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[Oliwerko]

Also, MT-32 is more pro => musicians => MIDI
while OPL is more common => hobbyists => trackers

That explained a lot, I did not really realize that.

Today I searched for more trackers for SID and OPL and found quite a few.
I also found people saying that AdLib Tracker II is shit and Reality Adlib Tracker or
FM-Kingtracker is a better option. I've also found ninjatracker and odin tracker for C64 (native for 64 though).

Is there any real difference between all these trackers, or is it all the same with little differences which make people prefer one over another?

[Saga Musix]

i don't know any of the trackers, but all of them have to have quite something in common: The FM synthesis. You have to build your own FM samples or load presets. It's mostly the inteface that is different, and some editor may only support OPL2 and not OPL3 (8 vs. 16 voices, mono vs. stereo). So some of them are indeed advanced, but they all have a lot in common.

[Oliwerko]

Today I was astonished having found out that new MilkyTracker version supports amiga resampling. Does that mean that using 4-channel milkytracker MODs with amiga resampling turned on sounds like if it was played on real amiga hardware?

[raina]

That's the idea, but what's even more important is that you're playing the song the song in either ProTracker mode instead of Fasttracker II mode. You can control this in Options. I personally prefer the ProTracker 2 mode for MOD tracking because it enables an on-the-fly sample change technique not available in other modes.

[Oliwerko]

on-the-fly sample change?

I also noticed the panning setting, which allows realistic amiga panning, that's great.
I'm getting fond of Milky more and more, I guess 

Actually, milkytracker was the thing that made me start tracking anyway.
I wonder how did you get samples in '91 or so, when internet wasn't everywhere. Did you have to buy samples? But in old modules, much of the samples are simple/lower quality, but complicated enough to be hard to draw. What options did you have back then?

[m0d]

I wonder how did you get samples in '91 or so, when internet wasn't everywhere. Did you have to buy samples? But in old modules, much of the samples are simple/lower quality, but complicated enough to be hard to draw. What options did you have back then?

• Disk swapping
• Making your own samples from synths via a sampler unit (parallel port, or for the A500  series, there were also side-expansion samplers available) for the amiga
• As above but taking sources from samples given away on cover CDs in audio format like Future Music
• BBSes
• Other modules (sample ripping )

Quite a variety of sources, there are more than this of course

[raina]

on-the-fly sample change?

Means, if you track like this:

Code: [Select]

C-4 ·1 ·· ···
··· ·· ·· ···
··· ·2 ·· ···
··· ·· ·· ···

...sample (instrument in MT) number 2 starts playing on the third row from the same position where sample 1 left off. It's a very powerful method for chipping and doing effects on samples which have only slight differences (different filter settings for example).

It's a poorly supported technique overall, since it was dropped in ProTracker 3, and I believe DOS trackers never supported it. To my knowledge, it's currently supported by MilkyTracker, XMPlay (in PT1 MOD mode), DeliPlayer, UADE and possibly OpenMPT. (Just waiting for saga to pounce and confirm the latter. )

[Saga Musix]

OpenMPT only seems to support this for .it modules, as far as quick tests show. So I suppose this behaviour is also valid for XM/MOD? (btw, I just fixed a .xm-related bug. and spotted a .mod-related bug in milkytracker at the same time )

[Oliwerko]

Ah, it's seen nice in the code. Quite a powerful feature, I guess. But, I have to admit - I have no idea where I would use it - another sign of insufficient experience

[raina]

@Saga, to my knowledge this is strictly a MOD feature, although I can't be sure about IT. XM never supported it and neither should any XM replay.