ProTracker documentation

The official handbook

"...The use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments, which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."

John Cage

"It is not hard to compose, but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table."

Johannes Brahms

Table of contents:

Introduction
Gadgets
Nice to know
How to create music using ProTracker
Miscellaneous
For the technical minded

Introduction

This chapter contains basic information about ProTracker and how and why to get started using it.

What is ProTracker?
Legal mush
How to start ProTracker

What is ProTracker?

ProTracker is a so-called "Tracker", a program designed for creating music savable as MOD-files. The most significant difference between ProTracker and other trackers is that ProTracker is based on the original tracker, SoundTracker. It also has more built-in tools than almost any other tracker and supports all aspects of the MOD file-format. (With the exception of 100-pattern modules between V3.0 and V3.50) If you don't count MIDI, about 99% of all music on the Amiga is made on ProTracker.
The ProTracker has become a standard for music and the MOD-files are even supported by most sample-based music programs on the PC. (I've even seen some players for Macintosh that supported them!) We must admit that the user-interface for the ProTracker is neither multitasking-friendly nor does it conform to the standard GUI guidelines. The reason for this is that the GUI consumes quite a bit of the program itself, and it would be a very time-consuming job to port it to use the system. (Besides, not all keyboard-shortcuts are comfortably read through the system.)

Legal mush

All users and distributors must read this!

• This program is fully public domain software, and may therefore freely be copied by anyone to anyone.
• The authors will not accept any charges demanded for distribution and/or copying of this program which   exceeds the nominal charge for postage, handling and disks.
• The authors takes no responsibility for any damages caused by use or misuse of this program, though all efforts are taken to make it as faultless as possible.
• This program is law-established intellectual achievement, and is therefore regulated by laws concerning such, where such laws exists.
• By using and/or distributing this program, you indicate your agreement with these paragraphs.
• If there are any of these paragraphs you do not understand, you are obliged to contact the authors and  ask for further information before indicating your agreement through the previous paragraph.
• Any violation of these paragraphs is both illegal and immoral.

How to start ProTracker

ProTracker may be started from both CLI and Workbench. (Type name in CLI or doubleclick on icon from Workbench) No arguments or tooltypes are supported yet, though.

Gadgets

This chapter should explain all gadgets and gizmos in ProTracker.

Mainscreen
Song section
Sample section
Edit options
Sample edit
Chord editor
Filter editor
Edit gadgets
Setup screen
Setup screen - Flags
Disk operations
Sampler
Volume requester

Main screen

CLOSEGADGET
This is a small box located in the upper left corner of the ProTracker screen. Pressing this will quit.

QUADRASCOPE
This is 4 "boxes" located in the upper right part of your screen. These shows the waveform currently being played on each channel. Clicking in any of these will disable the respective channel and ghost the box.

DEPTHGADGET
This is another box located in the upper right corner of the ProTracker screen. Pressing this will push the ProTracker screen behind all other screens currently open.

DATE
Shows the current date. (Atleast your computers idea of it!)

TIME
Shows the system time. PLAY Shows the time elapsed since ProTracker started playing.

EDIT OPTIONS (Numbers 1 - 7)
The edit options represent several small "tools" grouped into (somewhat) clear categories. The upper line will state what these functions will affect.
The numbers are:

1 - Edit options
2 - Sample edit
3 - Chord editor
4 - Filter editor

STATUS
Shows a somewhat descriptive text describing what ProTracker is doing.

CHIP
Shows how much chip-memory there is left on your Amiga.

FAST
Shows how much fast-memory there is left on your Amiga.

TUNE
Shows how much memory the current module uses.

PUBL
Shows how much memory (any type) there is left on your Amiga.

PATTERNNUMBER GADGET
This is a small box to the left of the BPM gadget, and represents the number of the pattern currently being edited. Click on it to type in a new number.

BPM
The tempo gadget on the status bar is for setting the CIA speed, if CIA timing is used. The gadget will be updated every time you set the speed using the F command (if CIA that is). This gadget does not show actual beats per minute unless the speed is 6! The main screen has some indicators on the left side of the statustext.
The indicators are as follows: M S M (Metronome ON, Split keyboard ON, Multi keyboard ON) I 0-9 (AutoInsert ON, AutoInsert Macro)

Main screen - Song section

SONGNAME
This defines the name of your module.

MASTERVOLUME
Defines the volume of your module. This gadget affects playing only, and the setting is not saved along with your module in current version of ProTracker.

POS
Defines the current position in the position-table.

I(NSERT)
Insert a position into your song.

D(ELETE)
Delete a position from your song.

PATTERN
Defines which pattern will be played at the selected position.

LENGTH (SONG)
Defines the length of the song.

PLAY
Will play the song from the current position in the song. The pointer turns yellow, just to show you what's going on.

PATTERN
Will play the current pattern which is shown at the bottom of the screen. The pointer turns yellow here as well. Holding down the right button while pressing play,pattern or record will play from the current patternposition.

CLEAR
Will first ask you what you want to clear. You can clear either all, song or samples. In addition to the gadgets you can use "A" for All, "O" for Song, "S" for samples and "C" or ESC for Cancel.

STOP
Will stop playing of songs and patterns, recording, and will turn edit mode off.

RECORD
Will put you in edit mode, but also play the current pattern or song. You can select this in the Edit Options menu. While the pattern or song is playing, you can type in notes and numbers from the keyboard, and they will appear in the pattern as it scrolls. The notes and numbers will also be quantized to the nearest slot, so that keeping a steady rhythm is no problem. The pointer will turn blue here as well as in the the normal edit mode.

SETUP
Will go to the Setup Screen

CONTINUE
Will continue the module from the last stopped position.

EDIT
Will put you in edit mode. The pointer turns blue, and you can enter notes and numbers from the keyboard. Use the arrowkeys to move up/down and left/right in the pattern. Entering a note or a number will cause the pattern to jump one or more slots down.

DISK OP.
Will go to the Disk operation screen

Main screen - Sample section

SAMPLENAME
This defines the name of the current sample.

SAMPLE
The number of the chosen sample. You can have up to 31, or hex $1F samples in a song. Pressing both mousebuttons at the same time will set the samplenumber to zero. You can then record the pattern with sample 0 to prevent ProTracker from setting the volume each time you play a new note.

VOLUME
Use this to set the volume the current sample will be played with.

FINETUNE
Tune your untuned samples to match the others.
0 436.4 hz -1 432.1 hz
1 439.0 hz -2 429.6 hz
2 441.6 hz -3 426.3 hz
3 445.1 hz -4 423.1 hz
4 447.8 hz -5 419.9 hz
5 451.5 hz -6 416.7 hz
6 455.2 hz -7 414.4 hz
7 457.0 hz -8 412.0 hz
To experienced musicians, this table clearly will seem wrong. A normal tuning should be 440! The reason to this is that ProTracker uses NTSC periods for playback.

LENGTH (SAMPLE)
The Length gadgets are simply used for setting the length of the sample. A sample can be up to 64k, or $fffe long. You can add workspace behind the sample by increasing the length and letting go of the button. ProTracker will ask if you are sure, and if you are, allocate more memory for the sample.

REPEAT
Here you set the start of the sampleloop.

REPLEN
Here you set the length of the sampleloop.

LOAD SAMPLE
Will simply try to load the current samplename. Use this when you've fucked up in the sample editor, and have destroyed a sample.

KILL SAMPLE
Will remove the current sample from your module.

SAMPLER
Will go to the Sampler screen

Main screen - Edit options

QUANTIZE
Will move the notes you record to every n'th slot. Entering 00 will turn off the quantizing, and the notes you play will always be inserted at the patternposition you are at. Entering 01 will quantize the notes the the nearest slot according to the speed. i.e. if you play a note after the first half has been played, it will be quantized to the slot below. Entering a value like 8 will quantize to every 8th note, and so on. Got that?

METROSAMP
[This option is not currently implemented, nor documented!]

METRONOME
A metronome is a steady sound which helps you keep the speed when recording. (I'm not particulary good at explaining, try it out!) The first number is the speed of the metronome, and the second is the channel to play it on. The Sample used for metronomes is always sample $1F. Load your own favourite metronome sample. The metronome will always be played at C-3, but you can still change the volume and loop values. To turn off the metronome, just set the speed or channel to 0.

MULTI
This table is used with the multi keyboard option. The four numbers represent what channel each channel will jump to next. 1-2, 2-3, 3-4 and so on.

RECORD HOLD
When this is set to "on", record will not start until the first keypress.

SAMPLE
This selects wether the edit buttons should affect all samples, or the current samples only.

RECORD
This selects wether the record function should record a pattern, or the entire song.

PLAYNOTE
When set to "multi", ProTracker will jump to another channel after you play a note on the keyboard. This makes it possible to play two or more notes at the same time (very useful with midi).

EDIT
This selects wether ProTracker should go right when inserting notes, or down to the next step.

Main screen - Sample edit

To the left of the title bar is a box which states what should be affected by the copy, exchange and delete gadgets. (Current track, whole pattern, real samples.) To the right of the title bar is a box which states the mixingmode. "half" will halve the volume when mixing and echoing to avoid clipping, while "clip" will not halve the volume and possibly clip the sample.

DELETE
Will delete all notes with the current sample in current track or whole pattern.

KILL
Will kill the current sample. That is, remove it from memory and reset all sample settings. It will not be deleted from the track or pattern.

EXCHANGE
Will exchange the samplenumber shown in the "from" gadget with the samplenumber in the "to" gadget and vice versa.

COPY
Will move the samplenumber shown in the "from" gadget to the sample- number in the "to" gadget.

MIX
Will mix one sample with another. ProTracker asks you which two samples to be mixed, and where to put the result. Holding the right button and pressing mix will mix the current sample with itself. You can offset the sample by setting a position in the "pos" gadget If you set "mod" to a non-zero value, the sample will also be modulated.

ECHO
Will create a echo effect on the current sample. Use "pos" to set the delay time of the echo. If you want more room to echo in, just turn up the length of the sample.

BOOST
Will turn up the treble of the sample. Use this on hi-hats and snares! If the sampler screen is open and a range is selected, this will only affect the selected range.

FILTER
Will Delta-filter the sample. Use this on noisy basses. If the sampler screen is open and a range is selected, this will only affect the selected range.

X-FADE
Will crossfade the sample (mix with itself, backwards). Handy for looping samples that are hard to loop.

BACKWD (Backwards)
Will turn the sample backwards!

UPSAMPLE
Will remove every second byte of the sample, halving the length and shifting the pitch one octave up.

DOWNSAMPLE
Will double every byte of the sample, doubling the length, and shifting the pitch one octave down. There is no demo of downsampling, but it's more or less the opposite of upsampling.

POS
This is just an offset in the sample, used for a lot of things.This one has a numbergadget as well. Holding the right mousebutton while pressing the numbergadget will zero the value.

MOD
This is used for modulation. Press "mod" to modulate the current sample. Holding the right button while pressing the numbergadget will zero the value.

CUTBEG(INNING)
Will chop the number of bytes set in the "pos" gadget off the beginning of the sample.

FU (Fade Up)
Will fade the volume from 0 to 100%. Use "pos" to select where in the sample to fade up to. If the sampler screen  is open and a range is selected, this will only affect the selected range. There's no demo of fade up, but it's the same as using the volume setting 0 and 100 in the volume requester of the sampler.

FD (Fade Down)
Will fade the volume from 100 to 0%. Use "pos" to select where in the sample to fade down from. If the sampler screen is open and a range is selected, this will only affect the selected range. There's no demo of fade down, but it's the same as using the volume setting 100 and 0 in the volume requester of the sampler.

VOL
With this you can change the "real" volume of the sample. Just set a percentage and press "vol". vol has a numbergadget. Holding the right button while pressing it will set the value to 100%. If the sampler screen is open and a range is selected, this will only affect the selected range. You may also set "POS" by clicking on the sample and setting the cursor-line.

Main screen - Chord editor

FROM SAMPLE
Selects which sample to mix the chords from. Clicking on it sets the current sample.

TO SAMPLE
Selects which sample to put the chord into. Clicking on it sets the current sample.

NOTES
Sets how many notes your chord contains.

ADJUST
[Sorry, not enough info for documentation...]

MAKE CHORD
Does the work.

NOTE 1 - NOTE 7
The notes to use in the chord. Click in gadgets to edit. This was accomplished using the notes C-3, D#3, G-3 and A#3.

Main screen - Filter editor

[No documentation exists on the filter editor, but I couldn't get it to do anything!]

Main screen - Edit gadgets

TRACK/PATT/CMDS/BLOCK
Selects what to be affected by the edit gadgets. (Refered to as range.)

INSERT
Inserts the buffer at current position.

CUT
Deletes the range and moves it to the buffer.

DELETE
Deletes the current step and moves all preceding one step up. (Not block)

COPY
Copies the range to the buffer.

CLEAR
Deletes the range. (Not block)

PASTE
Pastes the buffer out to current position.

FLIP
Turns the range backwards.

EXCHANGE
Exchange range with buffer.

OCTAVE UP
Transposes range one octave up.

OCTAVE DOWN
Transposes range one octave down.

NOTE UP
Transposes range one note up.

NOTE DOWN
Transposes range one note down.

SCROLL UP
Scrolls range one step up.

SCROLL DOWN
Scrolls range one step down.

ROTATE UP
Same as scroll, but inserts note scrolled out at top at bottom step.

ROTATE DOWN
Same as scroll, but inserts note scrolled out at bottom at top step.

Setup screen - Miscellaneous

MAIN MENU
Will exit the setup screen, and return to the main screen.

LOAD CONFIG
Will load the selected config file.

SAVE CONFIG
Will save the selected config file.

CFG
Selects the current configuration to use.

RESET ALL
Will reset to the original ProTracker configuration.

THE COLOR PALETTE
The color palette is simple to use. Just select a color, and use the R, G and B sliders to set the color. You may also edit the colors for the VU-meters by pressing anywhere within the VU-cols and edit.

COPY
Copies a color. Select the color to copy, select "copy", select destination color.

SPREAD
For use with the VU-meter colors. Press at start color, select "spread", and select destination color to make ProTracker calculate a nice fade between the two colors.

ARROWS (UP AND DOWN)
Rotates the colors for the VU-meter.

SWAP
Swaps two colors. Use as copy.

CANCEL
Will set the last saved colors.

UNDO
[Does not work, sorry!]

DEF1 - DEF6
[Does not work, sorry!]

TEMPO
This is where you set your default CIA timing tempo. Range: 32-255.

SPEED
This is where you set your default Vblank timing speed. Range: 01-FF.

TIMING
We included this so that American users also could enjoy ProTracker, and wouldn't have to use sonix or any other terrible music program... You can choose between CIA or Vblank timing. Vblank is the timing-method soundtrackers have been using since the dawn of time, while CIA is a much better and accurate timing with the tempo measured in beats per minute. Using Vblank on NTSC amigas will cause the song to play 20% faster. With CIA, there's no difference.

SOFTINT
[No documentation exists, but audible problems have occured when using "on".]

SCREEN
This enables you to move the screen to fit your overscan settings.

TUNENOTE
Selects which note to use for the tuning tone in the sample editor.

TUNE VOL
Selects the volume for the tuning tone.

RECOVER SONG
[Not implemented]

CLEAR
Will clear the splits. (See below)

SPLIT
You can set 4 splits on the keyboard, each with it's own sample, splitpoint and transpose. Just type in a sample number and select the key to split at by pressing the appropriate one. The transpose note for each split is the first note in that split-range. Notes below the first split will be played with the current sample. Split is great for recording drums, or for playing untuned samples in tune (use together with finetune).

ACCIDENTAL
Simple enough, accidental allows you to select sharp (#) or flat (b) notes. This will not be saved with the song!

PRINT SONG
Will print the song to the path shown below the "Print Song" gadget. The print path can be 31 chars long. (To make it actually appear on your printer, use "PRT:")

PP EFF
Selects which crunchmode to use when crunching with powerpacker library. The name of the modes explain it all.

VUMETER
Selects which VU-meter mode to use. "Fake" is the normal VU-meter used in all Trackers from the beginning of time, but "real" gives a much better impression of the actual volume of the channel.

Setup screen - Flags

SPLIT
Toggles between normal and split keyboard.

TRANS(POSE)DEL(ETE) ON/OFF
When on, notes transposed out of range will be deleted.

SOLIDSCOPE
When on, the quadrascopes will be rendered in a somewhat fancier way.

BLANKZERO
When off, ProTracker will show the patterndata with zeroes where no changes take place. When set to on, these places will be rendered blank. (Well, sort of, anyway!)

SHOWDEC(IMAL)
When on, memory sizes will be shown in decimal.

FILTER
Toggles the low-pass filter of the Amiga. (Not available on all Amigas)

NTSC
When on, ProTracker will only be visible 200 lines at a time, and scroll in order to be able to display the entire screen. This is only useful for users using a NTSC based video system.

LACED
When on, ProTracker will use the interlace (flickering) mode of the Amiga in order to make all genlocks a little bit happier. 8)

UNDYN IFF
Will automatically convert IFF DYN samples to normal 8-bit samples when loading samples.

UNDYN MOD
[Not implemented.]

OVERRIDE
When on, ProTracker will ignore any paths or disknames when loading a song. All the samples will be loaded from the current sample path.

NOSAMPLES
When on, ProTracker won't load the samples when loading a song or module.

SHOW DIRS
When on, directories will be shown in the disk operations screen.

LOAD LOOP
When on, ProTracker will load loops from IFF-samples.

AUTODIR ON/OFF
When on, ProTracker reads the current directory path automatically when the disk operation screen is opened.

AUTOEXIT ON/OFF
When on, ProTracker will automatically exit from disk operations when loading a song, module, track or pattern.

MULTICACHE
[No documentation available at time of writing.]

CUTTOBUFF
If enabled, all cut operations will copy to the paste-buffer.

CUTTOLOOP
[Not implemented]

UPS>28kHz
Will automatically upsample Maestro samples sampled at frequencies above 28 KHz.

Disk operations

The disk operations screen has a directory window at the right edge of the screen, were you can select which files to load.

MAIN MENU
Will exit disk operations and return to the main screen.

PACK
Selects wether modules and samples should be packed using powerpacker library.

SAMPFORM
Selects wether samples are to be saved as IFF 8SVX or as RAW 8-bit data.

SAVE ICON
[Not implemented]

HIDE .INFO
Selects wether ProTracker should hide .info-files or not. (Icon files used by the Workbench.)

RESET PATHS
Resets the paths to the internal paths for loading.

FORMAT DISK
Formats the disk specified by the path gadget. Should be as easy to use as the format command on your Workbench-disk. If you don't know which options to use, just click on "format" and wait...

RELABEL DISK
Changes the name of a disk. (DF0:?)

MASK
Specifies which files are to be shown in the filerequester.

PATH
This shows the current path. The paths for each file-type is saved in the config file on the setup screen.

FILE
This shows the current filename.

MAKEDIR
Creates a directory.

RENAME FILE
Renames a file.

DELETE FILE
Deletes a file.

Here follows a lot of "mode"-like gadgets. Clicking in the small box to the left of these gadgets (or the big gadget next to the file-name gadget) uses the path and mask selected for the filetype and enables loading of the selected format. Clicking direct in the mode-gadget selects saving. When loading a module it may sometimes happen that a requester pops ups with the text "15 instrument module?". This happens when ProTracker can't successfully identify the module. If you answer yes, ProTracker will attempt to load the module as 15 instrument, which is an ancient format used in SoundTracker. More commonly, the module will be a StarTrekker module which is loaded by selecting no.

SAVE EXE
[Not implemented]

SAVE MODULE
Saves the current module.

SAVE SONG
Saves the current module as a song. The sampledata for the instrument is not saved, so ProTracker will have to re-read these when reading the song back to memory. This way of storing modules is considered obsolete, and only loading of such files is recommended.

SAVE INSTR
[Not implemented]

SAVE SAMPLE
Saves the current sample.

SAVE PATT
[Not implemented]

READ DIR
Re-reads the selected path.

PARENT
Skips to the parent directory of your current path.

FREE
Shows amount of bytes free in the selected path. All other gadgets on the disk operation screen is devices and assigns on your system and may be pressed in order to make ProTracker make the device/assign the current path. Pressing right button in any of these switches through several pages.

Sampler - Main

The sampler screen consists of a sample-display, a scroll bar to move around in the sample, and a lot of gadgets.

EXIT
Will close the sampler screen and return the bottom part of the screen to pattern edit.

STOP
Stops the current sample from playing.

WAVEFORM
Will play the entire sample.

DISPLAY
Will play the visible part of the sample.

RANGE
Will play the selected range of the sample.

CUT
Will cut the selected range of the sample.

COPY
Will copy the selected range of the sample to the copy-buffer.

PASTE
Will paste the selected the copy-buffer to the current position of the cursor.

SHOW RANGE
Will zoom in to the selected range of the sample.

SHOW ALL
Will show the entire sample.

BEG
Will put the cursorline at the beginning of the sample.

END
Will put the cursorline at the end of the sample.

SWAPBUF
Swaps copybuffer with sampledata.

VOLUME
Opens the volume requester.

TUNETONE
Will create a steady sinus tone which you can tune your samples with.

ZOOM OUT
Will zoom out a bit.

RANGE ALL
Select the entire sample as range.

SAMPLE
Will first enter the monitor screen. Now click right button to sample, left to exit. The rate used will be the one specified in the box to the immediate right of the "sample" gadget.

RESAMPLE
Transposes the sample itself. (Changing the pitch) Instructions:
1. Turn on the tuning tone.
2. Use the keyboard to find what note it is. Use finetune if needed.
3. Enter the note in the "Note:" box to the right.
4. Press resample! Resample also takes finetune into account.

DISP
The number of bytes being shown on screen.

POS
The current postition of the cursor.

RANG
The length of the selected range.

INVERT
Turns the sample upside-down. (Flips it around the x-axis!) This is not particulary useful, so I won't provide you with any examples of this. In fact, you are not able to hear the difference.

MAXIMIZE
Up/down-shift the sample in order to make the best possible effects on a normalize function (see below), and performs it. This will cause maximum volume without distortion, though the bias of the sample may be altered.

NORMALIZE
Adjusts the volume of the sample to the highest possible without distortion.

NORMALDC
Balances the sample in Y-direction. (Bias adjustment) Some samples with faulty bias may have clicks in the end after this function. This click may be removed by selecting the end of the sample and use the volume requester with a %100 - %0 setting.

BACKWARDS
Turns the sample backwards.

BOOST
Will turn up the treble of the sample. Use this on hi-hats and snares! If a range is selected, this will only affect the selected range.

INTERPOL
Will Delta-filter the sample. Use this on noisy basses. If the sampler a range is selected, this will only affect the selected range. This is also the same as the filter-button in the edit options/sampler screen.

UPSAMPLE
Will remove every second byte of the sample, halving the length and shifting the pitch one octave up.

DOWNSAMPLE
Will double every byte of the sample, doubling the length, and shifting the pitch one octave down.

Sampler - Volume requester

The volume requester works on the current range. Set the "from" and "to" volume percentages by using the sliders, or just type in any number you please (from 0 to 200) in the percentage boxes to the right.

RAMP
Will ramp (calculate) the volume!

NORMALIZE
Will find the highest volume settings possible (without clipping).
\  Will set the percentages 100%-0%
/ Will set the percentages 0%-100%
- Will set the percentages 100%-100%

CANCEL
Will exit the volume requester.

Nice to know

" This chapter explains some things about ProTracker which I weren't sure of where to put.

Pointer colors
Keyboard shortcuts
Effect commands
Requesters and I/O
Standard paths
Keyboard percussion
What is DYN-samples

Pointer colors

ProTracker uses the color of the pointer to tell you what's happening. These colors are:

Gray - Nothing's happening.
Yellow - Playing song / pattern.
Green - Disk action.
Blue - Edit / record.
Magenta - Waiting for input (text, number or something else).
Cyan - Select entry or delete.
Red - Something went wrong.

Keyboard

The keymap on ProTracker is a standard US keymap. Remember to always use the left shift and alt, as the right ones are used for play / pattern play.

When inserting, pasting or join-pasting, hold down shift to keep the cursor from jumping to the end of the block. e.g. shft+ctrl+P

Effect commands

Effect commands on ProTracker should be compatible with all other trackers.

0 ... None/arpeggio
1 ... Slide pitch up
2 ... Slide pitch down
3 ... Toneportamento
4 ... Vibrato
5 ... Toneportamento and volumeslide effect command
6 ... Vibrato and volumeslide effect command
7 ... Tremolo
8 ... [Not used]
9 ... Sample offset
A ... Volume slide effect command
B ... Jump to position
C ... Set volume
D ... Break pattern
E ... Miscellaneous commands (See below)
F ... Set speed

The E command has been altered to contain more commands than one.

E0 ... Set low-pass filter
E1 ... Fineslide pitch up
E2 ... Fineslide pitch down
E3 ... Glissando control
E4 ... Vibrato control
E5 ... Set finetune
E6 ... Pattern loop
E7 ... Tremolo control
E8 ... [Not used]
E9 ... Retrig note
EA ... Fineslide volume up
EB ... Fineslide volume down
EC ... Cut note
ED ... Delay note
EE ... Delay pattern
EF ... Invert loop

Arpeggio effect command
Cmd 0. Arpeggio [Range:$0-$F/$0-$F]

Usage:
$0 + 1st halfnote add + 2nd halfnote add

Arpeggio is used to simulate chords. This is done by rapidly changing the pitch between 3(or 2) different notes. It sounds very noisy and grainy on most samples, but ok on monotone ones.

Example:
C-300047 C-major chord: (C+E+G or C+4+7 halfnotes)
C-300037 C-minor chord: (C+D#+G or C+3+7 halfnotes)

Slide up effect command
Cmd 1. Portamento up [Speed:$00-$FF]

Usage:
$1 + portamento speed

Portamento up will simply slide the sample pitch up. You can NOT slide higher than B-3! (Period 113)

Example:
C-300103 1 is the command, 3 is the portamentospeed.

NOTE: The portamento will be called as many times as the speed of the song. This means that you'll sometimes have trouble sliding accuratly. If you change the speed without changing the sliderates, it will sound bad...

Slide down effect command
Cmd 2. Portamento down [Speed:$00-FF]

Usage: $2 + portamento speed

Just like Slide up effect command except that this one slides the pitch down instead. (Adds to the period). You can NOT slide lower than C-1! (Period 856)

Example:
C-300203, where 2 is the command, 3 is the portamentospeed.

Toneportamento effect command
Cmd 3. Tone-portamento [Speed:$00-$FF]

Usage: Dest-note + $3 + slidespeed

This command will automatically slide from the old note to the new. You don't have to worry about which direction to slide, you need only set the slide speed. To keep on sliding, just select the command $3 + 00.

Example:
A-200000 First play a note.
C-300305 C-3 is the note to slide to, 3 the command, and 5 the speed.

Vibrato effect command
Cmd 4. Vibrato [Rate:$0-$F,Dpth:$0-$F]

Usage: $4 + vibratorate + vibratodepth

Example:
C-300481 4 is the command, 8 is the speed of the vibrato, and 1 is the depth of the vibrato.

To keep on vibrating, just select the command $4 + 00. To change the vibrato, you can alter the rate, depth or both. Use command E4x to change the vibrato-waveform.

Toneportamento and volumeslide effect command
Cmd 5. ToneP + Volsl [Spd:$0-$F/$0-$F]

Usage: $5 + upspeed + downspeed

This command will continue the current toneportamento command and slide the volume at the same time. Compatible with Noisetracker 2.0.

Example:

C-300503 3 is the speed to turn the volume down.
C-300540 4 is the speed to slide it up.

Vibrato and volumeslide effect command
Cmd 6. Vibra + Volsl [Spd:$0-$F/$0-$F]

Usage: $6 + upspeed + downspeed

This command will continue the current vibrato and slide the volume at the same time. Compatible with Noisetracker 2.0.

Example:
C-300605 5 is the speed to turn the volume down.
C-300640 4 is the speed to slide it up.

Tremolo effect command
Cmd 7. Tremolo [Rate:$0-$F,Dpth:$0-$F]

Usage: $7 + tremolorate + tremolodepth
Tremolo vibrates the volume.

Example:
C-300794 7 is the command, 9 is the speed of the tremolo, and 4 is the depth of the tremolo.

To keep on tremoling, just select the command $7 + 00. To change the tremolo, you can alter the rate, depth or both. Use command E7- to change the tremolo-waveform.

Sample offset effect command
Cmd 9. Set SampleOffset [Offs:$00-$FF]

Usage: $9 + Sampleoffset

This command will play from a chosen position in the sample, and not from the beginning. The two numbers equal the two first numbers in the length of the sample. Handy for speech samples.

Example:
C-300923 Play sample from offset $2300.

Volume slide effect command
Cmd A. Volumeslide [Speed:$0-$F/$0-$F]

Usage: $A + upspeed + downspeed

Example:
C-300A05 5 is the speed to turn the volume down.
C-300A40 4 is the speed to slide it up.

NOTE: The slide will be called as many times as the speed of the song. The slower the song, the more the volume will be changed on each note.

Position jump effect command
Cmd B. Position-jump [Pos:$00-$7F]

Usage: $B + position to continue at

Example:
C-300B01 B is the command, 1 is the position to restart the song at.

This command will also perform a pattern-break (see 2 pages below). You can use this command instead of restart as on Noisetracker, but you must enter the position in hex!

Set volume effect command
Cmd C. Set volume [Volume:$00-$40]

Usage: $C + new volume

Well, this old familiar command will set the current volume to your own selected. The highest volume is $40. All volumes are represented in hex. (Programmers do it in hex, you know!)

Example:
C-300C10 C is the command, 10 is the volume (16 decimal).

Pattern break effect command
Cmd D. Pattern-break [Pattern-pos:00-63, decimal]

Usage: $D + pattern-position

This command just jumps to the next song-position, and continues play from the patternposition you specify.

Example:
C-300D00 Jump to the next song-position and continue play from patternposition 00. Or:
C-300D32 Jump to the next song-position and continue play from patternposition 32 instead.

Adjust tempo effect command
Cmd F. Set speed [Speed:$00-$FF]

Usage: $F + speed

This command will set the speed of the song.

blank: Range 01-FF Normal timing
CIA: Range 01-1F Set vblank speeds with CIA timing.
CIA: Range 20-FF Set BPM speeds, range 32-255.
Both: Range 00 STOP song.

Set filter miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E0. Set filter [Range:$0-$1]

Usage: $E0 + filter-status

This command changes the status of the low-pass filter of your Amiga. This filter is not present in the A1000 and some very old A500s and A200s, but most computers are equipped with it. (If you've got one of these, please leave this switch alone, since flipping it constantly garbles the sound.)

Example:
C-300E01 disconnects filter (turns power LED off)
C-300E00 connects filter (turns power LED on)

Fineslide up miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E1. Fineslide up [Range:$0-$F]

Usage: $E1 + value

This command works just like the normal portamento up, except that it only slides up once. It does not continue sliding during the length of the note.

Example:
C-300E11 Slide up 1 at the beginning of the note. (Great for creating chorus effects)

Fineslide down miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E2. Fineslide down [Range:$0-$F]

Usage: $E2 + value

This command works just like the normal portamento down, except that it only slides down once. It does not continue sliding during the length of the note.

Example:
C-300E26 Slide up 6 at the beginning of the note.

Glissando control miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E3. Glissando Ctrl [Range:$0-$1]

Usage: $E3 + Glissando-Status

Glissando must be used with the tone-portamento command. When glissando is activated, toneportamento will slide a halfnote at a time, instead of a straight slide.

Example:
C-300E31 Turn Glissando on.
C-300E30 Turn Glissando off.

Vibrato control miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E4. Set vibrato waveform [Range:$0-$3]

Usage: $E4 + vibrato-waveform

Example:
C-300E40 Set sine(default) E44 Don't retrig WF
C-300E41 Set Ramp Down E45 Don't retrig WF
C-300E42 Set Squarewave E46 Don't retrig WF
C-300E43 Set Random E47 Don't retrig WF

Set finetune miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E5. Set finetune [Range:$0-$F]

Usage: $E5 + finetune-value

Example:
C-300E51 Set finetune to 1.

Use these tables to figure out the finetune-value.
Finetune: +7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1 0 Value: 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
Finetune: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Value: F E D C B A 9 8

Pattern loop miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E6. PatternLoop [Loops:$0-$F]

Usage: $E6 + number of loops

This command will loop a part of a pattern.

Example:
C-300E60 Set loopstart.
C-300E63 Jump to loop 3 times before playing on.

Tremolo control miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E7. Set tremolo waveform [Range:$0-$3]

Usage: $E7 + tremolo-waveform

Example:
C-300E70 Set sine(default) E74 Don't retrig WF
C-300E71 Set Ramp Down E75 Don't retrig WF
C-300E72 Set Squarewave E76 Don't retrig WF
C-300E73 Set Random E77 Don't retrig WF

Retrig note miscellaneous effect command
Cmd E9. Retrig note [Value:$0-$F]

Usage: $E9 + Tick to Retrig note at.

This command will retrig the same note before playing the next. Where to retrig depends on the speed of the song. If you retrig with 1 in speed 6 that note will be trigged 6 times in one note slot. Retrig on hi-hats!

Example:
C-300F06 Set speed to 6.
C-300E93 Retrig at tick 3 out of 6.

Fine volumslide up miscellaneous effect command
Cmd EA. FineVolsl up [Range:$0-$F]

Usage: $EA + value

This command works just like the normal volumeslide up, except that it only slides up once. It does not continue sliding during the length of the note.

Example:
C-300EA3 Slide volume up 1 at the beginning of the note.

Fine volumslide down miscellaneous effect command
Cmd EB. FineVolsl down [Range:$0-$F]

Usage: $EB + value

This command works just like the normal volumeslide down, except that it only slides down once. It does not continue sliding during the length of the note.

Example:
C-300EB6 Slide volume down 6 at the beginning of the note.

Cut note miscellaneous effect command
Cmd EC. Cut note [Value:$0-$F]

Usage: $EC + Tick to cut note at.

This command will cut the note at the selected tick, creating extremely short notes.

Example:
C-300F06 Set speed to 6.
C-300EC3 Cut at tick 3 out of 6.

Note that the note is not really cut, the volume is just turned down.

Delay note miscellaneous effect command
Cmd ED. NoteDelay [Value:$0-$F]

Usage: $ED + ticks to delay note.

This command will delay the note to the selected tick.

Example:
C-300F06 Set speed to 6.
C-300ED3 Play note at tick 3 out of 6.

If you use ED0, the note will be delayed a little anyway. You can play the same note on two channels, delay one, and get a nice flanging effect.

Delay pattern miscellaneous effect command
Cmd EE. PatternDelay [Notes:$0-$F]

Usage: $EE + notes to delay pattern.

This command will delay the pattern the selected numbers of notes.

Example:
C-300EE8 Delay pattern 8 notes before playing on.

All other effects are still active when the pattern is being delayed.

Invert loop miscellaneous effect command
Cmd EF. Invert Loop [Speed:$0-$F]

Usage: $EF + Invertspeed

This command will need a short loop ($10,20,40,80 etc. bytes) to work. It will invert the loop byte by byte. Sounds better than funkrepeat...

Example:
C-300EF8 Set invspeed to 8.

To turn off the inverting, set invspeed to 0, or press ctrl + Z. This effect will trash the sample.

Requesters and IO

ARE YOU SURE? REQUESTER
In addition to the gadgets, you can use "Y" or Return for Yes, and "N" or ESC for No.

THE TEXT-INPUT ROUTINE
Now this is really simple. Clicking on a textline will enable you to edit it. Some text lines are longer than they seem, so use the arrowkeys to scroll back and forth in the text. The text input mode is just like an ordinary text editor. You can use backspace, delete, space and such. In text-input mode you can also use the numeric pad for entering numbers. Pressing the right mousebutton will clear the textline and exit the editing. Use ESC or return to just exit.

THE NUMBERGADGETS
Click on them and type in the value (Hex or Dec). ESC or return aborts.

ARROWGADGETS
Pressing both the left and right button on the arrow-gadgets will speed them up a bit. All numbergadgets except Finetune and Sample allows you to click in the gadget and type in the desired value. Holding the right mousebutton while pressing them will zero the value.

Standard paths

ProTracker has several standard-paths which it uses when searching for things. Some of these may be configured, while others can't.

These are:
Config-file "S:"
Powerpacker-library "LIBS:"
Executable modules* "ST-00:Executable/"
Modules "ST-00:Modules/"
Songs "ST-00:Songs/"
Instruments* "ST-00:Instruments/"
Samples "ST-01:"
Patterns* "ST-00:Patterns/"

*="Not" implemented yet.

Keyboard percussion

Use backspace '\' to toggle modes. One or more dots will appear to the right of the freemem display.

No dots : Normal keypad.
1 dot : Drumpad.
2 dots : Drumpad Edit/Rec possible.

Use Alt + keypad key to set the note for the sample. With 'drumpad' selected, selecting a sample using the keypad will also play the sample. This is nice when browsing through the samples of modules.

What is DYN samples?

DYN samples is a new (and revolutionary) way of playing 16-bit samples with a 8 14 bit replay quality. Your Amiga achieves this by cheating a lot, and this sure does take cpu time. No official replay exist to play module utilising modules with these samples, so use for own pleasure only. Maestro 16-bit mono IFF samples are currently the only supported. :( The big drawbacks using DYN-samples is that click and ticks may occur. Also, playing DYN samples at low volumes may cause distortion.

How to create music using PT

I know. The information in this chapter may not be complete nor easy to understand, but it's atleast far better than any earlier attempt to explain how to use ProTracker in general. Suggestions are welcome!

What is a module?
Patterns
What should patterns contain?
Position-table
Samples

What is a module?

History

ProTracker's musicfiles are normally called modules. The reason for this is that way back, in the days of SoundTracker v1.0, Karsten Obarski (the author) thought that the best way to save music was as songs with only references to the instrument's names to make it possible to reload them each time the song was reloaded into SoundTracker. The module format was implemented in SoundTracker v1.0 allright, but it was only intended to be used when programmers wanted to replay the modules in their productions and not as temporary storage, as it is being used today. Because of this, SoundTracker couldn't load modules before version v2.2!
The module-format used today is created by Mahoney and Kaktus which made NoiseTracker in July August 1989, another tracker-clone. The only big defference they made to the format was that they increased the number of samples from 15 to 31.

What's in a module?

A module basically contains this info:
* Module name
* Samples (name, length, finetune, volume, repeat, replen and the actual audio data)
* Which pattern to play at each position of your module.
* Pattern data

The ProTracker v2.3 also outputs files called "mod!modname" which contains names for each pattern in the module. This will be featured in ProTracker v3.x when the new IFF format is implemented.
A totally empty module (no samples and one pattern) occupies 2128 bytes of disk space, while the (theoretical) largest module one would be able to create would occupy 4326460 bytes! (Even more if DYN samples were used!)

Patterns

What is patterns?

Any piece of music written with ProTracker is built up from patterns. Each pattern is built up from four tracks, one for each of the Amiga's audiochannels. A module may contain up to 64 patterns.
A pattern is 64 steps long. The magnified line is always the one you edit. If you need shorter patterns, use the patternbreak effect command.

A track is built up of steps like this:

C-3 01 C20 (1) (2)(3) (1)

The first two characters describes the note to play. The "-" may be replaced by "#" or "b" to describe a flat or a sharp note, depending on you settings in the setup-screen.
The third character is the octave to play the note in. ProTracker supports 3 octaves (1 through 3).

(2) This is the sample-number to play. Valid numbers are hexadecimal 00 through 1F. Sample 0 doesn't really exists but will play the last used sample for that channel without resetting the volume.

(3) This is the effect-command to play.

To sum it up: The C-3 is the note being played. 01 is the samplenumber, and the three last digits are the effect command, in this case, set volume to $20 C-Command, 20-Value).

Effect tips

You can set the volume to the volume of a specific instrument without actually trigging the sample. e.g. "---01000" will set the volume for sample 1 without playing a note. Try setting the volume and sliding the volume   down at the same time:

C-301A08 (If no sample is playing, no sound will be 01A08 heard at all...)
01A08 This will create a strange arpeggiato effect.

What should patterns contain?

THE NOTES

There are 12 different notes in all. The reason there are more than 12 keys on a piano is to make you able to play different octaves. In ProTracker, octaves are denoted as numbers after each note. For instance, C-1 is the note C in octave 1 while C-2 is the same note one octave higher. The best way to understand this is to start a music-program and play the different notes.
These are the names of the notes:
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B

Or shown in an alternate way: C Db D Eb E F Gb G Ab A Bb B

Some countries may have other standards for writing notes, though this is the internation standard. For instance, in Norway the scale looks like this:

C C# D D#
E F F# G
G# A B H

On a piano keyboard, the notes are placed as follows:

C# D# F# G# A# C# |
### ### | ### ### ### |
### | ### ### | ### ### ###
| ### | ### ### | ### ### ###
| ### | ### ### | ### ### ### | ###

| | | | | | | | |
|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___
C D E F G A B C ...

The ProTracker tries to emulate this by assigning a C to the keys Q and Z (one octave lower). Since the QWERTY keyboard is designed as it is, it looks pretty much as a piano claviature.

CHORDS

Chords are several notes of the same instrument played at once. This is a simple, but effective explanation. There are several types of chords, but I'll try explaining the most used ones here. C major : C, E and G C minor : C, D# and G C sus2 : C, D and G C sus4 : C, F and G C7 : C, E, G and A# Cminor7 : C, D#, G and A#
If you want to play a F minor, you need to transpose all notes in C minor 5 notes up (Because the interval between C and F is five notes). This would result in F, G# and C. A normal C major tune could easily make use of the following chords: C major, D major, E major, E minor, F major, G major, A minor and H minor. In ProTracker, you are allowed to mix one sample into a chord.
If you mix yourself a C sus2 chord, playing the resulting sample with note "D" would result in a D sus2 chord. Thus making it easy to re-use the same chord-sample for several chords. If your resulting chord seems a bit too low in pitch, you could transpose the lowest note one octave up.
The most common way to use chords in songs are having long strings playing the chords continously on one channel. Another common variation is using piano. Ofcourse, there is no need to follow this chord scheme. Your chord doesn't need to have a name to sound cool, as long as you like it, it should be used. Besides, there are ways to name nearly all possible chord-combinations.

BASS

Bass is mostly an instrument for adding "mood" to the chords. The most common (and easiest) way to use bass is to have it play on the base note of the chord (for instance C in a C major, G# in a G# minor7 and D in a D sus4). However, to create variation without too much fuss, you could vary with the other notes in the chord (D# in a C minor).
Not everyone likes following the book, and you should therefore always try whatever your heart tells you to get that "special" feeling in your tune. To help create a "snappy" bass, it can be useful to cut (or decrease drastically) the volume at strategic places.

For instance: C-2 1 . . . . A#2 1 . . C-3 1 . C0C . . G-2 1 . D00

The above bass example fits nice to for instance a C major (note that the note A#2 is from C major 7, but still sounds ok.)
In some cases, it may sound cool to even play a "melody" on the bass for adding extra variation to the song. Remember that bass is always a question about taste, and there are a great deal of different bass sounds to use in a tune. (Orchestral bass, slapbass, Electric bass, Acoustic bass, Synthbass, Sweep equ bass and so on...)

DRUMS

Drums consists most often of several sounds: hihat (steady and in the background), bassdrum (steady), snare (creates most of the variation), tams (for creating a markant "break" every now and then) and cymbals for creating that extra touch.
At our examples, the samples are given these numbers:

Bassdrum :

1 Closed Hihat : 2 Open Hihat : 3 Snare : 4 Tam : 5 Cymbal : 6

C-3 1 . C-3 2 . C-3 6 . . . . . C-3 2 . . . . . C-3 4 . C-3 3 . . . . .
C-3 1 . C-3 2 . F-3 5 . . . .
C-3 1 . C-3 2 . D-3 5 . . . . . C-3 4 C20     C-3 2 . . . . .
C-3 4 . C-3 3 . D-3 5 . . . . .
C-3 2 . C-3 5 . D00 . .

This example assumes that all samples sounds right at the note C-3 (ie. they are sampled in this note) and the volumes are set to 40.
The first thing you probably notice is that a realistic drumbeat requires several channels. This is a well-known problem and hard to compensate. The easiest thing to do is probably to mix samples with Open Hihat & Snare and Bassdrum & Closed Hihat and then join the first two tracks into one. The Cymbal and the Tam still require an additional channel, but solving that problem is easiest to do for each song, depending on how much voices are in use. One solution could be to mix Bassdrum and Cymbal into one sample. Making realistic drums is perhaps the most difficult task of all when it comes to music. Most composers find it very boring to make a genuine drum beat troughout the entire song and falls back to making drums one pattern and copies it to every pattern after. This method doesn't always sound bad, but most of the time. A compromised solution to this problem is to make genuine breaks here and there to create a feeling of variation.

MAIN LEAD

A main lead is without doubt "The" problem with computer music. The main lead is the element that prevents your song from being boring and is needed to keep the attention of the listener. You will quickly experience that making a main-lead is very demanding, because there is no song-text which creates variation for you. Perhaps the best way to make a mainlead is to listen to the rest of your song and hope the ideas come pouring down. Another, easier way is to experiment with a scale and hope to come up with something that brings you the inspiration needed. I will describe four scales here.
You might transpose them to fit your need.

C major : C, D, E, F, G, A, B (Used for happy or moodless tunes)
C blues : C, D#, F, F#, G, A# (Used for blues and rock)
C pentatonic : C, D#, F, G, A# (Used for rock)
C minor : C, D, D#, F, G, G#, A# (Used for moody, atmospheric tunes)

All true composers would insist that using a scale makes boring music, but most of the times it doesn't. However, if you feel comfortable with not using a scale, by all means, do so. Without doubt, your tune will sound "fresher" if you improvise all the way. This is all a question about taste and skills.

Position table

What is the position-table?

ProTracker holds a table with information about which order to play the patterns. You may freely define the size of this table. This table may be up to 128 positions, and each position may contain any of your patterns. When ProTracker plays your module it first play position 0, then position 1 and so on until it reaches the end of your position-table. When this occurs, ProTracker jumps back to position 0. If you want ProTracker to jump to another position, you must use the position jump effect command at the end of the pattern at the last position.

How to edit the position-table

The position-table is controlled using the three gadgets labeled "Pos", "Pattern" and "Length".
The "Pos"-gadget states which position you are currently editing, while the "Pattern"-gadget states which pattern to play at that position and finally the "Length"-gadgets sets the length of your position-table. You must remember, though, that the length also implies position 0. This means that if your length is 2, position 0 and 1 will be played.
The "I" and "D" gadgets are your friends and are used for inserting and deleting positions.

Samples

What are samples?

Samples are sound, converted from analog signals to digital (numbers). When your Amiga plays these sounds it converts them back to analog signals and feeds them to your monitor or amplifier. In memory, samples are stored as a big bunch of numbers. The easiest way to think of samples is recorded sound.

What decides the quality of samples?

(Hardware approach) The Amiga's sample-resolution of 8 bit means that it utilises 256 values (2^8) for describing the amplitude of the sound-wave. A CD-player with 16 bits uses thus 65536 values and therefore gives a more accurate reproduction lof the original sound. Another thing which (heavily) influences the quality of a sample is how often the hardware (in this case, your Amiga) is capable of send out a new value. If you send out a zillion values each second, there's small changes you would miss a change in the sound-wave. Easy?
Your Amiga has actually no absolute limits for how fast it is able to reproduce sound, but the easiest output method involves timing the sound output to the Amiga's display hardware. At normal resolutions this means a maximum of ~28000 Hz. In comparison a CD player outputs at a rate of 44100 Hz. It is generally a common mistake to refer to the Amiga's maximum rate as 28000 samples/second. In order for one hertz (Hz) to occur, you need a positive and a negative value. To put it another way, each hertz consists of two sample values.
This means that in the Amiga's maximum sample rate a sample of 56000 bytes would replay in one second! The sample rate is not constant, as it is used to specify the note to play the sample with. 28000 Hz equals the A-3 note in ProTracker, while the A-2 is half the rate (14000 Hz).

Where to get samples from

Sampling samples yourself is perhaps the easiest (and funniest) way to achieve samples. In order for this to work, you need to buy a sampler (generally very cheap, about £20 should get you a low-end one) and have a source to sample from (expensive). Sampling from CDs is difficult and often there are other instruments in the background, so obtaining all the samples you need from CDs is nearly impossible. The second alternative is buying a keyboard to sample from, but since most of these are pretty expensive (the price is usually proportional to the sound quality) I wouldn't advice anyone to buy a keyboard unless they're pretty sure they want to do music. Another (well-hated) way to get samples from is by stealing from other modules. It is generally a bad idea to load a module and use clear song in order to use the exact samples as another module.
The better approach is to save samples from all modules and mix them together on a HD or create your own sampledisks. This way (if you catalogize them properly) you could easily find the sample you need when you need it. The third way to obtain samples is obtaining PD sample disks. Your could buy the AM/FM series sampledisks (from Bjørn A Lynne) or you could write to a PD company. (Most of these has a large variety of sample disks.)

What decides the quality of samples?

(Software approach) When sampling, it's essential that your equipment is in perfect order. All connectors must be clean and your wires should be properly isolated. If you experience a lot of interference, you could try to disconnect all electrical appliances nearby. Sample from the auxillery output of your Stereo rather than from the headphones output. If your Stereo does not have an AUX output, try sampling directly from the CD- or Cassette player. The volume should be adjusted in a way that it just about fills the entire height in the sample editor in ProTracker in order to utilise the full sample-resolution. When selecting sample rates, you should keep in mind that higher sampling rates yields better quality but effectively eats up a lot of memory.
I myself samples most things at C-3 (16000 Hz) except drums, which I sample at G-3 or A-3 (28000 Hz). It doesn't matter (well, mostly) which sampling software you use, but I prefer to use ProTracker since it's editing functions are faster than any other I've seen.

Miscellaneous

" Not much to say, these are... erm.. miscellaneous things!

Chronicles and anecdotes
Known bugs
Things we'll never implement
Things we will implement
Frequently asked questions
Thanks and acknowledgements
Contacting the authors
Musical dictionary

Chronicles and anecdotes

" This chapter contains some historical and background information. Not all of this may be proper to put into a documentation, but I hope it's interesting for someone.

ProTracker development and progress
ProTracker-relevant clones
ProTracker version history

Development and progress

SOUNDTRACKER THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA

Way back (dunno, the year) Karsten Obarski was tired of the monotonous music in all games and demos and came up with the idea of using samples for instruments in music. The music used at the time consisted either of synthetic instruments or sampleloops. There were two mainreasons for this. Firstly, people still wanted to support the first A1000 models which came with 256KB RAM and secondly sampleloops were easier to make (mostly grabbed from records).
Karsten Obarski's program, SoundTracker v1.0 didn't look much like todays trackers, it had no sampleeditor, the patterns didn't scroll when playing and one couldn't load modules (storage of music was based on songs). The module/song-format was easy and fairly effective and is still used in today's Trackers (though it has been expanded from 15 to 31 instruments). The SoundTracker became immediately extremely popular and everyone started using it. The program was far easier to use than other programs available at the time and various "crackers" started improving on the program.

SOUNDTRACKER THE CHAOS AND THE FALL

As several other groups started making their own versions of SoundTracker, Karsten Obarski gave it up and didn't release more version than v1.0. Groups such as The New Masters, D.O.C. and Spreadpoint seemed to fight for doing the best improvements and this "race" caused a significant improvement of SoundTracker.
But after a while the groups got tired of the work and couldn't compete with a new tracker-clone by Mahoney and Kaktus of Northstar called NoiseTracker.

PROTRACKER ENTERS THE STAGE

Just before SoundTracker died, a small and (fairly) unknown norwegian group called Amiga Freelancers started disassembling SoundTracker v2.4 in an attempt to improve it. NoiseTracker gained a lot of users before ProTracker acctually got released. However, ProTracker contained so many features that weren't in SoundTracker, that Mahoney and Kaktus gave up. ProTracker shortly became the standard and noone even thought of using other trackers.

AMIGA FREELANCERS GIVE UP

In late 1991, Amiga Freelancers got tired of updating the ProTracker and decided to hand out the source to the public. At this time they had recently released v1.2 and v2.0 (v2.0 was a semi-commercial version, but the only differences from v1.2 was the opening-graphics).
After a while, they still released v1.3A and v1.3B with some bugfixes, but the sources for these were never released. At this time, a lot of quick hacks was released by several groups in an attempt to win fame and fortune, but the only groups that did noticable improvements was Noxious and Cryptoburners.

NOXIOUS TAKES OVER FOR A WHILE

Noxious releases their first version v2.1A in the early 1992 but stops after v2.3a in January 1993 probably as a result of Cryptoburners new ProTracker, v3.0.
In my humble opinion Noxious did pretty much for ProTracker and a lot of people still uses v2.3a because they can't get used to the new look introduced by Cryptoburners in v3.0.

CRYPTOBURNERS RADICAL CHANGES

Cryptoburners changed the resolution of the ProTracker from Low-Res to Hi-Res, a change that has been discussed widely by ProTracker users. They altered the positions of a lot of gadgets and some people still haven't get used to it. Other changes by Cryptoburners included new disk-operations screen and some more edit-gadgets

MAW 14 BIT SOUND

After ProTracker v3.10, Cryptoburners handed the source over to Maw who was supposed to implement DYN sound (up to 14 bit sound resolution) in ProTracker. According to Maw himself, no versions after v3.10 was released as these were supposed to be beta-versions sent to different people. Maw never fully completed the DYN implementation and has given up the project and is now working on a new music-program he intend to call ProTracker4. This program has more than 4 voices, synthetic sound and works with 16-bit samples. Maw refuses to release his work on ProTracker and his work is therefore lost forever. However, a lot of people look at this as a nice thing anyway, since it is nearly impossible to play 14-bit sound in an action-paced game and the implementation of the DYN system mostly caused bugs.

CRYPTOBURNERS AGAIN WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?

As far as I know, Cryptoburners has stopped developing the ProTracker and is currently working for FunCom productions, a manufacturer of video games. If they still has the v3.10 source it would be the best point to continue the ProTracker from, but the author haven't been able to reach them yet.

Other tracker-clones

All programs are listed in estimated time of arrival. 8)

SoundTracker v1.0

This is the mother of all tracker-clones and was made a looong time ago (around the release of A500 methinks). The author is Karsten Obarski and the program was (in my opinion) far from easy to use. After releasing this, other groups released a lot of improvements on this program and Karsten Obarski sort of gave up improving the program himself.

SoundTracker v1.1 v2.3

These versions were different improvements over SoundTracker v1.0. Unfortunately, I have no information on who made the different versions (please write if you do). I do however, know that Dr. Mabuse of DOC and T.I.P of The New Masters released most of these versions.

Games Music Creator

This music program looks a lot like the v2.x-soundtrackers and contains a lot of the same features. However it seems recoded and a bit unfinished. The author is Andreas Tadic.

SoundTracker Pro II

This tracker has a totally different look from the other tracker-clones. It looks like it's supposed to have more features, but is far from finished. Unfortunately, there is no text in the program that states who made this program.

NoiseTracker v1.0 v2.1

NoiseTracker made by Mahoney and Kaktus of Northstar was the first tracker to implement 31 instruments and a configuration-screen! This tracker became immediately very popular, and was probably the king of the scene until ProTracker came along. The NoiseTracker was based on SoundTracker v2.3

SoundTracker v2.4 v2.5

These were SoundTrackers which adopted the new features of NoiseTracker, including 31 instruments. According to my knowledge, both these versions were made by MnemoTroN of Spreadpoint.

ProTracker

This is about the place where ProTracker first did it's appearance. Beacuse of the many changes from SoundTracker (which it was based on), there were numerous bugs in the first versions.

NoiseTracker v1.3D

I haven't the foggiest about who made this version of NoiseTracker, but as far as I know, it wasn't Mahoney and Kaktus. This version utilised a special "packed" moduleformat.

SoundTracker v2.6

This SoundTracker implemented something no other tracker has ever used, one-channel patterns. The idea is that for each position you have to specify one pattern for each channel. This idea saves some memory, but is harder to edit and did therefore not "win" the audience. This tracker was also made by MnemoTroN.

StarTrekker v1.0 v1.3

This tracker was the first to utilise more than 4 voices! It could play a maximum of eight voices and included synthetic sounds. (AM and FM sounds!) Unfortunately, this tracker died silently. StarTrekker was based on NoiseTracker v2.0 and was made by Björn Wesen (aka Exolon of Fairlight).

IceTracker v1.0 v1.1

This tracker was based on SoundTracker v2.6 and was made by Isepic. It consisted of several improvements and add-ons.

MaxTracker v1.0

This tracker was originally based on ProTracker v1.2, and included the possibility to store samples in fast memory. The readme-file that was distributed with this tracker stated that it could play samples of any length, but couldn't get it to load nor sample samples over 64 KB. The author is Sylvain Marchand.

Version history

The version histories are listed by versionnumber, not by releasedate. There is a version around marked V3.18 BETA with reworked setupscreen and the dir-selector-bug fixed. Since this version is a true beta-version (i.e: it is not supposed to be spread) it is not considered a release nor listed separately here. All versions of ProTracker is based on lower versions, except (ofcourse) the V0.89 BETA, which is based on SoundTracker v2.5 by MnemoTroN. If anyone has version-information for versions not listed here or versions which has no specific information listed, feel free to send them in.

Sources:

Source for
ProTracker V1.2 and V2.0 Quick doc for PT V0.89 by Mad Martian ProTracker
ProTracker V1.0A readme-file ProTracker V1.0A readme-file
ProTracker V1.3B readme-file ProTracker V2.3A readme-file
ProTracker V3.00ß readme-file
ProTracker V3.01 readme-file
ProTracker V3.10 readme-file
ProTracker V3.14B readme-file

Version releasenotes:

V0.89 BETA Amiga Freelancers
V1.0A Amiga Freelancers
V1.0B Amiga Freelancers
V1.0C Amiga Freelancers
V1.1A Amiga Freelancers
V1.1B Amiga Freelancers
V1.2 Amiga Freelancers
V1.2C Raul Sobon
V1.2D Raul Sobon
V1.2E Raul Sobon
V1.2F Raul Sobon
V1.3A Amiga Freelancers
V1.3B Amiga Freelancers
V1.8 SCL
V2.0 Amiga Freelancers
V2.1A Mushroom Studios / Noxious
V2.2A Mushroom Studios / Noxious
V2.3A Mushroom Studios / Noxious
V3.00 BETA Cryptoburners
V3.01 Cryptoburners
V3.10 BETA Cryptoburners
V3.14B Cryptoburners
V3.15 Cryptoburners
V3.18 Cryptoburnes
V3.30-V4.0 Tom Beyer
V4.0-V5.0 Tom Beyer

V0.89 BETA
V0.89 BETA (May 1990) Exclusively for Crusaders

This is the first known release of ProTracker. It was based on SoundTracker V2.5 by MnemoTroN and made by The Amiga Freelancers.

• Retrig note, note delay, pattern delay and funk repeat didn't work.
• inetune were introduced.
• Online help.=")"

V1.0A
V1.0A (August 1990) First public release

Many functions not operational in V0.89 were now implemented.

V1.0B
V1.0B (September 1990) Bugfix

• PatternLoop (It always jumped to the start of the pattern, not the loop)
• FineTune AND Glissando-Control were in the same command! (E3)
• Fade Up / Down caused shit and even a few gurus!
• Delete Pos inserted pattern 77 (!) at position 127 in the song, causing it to be longer than 80k!
• Filter All Samples was slow as hell because it tried to filter nonexistant samples.
• If you selected sample 0 from the keypad, it always played the last sample played as sample 0!
• A590 harddisk owners couldn't use the keyboard because of the way Mahoney & Kaktus set up the keyboard interrupt (their NT1.1 routine was used).
• Entering the help screen when in the midi screen fucked up the display.
• Escaping from Mix exited from the whole edit op.!
• CutBeg no longer fucks up the Sample length and Pos.
• The help file was FULL of bugs / misspellings.

V1.0C
V1.0C (October 1990) Bugfix

• Error in Finetune-table2 (note B-2)
• Abort Load sometimes caused a guru!
• Toneportamento (cmd 3) didn't work correctly with finetune.
• PLST screen was one pixel off. * MIDI screen was removed.

V1.1A
V1.1A (December 1990) Party release with bugs

• Read input in a more system-friendly way.
• Detached from CLI.
• Loaded IFF samples correctly.
• Used sprites to show loop in sampler.
• Several directory paths in disk operations screen.
• Protracker will now run if you have Kickstart 2.0 installed! (A500, A1000, A2000, A3000 etc...)
• Keyboard buffer. Wow!!! Now you can play really fast, and PT won't miss a single key (...well, not as many as it used to before...).
• The vertical blank interrupt no longer patches the vector itself, but uses the AddIntServer function.
• The playroutine creates it's own CIA or VBLANK interrupt, and it will not be removed if a song is playing when you go to CLI/Workbench.
• Improved "Out of memory" handling (hopefully no more gurus...).
• Only the first 2 bytes of a sample will be zeroed (were the first 4).
• Lots of new keyboard commands/shortcuts using the Alt key.
• Vibrato depth changed to be compatible with NT2.0.
• Funk Repeat changed to Invert Loop (may trash your samples though).
• Play samples from the keypad (dot mode) when pressing backslash.
• Quadrascope. Four channel oscilloscope that displays the samples in real- time, even when playing from keyboard. The good old spectrum analyzer is still there, just click on the scope to toggle.
• Tempo gadget. Default is 125 BPM (normal vblank speed), but that can be changed if you select CIA timing on Setup2. Range is 32-255 BPM, and can also be changed with the 'F' effect command (speed/tempo).
• Repeat and replen will be updated in the samples when you change them. You no longer have to press a key to hear the new loop.
• Protracker should now be able to show up to 10/16 megs of freemem.
• Error messages when PLST or Config not found.
• Click to enter position, pattern and length with the keyboard.
• Choose RAW or IFF when saving samples.
• Samples can be saved with IFF-loops.
• Change path without reading directory.
• All 30 characters in filename/directory stored (was 24).
• Shows directories, just click to add directory to path.
• Parent directory gadget.
• One preset and several default paths for modules/songs/samples.
• PT will now read an "unlimited" number of directory entries (was 200).
• Two setup-screens.
• Override: Load/save sample from samplepath even if there's a path in the samplename. ST-37:bigbadbass with override will be loaded from DF0: (or whatever) instead of ST-37:. You may want to put all your samples in one big directory on your harddisk...
• NoSamples: Will load a song without asking for the samples.
• BlankZero: This will show the samplenumbers in the pattern in the same way as Noisetracker 1.2 (Zeros are blanked out).
• Show Dirs: If on, directories will be shown in Disk Op.
• Show Publ: If on, PT will show all free Public memory, otherwise just free Chip memory.
• CutToBuff: If on, the part of the sample cut away in the sample editor will be saved in the copybuffer.
• Load Loop: Will load loops from an IFF file when loading a sample, or adding a path in the sampleeditor.
• Slow Mode: Use this toggle if you have a 25 Mhz A3000 where everything is faster. Turning it on might help.
• Set Default paths. * You can set the maximum number of presets (used to be 2500).
• DMA wait. Use this on 25MHz Amigas (normally 300, use 900 on A3000).
• Set tuning tone (note and volume).
• Select CIA or VBlank timing.
• Set default CIA tempo.
• Spectrum Analyzer/VU-meter copper color editor!
• Use Preset removed, inserted Delete Disk instead.
• You can now save Finetune instead of Volume in the PLST.
• ST-disk number changed to hex (ST-00> ST-FF)!
• Adding samples with IFF-loops to the presetlist is possible.
• Proper PLST allocation. Protracker will no longer allocate any memory if there's no PLST.
• ST-disk number changed to HEX. This means you can have up to $FF, or 255 ST-disks (used to be 99).
• Sample Graphing like Audiomaster. With Show Range, Show All, Zoom Out, Range All, etc...
• Play either Waveform, Display or Range.
• Repeat points are shown, and can be dragged around.
• Loop on/off toggle.
• A line shows current position when playing back a sample.
• A sampler just like on NT2.0.
• Resample function w/tuning tone.
• Cut, Copy and Paste functions.
• Cursor to beginning/end.
• Swap current sample with copybuffer.
• Transpose All bug removed.
• Move changed to Copy (use this to copy samples too).
• Upsample changed a tiny bit (allocation).
• Most functions will now work with marked ranges

.

V1.1B
V1.1B (August 1991) - Most known version. (Methinks =)

• Many major bugfixes.
• Changed layout for quadrascope.
• Load gadget no longer hangs the program when trying to load a file that doesn't exist.
• Better filehandling with error messages.
• Repeat and replen check installed (Rel. A hanged when replen accidentally got the value zero).
• Repeat and replen were swapped when loading an IFF sample.
• Only RepLen values in IFF samples were added in the preset-editor.
• Tune memory wasn't always updated when editing samples.
• Swap Buffer debugged.
• The arpeggio sounded weird because the pitch wasn't set back at the right time.
• Shift speeds up the scrolling in the PLST and preset-editor.

V1.2
V1.2 (July 1991?) - Kickstart V2.0 version

Information could not be obtained.

V1.2C
V1.2C (July 1991?) - Parallel communication version
Made by Raul Sobon. He did also make V1.2D, V1.2E and V1.2F.

• Made real 8 channels possible through parallel communication between two Amigas.

V1.3B
V1.3B (Unknown release date)
V1.3A was also accidentally released, but contained many bugs.

• Save module bugfix.
• Not case sensitive on 'MOD.'
• 'MOD.' bug when switching to and from modules dir.
• Inputhandler bugs fixed.
• Single Step forward and backward works properly.
• The Sample function works with OS2.0
• No hang when a R/W-error occurs in OS2.0
• No crash when loading a non-module file.
• MIDI In works as it should!!!
• PT on Pseudo system screen (?)
• [LEFT Amiga] M and [LEFT Amiga] N works within ProTracker.
• Improved multitasking!
• Screen Adjust (for A3000).
• No slowmode necessary for turbo Amigas. Auto init of DMAWait.
• System requesters ON/OFF function.
• Finds volumes and diskdrives in filerequester.

V1.8
V1.8 (1994?) - Parallel communication version
Made by Bagitman of SCL.

• Made real 8 channels possible through parallel communication between two Amigas.

V2.0
V2.0 (Unknown release date)
Mainly the same as V1.2. I don't think anyone knew the difference. =O

V2.1A
V2.1A (Unknown release date)
Made by Mushroom Studios/Noxious. Contained many Bugs.

• mod. prefix was shown in the file-list if it wasn't lowercase only.
• ReturnfromCLI requester enhanced with quitgadget.
• Gadgetpositions fixed properly.
• Accidental and Diskspace bugs fixed.
• Editskip has now got an indicator.
• DISK OP., PLST and PRESET-ED screens have TOP/BOTTOM gadgets.
• PLST screen has now got Up/Down arrows.
• PT can load&save powerpacked samples/modules.
• PT can load&save tracks/patterns.
• Format disk bug has been fixed (I hope).
• Volume,Repeat,Replen,Pos & Mod is now editable from the keyboard. Just click on the numbergadgets.
• You can now choose an autoinserteffect of your own. (One of the ten effectmacros).
• The bug that completely turned the sound off when stopping the recording has now been fixed.
• You are now able to fastscroll the file- and presetlist to the next startcharacter.
• The preset-ed routines have been corrected.To use your old PLST, simply delete preset #0.
• The metronome has now got an accent on the first beat.
• A metronome keyboard toggle has been included.
• The metronomechannel can easily be changed to the current cursorposition.
• Most of the numbergadgets can now be zero'ed.
• Better patternrefresh when doing keyboard I/O.
• PT now reads the dir after rename/save/delete if the Autodirtoggle is on.
• You can solo a channel with the mouse by holding the right mousebutton while pressing 1,2,3 or 4.
  
• You can pass an argument from workbench/shell/cli to automatically load a module when PT starts.
• Powerpacker crunching/decrunching with powerpacker.library! PT will automaticly append/remove ".pp" to/from the filename.
• You can save an Icon together with the module.

V2.2A
V2.2A (Unknown release date

• Fixed the chip-mem bug from PT2.1A. (It didn't work with chipmem only)
• When Preset-ed screen was shown,you couldn't use the gadgets on the lower part of the main- or sample-screen.
• When autoexitdirtoggle was off,PT didn't change the songname when you loaded a new song/module until you exit from disk op.
• If you resampled a sample with big difference between the tunetone and the resampletone then the new length was incorrectly computed.
• If you ran out of memory when allocating crunchbuffersize then ... software failure! This should work just fine now.
• If you loaded a sample with a '.' in the samplename then PT set the length incorrectly in some cases.
• Save module should work fine now.(another nasty bug is swept away!)
• The Sampler works fine on ks2.0 (This version tests diskactivity before sampling, PT1.3 doesn't!) Source by Matrix/LSD.
• The timer is updated when you play a song while jumping out to Workbench.
• The Loopsprites are working fine with screenadjust.
• Stepplay works fine now. Amiga+Backspace is gone though.
• MIDI in functions are working now, I hope!
• Inputhandler debugged a little.
• ShowFreeDiskGadget debugged (again). Before it showed 2 sectors too much.
• If you pressed the deletefile gadget and then pressed a directoryname in the list then the dir was added to the path but the directory wasn't opened. This is now fixed.
• PrintSong now prints the patternlist with decimal values. It prints all patterns.(Older versions of PT missed to print the highest pattern)
• I have implemented a chord maker.
• I have implemented e Position-Editor.
• On request, I have made ''multitasking'' like in PT1.3.
• ProTracker has it's own screen. When the PT screen is in front of all other screens, PT will wake up.
• The browse function is modified to act like PT1.3. It shows the current devices and disknames.
• If you hold the right mousebutton while pressing the browsegadget a disklist will pop up showing all the device- and disknames from the browsegadget in the filenamewindow. Pressing a name will autoload that directory.
• If you press LeftShift+any key 0-9 a-z while in DiskOp, PLST or PresetEd, PT will move you to the position in the list with a name beginning with the corresponding character.
• If you use MIDI I've added two new keys. A-2 and B-2 on the Synthkeyboard are used as SampleNumber Up/Down! I have also Transposed the MIDInotes input one octave down (because Dolphin has a small keyboard and couldn't access the upper octave,C#3 - B-3).
• SaveExecutable option.
• 9 new toggles.

V2.3A
V2.3A (January 1993)

• Mountlist in PLST is fixed. Before it asked for disks in all drives even if you didn't have extradrives.
• Helpfile fixed. In the betaversion the jumptable was corrupt.
• Pointer color was green after succesful saving. This one is fixed now.
• In the betaversion you couldn't exit POS-ed with ESC.
• PT shouldn't quit with ESC. This is fixed now. Use Alt+Q (This one has been there all the time) or click in the top-left corner to quit.
• There was a bug in the Entry jump routine (Shift+Desired character) in Disk.op, PLST and PresetED. If you had directories in the current path PT jumped to the first DIRECTORY starting with the desired character instead of searching for the first FILE beginning with that character.
• Some minor bugs fixed as well.

V3.00 BETA
V3.00 BETA (January 1993) - Hires version
Made by Cryptoburners, and based upon V1.3, and does therefore not contain the features of V2.1A - V2.3A.

• PowerPacker support. Powerpacker.library must be present in the "sys:libs/" directory. Version needed: 35.000 or higher. It is however recommended that you have at least 1MB to use this feature with large modules.
• Protracker rearranged to HIRES 640x256x3.
• Format now works with dfx. Remember to specify which drive to format in the "path" string-gadget.
• Midi has been kicked out (temporarily?).
• "SpectrumAnalyzer" has been kicked out.
• Protracker now works on Kickstart 2.04 and higher (SCS/ECS).
• Memory display now displays all memorytypes.
• Improved input handler. PT will now live peacefully with Commodities. We hope.
• Invented new fileformat based on Interchanged File Format (IFF) chunks. See docs elsewhere on this disk for a discussion of this format.
• Hold record mode; waits for keypress before starting to record.
• New filerequester.
• Screen to back gadgets. You may also use Left Amiga + M/N.
• Standalone playroutine supporting Finetune etc. Not fast though :(
• Some speedups in the SampleEd. It was awfully slow at marking in HIRES!
• Scroll bars added here and there (but not everywhere ;)
• New pointer! The old one was simply too big for the new resolution.. :)
• Setupscreen revised and merged into one.
• Date and time online at mainscreen.
• Task interferance problems fixed (Improved multitasking). No busy waits.
• The dragging routine in the sampler draws pixels instead of lines when dragging.
• Major rearranging on mainscreen; editor centered and some new buttons for editing, such as cut/paste, up/down octave etc.
• You may now click into the different tracks with the left mousebutton! :o
• Audio.device channel allocation, to ensure that other programs doesn't mess with your tunes in a multitasking environment.
• Chords editor with up to 7 notes. (Hi JanneS :)
• PT now hopefully works on KS3.0 in AGA mode too (Hi Vishnu).
• The sampler works again! ;)

V3.01
V3.01 (Unknown release date) - AM/FM release

• Reads the devices mounted in the system instead of hardcoded ones.
• "Free" gadget fixed.
• Sample read/write fixed.
• Now gets the directory automagically when one is entered in the pathgadget.
• Fixed bug in chord editor. Sometimes caused division by zero.
• Added adjust to chord editor; boosts the volume of the resulting sample to fit the original sample.
• Screen adjust gadget is now working. :)
• Bug in runback fixed.
• CIA allocation failures are now displayed.
• Tools gadget removed.
• Short keys for setup-items caused the switches to be displayed on the main screen. Not anymore :)
• Drumpad likewise.
• Several smaller bugs fixed.
• Added a gadget on the dirscreen for fast browsing through the file type options.
• New icon on the out-of-memory requesters :o
• Some new gadgets are working!
• Minor graphical changes
• Decimal numbers on samplelength and loops

V3.10 BETA
V3.10 BETA (May 1993) - Amiga Format version

• A new improved 7-note chord editor, recalculates loops.
• Full compatibility with all existing OS versions including OS3.0
• Better multitasking capabilities
• New sample edit options, includes Invert, Maximize, NormalDC, Normalize.
• Mouse controlled editing made possible.
• Added real VU-meters.
• New configurable options: - Screen positioning. - Lace on/off for genlock users. - Multicached disk directories.

V3.14B
V3.14B (Unknown release date) - DYN samples version

• For the first time in Amiga history: Improved sound quality! Actual 14 bit sound dynamics using a new and revolutionary algorithm. No additional add-ons required, furthermore, no extra storage usage. Fully compatible with traditional 8-bit Amiga sounds.
• Reads and converts Maestro MONO 16-bit samples.
• Info requester when reading IFF samples.
• The "BlankZero" now also blanks empty effect commands and the extended command byte.

V3.15
V3.15 (Unknown release date) - Bugfix version

V3.18
V4.18 ((Unknown release date) - Bugfix version
Internal version especially for Audiomonster

V3.30-V4.0(1994-1997) from Tom Beyer (Dreamer)
started as an bufix project, it was an rewritten protracker based of an resourced protracker 3.15 on the amiga.

• moving of the loopsliders in sample editor if directory window is open crashed the system (fixed)
• xpk packing system (saving and loading) for all protracker filesystem operations implemented
• integrated 100-pattern fileformat from Protracker V2.3
• plst, ped and onlinehelp integrated
• information menu integrated
• song position system integrated
• recovery system integrated
• module repair integrated
• a1200 keyboard fix integrated
• numerous fonts integrated
• new DMA handler for fast machines integrated
• pre-defined setups integrated
• new loading routine implemented. No more crashs by loading non-module files
• numerous D4-D7 data register allocation errors (fixed)
• sample end calculation (global, fixed)
• aga spritefix by using hires pointers (a1200, a4000) and an fixed copperlist
• keyboard lookups (refused by CRB's PED/PLST kick-out)
• multiple-fileselect-error in the directory window (fixed)
• setfunction now kickstart3 compatible. No more IRQ-crashs in directory window
• now all settings are initialised by program start. much more settings will be saved
• step play forward/backward (ENTER/Backspace) correctly implemented
• realtime refresh of patterns by using shift+cursor keys and gadgets implemented
• song loading/saving again correctly implemented and usuable
• no name overrun of the first sample anymore if the filename was edited in the directory window
• dozens of on the fly fixes i have forgotten
• sampler window gadget routine fixed
• alt- keypad 1-0 was only functionable if percussion mode was enabled (key \). fixed.
• loading/saving of setups in the setup window fixed. No more trashs in the directorywindow after this anymore
• long paths (over 30 alphanumerics) implemented
• loading of modules with more than 21 alphanumerics in the samplenames now loadable ("the newtracker bug")
• Loading/saving with "nosamples" enabled fixed.
• ALT-cursordown (turboscroll) fixed.
• pressing the key ~ (over TAB) in text input fields crashed the system (fixed)
• whole program is now 68060 CPU clean
• loading of modules from old trackers fixed (the high beep at the end of some samples). Was an error at the loop allocation in the sample routine from CRB. The correctly loop now calculated dynamicly by loading the module
• Editing od samplenames with full 22 characters instead 21 (fixed).
• sample names now correctly updated by loading if the directory window is open
• Implemented 8 channel mode (not finished)
• More scopes (stereoscope, monoscope...)
• Internal usage of packed IFF pictures instead RAW. Saves almost 100k executable space (and memory).
  (Imploder FIMP format used)

V4.0-V5.0 (1997-1998) from Tom Beyer (Dreamer)
actually internal release, started on other machines than only amiga. Versions for amiga, Linux and WindowsNT are compiled. Completly rewritten source in C++. No versions history available this time.

Known bugs

If your copy of ProTracker shows some strange behaviour and you can't find it here, look in the Frequently Asked Questions section. It could be that it's not really a bug. If you can't find your case anywhere, please do contact the authors.
On A1200/A600 it is not possible selecting (or atleast very difficult) to select instrument $10-$1F using the keypad. This is our punishment for not using the system and may not be fixed for a while.
ProTracker does not go on well with the debugging tool MungWall from Commodore.
Temporary workaround is to quit MungWall before running ProTracker.

• Very few screenblankers cooperate with ProTracker. If ProTracker locks up after 2-3 minutes, this could be it. Disable all screenblankers before running ProTracker. (SuperDark does work though!If you are using a hires-pointer on your Workbench, some gadgets, the pointer and the cursor will appear with half width.
• On really fast machines (68030 30MHz or faster) some notes causes crap in the audiospeakers. This will (hopefully) soon be fixed.
• When entering subdirectories in disk operations some lines remain "selected". This is taken care of.
• Earlier, you could change instrument-number without setting new notes, and chip-instruments (very short samples with loop) would automatically jump to the new sample. This no longer works after the implementation of DYN samples.
• Playing the same note on two different channels may produce slightly different sound from time to time.
• When editing the modulename from disk-operations, the first character of the name of instrument 1 is set to a "_". * Effect-command 9 (sample offset) doesn't give any sound if the desired offset is behind the end of the sample. Earlier, it did.
• If ProTracker attempts to play a sample with 0 in replen (this is the case of some older modules) it will lock up.
• Memory fragmentation occurs when starting PT twice from Icon.
• Samples succeeding 32Kb are not displayed fully in the sample editor.
• Keyrepeat sometimes don't stop in pattern editor. (Nasty!)
• Saving samples sometimes chooses the wrong device to write to.
• Turning off audio channels doesn't stop repeating instruments immediately.
• Updating sample length when resampling/upsampling/downsampling.
• At present time you must launch PT as a project icon from WorkBench, or from CLI. Tool icons will hang your system!
• Applications that do not allocate the timers properly, will cause the music to stop (eg. ProPlay). However, this is not ProTrackers fault; PT allocates the used timers gently :) As you see this is not really a bug, but we just want kill potential "bug reports" in birth
• When a DYN-sample is played by keys while song is playing, it will sound distorted.
• If starting a song, notes with DYN-samples in the first line are not always played correctly.
• Sample edit operations on DYN-samples will not work, but crash the system (sooner or later).
• Using volume on DYN-samples creates awful distorted sounds.
• When loading a new module, ProTracker doesn't set the lo-pass filter to the default value.
• When clicking on the destination-gadget in the chords-edit, PT seems to select a random sample-number. This is ofcourse wrong.
• When mixing samples, PT does not calculate the arpeggio-values to put in the samplename correctly if these are too high.
• Writing values directly to sample length/repeat/replen does not always work.
• Increasing sample-length using the up arrow is okay, but decreasing does not seem to work as desired.
• The playtime-clock is halted when the Workbench screen is up.
• Setting the rate for samples using alt + keypad does not work when keyboard percussion is turned off.
• Samplerates for samples aren't cleared when clearing module/loading a new module. This should be done.

Things we'll never implement

• Splitting up each track of a pattern into a seperate "pattern", independent of the others. After having talked to many musicians, we all agreed this is all in vain. Nobody seems to be going to use it, due to the serious timing problems that will arise. Use SIDMON instead, if you're really anxious to use this feature

• 8 channels Protracker. The Amiga is designed for 4 voices, if this feature is to be implemented, the CPU has to mix the channels realtime, and will use all CPU DMA on lowend Amigas. Forget it. Use StarTrekker if you want it.

• ASDR editor for channel modulation aka envelopes. This will take up a huge amount of CPU capacity to play as well as it does very little for the sound. No, no, no!

• A whole new range of DSP effects for your samples, including: - Low, high, band and allpass filters (IIR filters). - Comb filters. - Shelving low and high filters. - Multitap delay/feedback algorithms. - Graphic eq. - Noise reduction. This is partly because I don't know shit about how these things work and because of the 16-bit technology around the corner. If I get some sources (preferably assembly) I might concider it. FFTs are especially wanted!

• Fastmem replay. Your modules can't be used for anything if they don't fit into chipmem anyway. Live with it. Blame Amiga Technologies, not me.

Things we will implement

• Implementation of the new IFF fileformat which includes:

• Commands ranging from 0..0xFF (0..255). All commands that CAN run in parallel will do. Lotsa other commands. Suggestions are welcome!

• 256 Positions.

• 256 Patterns.

• 256 Samples. (Higly wanted!)

• Implement octave 0! - Maximum sample size raised from 64Kb to 128Kb. It's there, why not use it?

• CIA/VBL flag saved with modules.

• Author information.

• Samplerate info for each sample.

• Seek zero/loop in sampler.

• Protracker.library for non-tech programmers wanting to use PT modules in their programs.

• Separate position-editor.

• Save module as executable.

• Add icon to saved files.

• Load samples/instruments/patterns from an existing module.

• Freehand sample-editing.

• Gain/Finished info when packing.

• Hypertext on-line help.

• Serial comm. to other protrackers. (Synchronize playing)

• External metronome signal using a special joy=>jack adapter. Details are being worked at. (Audio without using any of the normal audio channels, nice for PortaStudio owners and such.)

• Send (as well as receive) synchronization signals to/from professional audio equipment to allow accurate recordings from ProTracker.

• Bugfree functionality. (This one has low priority!) =)

• Read (and save?) QuadraComposer (EMOD) modules. While we're at it, we'll check for the possibilities of using a plug-in interface for loaders and savers.

• Use a system-friendly screen for ProTracker. When this is done, you'll be able to use ANY screenmode for PT.

• Selectable replay using audio-device. After all, new audio hardware is around the next corner!

• Unlimited samplesize. I have already figured out a replay scheme to pull this one off, but other things have higher priority right now. (Still limited by chipmem size, though...)

Frequently asked questions

If you have any questions that's not listed here, send them in.

Q: Keyboard shortcuts with more than one key involved doesn't work as expected. I have an A1200 or A600.
A: This is a known bug, and it's not much to do about it.

Q: When I run the program xxx before starting ProTracker, my Amiga crashes.
A: Don't run xxx.

Q: When I launch ProTracker it always locks up after x minutes.
A: You have a screenblanker running. Quit it before launching ProTracker.

Q: I use the resample-function in the sampler, but the resulting sample is one or two octaves too high!
A: Your tunetone setting is not C-3. ProTracker takes the tunetone setting into account when resampling.

Q: Some of my chipmodules sounded strange on my new ProTracker.
A: Some chip-modules rely on ProTracker changing the sample when setting a new samplenumber for a channel without specifying a new note. This worked earlier, but doesn't any longer.

Q: Sometimes instrument 1 gets the first character of it's named replaced with a "_". Why?
A: This happens when editing the modulename from disk operations and is a bug. Sorry.

Q: I've got a module which my player regocnises as a ProTracker module, but ProTracker refuses to load it in (or crashes). Why?
A1: The module utilises more than 64 patterns. These modules are created with ProTracker V2.1 - 2.3 by Noxious. It's not much to do about this until we've included support for these modules.
A2: The module is severly damaged. Try to repair it using the TrackerTool command from DOS.
A3: The module is packed with some bogus packer that ProTracker doesn't support. See the documentation for the player to find out which packer and get the packer to unpack the module.

Q: I've got a module which makes the sample-display look phoney and distorts the length-display in the sample-editor. Why?
A: Your module has samples longer than 65536 bytes. ProTracker does not support this at current.

Q: I've got a module which gives a very high peeping sound at the end of some samples. Why?
A: This module is either made on another platform (PC, Macintosh) or converted from some old module-formats. The trick is that ProTracker needs the 2 first bytes of each sample to be set to 0. This could either be done by zooming in, selecting the first 2 bytes and setting their volume to 0 or by cutting one byte at the end of the sample (this last action causes ProTracker to automatically reset the first two bytes).

Q: I've got a module which makes ProTracker lock up when I attempt to play it. Why?
A: Your module probably contains samples with replen set to 0. Set all of these to 2 and your module should be fine.

Q: I have a module which sounds like parts of it are being played in wrong speed. How can I listen to the module the way it was meant to?
A: The module has been created with a CIA/VBlank setting that differs from yours. Go to the setup screen and change your CIA/VBlank setting.

Thanks and acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank and bring their acknowledgements out to:

Børge Nøst - debug help Crossbones - bugreports and techchat
Guru / Sahara Surfers - techtalk and IRC online debugging
Hans Christian Skattør - ProTracker info Lizard - bugreports
Ron Unhammer - suggestions
Stein Engelsgjerd - bugreports and suggestions
Tweeter - suggestions
Sveinar M Rasmussen - suggestions and betatesting

And finally: all the guys at the IRC-channels #amiga, #amigascne and #coders as well as the people at usenet group comp.sys.amiga.audio! You've been to great help! I'm sure I've forgotten someone, but you all know who you are!

Contacting the authors

Contact one of the authors if you have bugreports or any other suggestions. NOTE: There is no use contacting Cryptoburners for anything regarding ProTracker anymore since they have stopped developing it. I am therefore collecting all reports until someone continues the ProTracker or I can convince Cryptoburners to give me the source. DYN note: If (or rather when, as the situation is now)
I get the ProTracker source, I will remove the DYN system for ProTracker, because the modules can't be used for much and it's very difficult to handle such sampled. However, Markus Weichselbaum would like to receive feedback on the DYN system, especially because he's developing a new musicprogram which also utilises 14 bit playback. Unfortunately, I do not have Markus' E-Mail address handy. So if you've got anything you'd like to say to him, E-Mail me and ask for his address and you will receive it promptly.
I can promise the next version of the ProTracker support archive will feature his E-Mail address. The E-Mail address will only be valid until the summer 1996. After that, I'll only be able to reach via snail-mail for a year.

English documtation, development and support for current versions since 3.18 due 5.00:

E-Mail: havardp@mail.stud.ingok.hitos.no
IRC: (Nice alternative) Nick: Howard_MD or Howard-MD
Snailmail: (When all else fails...)
Håvard Pedersen
Kvartsveien 175
N-9022 KROKELVDALEN
Norway
Phone: (Voice rate) +(47) 77 63 13 34 (Håvard)

German documentation, development and support:

E-Mail: Tom_Beyer@nacamar.com
IRC: Nick: RD10 or Dreamer
Channels: #amiga, #amigascne and #coders.

Musical dictionary

DICTIONARY

This is a short dictionary which attempts to explain some words related to music or used in this documentation. ADSR: A system used for describing the volume envelope of a sample. The four letters is an abbreviation for the four words Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release. The ADSR system is shown below.
As you can see, ADSR consists of four different phases which all participates in generating the sound as we hear it. Snappy sounds is for instance said to have a fast and high attack and short sustain. A good example of this is slap bass.

Attack Decay Sustain Release

Arpeggio: Playing a pattern of notes over and over again.

Attack: See ADSR.

Beat: The percussive rythm of a song.

Brass: Wind instruments with brass mouthpieces. For instance horns and trumpets.

Break: Making variation in the rythm of a song just before starting a new part of tune is called making a break. Most composers combine this with a coffee break to gather new inspiration.

Chip: A often used description for music written with memory usage in mind. These tunes are called chip modules and the instruments are called chip instruments. These are often samples of 30-100 bytes length and small loops and the drums are often upsampled one or two times.

Clavinet: A piano used in the baroque period with a light and tender sound. Also called Spinet or Harpsichord.

Decay: See ADSR.

Envelope: See volume envelope. Fretless bass: An electric bass with it's frets removed. While it requires more skill to play than an ordinary electric bass, it provides a much warmer sound than a normal electric bass.

Funkbass: See slap bass. Groove: The rythm of a song. Not only the percussive rythm, but also bass, chords and melody. Percussion: Rythm instruments (drums). Recursive: See recursive. Reed: See woodwind.

Release: See ADSR. Slam guitar: Slap bass played on a normal guitar.

Slap bass: An (often) electric bass played by dragging a string out from the bassguitar body and release it to make it "slap" against the body. This creates a sharp sound and is often used in funky tunes. It is also used on guitar in funk music.

Strings: A collective expression for string instruments. Most often used for orchestral samples. (Violins, cellos etc...)

Sustain: See ADSR. Sweep Eq: A special way of using so-called parametric equalizers to make a monotonous sound change it's timbre. Often used in techno music. Timbre: The sound of an instrument.

Volume envelope: The volume changes in an instrument. ADSR one way of describing a volume envelope.

Wind instruments: Instruments which create sound be having the player breath air into them. For instance flutes. Woodwind: Wind instruments with small pieces of wood in their mouthpieces which vibrates and generates the sound. These often have a softer sound than brass instruments. Also called reed.

For technical minded

This chapter describes support files and other things needed to know when writing applications that handles ProTracker files.

File formats

ProTracker song/module format
ProTracker IFF song/module format

Sources

Using the ProTracker play-routine
Using the ProPruner play-routine
Using the AudioAlloc sound allocation routine
Using the SoundFX sound-replay engine
Using the PTCalcTime playtime calculator

Support software

The TrackerTool command
ProPacker v2.1 by Christian Estrup
PPRStrip and PPRSampler

Miscellaneous

CIA tempo calculation
DYN-Samples

ProTracker song&module format

If the file is a module, the sampledata follows right after the patterndata. If not, this is the end. The samples are located from 1 through 31. Use the sampleinfo to find the start and end of each sample. Each DYN sample is followed by a longword with length of the DYN info, and then the DYN info itself. The format of the DYN info is not publically available yet.

SAMPLE INFORMATION

PATTERN FORMAT

Each note is stored as 4 bytes, and all four notes at each position in the pattern are stored after each other.

00 - chan1 chan2 chan3 chan4
01 - chan1 chan2 chan3 chan4
02 - chan1 chan2 chan3 chan4 etc.

Info for each note:

BIT# 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 USE S7 S6 S5 S4 P11 P10 P9 P8 P7 P6 P5 P4 P3 P2 P1 P0 BIT# 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 USE S3 S2 S1 S0 E11 E10 E9 E8 E7 E6 E5 E4 E3 E2 E1 E0

S7-S0 - Samplenumber.
P11-P0 - Period of note.
E11-E0 - Effect command.

Periodtable for Tuning 0, Normal C-1 to B-1 :

856,808,762,720,678,640,604,570,538,508,480,453 C-2 to B-2 :
428,404,381,360,339,320,302,285,269,254,240,226 C-3 to B-3 :
214,202,190,180,170,160,151,143,135,127,120,113

To determine what note to show, scan through the table until you find the same period as the one stored in byte 1-2. Use the index to look up in a notenames table. These periods are really for NTSC timing, but is used for both PAL/NTSC. This is the data stored in a normal module/song. A packed song starts with the four letters "PACK", and then comes the packed data.

ProTracker IFF song&modules

Take a look at the support page.

Using the PT playroutine (Amiga source)

The replay relies on you not turning on the audio DMA, as this is done when needed. In order to get the replay working properly it needs to initialize itself. To make this happen, call PT_Init with a pointer to your module in A0. When this is done, everything is ready to go. Simply call PT_Music 50 times a second to achieve music. This call assumes exclusive access to an OCS/ECS/AGA-compatible audio hardware located at $DFF000. It is safe to call both PT_Init and PT_End if your PT_Music-calls are done in an interrupt and your interrrupt is still enabled. When you're finished, you may call PT_End to ensure that all pending sound is removed. If you intend to sync the module to some visual effect, this may be done with effect command 8. The last value can be read in PT_MainData+PTm_SyncVal.

Mastervolume/balance

In order for the mastervolume features of the replay to be enabled you must insert "PT__MasterVol = 1" somewhere in your source before the replay. You should, however, note that enabling the mastervolume features heavily slows down the replay. In order to adjust the mastervolume, you may call PT_SetMasterVol with the volume (a word) for the left channel in D0 (range 0-64) and the volume for the right channel in D1. The change takes place immediately.

Overstep

This is a strange word, which I generated myself when I couldn't find another word to describe this feature. The idea behind overstep is that the programmer should, in some way, be able to sense when the current module is finished in order to be able to load in another module or perform some other action based on this. In order to activate overstep, insert "PT__OverStep = 1" in your sourcecode. Overstep provides nearly no overhead. The byte PT_OverStep will be written with a 1 if a position jump occured, the module was halted, the end was reached or a fast forward hit the end. The value -1 may occur in this byte if a rewind was done in position 1.
Please note that the replay itself never clears the byte PT_OverStep, so the programmer must do this himself when changes are sensed.

Winding

In order for the winding functions to be enabled, insert "PT__WindFuncs = 1" in your source. You may now call the functions PT_Forward and PT_Rewind to skip forward and backward one pattern at a time. The module loops correctly both at beginning and end. Please beware that if there are any position jump commands at the end of the current pattern when you do a PT_Forward or a position jump command just occured when doing a PT_Rewind, the positions may not be played in a correct order. Working around this is way to much work, so settle with it. CIA timing. The replay does not do CIA timing itself, but has been extended with a small support forl the user to implement this. To enable the CIA-mode of the replay, insert "PT__CIA = 1" in your source. When CIA is enabled, the replay assumes the user to supply a function called CIA_SetBPM wich is to be called with the CIA tempo in D0 and does not trash any registers. This function is called inside PT_Init and each time the module attempts to change the CIA tempo.

68020+ optimizations

To enable the 68020+ optimizations, insert "PT__68020 = 1" in your source. The replay now uses a few 68020+ only instructions to gain some speed. These optimizations aren't much for now, but may increase in the future.

NoiseTracker compatibility

NoiseTracker is another tracker written by Mahoney and Kaktus which writes modules almost identical to the ones written by ProTracker. As of revision 2C, the ProTracker replay is capable of playing these modules with the extra 'quirks' of the NoiseTracker module-format. The NoiseTracker compatibility is on by default and may be disabled by inserting "PT__NTComp = 0" in your source. The NoiseTracker compatibility causes the replay to correctly play NoiseTracker vibrato and utilises the repeat-feature of NoiseTracker. This option uses nearly no (if any) extra CPU-time.

BACKGROUND

The ProPruner playroutine is an attempt to make a replay that is significantly faster than the clean ProTracker replay. The ProPruner playroutine contains nearly all features that one can think of and is pretty fast. In order to achieve the extra speed, it needs the modules to be modified and saved in a special format. Currently, the ProPruner replay need

ProPacker v2.1

modules and does some internal changes to these modules before playing them. The ProPacker v2.1 is made by Christian Estrup and is spread without his permission. For documentation on how to use the ProPacker, please read it's separate chapter.

The program TrackerTool will soon be able to output ProPruner modules directly, so you won't need to use the ProPacker and the modules won't need to be altered by the replay before playing.

BASIC USE OF THE PROPRUNER PLAYROUTINE

The first thing to do when using the ProPruner CIA shell or Level 6 timing is to fetch the vector base register and store in PPR_MainData+PPRM_VBR. The replay will then use it for compatibility on higher processors. In order to use the ProPruner playroutine, you have to initially call PPR_Init with A0 pointing to your module and A1 pointing to your samplefile if the use of a samplefile is enabled. When this is done, you call PPR_Music each vertical blank to achieve music.
CIA timing is described separately later on. When you want to stop the music, call PPR_End. It is perfectly safe to call PPR_Init and PPR_End while your VBlank interrupt is still enabled. The function PPR_Init may also be used for restarting the module and all function trashes all registers except where else is stated. If noteplayers are disabled, the module must be in chip memory. If you use a separate samplefile, only the samplefile need to reside in chip memory. PPR_Init should not be called while a module is playing without first calling PPR_End.

LEVEL 6 MODE

You may have ProPruner use the level 6 (CIA timers) interrupt for DMA waiting in order to save cycles when playing modules. Keep in mind, though, that neither the timers nor the interrupt vector is allocated from the system, so this feature should only be used when all hardware resources are available. When level 6 mode is in use, you cannot figure out the rasterline usage by timing the PPR_Music call since some of the actual work is done in an interrupt which occurs a while after the PPR_Music call. Level 6 timing is enabled by setting PPR_Level6 to 1.

SEPARATE SAMPLEFILES

ProPruner supports separate samplefiles in order to save precious chip-memory and delta-processing. Delta-processing is currently only available when separate samplefiles are enabled. The samplefiles are extracted from modules using the PPRStrip and the PPRSampler commands. To enable the usage of separate samplefiles, set PPR_SampleFile to 1.

PREDOUBLING

This feature is hard to explain, but shortly it means that the module is preprocessed during init in order to achieve slightly faster replay. Since this processing may cause errors in some VERY large modules, it is possible to disable it. Predoubling is on as default and may be turned off by setting PPR_PreDouble to 0.

MASTERVOLUME CONTROLS

ProPruner's mastervolume system is a combination of balance and mastervolume. The mastervolume provides a small speed overhead and should therefore be left off if unused. If mastervolume is enabled, call PPR_SetMasterVol with mastervolume for left side in D0 and mastervolume for right side in D1. The range is 0-64. To enable mastervolume, set PPR_MasterVol to 1.

DELTA-PROCESSED SAMPLEFILES

Delta-processing is currently only supported for separate samplefiles. Delta-processing is an altering of the sample data in order to make them easier to compress. When delta-processing is enabled, the ProPruner playroutine will decode the sampledata back to their original form before starting the module. Delta-processing causes no changes to the final sound. With delta-processing enabled, the ProPruner replay will still handle module without delta-processing. To enable delta-processing, set PPR_Delta to 1.

SELECTABLE FINETUNE

The finetune option consumes both rastertime and space in the replay, so it is therefore advised to disable finetune if the replay is used to replay module(s) without finetune. The packer will inform you of wether the module uses finetune or not. To disable finetune, set PPR_Finetune to 0.

CIA TIMING USING THE PROPRUNER PLAYROUTINE

The ProPruner playroutine does not support CIA timing directly, but relies on the caller to provide the interrupt. If CIA timing is enabled, the user must himself allocate necessary resources and set up an CIA interrupt that calls PPR_Music. The playroutine will then call PPR_SetBPM with beats per minute in D0 each time the CIA tempo is supposed to change. The PPR_SetBPM function must be supplied by the caller and may only destroy D0 and D1. Please do also note that the Level6 function seldom works correctly when CIA mode is turned on. To enable the CIA mode, set PPR_CIA to 1.

SELECTABLE 68020+ OPTIMIZATIONS

The ProPruner can be assembled using special 68020+ optimizations, which may result in a slight rastertime usage decrease. The optimizations is mostly noticeable when powerpattern is disabled, but is always (to some extent) usable. To enable 68020+ optimizations, set PPR_68020 to 1.

PAUSE/CONTINUE FUNCTIONS

The ProPruner playroutine comes with selectable pause/continue functions. When these are enabled, PPR_Pause is used to pause the module and PPR_Continue is used for continuing the replay.

REWIND AND FAST FORWARD FUNCTION

Another feature of the ProPruner playroutine is the possibility to skip one position forward/backward in the module. When this possibility is enabled, PPR_Forward will skip one position forward in the module and PPR_Rewind skips one position backwards. If the module is at the beginning, ProPruner will automatically wrap to the end of the module. These function may cause overstep events and may miss position jumps!

THE POWERPATTERN OPTIMIZATION

The heart of ProPruner is the powerpattern feature. This is a way of storing the patterndata that differs slightly from both ProPacker (which ProPruner is based on) and ProTracker. PowerPattern should pose any problems but may be disabled by setting PPR_PowerPatt to 0.

NOTEPLAYERS - WHAT?

If the noteplayer feature is enabled, ProPruner itself won't bang straight on the hardware to play the sound, but will use supplied functions and macros for achieving sound.

The macros are:

PPRN_InitReg (Channel)
- Is called to enable the noteplayer to set up A5 pointing to a data area needed by the other macros to perform correctly. The argument "Channel" is in the range 0-3, thus making the selected channel the "current" channel.

PPRN_KillSound
- Has the sole purpose of killing the sound of all channels. This macro may be called without having A5 pointing to anything of significance.

PPRN_KillCh
- Kill all sound on the current channel.

PPRN_TrigWave (Wavestart, Wavelen)
- Causes the noteplayer to immediately start playing the selected wave and loops back to the start of the wave when the wave is through playing. Wavelen is given in number of words.

PPRN_SetWave (Wavestart, Wavelen)
- Does nearly the same as PPRN_TrigWave except that the wave is not started until the current wave has reached it's end.

PPRN_SetVolume (Volume)
- Sets the volume (range 0-64) for the current channel.

PPRN_SetRate (Rate)
- Sets the samplerate for the current channel.

PPRN_SetMVolL (Volume)
- Sets mastervolume for the left side. Range is 0-64. A5 is not initialized.

PPRN_SetMVolR (Volume)
- Sets mastervolume for the right side. Range is 0-64. A5 is not initialized.

PPRN_Filter (State)
- Attempts to change the status of the lo-pass filter. The noteplayer doesn't need to support this action. At the beginning if PPR_Music, the function PPRN_MakeSound is called. This function may be used for mixing and trigging the actual sound output. To enable noteplayer, set PPR_NotePlayer to 1. The noteplayer feature has not been debugged at all, so don't be surprised if it doesn't work. I would, however, be glad to hear about it anyway.

SELECTABLE NUMBERS OF CHANNELS TO PLAY

The ProPruner playroutine is able to play less than 4 channels in order to set the remaining channels free for soundeffects. This is especially useful in conjunction with the SoundFX soundeffect replay engine. Disabling channels effectively saves a huge amount of raster time and should therefore be used even when the last channels isn't in use when the module to replay has no notes on the last channels. To use this feature, simply set PPR_Channels to the number of channels to play.

OBTAINING INFO FROM THE MODULE

The ProPruner playroutine supports a effectcommand not supported by other replay, effectcommand 8 to send events to the replay. When the module issues for instance effect command 847, the byte PPR_MainData+PPRM_Msg will contain the hexadecimal number 47. The programmer is free to read this value at any time and take actions upon it.

OVERSTEP EVENTS

If the module has reached the end, the byte PPR_MainData+PPRM_RestFlag will be set to true (non-zero). The caller may then take proper actions, such as loading another module.

Using AudioAlloc

GENERAL

This source allocates four channels from the audio device, in order to ensure that no other programs attempts to access these channels. However, this does not guarantee easy sound replay. Most sources (including those in the ProTracker support archive) accesses the hardware directly to produce the actual sound, and this is subject to fail anytime. However, most of the time, it doesn't.

USAGE

Call AA_Alloc to try the allocation. If D0=0 upon return, the allocation failed. If D0 is non-zero, the allocation succceeded and the audio channels are exclusively for you to use. However, you must remember to free the audio channels when you no longer need them. This is done by calling AA_Free.

Using SoundFX

WHAT IS SOUNDFX?

SoundFX is a sound-effect engine that enables playing of 2 samples through one normal audio channel. The mixing is fairly fast and provides minimal overhead. Both samples must have the same samplerate and cannot be looped in current version. This is done to save CPU cycles when mixing.

GENERAL USAGE

Call SFX_Init with the samplerate in D0. Minimum values are 123 for PAL and 124 for NTSC. When using the fastmode (described below) only rates of 226/228 or higher are supported. Call SFX_SetVolume with volume (0-64) in D0 for adjusting the mastervolume. This is not set to default values and should therefore be done after the SFX_Init call. Call SFX_StartSound with D0 stating which channel-partition to play on (0 or 1 for now), A0 pointing to the sampledata (should be in fastmem if possible) and A1 pointing to the end if the sampledata (samplepointer + samplesize). The sampledata should be halved to avoid distortion. In assembly this may be done by issuing a LSR.B #1 on all bytes. Call SFX_End when the engine is not in use anymore. After this call, SFX_Init must be called before further sound effects may be generated. While the sampledata does not need to reside in chip, the SoundFX engine itself has to because of some buffers.

SETTING THE BUFFERSIZE

The buffersize tells SoundFX how many bytes to mix at a time. Changes to the sound (such as new samples) are only senced at the end of a buffer. Smaller buffers yields better response-times but provides more CPU overhead when starting the mixing while higher values does the opposite. The default setting of 1024 bytes should be sufficient. To change the buffersize set SFX__BuffSize to the number of bytes you wish the buffersize to be. Please note that the buffersize must be an even number.

THE FASTMODE

The fastmode provides a somewhat faster mixingscheme, but has worse audio output than the normal mode. When fastmode is active you can only use half the frequence of normal notes (rate 226/228 or higher) as normal. This mixing mode may produce high-frequency tones which may both distort the sound and destroy loudspeakers! To get rid of this quirk, enable the audio filter. In fastmode, however, the sampledata does not need to be halved. To enable fastmode, set SFX__FastMode to 1.

DIFFERENT OUTPUT MODES

The SoundFX engine at current supports two different output modes. To select one, set SFX__Mode to the number of your mode. (0) - Vertical blank. This mode is perhaps the most convenient one for games that destroys the OS and does not wish to set up audio interrupt themselves. The engine relies on the user to call SFX_VBLHandle each vertical blank. All registers will be trashed. In this mode, the user must choose both buffersize and the replay rate so that one buffer takes exactly on frame to play. For help on how to calculate this, refer to the Hardware Reference Manual from Addison Wesley. For the rate 224, the samplebuffer should be set to 636 bytes. (1) - OS Audio interrupts. (Default) This mode uses the operating system to set up an audio interrupt which handles everything. The sound replay is transparent to the caller and the buffersize may be freely chosen.

Using PTCalcTime

WHAT IS PTCALCTIME?

PTCalcTime is a source that calculates the playtime of ProTracker modules. This source operates internally with 1/25000ths of a second and should therefore be very accurate.

GENERAL USAGE

Call the function PTCalcTime with the registers set up as follows: D0 - The songpos to start the module from. Normally, this should be 0. D1 - 25000th of a second to pass between each interrupt. This should normally be set to 25000/50. D2 - Set to 1 if the timing is CIA based. Otherwise, set to 0. A0 - Points to the ProTracker module. A1 - Points to four longwords that are used for storing the playtime. The first longword will contain hours, the next minutes, then seconds and finally 1/100 seconds. The function returns shortly, but might use up to 2-3 seconds on really slow Amigas.

CIASHELLS

There are two official CIA shells, CIAShell_HW (a hardware-banging CIA shell which doesn't attempt to access the OS at all) and CIAShell_OS (which uses the OS for all access and should work on all Amigas, even the DRACO). The usage of these are described in the chapter of each of the playroutines.

PTCUSTOMIZE

This isn't really a source, but a description on how to customize the ProTracker replay for your own needs, for instance another tracker or an upjazzed player which needs functions and information not normally obtained from the replay. It's a combination of textfile and source.

The TrackerTool command

What is TrackerTool?

TrackerTool is a small DOS-command designed for performing certain tasks on modules, which is clearly beyond the scope of ProTracker itself. This tasks mainly involve repairing and converting modules. (Current output modes are only normal ProTracker modules, though.)

Why use TrackerTool?

If you've tried QuadraComposer, you may have found out that QC is not able to identify Noise/Pro-Tracker modules properly if their size is wrong. To make this problem even worse, some tools save 4 bytes extra on modules because of a bug in earlier replay-routines. In order to fix these modules you either load them one by one into ProTracker (if they're not too damaged for ProTracker to recognize them!) and save them back to disk or you could use TrackerTool.

How to use TrackerTool?

The template for TrackerTool is: TrackerTool SOURCE=FROM/A,ALL/S,VERBOSE/S,UPDATE=UD/S,WRITE=TO SOURCE may be a file (ex: "mod.jugux"), a directory (ex: "modules/") or a wildcard (ex: "mod.eat#?"). ALL specifies that subdirectories is entered recursively.
VERBOSE will cause TrackerTool to print a lot of useless information about what it actually does. If TrackerTool shows strange behaviour, enable VERBOSE in order to find out what actually goes wrong. UPDATE specifies that the original module(s) are to be overwritten with the repaired module(s).
WRITE specifies a path to write the repaired module(s) to. For repairing all modules on you device XST-00: you would write: TrackerTool XST-00: ALL UPDATE Or repairing all modules in the current directory starting with an "a" and write the repaired modules to RAM: you would write: TrackerTool mod.a#? WRITE RAM:

Anything more to tell me?

Since the main reason for using TrackerTool (at current) is repairing possibly damaged modules, TrackerTool does no attempt to identify the specified file(s). Because of this, you must NEVER run TrackerTool on any files that are not 31-instrument tracker modules. This includes text files, IFF pictures and 15 INSTRUMENT TRACKER MODULES! If you attempt this, your Amiga might crash with a horrible wail and if used in conjunction with the UPDATE keyword, you will probably lose your files. TrackerTool does, however, support up to 256 patterns, DYN samples and 128 Kb long samples without problems.

ProPacker v2.1

READ FIRST!

ProPacker is needed to generate the modules for the ProPruner playroutine. The ProPacker v2.1 is written by Christian Estrup and is spread without his permission. What follows here are the original docs, only slightly adjusted to fit the guidelines for this AmigaGuide document.
Some parts of the doc concerning the replay has been cut out. Do also note that the ProPacker does not support being started from the Workbench, but must be started from CLI/Shell.#

PREFACE

Pro-Packer 2.1 is Freely Distributable. This means, that the program may be freely distributed (!), as long as the replayer and this docfile are included. NO money WHATSOEVER may be made from selling Pro-Packer 2.1. Public Domain companies and their likes, who want to sell this program, have to get a special, written permission from me. You will find my address at the bottom of this doc-file.

INTRODUCTION

Pro-Packer 2.1 enables you to pack your ProTracker-modules (and compatibles). It comes with a replayer, which is able to play the packed modules a lot faster than the original PT-replay-routine.

THE PACKER

Using the packer is fairly easy. To load a module, just click in the load gadget (surprise). You will then see the familiar (?) req.library file-requester. (This means, of course, that you need req.library to run the packer!) When you've selected a module, it will automatically be packed. When packing is finished, the packer will show you the length of the packed module. The packer will also tell you, whether or not the module uses finetune (see 'The Replayer' about this). To save the packed module, just click in the save gadget (easy, isn't it?), and you'll see the file-requester again. Select a filename, and you're done...

PPRStrip & PPRSampler

WHAT ARE THESE?

PPRStrip and PPRSampler are commands used for handling the generation of separate samplefiles for use with the ProPruner replay routine. These commands was originally thrown together for personal use, but should nevertheless be bugfree as they have been thoroughly tested. Both these commands needs OS 3.0+ to work.

PPRSTRIP

PPRStrip is used to strip the sampledata from ProPacker v2.1 modules. The only argument supported is the filename, so the original module will be overwritten.

PPRSAMPLER

PPRSampler is used for generating a samplefile from a ProTracker module. The command supports three arguments:

SOURCEFILE - The complete path and filename of a ProTracker module. This file will only be read and not changed in any way.
DESTINATIONFILE - The filename of the samplefile to generate.
DELTA - This is a keyword which, if present, causes PPRSampler to delta-process the sampledata. Look in the documentation of the ProPruner playroutine for information on delta-processing.

CIA tempo calculation

CIA TEMPO ISSUES

Fcolor = 4.43361825 MHz (PAL color carrier frequency)
CPU Clock = Fcolor * 1.6 = 7.0937892 MHz
CIA Clock = Cpu Clock / 10 = 709.37892 kHz
50 Hz Timer = CIA Clock / 50 = 14187.5784
Tempo num. = 50 Hz Timer*125 = 1773447

For NTSC: CPU Clock = 7.1590905 MHz --> Tempo num. = 1789773

To calculate tempo we use the formula:

TimerValue = 1773447 / Tempo

The timer is only a word, so the available tempo range is 28-255 (++). Tempo 125 will give a normal 50 Hz timer (VBlank). A normal ProTracker VBlank song tempo can be calculated as follows: We want to know the tempo in BPM (Beats Per Minute), or rather quarter- notes per minute. Four notes makes up a quarternote.

First find interrupts per minute:

60 seconds * 50 per second = 3000 Divide by interrupts per quarter note = 4 notes * speed

This gives: Tempo = 3000/(4*speed) simplified: Tempo = 750/speed

For a normal song in speed 6 this formula gives: 750/6 = 125 BPM

DYN Samples

PREFACE

Markus Weichselbaum has asked me to remove the earlier description of DYN samples because he claimed it was beta information and contained bugs. He promised to write a new information text for this AmigaGuide, but I've taken the liberty to write my own temporary description.

THE PROBLEM

If you try playing a sample with a low signal, you'll notice it always contains some sort of noise. The problem is that when the signal is at a low level, it isn't able to make use of all the bits in the sample signal. Low level samples does in some cases only use bit 2-0. This problem seldom arises because it's easier to sample at higher peaks and later adjust the volume setting for the sample. However, if you have a sample that starts with high volume, but later on descends into a low, continous tone, you'll be (again) experiencing the "distortion" that occurs. One way to avoid this is sampling the sample with the volume turned way up, but this again creates distortion in the early stages of the sample.

THE DYN SOLUTION

The DYN technology splits the sample up in several parts, depending on the volume changes of the sample. This make it possible to play the start with full volume, utilising the entire range of the Amiga sample playback system, while playing quiet parts with a higher signal and lower volume setting. You don't have to sample the signal several times with different input volume, because the DYN system uses a 16-bit sample to generate it's DYN sample. All in all, this makes a sample with 8-14 bit resolution, because the resolution isn't constant but changes during sample playback.

THE HI-FI SOLUTION

There is a solution to the problem that gives better results than the DYN system, but is more expensive in the aspect that it requires 2 audio channels for each sample to replay. The advantages is that the quality is much more often on the 14 bit side of the range than the 8 bit since the calculations are done on a per-byte basis. This system is used for most S3M/FastTracker1&2-players (PC moduleformats with more than 4 voices) available on the Amiga today. This system needs to calculate to separate samples based on the input 16 bit sample. One buffer is played with full volume, while the other buffer is played on the same side as the first, but with volume set to 1. This makes the Amiga output the first channel + the second channel, resulting in a signal with 8-14 bit quality, depending on the incoming signal.
I will not attempt to describe how to calculate the two buffers, since it's beyond the scope of this chapter.