Adlib Tracker II - the official website

Hey! Very nice software here. I recently discovered this gem and I have built retro pc just to try it on a real thing! Unfortunately it does not work :(. The program seems to work fine but when I play something there's just some random stuff/noise. Can you help me troubleshoot this?

@european: Sorry but I don't see any particular reason for certificates on this page. It's all read-only data, only one input sent from your computer to the site is actually messages you write here and are stored in SQL database on hosting server. Site evidently doesn't contain any hints of vulnerability or hidden code, which could harm your computer's safety. I'm not against security, but keeping this site online already costs few more bucks (for site hosting and domain registration) which all go on us (me and Encore), as software is completely free of charge. Such change would require additional "work budget" for keeping site online with the need of certificate updates..... in my opinion (for any browser out there), it's still better for the site to be HTTP than HTTPS with expired certificate :-) I value your interest here, but let's focus back on the FM topic. Thanks for understanding.

for security and privacy

you can use let's encrypt for certificates

@european: ??? For what reason?!

@keenmaster486: I'm not aware of copyright for most of the songs, except this HSC Player (.hsc files) stuff which was used in some commercial game back then. All the rest should be just demo scene or home composing stuff, of course I cannot confirm you that authors would be down with using their stuff in some commercial (or even non-commercial) game, sure it would be better to get in contact with particular authors first and ask them ;)

Hey subz3ro - first of all, ATII is awesome, keep up the good work! Secondly, I'm wondering what the policy is for usage of the demo tracks included with the program. I'm trying to start development of a new game for DOS and some of those tracks I'd really love to see included. Thanks! -keenmaster

@theorize: Easy, I definitely value any your interest :) Have fun with the tracker and your further discovering of new stuff ;)

You are correct, I just installed the new version and gave it a whirl, I like the changes :)... and I wasn't asking you to change it I was just wondering why it was done that way, trust me I appreciate every bit of work you've done on AT2 and am extremely happy to have this tool, without it I may not have gotten into OPL3 (or FM in general, which would be a shame). I'm still learning to use the tracker, most of what I've done so far is learning FM synthesis, but I would like to start working on some actual tunes soon. Thanks for the new release, it is appreciated :)

@theorize: I agree that the 4op instruments could be done more elegant way, but in my opinion, improvements made in latest version have already made it quite easy to use and store in file system (at least compared to previous versions) The reason why there are no delegated 4op instruments is simple..... changes in UI necessary to achieve this would be considerably huge and unfortunately I don't have time (nor mood) for that anymore :( In addition, current implementation exactly makes use of 4op concept such as-is designed by engineer who did it for Yamaha and OPL3 chip... every modification to it would be just convenience tweak of input for users, nothing else.
Enough of arguing and defense, I have some strange feeling you probably don't know about these latest changes for handling 4op instruments that I'm talking about, do you? :) Here is some hint: just toggle 4op instrument pairs with Shift+O in Instrument Control panel, and see what happens (with editing, saving, loading etc.)

I am curious, why not make individual instruments 4-0p capable, rather than using two 2-Op instruments? This makes it a bit unfriendly if one wants to save 4-Op patches for later use.

@subz3ro My poking around with HW reads of AdT2 source resulted in no emu rape and lotsa tempo instability, with any significant event in the user interface. So I decide leave that alone.
This make me rethink issue. And with a bit of asking around, I've been suggested to emulate reads and only pass writes to hardware. This works well so far(except for some detection issues).
I think the main issue here is actually inpout32 I/O calls taking waaaaay more time than raw I/O with raw OPLx/clone hardware.
I may also want to look into PortTalk as opposed to inpout32. I've had some positive experiences hex editing dos executables to point all the way up to 0x9400 :P(except for timing, since NTVDM sucks bumarse)

When I feel like programming again, I would like to ask you a thing or two of programming the OPL2/OPL3, via e-mail.

@passing_by: These delays for OPL writes are required for normal function on hardware chip. It's already reduced from 6/36 read cycles as for OPL2 chip to 0/26 read cycles for OPL3 chip, which still seems to do problems occasionally for specific hardware, though, so users have to increase the wait cycles to those OPL2 reference values (with setting option opl_latency=1) in order to troubleshoot horrible playback issues.
Actually, I never got any feedback regarding OPL-passthrough other than from NeuralNET, who came with this idea and prepared PortTalk package and tutorial for DOSBox-HW version. Perhahps I could add an option opl_latency=2 for OPL-passthrough to skip all the wait cycles for particular use without PortTalk driver (which I assume should be working fine, since NeuralNET didn't report any playback issues). Just send me your modified "adt2opl3.pas" file to my email address, so I can precisely compare what everything have you changed, because as mentioned, I don't have opportunity to thoroughly test such changes on any suitable hardware.

Ohai, I've been mucking around with DOSBox sourcecode and an OPL hardware passthrough patch(by way of inpout32).
I noticed that your replayer heavily spams OPL reads during playback.

What happens:
1. Tune in question is fm63b_rv.a2m
2. Play tune.
3. Reach 4OP section.
4. DosBox shits itself with extreme slowdown due to all the waiting it has to do for the reads.

What I did was comment out read call of inpout32 and simply return value 0. Lo an behold, no more deadly slowdowns.

@Proto Modulator: There is no support for MIDI interface in current version. You can try MidiSynth mode which was part of AT2 ver.2.3.52 (still available for download), but be aware that it uses only very limited functionality out of MPU401.

Hi! I'm wondering how to access midi in Adlib Tracker II.

Thanks subz3ro, i have posted the issues to the group, lets see now.
Long time user btw, we have exchanged some emails long time ago reporting crashes and such :)
Atb

@jsf: I personally have too crappy Android phone to check this issue on... however, in my opinion it would be better if you join the AT2 User Group on Facebook and put this information directly there. It will have then slightly better chances to be seen and answered ;) I don't think many people check this Message Board here regularly, though.

I am running at2 on an android phone with Magic DosBox. I have tried aDos and DosBox Turbo but none of them work as expected.
Here a few issues common in all I have found:
. the sound emulation is very low res, even if with all settings set to max/best resolution
. when editing patterns, it's seems impossible to insert pattern break effect, every time I click D, C is inserted instead. Other effects are inserted fine.
. when in pattern editor if I click Ctrl+E, Instrument Control window opens alright, everything seems to work fine, until I hit ESC and nothing happens. If i press TAB opens instrument editor, hit ESC and go back to Instrument Control, press Shift+TAB go to macros, hit ESC again and go back to Instrument Control, Ctrl+O opens octave window, Ctrl+T transpose, in short I can travel around at2 pretty normally using the respective shortcuts, but Ctrl+P to go back to Pattern Editor... from Instrument Control there's no way to get back to Pattern Editor. ESC works fine in any other window. Could anyone replicate the issue and confirm this please?
Im using Magic Dosbox because it allows the user to create extra shortcuts on screen, one being for opening and closing the keyboard.
here 2 pictures with custom shortcuts
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/723155/000/Screenshot_2016-06-10-11-13-10.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/723155/000/Screenshot_2016-06-10-11-47-04.png

Hello,

for Android, you can download a Dos Emulator (I recommend Magic Dosbox), and use the dos version of adlib tracker II, it works very well! (just increase the memory to the maximum)
If you can use an external keyboard, it's even better. I've tested it on my phone (but with the virtual keyboard in portrait mode it's quite small), on a tablet (it's correct, I just need a bluetooth keyboard so I could use it in landscape mode) and on a TV with an android HDMI dongle, it's perfect!

Thanks a lot for this amazing tracker.

@Player X: Nope. There is currently no version for Android.

Hi subz3ro,
I'm Player X. Do you've a version of Adlib Tracker II for Android?

Thank you very much!

@Alif: Ctrl+Tab+Down to scroll screen down to visualization section and Ctrl+Tab+Up to scroll back to main screen. In SDL version, use adtrack2_hq1 or adtrack2_hq2 to get extended screen views.

Hello.i not know? What press button visualizer what click keys thanks.

Hi. Joking aside, in principle it would be possible to port AT2 to any platform now, as we have it completely compilable by Free Pascal Compiler, and SDL library is also available for almost all targets (version 2.0 is available for Android too), so as well-known idiom states - Never say never :D But I'm now focusing on other things, to be honest, which have more priority and more common use, though.

Hi. To your question I wish I still had my dos machine with Turtle Beach soundcard, which sounded very good and had a real opl3 chip from Yamaha, but someone stole my PC with all my fm music several years ago. My best tracks have been made between 2003 and 2004 but now they are lost. The windows version already sounds good, so I'm eager to hear the improvements you're mentioning. Do you plan a smartphone version some day ? Ha ha it would just be tremendous :)

Hello Benjamin. It's cool to have you on board :) I thought to myself if you will show up, when Christophe mentioned to me that you are still in contact. Do you still have a DOS machine with OPL3 soundcard, or are you using SDL version with OPL3 emulation? In latter case, I can inform you that the version from page is not yet the best "working material" what we currently have. There's SDL version with much better OPL3 emulation to come soon ;)

Hi Subz3ro, I'm so happy to get your tracker that I feel like the past 25 years didnt exist ! I'm eager to make new tunes some day when I'll get used to it. Cheers !

@eric: You have to run AT2 in pure DOS - or - if you are running in Windows, make it run fullscreen (not windowed). But I strongly recommend to run in DOS mode. This is possible to setup for adtrack2.exe with right-click and context menu.

Hi. I'm totally new to AdLib Tracker II, and anything that has to do with FM synths, really. I was wondering how I can set up AdT2 to fill up the whole screen, because running on a old Toshiba Satellite Pro 460CDX with no settings changed, everything is mushed together and windows split in half and just blech.

Johan, I would love to see a video of dosbox and the usb device, it seems really interesting. Is it easy to set up?

@Johan: Looks interesting... great. It would be even greater, if you could supply us with more information on how to obtain this USB device and where can one get the special DosBox version for download... I would then put all this stuff to FAQ section. ;)

Hi,

did you know you DON'T need old hardware to get opl3/adlib support :)
there is a device on USB with expansion boards with yamaha chips.
check this out: https://youtu.be/9HjqZp9uLwY

link to the site: http://gimic.net/index.php?Getting%20Started%20with%20G.I.M.I.C

i use a special edition of dosbox to use the OPL3 on adlib tracker 2 :)

regards from The Netherlands

@Ludd: You can try installing DOS, but I barely believe that soundcard's driver will give you better results with OPL3 emulation than SDL verion, even if you will be able to make it work. Some notebooks are simply not suitable for AT2 in any aspect - if they are yet (HW-wise) too old to decently run the SDL version, and they are already not containing real OPL3 chip, this is the case then :-)

thanks!
I tried the SDL-Linux version. It sounds right but glitchy and overloading the ram (just 144 mb).
So, the SDL-version does emulation of the OPL3 by software, right?
Does the NeoMagic soundcard must do emulation of OPL3 stuff by hardware in DOS native system? It make sense if I try installing DOS for that?
Is FreeDOS good?

@Ludd: My Gateway Solo 2500 notebook uses NeoMagic NMA 2 and it handles OPL3 stuff very fine, but it is an ISA bus card. From what I was able to find, it seems that this your NeoMagic 2200 is a PCI bus card, and only uses AC97 codec. What you can try is using SDL-Linux version and see how it will perform on this "older" hardware...

hi people,
i have an old laptop with linux debian installed:
Dell Latitude CPi A366ST. Sound Controller: NeoMagic nm 2200 av. "Soundblaster compatible".
Do you know if AT2 will work?

cheers.
greatings from Argentina

@Jalex: I don't have any experience with Mac's and their operating system, so to current moment, it's not planned from my side. But as recent version is pure Free Pascal Compiler except this one C module for emulation of YMF262 chip, I think it should be possible to compile it for Mac OS X too, as SDL library is available for this platform, and so is available GCC, which means it's just question of simple code change (adding compiler directives for Mac OS X, which could be mostly the same branch like for Linux) and compiling... which means something, that should be really no big deal for anybody (with basic or medium knowledge in programming) who owns computer with Mac OS X :)

Hey ! Thank you for your work. Great tracker. Just one question: OS X version it's possible? Yeah I know about dos box))) it's just fetish, native OS X version.

Thnx!

Hello, just wanted to say that it's great when you develop programs like this. It's important to keep FM synthesis alive! I'm especially interested about old DOS games that use FM synthesis.

@David: Don't know if it's his real name, but he distributed this track on Youtube under account Roger Ojala. (check out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meGu4RkiWT8)

Does anyone know who did the track 'Square' in the modules folder? it is amazing but I don't know who the artist is!

@David: No need to thank, I'm glad to implement reasonable and useful feature requests -- and this yours is very good example ;)

@subz3ro Thanks very much I will check the downloads section over the next few weeks. I really appreciate you thinking about adding the feature!

@David: Ok, this sounds feasible... even though Ctrl+1..8 keys are already occupied by setting of octave, so perhaps it will be Ctrl+Shift+1..4 for triggering mute on operators. I will make beta version when this feature is done, so check the bottom of Downloads section from time to time ;)

>I'm not certain what you mean with muting operators.... setting operator's volume temporary to 0?

Yes, that is right! The feature is described on page 7 of the dx11 manual as 'operator on/off'

http://www.synthfool.com/docs/Yamaha/DX_Series/Yamaha%20DX-11%20Owners%20Manual.pdf

I imagine a toggle where while on the instrument screen :

ctrl + 1 sets OP1 output level to 0 / pressing again returns it to the original output level.
ctrl + 2 sets OP2 output level to 0 etc

This makes it a bit easier to for example just work on one pair of operators when making a sound or to turn off the modulators so you can get the carrier envelope just right.