NAME¶
aylet, xaylet - play Spectrum `.ay' music files
SYNOPSIS¶
aylet/
xaylet [
-BehlmnNsS] [
-A stopafter]
[
-F fadetime] [
-t tracknum] [
file1
[
file2 ... ]]
DESCRIPTION¶
aylet plays music files in the `.ay' format. These files are essentially
wrappers around bits of Z80 code which play music on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum
128's sound hardware - the beeper, or the AY-3-8912 sound chip, or both. Files
using the Amstrad CPC ports are also supported.
`aylet' has a curses-based interface, and `xaylet' has an X-based one.
OPTIONS¶
- -A
- set stop-after time in seconds (this is the time at which
tracks start fading out), or 0 to disable fading. The default is 180
seconds (3 minutes).
- -B
- use `ABC' stereo positions, rather than the default `ACB'.
ACB effectively pushes channels A and B to the left and right (using a
stereo delay), with C remaining central; ABC puts A and C to the
left/right instead, leaving B central.
- -e
- force 8-bit playback, even if 16-bit is available.
- -F
- set fade-out time in seconds (the time tracks take to fade
out). The default is 10 seconds.
- -h
- give terse usage help.
- -l
- list the contents of files (track names etc.) rather than
playing them.
- -m
- use mono rather than the default stereo playback.
- -n
- rather than the usual interface, use a simple batch-playing
tty style, a bit like mpg123. (Only works in the curses version.)
- -N
- use `narrow' stereo separation (so the channels sound
closer together) rather than the default `wide' separation.
- -s
- output sample data to stdout rather than playing it;
implies `-n'. The sample is 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo (or mono if using `-m').
Don't be surprised if the sample takes a little while to generate, as it
still has to emulate the Z80.
- -S
- apply a pseudo-stereo effect to the beeper output. Works
well in some cases, but can make things sound a bit shaky (or rather, more
so than usual :-)).
- -t
- play only the specified track, then exit. (Strictly
speaking, it starts playing the given track, and exits when any track
fades out.) Mainly useful when playing a single file
non-interactively.
- file1 etc.
- the file(s) to play. Currently these can only be specified
on the command-line.
BEHIND THE SCENES¶
The way aylet works may seem a little strange if you're not familiar with how
the `.ay' format goes about things, so here's some background on how it all
works.
As mentioned above, the files basically contain chunks of machine code to run on
an emulated Z80 with certain sound hardware. Since you're just running a
program, you can't really fast-forward or rewind as such, but you can move
between tracks specified in the file. (Some files only have one, but others
have several.)
The whole just-running-a-program thing leads to two other problems, too. You
can't tell where a track ends, other than to see when the sound stops; what
aylet does is to exit a track after 4 seconds of total silence. And a track
may never end at all; aylet fades it out after 3 minutes by default. (Yes, 3
minutes be may too soon to allow some tracks to `finish', but you have to
strike the balance somewhere, and it's only a default. Use `-A' or press `s'
to change it.)
KEYS¶
Both the curses-based and X-based interfaces use these keys (some of which are
based on those used by XMMS):
- q or Esc
- exit the program.
- z
- previous track.
- x
- play.
- c
- pause.
- v
- stop.
- b
- next track.
- r
- restart track.
- Backspace or Delete
- previous file.
- Space
- next file.
- s
- increase stop-after time.
- S
- decrease stop-after time. Setting it to zero disables
fading completely.
- f
- increase fade-out time.
- F
- decrease fade-out time.
- h
- enable/disable high-speed mode, playing four times as fast
when enabled (in a way), as a sort of substitute for a real fast-forward
control.
In xaylet, you can also use the matching buttons for most of the above.
When using `aylet -n', the interactivity is scaled down dramatically, leaving
just the one control:
- Ctrl-C
- if the current track has been playing for less than half a
second, exit the program; otherwise, skip to the next track.
Note that the key used to do this is really whatever you have set up to generate
a SIGINT signal, but it's generally Ctrl-C.
EXAMPLES¶
To play all .ay files in the current directory:
aylet *.ay
or
xaylet *.ay
To convert ysfollin.ay to a mono sample in .wav format (requires `sox'):
aylet -sm ysfollin.ay |sox -r 44100 -t sw - tune.wav
BUGS¶
The AY is probably too loud relative to the beeper. This may be fixed in the
next version, though it's more likely to be an option to choose between the
current more reasonable balance and the real thing. :-)
Several options which it could reasonably allow to be changed at runtime (e.g.
AY stereo, beeper stereo, ACB vs. ABC) can't be at the moment.
The X version is currently a bit too much like the curses one, at the expense of
GUIness in some respects.
SEE ALSO¶
fuse(1)
AUTHOR¶
Russell Marks (rus@svgalib.org).
The Z80 emulation was written by Ian Collier, for xz80.
Chris Cox wrote the OpenBSD sound code.
Matan Ziv-Av was partly responsible for the OSS sound code.