Home Page Forums Other Emulator Message Boards Audio Overload So what would you like...?

There's going to be an update to Audio Overload in the near future.

At the moment the main new feature is a proper ORC player, but there's also Retina Display support for Macs.

Anything else you'd like to see?

Nice timing. It's been ~4 years since I last checked this board.

Just one request: it would be nice to have an option to make Audio Overload play the next song if it finished playing one. Right now it plays a song and just stops at the end; waiting for me to click the next one.

How about fixing .s3m tempo, which is too slow right now.

Not without a song that shows wrong tempo. It's correct on my test tracks.

By the way, don't let the lack of replies demotivate you. This forum is not too easy to find. It's not linked on the homepage or Mac Update page, and it's been years since the last Audio Overload update. I'm pretty sure many people use Audio Overload since it's the only all-round video game music player on the Mac. Only others vgm players I know of are Game Music Box, Cog and PSFPlay. Module Trackers/Players are also scarce on the Intel platform. Scarce enough to bump into Audio Overload multiple times while searching for them on the web.

Have you considered putting Audio Overload on the Mac app store? Not that I like that development but it appears people actually use it now. It would give the Mac version of Audio Overload more exposure.

Not a problem with motivation. The current blockers are:

- Finding things that need fixing (hence this thread)
- Waiting on me to reconstruct the Windows port from near-scratch after I lost the Visual Studio project files and most of the Win-specific parts of the source. I guess it's that rewrite I'd always wanted to do ;-)

Incidentally, it looks like VRC7 and NDS sound channels will be supported for NSF in AO 2.1.

I have a moral objection to paying Apple an annual fee, even a small one, to develop software for their platform that they can then turn around and refuse to distribute at a whim. So I don't see the Mac App Store in the immediate future for AO.

Heh, figured as much. Apple isn't moved one bit by morals though, nor by 80% of the developers staying away. At least it'll take a few years before users 'forget' they can get software on websites. Perhaps there will be well known/used app store alternatives by then. Or we'll be using another OS (without autosave/versions).

Sorry to hear about losing the Windows sources. That must be weeks of work at least!
I do have a few remarks on that one as well if you want them:
- It doesn't parse directories when dropped into the playlist (unknown file error)
- It's quite a bit slower than the Mac version parsing archives and multiple files when dropped on the playlist. Mac is instant, Win takes a few seconds.
- The window isn't resizable. Not a real problem but a bit annoying on a 1920x1200 screen with a lot of items on the playlist.
- Stops after playing one file (same as Mac version). Would be nice to see both versions behave a tad more like an audio player with a playlist. Now both versions are 'single song players'.

Other than that it just works. I like that it doesn't need to be installed.


If you also want to hear something about the emulation code, some PSF2 files still stop playing after the first second (FF12, believe it was mentioned here already). Haven't noticed/remembered anything else.

Try virt-*.s3m, from ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/rez/s3m
(via chiptunes.com.)

All of those virt tracks play too slow in AO, compared to Milkytracker, and the MP3 references at http://www.biglionmusic.com/category/music/chiptunes/

arekkusu - long time no see! You were kind of a regular back in the MacMAME days. I have fond memories of your OpenGL renderer with its (impressive at the time) persistence effects.

Nthing this. Why even have a playlist if it doesn't auto-advance?

Maybe you could take a look at adding support for NEZPlug M3U playlists, since, well, people on Mac can't really listen to Portable Music History sets the proper way (no Mac player to my knowledge can handle this format, so you're left with untimed songs).

No Linux player can either, for that matter.

And PMH in general is too pretentious for words, but at least somebody's doing proper tagging and timing on portable sets.

Not sure how it looks for Macs, but Datschge's been using Winamp under Wine for things like that. Obviously, it would be nice to have a native player for both systems.

And it's just a name, really. No hidden agendas there.
(Although I wish I had thought of adding Lynx, SuperVision and earlier portables earlier, never mind the lack of music formats for those).

Not implying hidden agendas, I just think the huge emphasis on chronological release dates without also having a more conventional archive view (like snesmusic itself does for SNES games) is weird. There's no search function, and the front page loading on-demand defeats using CTRL-F to search.

Actually, Datschge has just implemented better integration with snesmusic main, so you can just search for composer/company there and get links to PMH sets.

Example: Yuzo Koshiro's profile

I don't think it's possible to do a game title search yet though, as Google doesn't seem to index PMH properly ATM, will need to bring this up to Datschge later.

Right, Google can't crawl it for the same reason CTRL-F doesn't work.

Support for Hoot drivers.. but with better sound emulation? :-)
http://dmpsoft.s17.xrea.com/hoot/index.html

I would like there to be an update so that PCM becomes channels on the SEGA side as so far you can only enable and disable channels of the main chip and you are then left with PCM channels still playing.

I like to fiddle with the channels to see what it sounds like but the PCM chips always being enabled stops us from fiddling with GYM and VGM channels properly.

Hopefully an update where we can fiddle with the PCM's enabling and disabling random channels from that as well would be a really cool feature as the fiddling with channels is my favorate feature of the player by far.

Adding the other random AMIGA tracker formats is a must for the new versions as well you can find the rest of the tracker formats and extensions for those formats on Exotica the AMIGA music resource and AMIGA Music Preservation your other source for tracks.

And I think this other idea I got from Page 1 of an advanced pitch settings tab somewhere in the corner or something where you can choose the speed manually as well as the key pitch it plays in and stuff love fiddling with those types of things in Virtual DJ and Audacity so it's welcome to the player especially in the case of that Zool track for AMIGA where it makes you set a higher BPM manually to play it at the right speed.

That manual track tweaking idea is bloody genius I love that idea it's brilliant I would like to see the track information more as well like if it's that Zool mod it tells you what BPM to play it in so it's a must to see that part of the additional module info to be able to tweak it correctly like it says in that info if you do add the manual tweaking.

I also think that this PS3 WWISE OGG/WAV support thing from a few threads down is a great idea if it's executed well and can suck in the complete playlist from a PS3/360 PCK file into AO without having to use any manual software to extract them to listen yet another great idea I approve of by someone else on here in fact the extra SEGA channel fiddling and extra AMIGA formats are the only ideas I didn't approve from someone else and made up myself.

So there you go 2 ideas from others I approve on and 2 ideas of my own think the SEGA and the AMIGA other formats my ideas are the main ones I would like to see though obviously because they are my own suggestions but I very much approve the other ideas I made my own twist on to suit the software more as well if it's possible to do.

Personally I'd love to see support for more console-native formats, e.g. Sony .VAG and Xbox / Xbox 360 .VGM (I think that's the container format, anyway), since players exist for the former and decryptors exist for the latter. However, I suspect that supporting WWISE/FMOD/Bink container formats would be kind of annoying to implement and might incur wrath from the relevant companies.

Also, your post was really hard to read, as it lacked commas and periods in a number of important place. As-is your post reads like a hyperventilating, over-excited teenager talking about anime.

VGMStream supports pretty much every console stream format known to man and several that aren't, but it's gotten less and less source-available as it's progressed (mostly due to laziness by hcs rather than malice, I think, but it makes it hard to keep updated).

I just noticed that in 2.0, the NSF channel toggles don't work when playing .nsfe files.

For example, Shovel Knight.

...safe to say this is dead?

How does it compare to let say BZR?

The proposed latest M1 if it even happens might end up being an Audio Overload/M1 merged played gone to the extreme so there is still hope for it yet.

That is because new MAME source code has XML's for games from many systems as it's merged with MESS now and it also has the CPU and Audio sources for those systems.

They can also add the CPU's and Audio Drivers for the PinBall MAME and Fruit Machine MAME into it to make the MAME Music Drivers source even more compete.

I'm hoping for the best from the new M1 direct audio games player. We can even listen to the tracks that didn't make it to the game as long as the music is in the source still and all that nerdy goodness and all in direct lossless quality to how it was programmed unlike a Mega Drive .vgm or .gym for example which is a logged file so might not sound as good as if you load it in M1 direct.

So yeah I'm hoping the new M1 could use the MESS sources for an extra Audio Overload style of advantage for at least cart based games if not floopy based AMIGA ones too for harder to crack game music games which havn't even been put on Exotica as the music is so hard to crack from some copy protections out there which a direct audio player would bypass due to accessng all the possible audio slot placements on the disks directly.

Hopefully we can get this new M1 source code going soon as I just want to see all those new possibilitys from the new combined MAME/MESS sources in action and perhaps when thats working the special PinMAME and FruitMAME versions added as well so theres a working audio source for those machanical games not working in the MAME/MESS source.

What are you even talking about, the current version of M1 supports shitloads of pinball games, it has for over a decade now, where have you been

Is the source code available anywhere?

AO itself is not, but the majority of the players its based on do have available code.

AO can't be open sourced as it stands because there's a fair bit of code in it where the license precludes open source release. One of these days I'd like to get back to it, but real life has gotten in the way.