FamiTracker's note table: 96 notes? But only 87 are playable

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GradualGames
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FamiTracker's note table: 96 notes? But only 87 are playable

Post by GradualGames »

I am using FamiTracker's NSF driver's note table as a basis for the note tables in use in my sound engine. These tables at present have 96 notes in them. Yet, in FamiTracker itself, you can only use 87 of these notes. A0 appears to be the lowest and B7 appears to be the highest. My midi keyboard when it sends a note higher or lower than these two does not change the pitch. There might be a note below A0 that sounds maybe a quarter tone different but it is not on the same chromatic scale with everything else, so I do not use it in my engine, A0 being the lowest apparently usable note. Notes higher than B7 do not even sound. So my question is---does anybody understand why these additional notes are in FamiTracker's driver? *edit* the additional notes all appear to be periods which would be lower than A0.
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rainwarrior
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Re: FamiTracker's note table: 96 notes? But only 87 are play

Post by rainwarrior »

A few possible reasons:


96 is exactly 8 octaves

96 = 8 * 12

96 is the sum of two powers of two (convenient boundary when packing data?):

96 = 2^6 + 2^5

Many of the expansion chips are capable of going below A-0.
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GradualGames
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Re: FamiTracker's note table: 96 notes? But only 87 are play

Post by GradualGames »

Makes sense! Thanks!
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dougeff
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Re: FamiTracker's note table: 96 notes? But only 87 are play

Post by dougeff »

Dpcm samples do a fair job at extra-low notes (contrabass). But, they are a little quiet (from my experience).
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Myask
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Re: FamiTracker's note table: 96 notes? But only 87 are play

Post by Myask »

*opens pitch spreadsheet*
2A03 Triangle can go from A0 at lowest/longest, same as an 88-key piano, a fine reason to start there.
C9 (one after Bb8) is that 88th key.
2A03 Pulse can go A1 to (approx.) G9,but the top three octaves or so are all pretty wildly variable in how far off the tempered scale they are: Gb6 (on pulse) is 9.5 cents off, and it just gets mostly worse past that. (Lower, there's nothing even 5 cents off).
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