About interfaces, music and more

My respect, All!

I love Spectrums. I've been interested in them since childhood. That is why, having gained access to Fido, the first thing I did was subscribe to the ZX.SPECT-
RUM echo. The thought that I would have the opportunity to communicate with thousands of like-minded people wandered for a long time in the recesses of my fevered brain. And
finally, it is allowed to come true!
Some problems that concern me, I want to bring to the attention of the readers of this echo. I’ll make a reservation right away, I’m reading it for the first time since July 28, 1997, and for this reason I have little idea (and that’s putting it mildly) of what, in fact, it’s talking about. Some of the main problems that I had to face and that I want to solve with your help will be discussed below.
Undoubtedly, the ease of working with a program and its attractiveness largely depends on its appearance, on the implementation of the user’s way of communicating with it, which is called the user interface. Each of us, undoubtedly, remembers those programs where the above interface not only provided the convenience of working with the programs, but also gave them the right to life, in some cases, despite even minor shortcomings of a purely technical nature (compare Artist 2 and Art Studio, ASM and Pro
Tracker 2...3, Tasm and ZX Asm, Mons and STS, TLW and ZX WORD...). Perhaps I'm not entirely right, but I'm just sorry for someprograms on the ZX that have significant functionality next to, albeit small, but annoying “features” of the interfaces. I can already hear the shouts: you can’t please everyone, taste or color... But we are not the first, we are not the last! A number of programs on the PC provide the user with a variety of Setups, configuration files and other things. Only here on the Speccy we adore there are not enough such programs (I hope for now).
However, there is something to talk about. In the meantime, one more question: how are things going with digital music on the ZX? I looked through it, I broke a bunch of different editors - and I realized: there is still some groundwork, the quality of music for covox can be improved. And not only quality. But here is a completely legitimate question: is this necessary? After all, there is GS... I wanted to write a cooler
editor, for all the covoxes, with powerful, by the way, settings for pla-yer, editor, memory manager, etc., but I really don’t know if all this was not in vain...
By the way, regarding in vain - not in vain: I’m finishing writing an assembler
for the microcontroller KM1816BE48 (one passenger asked for it here) and then I thought - what if someone else needs it... :)
Well, okay, we got tired of it - and good-bye, it’s already the first hour. And whoever has
something to say - go for it, that’s what echoes were invented for.

Sincerely, Andrey (AKA Mad Coder/ILW)

P.S. If youyou've seen my Sea-boot, know that I respect constructive criticism.

hello, Andrey Teplyakov! I remember that on 29 Jul 97 you took it and launched
in All with this:

AT> However, there is something to talk about. In the meantime, one more question: how are things going with digital music on the ZX? I looked through it, I broke a bunch of different
AT> editors - and I realized: there is still some groundwork, the quality of music for covox
AT> can be improved. And not only quality. But here is a completely legitimate question: is this necessary? After all, there is GS... I wanted to write a cooler
AT> editor, for all the covoxes, with a powerful, by the way, setting up pla-
AT> yer, editor, memory manager, etc., but I don’t know if all this is not in vain
AT>...

It’s necessary, only for GS. The fact is that you won't get very far with Covox anyway - it eats up processor time... But for example, on GS you can and should make a very good editor. For example, to look for ideas, I advise
to look at FastTracker on a PC, and also get acquainted with Amiga things - there are also
a lot of finds... And you need not only a MOD-Editor, but also a good Wav-Editor.
Of course, with a floppy disk you won’t get far on this topic, but with a hard drive you can
at least rip music from compacts. And what? You say that GS has 4
hardware channels of 8 bits each? What if you combine them by 2? Then we can play
at least 14 bits. For example, on the Amiga this is done like this, and about this
possibilityEven the creators themselves did not suspect it. On one channel in a pair the minimum volume is set, on the second - maximum. The lowest 8 bits are thrown into the channel with low volume, and the remaining 6 bits into the highest 6 bits of the channel with high volume. A copy
of the two most significant bits of the first is sent to the lower 2 bits of this channel. I don’t know why this is so. That's all the technology... And
you can come up with so much...

bye, with all the best wishes, Pavel Fedin.