Pulsar Synth Demo 1

Here’s a quick demo of where I am with the new synthesis engine which will (hopefully) form the foundation of a new tracker, “Pulsar”.

Pulsar Demo

As I mentioned before, it’s running at 240hz (updated 4 times per frame) which makes for some interesting effects.

Load up the ROM and you can modify some of the synth settings live:

Hold B to modify vibrato: then U/D changes depth and L/R changes speed

Hold A to modify pitch sweep : then U/D changes speed

Hold SELECT to modify arpeggio: then L/R changes speed

To change the note, just use U/D without any other keys pressed.

The other control is quite an interesting one. Everyone knows of the side effect of writing to the upper frequency register whereby the phase of the square waves is reset and you get a tiny click, often evident in vibrato on certain notes (unless you employ blargg’s genius trick of using the hardware pitch sweep to write the upper register for you, click free, as used in NTRQ, amongst others).

Because of the super fast refresh speed of Pulsar, you actually get a kind of self modulation if you constantly write the upper frequency. Press START to toggle it on/off. I’m going to have it as an option in the instruments. Try turning it on and changing the note, lower pitches have a more dramatic effect.