
Some are starting to get it. Soundcloud, terrible in every other way, at least has this really big player with a big and obvious play button. That’s how it’s done.
Absolutely! Its a relic of a 90s skeuomorph! And the thing is Winamp didn't look so tiny when your screen resolution is 800x600, so mp3 players didn't catch-up (and a):
No idea what music is exactly on the site but I, for one, love 8bit music and would like to take this opportunity to spam some links to various related websites in case TFA is relevant to your interests.
There's also plenty of material on Spotify and Grooveshark. If you need a player, Audacious / Banshee / Foobar2k / ModPlug Player / mpd / VLC / Winamp / XimpleMOD... Many players will work, try your existing player if you're not using one of the aforementioned players.
I remember that for my first PC, I bought a Pro AudioSpectrum card, which included Soundblaster compatibility. One of the things they included was a Modplayer. I can remember downloading a few mod files from Compuserve.
MODs were around (I'm pretty sure) years before Soundblaster. At that point there was really no way to create them on the PC. Pre-SB you could play them through the PC speaker, which was a tease because you could hear them, just not make them--without an Amiga. There was this thing called the STM format (ScreamTracker) that was an attempt to create MOD-like music on the PC. ScreamTracker wan't compatible with MOD though. Problem with ScreamTracker, it kinda worked but just barely--it was unstable. Also the Amiga was lightyears ahead of the PC so the STM format never really had a chance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream_Tracker I think tracking on the PC got to be more popular later in the 90s with the rise of Drumnbass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bass
I could be wrong, but I think Modedit 2 was the first PC app to make MODs. But it wasn't really floating around in the wild, maybe you had to be "elite" or something to even know about it, LOL. There's a guy in here who mentions Modedit 2, I didn't see anything in Google but I didn't look very hard http://www.inthemix.com.au/forum/archive/index.php/t-68295.h...
It's interesting that the author chose to put the spectrum analyzer after the volume control. Usually media player visualizations are computed before the output gain is applied, to make them look the same regardless of playback volume.
Has anybody implemented a module player in JavaScript? I've always wanted to write one for fun; maybe I'll put a Web Audio version on my never-ending experimental projects list.
There was a definite style to a lot of e.g. game music on the amiga that made it feel quite unique both at the time and since, and listening to this reminds me of that style.
'the number of voices is limited to four. To have something similarly to chords, the three notes of it are repeated very fast. This makes MODs sound so freaky.'
This is possibly why this stuff sounds so unique. Interesting how a technical limitation can result in unintended stylistic consequences.
Actually, chiptunes (C64) and MODs (Amiga) used quite different playback technologies.
The C64 synthesized its sound via the MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID (Sound Interface Device). It was limited to 3 voices, so the only way to emulate chords on a single voice was to arpeggiate rapidly through a sequence of notes.
The Amiga used four PCM sample based sound channels (in stereo - two left, two right). So chords could easily be sampled and played back on one or more channels.
Chiptunes were limited to the distinctive '8 bit electronic' style - although it didn't stop groups like Maniacs of Noise pushing the technology to use primitive samples alongside the traditional sounds; one notable example was the 'Stormlord' soundtrack.
MODs, being sample-based, could be made to sound like quite respectable audio recordings. Even so, there were some musicians who tried to emulate the old C64 sound on the Amiga, hence the profusion of chiptune-sounding MODs.
Hm! Yes, very cool. But this is not how typical mod-files sounded. These sound more like chip-tunes (SID C64-style), whereas mod-files used quite a lot of samples. Think Fairlight stuff, Jean Michel Jarre's Zoolookologie...
My favorite MODs are still the ones from Star Control 2 :)
For those interested in a javascript/web audio api based mod player with a much more comprehensive list of formats, Flod may be of some interest to you
http://www.photonstorm.com/flod
47 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] thread(I wouldn't be surprised anymore if the NSA has a backdoor in it, in addition to the continuously growing list of known security vulnerabilities.)
Some are starting to get it. Soundcloud, terrible in every other way, at least has this really big player with a big and obvious play button. That’s how it’s done.
I like that it's small. It's meant to be heard, not seen.
http://rustythinkpads.info/photos/380ED.jpg
http://www.crasseux.com/images/gnome2.png
(winamp clone for unix xmms)
Player (for those obscure custom Amiga formats, can use Eagleplayer playroutines too, IIRC): http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Audio-Players/...
I was really surprized when I copy/pasted one of the links into AmaroK and it just started playing :)
Has anybody implemented a module player in JavaScript? I've always wanted to write one for fun; maybe I'll put a Web Audio version on my never-ending experimental projects list.
'the number of voices is limited to four. To have something similarly to chords, the three notes of it are repeated very fast. This makes MODs sound so freaky.'
This is possibly why this stuff sounds so unique. Interesting how a technical limitation can result in unintended stylistic consequences.
The C64 synthesized its sound via the MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID (Sound Interface Device). It was limited to 3 voices, so the only way to emulate chords on a single voice was to arpeggiate rapidly through a sequence of notes.
The Amiga used four PCM sample based sound channels (in stereo - two left, two right). So chords could easily be sampled and played back on one or more channels.
Chiptunes were limited to the distinctive '8 bit electronic' style - although it didn't stop groups like Maniacs of Noise pushing the technology to use primitive samples alongside the traditional sounds; one notable example was the 'Stormlord' soundtrack.
MODs, being sample-based, could be made to sound like quite respectable audio recordings. Even so, there were some musicians who tried to emulate the old C64 sound on the Amiga, hence the profusion of chiptune-sounding MODs.
My favorite MODs are still the ones from Star Control 2 :)