The expansion slots are, I think, a good way to democratize and defer part of the design process. If people want X badly enough, then Y.
Limits the compromising down to "what's the base framework". Although I do note that 8BG paid attention to his own episodes, and noted that apps tend to develop off of the base platform for maximum market-- so include the things you WANT, when you design the base model.
This is perhaps my favorite feature of the X16. Small simple core but options to expand. I think the 8BG is generally right too but there are exceptions. Only musicians (and only a subset) might need a MIDI interface. Most folks won't for just playing games. Excellent feature for an expansion card. Also the nostalgia of what, I guess, we now call FOMO, can be relived in buying a game that requires an expansion card you don't have ? I'm still nearly certain someone is going to come up with a GUS PnP style sound solution on an expansion card. Network I/O also might be more of a subset of folks (for developing or bringing back the BBS experience, etc.).
So all in all, super glad to see it. It's really what got me the most excited about the platform (though the cool banking thing is something I find really fun to work with, but I can't really quantify why).
It would be yep! For me I wanna use it for clock sync to Command Tracker (which also uses Concerto) but yeah making the X16 more of a realtime instrument via Concerto would be really fun as well! I doubt many folks would use it but having the tracker do MIDI out could be interesting as well. Write tunes using YM2151, VeraSound and a SoundCanvas? Why not!
Let's face it - if the X16 had a MIDI port and a decent host application to present at least General MIDI as well as a custom patch engine, hooking it up to Qbase and doing chiptunes with it would be pretty sweet.
Let's face it - if the X16 had a MIDI port and a decent host application to present at least General MIDI as well as a custom patch engine, hooking it up to Qbase and doing chiptunes with it would be pretty sweet.
That's basically what I picture doing with the Gen X. If a program can be written to allow the user to set which MIDI channels go to which channels of which chips, and which MIDI CC messages control which aspects of each chip, then the Gen X would act as an external MIDI tone generator giving you access to all five flavors of sound chip even from the DAW on your modern machine. Of course, that software doesn't exist for the Gen X yet, so if I do get one I may end up having to write it myself.
If a program can be written to allow the user to set which MIDI channels go to which channels of which chips, and which MIDI CC messages control which aspects of each chip, then the Gen X would act as an external MIDI tone generator giving you access to all five flavors of sound chip even from the DAW on your modern machine.
If I were writing such a thing, I'd probably go a slightly different route, presenting a single synth to the DAW and making the synth UI (on-system) able to leverage all chips at once to make some interesting tones that way... kind of like what Concerto does on X16.
I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear. That is pretty much what I had in mind. The DAW would only be aware of one MIDI-out with the standard 16 channels. The UI on the Gen X would let you assign those 16 channels to whatever you wanted.
Unless you mean there'd be only a single incoming MIDI channel - and you could use the UI to control how any or all of the five chips could respond to events on that single channel. That would be different - and is an interesting idea to consider. (I'm sorry, I haven't checked out Concerto yet, so I don't know how it works.) You could probably do some interesting things that way, but I naturally think of composing for more than one voice at once, and would surely want the option to be able to control different chips on different channels.
Unless you mean there'd be only a single incoming MIDI channel - and you could use the UI to control how any or all of the five chips could respond to events on that single channel.
That's what I mean. So the combination of selected voices would be a single "instrument" selectable on MIDI, and you'd be able to get polyphony based on how many channels it takes vs how many of those types are available. So if you used one voice each in the OPM, OPL, and a SID, then you could have 3-note polyphony with 1 SID, or 6 with 2 (as that's the limiting factor) - no SID, you could have 8-note polyphony. 3-voice OPL patches would leave you with 3-note polyphony. Etc.
That's what I mean. So the combination of selected voices would be a single "instrument" selectable on MIDI, and you'd be able to get polyphony based on how many channels it takes vs how many of those types are available. So if you used one voice each in the OPM, OPL, and a SID, then you could have 3-note polyphony with 1 SID, or 6 with 2 (as that's the limiting factor) - no SID, you could have 8-note polyphony. 3-voice OPL patches would leave you with 3-note polyphony. Etc.
There's always two soft SID's they just don't have the analog filters as they are implemented in the FPGA that is acting as the master for the sound chips side bus ... the sockets are for two additional real SIDS (or FPGA implemented soft SIDs that use the whole FPGA to emulate the analog filters).
Plus there's what Stefany refers to a the CODEC, though I would guess she means the hardware to play an LPCM codec.