Players overview

Arkos Tracker 3 comes with several players. Which one to use depends on your needs.

  • AKG: Your go-to player. Good balance between speed and memory.
  • AKY: Fast player (12 scanlines on CPC!). But the music are also bigger. In league with FAP (see below).
  • AKM: Optimized in memory. An interesting alternative to CNGSoft’s Chip’n’Sfx. But much more powerful!
  • FAP: CPU stable, fastest with an excellent compression ratio, by Hicks/Vanity and Gozeur/Vanity! For demos.
  • SE: Stand-alone Sound effect players. Useful if you don’t need music, only sound effects.
  • MOD: Player for MODule (full-sample).

What player to use?

To make it simple:

  • Working on a game? AKG or AKM (more limited).
  • Working on a demo? FAP (CPC only) or AKY (multi-platform), compare.
  • Working on a sized-limited demo? AKM.
  • Need more than 3 channels? AKY.
  • Need samples (no PSG sound!)? MOD.
  • Need short samples along PSG sounds (i.e. digidrums)? AKY (see this tutorial).
  • Need pitched samples along with PSG sounds? AKY (see this tutorial).
  • Don’t need music, only sound effects? SE.

RAM/ROM players

The RAM players are using self-modifying code as an optimization. This is a drawback for ROM productions, so ROM players have been developed: they use a buffer instead, at a small cost of CPU (the size of the buffer is indicated in the sources). See below for the availability.

Hardware availability

Z80

  • Amstrad CPC: all the players: AKG, AKY, AKM, FAP, SE, MOD.
  • Amstrad PCW: AKG, AKY.
  • MSX: AKG, AKY, AKM, SE.
  • ZX Spectrum: AKG, AKY, AKM, SE.
  • SpecNext: AKY (9 channels).
  • Spectravideo SVI 318/328: AKG.

Player capabilities:

  • Sound effects support for AKx, plus SE (stand-alone sound effect player).
  • ROM version for all the players (except MOD and FAP).
  • Support of player configuration to optimize both CPU and memory.
  • Digidrums (see this tutorial).
  • FAP is currently only supported on CPC, single PSG, no sound effects.
  • Supported extensions (AKY only):
    • CPC PlayCity (9 channels)
    • PCW TurboSound (6 channels)
    • Spectrum TurboSound (6 channels)
    • MSX FPGA Psg (6 channels)
    • MSX Darky (6 channels)

68000 (Atari ST)

  • AKY, without sound effect support, but with an optional SID implementation. Player made by ggn, to be downloaded here.

6502 (Apple 2, Oric, Atari 8-bit)

  • AKY only.
  • Supported machines:
    • Apple 2
    • Oric (both thanks to Arnaud Cocquière)
    • Atari 8-bit with 48K RAM (800 / 800XL / 1200XL / 600XL / 65XE/ 130XE / XEGS) plus the SONari extension (thanks to Krzysztof Dudek).

Vectrex

  • A AKY player exists for AT3, made by Malban. Check out his repository.

VG5000

  • A basic buzzer player was done in AT2 with the Lightweight (LW) player. Since AT3 does not have the LW player anymore, I’m waiting for some interest from the VG5000 community before adapting it to the AKM.

Elektronika MS 0511

Other platform?

  • Do you need a support for another platform? Contact me and we may find a way!

Samples support

Platform interoperability

Can a song exported in a PSG of 1 mHz (like on an Amstrad CPC) sounds well on a Spectrum? It depends mostly on the player, and a bit on the song:

  • AKY encodes all periods, software and hardware. So it will sound different from a platform to another. You should export the song once again, targeting the right PSG frequency.
  • AKG and AKM songs are composed of notes, not period. So in theory, the song can be directly used to another platform. However, pitch effects are period-based, so they will sound differently.

Morality: listen to the song on the real hardware, or load the song in AT3 and set the PSG according to the hardware your are using. Correct the pitch effects/tables if needed! So this means that you may need several versions of a song if you plan on targeting several platforms.