User talk:Halftheisland

Latest revision as of 14:32, 14 September 2018

To try to get some order and logic to the Audio and Music file types, aren't "trackers" of the sort as some you've posted more in the area of instrument control than direct storage of audio (e.g., more like MIDI than WAV)... and thus, belonging in the Music rather than Audio section? Or does this ontology not make sense and need to be rethought? Dan Tobias (talk) 17:38, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

(Maybe Audio and Music should be merged, and then grouped into subcategories such as Musical Instrument Control and Sound Wave Storage?) Dan Tobias (talk) 17:44, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I think trackers pose an interesting problem in the Music vs. Sound issue - they produce single, self-contained files which hold both the instructions for playback and (often) the samples / instruments. They aren't, as far as I'm aware, generally used to control a standalone instrument in the same sense as MIDI, although I believe some of the Adlib trackers work in a similar way, in that they pass instructions for playback to a specific brand or type of soundcard.Halftheisland (talk) 18:24, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

To try and get at this point in a way that allows us some preliminary organisation, I would suggest that anything which requires the emulation of a specific piece of hardware for playback (like, I believe, some of the Adlib trackers or the PSF variants) should be categorised under Music. Anything which can be played back by any player possessing the correct format info / codecs should go under Audio. Not sure if that's helpful. Halftheisland (talk) 18:35, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe the best bet would be to create a unified "Audio and Music" category, with subheaders (just like the Graphics category has subheaders for raster, vector, animation, etc.) like "Sound waves", "Musical instrument control", "Trackers", and "Musical Notation" (e.g., guitar tabs)? Dan Tobias (talk) 03:28, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, that sounds like the best solution. That also gives us, I think, a way to deal with files which are audio-related but not strictly audio (e.g. FLP (FruityLoops project files). I'll start splitting it up as best as I can later today. Halftheisland (talk) 14:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

(Never mind, I see a good start has been made on that) Halftheisland (talk) 14:23, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Audio and music

You're doing great with the audio and music stuff... keep it up! I never would have imagined there were so many different formats. Dan Tobias (talk) 12:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Dan! I thought I had a handle on it but the more research I do the more I discover... still hundreds (at least) to add. Wish I had more time at the moment to dedicate to this - I've got a long way to go before I can match your prodigious output. Halftheisland (talk) 13:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. Now, since you seem to be the resident expert on sound and music (honestly... if I were tasked to come up with a list of formats in that area, I'd come up with MP3 and WAV and RealAudio and MIDI and whatever the hell are the formats iTunes and Windows Music Player use, and then if I dug around and googled and stuff I'd maybe come up with a dozen or so others, but not the hundreds that are on the list now.) But anyway, do you know what those handful of formats still left at the bottom of the audio page are, which still say "unclassified"? Like Onyx Music File? That's got a whole article on it, but it's still "unclassified". It says it's "MOD-like", and the other "MOD" stuff seems mostly connected with trackers, but this one doesn't seem to? Maybe you have some clue what the heck it is, then? Dan Tobias (talk) 12:16, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Onyx Music File can probably be moved into the Trackers section - it's similar enough to the other tracker formats to merit inclusion there (I'm no expert, just an enthusiastic amateur, but I would imagine it's either a modified form of another tracker format or was created using a tracker internal to the group). As for the rest of them, I have an inkling about a couple - the MSX stuff probably belongs either in Trackers or Emulated - but haven't found a huge amount of info about the rest. I suspect a lot of them will turn out to be streamed GameCube / Playstation / Xbox audio. That whole section will need some serious reorganisation at some point soon, as it seems like a lot of those are the same audio format / codec with different extensions. Once I've tackled the low-hanging fruit from e.g. format specs on the Modland FTP, I'll see about sorting those out and trying to properly classify the remaining unclassified formats. Halftheisland (talk) 12:43, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Enthusiastic amateurs seem to be what makes this site work... Dan Tobias (talk) 12:48, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome back!

Glad to see you editing again. There's probably no reason you couldn't put that ABC page into its real place even if it's unfinished; there are plenty of stubs around less finished than that. Dan Tobias (talk) 11:46, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Dan - good to be doing it again. The reason I've got the ABC page where it is just now is that it's not really stub-level unfinished (i.e. functionally complete but lacking information),it just tails off halfway through. Going to try and get it finished (or at least flesh out some more of the structure) this afternoon / tonight and put it in place Halftheisland (talk) 12:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

[edit] Other program producing .xm files

I do know of one other program (other than DigiTracker and FastTracker) that can produce .XM files, which is AmigaMML, because I wrote it. (AmigaMML was originally designed to produce .MOD musics (which is why it is called "AmigaMML"), so you need the #EXTENDED command for .XM output.) By default, the tracker name field says "AmigaMML" and the version number, although the #TRACKER command can be used to override this. AmigaMML cannot editing existing .XM files; it is a MML compiler. One more program that makes (and edits) .XM files is OpenMPT, which someone else wrote. --Zzo38 (talk) 14:32, 14 September 2018 (UTC)