I noticed that there's a discussion about converting MPEG to Replay, while this question isn't related to these formats, I was just wondering if anyone knew of a way to put files in Sound Tracker, Tracker or Digital Symphony format on to CD.

I was just wondering if anyone knew of a way to put files in Sound Tracker, Tracker or Digital Symphony format on to CD.

In theory you could capture the sound buffer as the tracker tune was playing, recording it as a WAV-type file.

In practice, unless there's a utility to do this (anyone want to offer one?), it would be easier just to record it.

Oh, and don't forget that tracker tunes can repeat, whereas CD tunes generally don't.

In theory you could capture the sound buffer as the tracker tune was playing, recording it as a WAV-type file.

There is a program to do this, but I can't remember what it's called

Thanks for the advice Jason!

That's alright!

I assume that you know when I'm talking about the Tracker format that I mean the converted Amiga music format.

Considering I co-wrote Desktop Tracker, have written other tracker-like players and I compose my own music, I have a pretty good idea as to what's going on.

I don't know much about how music CDs work, but I thought I could extract the samples from the Tracker or Sound Tracker (QTM) file, convert them to Wav format and then burn them to CD.

These are two different music schemes.

Tracker tunes are very similar to MIDI - they basically tell the computer what note to play, and what effects to put on the notes. Unlike MIDI, however, each instrument is sampled so you don't get differences between instrument sets.

CD music is like a tape recording of the sound, with all the instruments mixed.

This would be okay if the samples didn't have to repeat to be used in a music track, but they do.

This would only work if you wanted to hear the individual notes at a fixed frequency - as a rough guide as to what happens, *SetType a Tracker tune as something like Data, or Tracker Sample, and load it into !SoundCon, or !Sonor (which is available on my web site) and play it. You may have to try different formats (mu-law, 8-bit signed, 8-bit unsigned are the more common ones). There'll be a lot of crap at the start which is the tune (hopefully it won't blow up any HiFi speakers you may have plugged in), but you'll see what happens.

Interesting what you said about the sound buffer, how do I access that? I've never programmed sound before.

For 8-bit sound system machines, the sound system is documented in PRM4. This can be used on a 16-bit machine, but the tracker player may not use the 8-bit emulation layer. However, the process is the same.

Basically you claim the sound buffer handler, but pass on all the calls to the sound buffer to the original one (which you will be passed). Once the buffer is filled, control returns back to you and you can replicate the data to somewhere in memory (or even change the entry pointers to your memory block which would save lots of CPU). For an 8-bit system, you'd need to remix the samples to 16-bit before you can create your WAV file.

Oh, and you'd also have to resample it - the 8-bit sound system is 20.833KHz by default, whereas CDs are 44.1KHz. For the 16-bit sound system, you'd have to read the current rate - it's normally a multiple of 44.1KHz (or rather a division of), so resampling it is a simple matter of interpolation.

For an 8-bit system, you'd need to remix the samples to 16-bit before you can create your WAV file.

Oh, and you'd also have to resample it - the 8-bit sound system is 20.833KHz by default, whereas CDs are 44.1KHz. For the 16-bit sound system, you'd have to read the current rate - it's normally a multiple of 44.1KHz (or rather a division of), so resampling it is a simple matter of interpolation.

Wouldn't the CD burning software allow for the resampling itself?

Wouldn't the CD burning software allow for the resampling itself?

I don't know about RISC OS software, and I'd only trust 'doze software to do it if it asked if I wanted to resample (or there was an option box for automatic resampling).