But we're not talking 1987 when it launched, we're talking 1993-4 when it was required & cheaper. I mean obviously making their own hardware would have been nice at the time, but I'm just spitballing on a different, cheaper approach which may have saved them and given them 'next gen' hardware to fight the PSX.


Imagine releasing all the X68K arcade ports at the launch, that would have been mind blowing and so out of nowhere when the X68k was almost unknown in the west.

I agree, but you still need to have an expended 68k and even in 1991 or 1994 it was very expensive, always more than an amiga AGA or falcon .
The kind of ram that the machine use, is still way faster than both use .
Plus you can add that you need a multisync monitor,the X68k cannot be connected on a classic TV (and if you can, you're limited to games/programs that only use a 15khz H-sync,so not much) .

Of course the X68k was a beast, but not a cheap one, this machine was done with an almost "unlimited" budget in mind for the professional market,and the amiga was not of course .

i don't like x68k due to one big reason (even though im Japanese), but i still know some about it's music format.

most popular one should be MDX format.
its based on good'old MML format in text form.

here is MDX music archive site
http://mdx.vampi.tech/

and harddrive image for emulators (over 32000 songs in 921MB)
https://archive.org/details/X68000MDXML

in best time of x68k communty, there were so many tools around this format just not only to listen FM+ADPCM sound file but to rip game music off game disk directly.

here is player and tools for win32.
http://gorry.haun.org/mx/index_e.html


soon after, midi became somewhat popular (but not necessarily good for games) for x68k heavy users. so advanced format ZMS, it's driver and some tools have born.
format itself was still kind of extended MML but this time, it became like "8ch FM synth + 8ch ADPCM + 32ch(max 64ch) MIdi" thing which could playback with all 3 sources in perfect sync.

here is some ZMS musics.
http://most.bigmoney.biz/g0org/music/?cat=50&paged=4

most advanced tool is ZMDRIVE. (for win32)
here is a player "ZMDRIVE version0.3X" (site is dead so its wayback machine.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20150717...mdrive_dl.html

ZMDRIVE needs "x68sound.dll" putting into system32 or player's folder in advance. here is another wayback link to dl the dll file.(click X68Sound_020615.zip)
https://web.archive.org/web/20040318...8soundbody.htm


lastly, english site about x68k sound format
https://battleofthebits.org/lyceum/V...+%28format%29/

Thanks for all these important info ! :)

This really helped me get some music and software for this format, thank you for such a helpful post.

Sure, but those trackers just multiplexing PCM waves. In this case you need to EMULATE the whole FM chip YM2151. for generate de instruments and next, multiplexing the 8 FM channels to 3 from Paula. (the four channel will be for PCM X68000 chip)
Can be done? sure! but you will need a lot of CPU power for do it. Much more than shoot a 16ch .XM module.

by the way... amazing the tunes from X68000's Dracula! woah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m4ShRNDCiE

Sounds rather 'clinical', and looking at the waveforms you can see why. Strange shapes that don't look like any real musical instrument.

I'm not a big fan of FM sound either, I prefer the SID-sound but we have to admit that the melody/harmony is good.

Could you expand on that? x68k is a kinda 'dream machine' here in the west and was mostly unknown to us beside me that stumbled in a Technopolis magazine in 1993 so its idiosincracies are mostly unknown to us - beside the price and the power supply troubles

I think most of the musics on those machines were done via midi interfacing/transcode rather than composing the western way using code or trackers - given the chipset someone shuld port Adlib tracker there

Most music was made by writing it in a music macro language like MML.

Cannot even imagine that -_- Was same technique used for the PC-98xx soundtracks i suppose?

MML derivatives were used on all Japanese computers.

We were just using MOD trackers with approx instruments in the late 90s for other systems. It even worked for gameboy music dev.

ok reading the wikipedia page seems an evolution of the infamous MSX 'play' BASIC command, albeit i still cannot abstract like that; a tracker that write in MML for those machines might be a huge improvement ^^ would however be a future composer style tracker and not a protracker style one given the elasticity

The advantage, as far I’ve understood it, is that you can port your music to different sound routines instead of being locked into a single one, which works rather well for a sample based machine like the Amiga but is a limitation on a »chip music« sound chip like the SID or the YM2051 where new effects and sounds are invented continuously by making up new routines.

That, and the fact that you can create macros to do what would be a lot of manually punched-in effects in a tracker.

Actually, there is not much information on how much CPU-power a VGM player requires. (its a wellknow player that support a lot of old audio-chips, like the YM2151) It would be really cool if some coder tried to compile the player for Amiga for testing.

VGMPlay Source code:
https://github.com/ValleyBell/vgmpla...ive/0.51.0.zip

X68000 .VGZ song for test:
https://vgmrips.net/packs/vgm/Comput...Stage%201).vgz

That appears to be the source for something called 'libvgm'. I downloaded the file but it's full of Windows crap with no actual player code?

YEP. :( Seems so, apparently , they move to a kind fo lib called libvgm. :(

Anyway take a look here:
https://github.com/vgmrips/vgmplay


By the way, I converted the X68000's Vampire Killer tune to .MOD for the Akumajo Dracula Amiga conversion by Dante.

I hope you like it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4pRa3nBIHc

I imagine you used hoot to capture samples or a more complex but proficuous hoot-> HVR-> deflemask -> amiga process