Ok. Another alt.universe me for sure. The digital sound ability of these Tandys, one of which I had, was amazing for the day and I made good use of it. But he's achieving something I could only have dreamed of back in the day: getting it to do stereo. So.. he's doing something I might've done.... no, I know I would've done. Just get another one, time it right, and play them at the same time to get stereo. Pretty amazing for 1990 tech, playing a 2013 TH-cam song.... even if it had to be spread across two computers to get the stereo
Always wondered how computers with different CPU clock rates adjust to keep programs such as games running at the same speed. In this case I'd guess there is a separate clock crystal for the audio chips. Pretty accurate time base as the channels don't drift apart. I remember trying this with two mono cassette players. Even though recorded on the same unit it was played back on, the tracks would still drift out of sync.
Oh yeah; cassette decks are notorious for speed inaccuracy. Not long ago I made a stereo recording of a full orchestra with a pair of iPhones spaced a few feet apart. They stayed perfectly in sync over 45 minutes!
Haha that's awesome! The fact that both channels aren't perfectly in sync makes a really wide stereo effect! Just transfering this to a modern computer for TH-cam must have been a real pain with all those diskettes, let alone getting both computers to play at once, especially since one loads faster than the other. I've done this a few times, but from analog sources. It's much easier to sync up in Audacity, but then you gotta deal with the slight difference in speed that both songs are playing at, and the wow and flutter :-)
Recording the audio from the two Tandys was the easiest part -- I just plugged it into the external mic input of my Canon FS200 camcorder! The audio you're hearing is exactly what the Canon recorded.
fantastic lol.. i remember reading an article in the early 90's i think it was Prodigy that used multiple Amiga's to create their early stuff recording on DAT, Those tandy's where very expensive back in the day :-)
These doesn't have any kind of a network adapter add-in card available? I'd think if you got a audio stream coming from another computer, streaming left and right on separate streams, you could do it that way. Only that I guess DOS doesn't have any software, which could do that / or these just don't have the power for such things...
That's pretty cool. I sometimes do this with say my iPod and the radio or a youtube video of the same song and pause and play it until both songs are in sync.
Haha, you loon. I love it. Could you maybe use a DIN cable splitter or something to send the keyboard command to both in perfect sync? Or if that doesn't work (the PC keyboard interface being 2-way...), maybe a 9-pin splitter for the mouse (which is only one-way) and suitable mouse driven software? Good work getting within about 1/30~1/40th sec anyway, that makes a decent reverb or echo effect usually rather than being too distracting. And fun choice of tunes :D Possibly the world's least efficient way of getting 80mb of useful storage online at the same time, other than maybe 240 5.25" floppies working all at once?
That would make it much worse, because as you saw in the video, one computer takes longer to load the data from disk than the other. That's why I had to press the key on one computer a few seconds before the other.
Just fired up my 1000HX and the video rolls on the capture but not the monitor. Trying to figure out how to stabilize it. DOS 2.11 in ROM only 3 seconds to boot to a ready prompt :)
When I was using a Matrox video capture card, it didn't really like the composite output of my original Tandy 1000 either. These days I use an old Sony Handycam to do video capture. Many of their MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders will let you capture analog video from composite or S-Video and stream it in real-time to DV output, which you can record on any computer with a FireWire port. This works very well because the camcorder has a built-in TBC (Time Base Corrector) to stabilize the video signal.
vwestlife I had the video output turned down to make the characters sharper on the monitor. Once I turned it up the signal must have gotten strong enough to stabilize on the capture. And a little more enhance and all was well. Now I just have to find some of my tandy games. If I remember correctly tandy graphics should be the same as EGA.
***** Tandy graphics are 320x200 with 16 colors and 640x200 with 4 colors (or up to 16 colors on the later 1000RL/SL/TL models) -- the same as many EGA games used, but it's not directly compatible with EGA.
Tandy sound was definitely better than IBM until you got a sound card. I remember some serious debates for and against Tandy vs IBM. I held out till 1989 and got a used IBM AT with EGA and above board with 1 meg ram and 20 mb HD. Cost me $750
Excellent experiment, really enjoyed it :) One thing I'm wondering about: What's the sample- and bitrate of the music files you made, or what's the technical limit of the system? I'm not completely sure about that but I think I can hear a very very slight bitcrushing effect only on the highest frequencies whenever you play music with your Tandy, which makes me assume it could be somewhat lower than 44.1 Khz / 16 Bit.
The Tandy DAC is 8-bit and can handle sampling rates up to 56 kHz, although 22.05 kHz is about as fast as it can go while buffering from disk, so that's what I used for this demo. If the sound file is small enough to fit in RAM, it has no problem playing higher sampling rates, although with only 640K RAM, you can't fit much!
This is the kind of music I used to play on WMHB 90.5 up in Maine. :) You got the stereo sound very nicely. Comes in real clear on my speakers.
Ok. Another alt.universe me for sure. The digital sound ability of
these Tandys, one of which I had, was amazing for the day and I made
good use of it. But he's achieving something I could only have dreamed
of back in the day: getting it to do stereo. So.. he's doing
something I might've done.... no, I know I would've done. Just get
another one, time it right, and play them at the same time to get
stereo. Pretty amazing for 1990 tech, playing a 2013 TH-cam song....
even if it had to be spread across two computers to get the stereo
You Sir, are an exquisite Nerd. I salute you!
Always wondered how computers with different CPU clock rates adjust to keep programs such as games running at the same speed. In this case I'd guess there is a separate clock crystal for the audio chips. Pretty accurate time base as the channels don't drift apart. I remember trying this with two mono cassette players. Even though recorded on the same unit it was played back on, the tracks would still drift out of sync.
Oh yeah; cassette decks are notorious for speed inaccuracy. Not long ago I made a stereo recording of a full orchestra with a pair of iPhones spaced a few feet apart. They stayed perfectly in sync over 45 minutes!
Haha that's awesome! The fact that both channels aren't perfectly in sync makes a really wide stereo effect! Just transfering this to a modern computer for TH-cam must have been a real pain with all those diskettes, let alone getting both computers to play at once, especially since one loads faster than the other.
I've done this a few times, but from analog sources. It's much easier to sync up in Audacity, but then you gotta deal with the slight difference in speed that both songs are playing at, and the wow and flutter :-)
Recording the audio from the two Tandys was the easiest part -- I just plugged it into the external mic input of my Canon FS200 camcorder! The audio you're hearing is exactly what the Canon recorded.
vwestlife
Sounds very good!
What ever you do don't let Garret Claridge get his hands on those computers lol
Garret Claridge, Shawn K, Plainrock, etc. are destructive with electronics, they should not go near electronics.
fantastic lol.. i remember reading an article in the early 90's i think it was Prodigy that used multiple Amiga's to create their early stuff recording on DAT, Those tandy's where very expensive back in the day :-)
Nice!
BBISHOPPCM's World Interesting seeing you here. :P
Great, the effort pays off!
This is plain rockin' man! Great job! Sounds very good through my headphones.
those tandy keyboards are actually quite great!
That's actually fantastic, forgot all about Slugbug's 'Computers again', was a few year ago now that I heard that for the first time on your channel!
Thanks, you got the stereo sound very nicely. Comes in real clear on my iMac speakers.
These doesn't have any kind of a network adapter add-in card available? I'd think if you got a audio stream coming from another computer, streaming left and right on separate streams, you could do it that way. Only that I guess DOS doesn't have any software, which could do that / or these just don't have the power for such things...
My elentary school had these computers only they played in stereo, if I remember its been almost 2 decades lol.
add 2 pc`s and you get it in surround
That's pretty cool.
I sometimes do this with say my iPod and the radio or a youtube video of the same song and pause and play it until both songs are in sync.
Haha, you loon. I love it.
Could you maybe use a DIN cable splitter or something to send the keyboard command to both in perfect sync? Or if that doesn't work (the PC keyboard interface being 2-way...), maybe a 9-pin splitter for the mouse (which is only one-way) and suitable mouse driven software?
Good work getting within about 1/30~1/40th sec anyway, that makes a decent reverb or echo effect usually rather than being too distracting. And fun choice of tunes :D
Possibly the world's least efficient way of getting 80mb of useful storage online at the same time, other than maybe 240 5.25" floppies working all at once?
That would make it much worse, because as you saw in the video, one computer takes longer to load the data from disk than the other. That's why I had to press the key on one computer a few seconds before the other.
ah... I was scrolled down when that happened and missed the actual event. D'oh :)
Thats something you dont see evereyday.
Hahaha I really hope PDMillar sees this. :)
hahaha love your channel, dude.
LOL awesome! I love that first song too!
kinda funny I only realized that I am using my mono speaker after watching this haha
What's the name of that country song at 4:25?
Derek Ryan - I'll Settle For Old Ireland
Great way to show off the sounds of these classic machines! How did you get such great sound quality to play on the recording?
Excellent job my friend.
be careful with the full songs on ytb...
Too late -- my vwest1ife channel has over 500 videos of full songs on TH-cam!
vwestlife ouch... :/
dmode79 Not "ouch". It's my music channel! th-cam.com/users/vwest1ife
Just fired up my 1000HX and the video rolls on the capture but not the monitor. Trying to figure out how to stabilize it. DOS 2.11 in ROM only 3 seconds to boot to a ready prompt :)
When I was using a Matrox video capture card, it didn't really like the composite output of my original Tandy 1000 either. These days I use an old Sony Handycam to do video capture. Many of their MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders will let you capture analog video from composite or S-Video and stream it in real-time to DV output, which you can record on any computer with a FireWire port. This works very well because the camcorder has a built-in TBC (Time Base Corrector) to stabilize the video signal.
vwestlife I had the video output turned down to make the characters sharper on the monitor. Once I turned it up the signal must have gotten strong enough to stabilize on the capture. And a little more enhance and all was well. Now I just have to find some of my tandy games. If I remember correctly tandy graphics should be the same as EGA.
***** Tandy graphics are 320x200 with 16 colors and 640x200 with 4 colors (or up to 16 colors on the later 1000RL/SL/TL models) -- the same as many EGA games used, but it's not directly compatible with EGA.
Tandy sound was definitely better than IBM until you got a sound card. I remember some serious debates for and against Tandy vs IBM. I held out till 1989 and got a used IBM AT with EGA and above board with 1 meg ram and 20 mb HD. Cost me $750
Thats so cool, how did you get them perfectly in sync? I'm almost crying with nostalgia lol :P
Excellent experiment, really enjoyed it :)
One thing I'm wondering about: What's the sample- and bitrate of the music files you made, or what's the technical limit of the system? I'm not completely sure about that but I think I can hear a very very slight bitcrushing effect only on the highest frequencies whenever you play music with your Tandy, which makes me assume it could be somewhat lower than 44.1 Khz / 16 Bit.
The Tandy DAC is 8-bit and can handle sampling rates up to 56 kHz, although 22.05 kHz is about as fast as it can go while buffering from disk, so that's what I used for this demo. If the sound file is small enough to fit in RAM, it has no problem playing higher sampling rates, although with only 640K RAM, you can't fit much!
Do you have a tape drive?
What audio program are you using. Is it some kind of tracker?
No, DMSound. www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/sound.html
I had that the tandy 1000 RL.
Where can I get the files you used for computers again by slug bug?
I didn't save them.
What Sample Rate did you use for those tracks? it sounds like 44.000 kHz
22.05 kHz
impressive... it sounds really good ^^
That's what I suspected; sounded to me like wideband AM reception, cutoff around 10 kHz.
Now try to create The surround-ish sound you get in good headsets like mine! :P
Saved to goog
wow. how counter-intuitive.