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[Radium Editor]

Hi,

Radium is a very visual tracker-like music editor, showing waveforms
velocity automation, effect automation, smooth scrolling, etc.

Here's some Youtube videos with some classic tracker modules playing in Radium:

Peter Salomonsen - Garbage Collection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMdZM0mlt_s

Dreamer - Black Queen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_lQL8Fb8LU

Dr. Awesome - Godzilla:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLTxxvqYzl4

H0ffman and Daytripper - Professional Tracker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qFltj2Czuc

Captain - Space Debris:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I2gnrDRCng

[Saga Musix]

Looks interesting, but Professional Tracker plays completely wrong (it uses many ProTracker quirks), so it's probably not a good example.

[Radium Editor]

Hi,

I just listened carefully through "Professional Tracker" both in Protracker 2.3d clone, and in Radium, and I found at least one thing that wasn't the same: At around 0:10 it sounds like there is an extra thunder sound in Radium, and in addition things seem a bit more "muddy" between 0:06 and 0:12. That's really strange. Have to investigate that, but I couldn't hear any other differences, except that Radium is using a different resampler algorithm than protracker. Can you be more specific about what's completely wrong? Thank you.

Here's a couple of more modules I just uploaded:

4-mat - Madness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOEvbEi-sOc

Jogeir Liljedahl - Guitar Slinger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yesS2hdLr9E&feature=youtu.be

[Radium Editor]

I think I see the problem. The mod importer don't remember sample offset value. I thought it was always resetted after usage, but protracker seems to use the last used value on the current channel when it's playing a sample with instrument number 0.

[Radium Editor]

Fixed the sample offset problem, and uploaded a new video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQhJk985x0w

Please let me know if anything is wrong. There are a couple of notes which are obviously wrong now, one of them is at 1:05, but overall it's much better. Anyhow, I think "completely wrong" was a bit of an overstatement, even before this fix.

[Saga Musix]

ProTracker offset is more complicated than most people assume. Here is a test case that explains what you need to change: https://wiki.openmpt.org/Development:_Test_Cases/MOD#ptoffset.mod
The vibrato effect heard in the chiptune part right at the start is too strong, too.

Anyhow, I think "completely wrong" was a bit of an overstatement, even before this fix.

Writing a simple mod player that will get everything sound "somewhat correct" is trivial, hence anything that doesn't get the more advanced stuff right is "completely wrong" for me, especially in this particular module where entirely wrong drum samples are heard if you don't emulate the offset quirk correctly. Not that this quirk is really specific to ProTracker, so it should not be applied in other formats.

Anyway, nice work. Why do some of the waveforms change their look while scrolling through the patterns (especially visible e.g. in Space Debris) - is that caused by offset effects?

[Radium Editor]

ProTracker offset is more complicated than most people assume. Here is a test case that explains what you need to change: https://wiki.openmpt.org/Development:_Test_Cases/MOD#ptoffset.mod

Thank you. Those tests seems very useful. Wish I had known about them before. I've probably rewritten everything at least twice because I had done things the wrong way.
The ptoffset.mod module is really strange though...

The vibrato effect heard in the chiptune part right at the start is too strong, too.

To me it only sounds like the vibrato oscillator is updated a lot more often than in protracker. But there is some vibrato on channel 4 (the arpeggio sounds), which is not supposed to be there.

Writing a simple mod player that will get everything sound "somewhat correct" is trivial, hence anything that doesn't get the more advanced stuff right is "completely wrong" for me, especially in this particular module where entirely wrong drum samples are heard if you don't emulate the offset quirk correctly. Not that this quirk is really specific to ProTracker, so it should not be applied in other formats.

Can you still hear if something is wrong in the new version? (The importer doesn't play the ptoffset.mod module correctly though, but does "Professional Tracker" exploit the very mysterious behavior in that module?)

Anyway, nice work. Why do some of the waveforms change their look while scrolling through the patterns (especially visible e.g. in Space Debris) - is that caused by offset effects?

Correct. Changing sample offset triggers Radium to repaint the waveforms while playing. It would have looked better if the module converter didn't add an "offset 0" commands right afterwards though, so it might seem a bit strange sometimes. (I just do this to avoid having to calculate how long the note is playing, plus to avoid having to deal with "sample offset" clash for the same instrument on different channels)

[Saga Musix]

Can you still hear if something is wrong in the new version? (The importer doesn't play the ptoffset.mod module correctly though, but does "Professional Tracker" exploit the very mysterious behavior in that module?)

As you mentioned yourself there were some weird notes around 1:05, which is probably because you trigger the note when there's an instrument plus offset combination but no note next to it. In this case, the new sample is loaded (but not played), and the offset for the next note is memorized. This is also ProTracker-specific behaviour and I think it's part of ptoffset.mod.

[Radium Editor]

As you mentioned yourself there were some weird notes around 1:05, which is probably because you trigger the note when there's an instrument plus offset combination but no note next to it. In this case, the new sample is loaded (but not played), and the offset for the next note is memorized. This is also ProTracker-specific behaviour and I think it's part of ptoffset.mod.

Oh, yes, those weird notes are there because sample offset is set per instrument in radium, not per channel. So the offset was set on channel 3, while the same instrument was playing on channel 1. It's the same reason there is vibrato on the arpeggios in the beginning. This bug should not be so hard to fix.

ptoffset.mod, on the other hand, seems to handle some kind of bug in protracker. I would be surprised if the author(s) meant it to behave like that.

[Radium Editor]

Seems like I didn't read the descripton for ptoffset.mod in the link you gave me:

ProTracker 1/2 has a slightly buggy offset implementation which adds the offset in two different places (according to tracker_notes.txt coming with libxmp: "once before playing this instrument (as is expected), and once again after this instrument has been played").

Does "Professional Tracker" exploit this bug? Either way, I don't think I'll support it in Radium.