Reminds me of an experiment that we did with TI calculators in the late 90s. Someone found that you can put an AM radio next to the calculator and it would beep based on what instructions were run on the Z80. There were some demos that played songs via 1 bit beeps like this, but since games actually have to run instructions, you couldnt reliably play background music during gameplay.
I created a program like that back in the day. In my case, I recorded my voice through the "MIC" input and played it back through the TV. A few seconds of sampled audio required the entire available memory. While I fully understood what was going on, I thought it was magical that the Spectrum could "speak with my voice".
It would be interesting if someone could implement or adapt Roman Black's BTC algorithm to model the Speccy beeper.
https://www.romanblack.com/BTc_alg.htm
I hope everybody knows Tim Follin - or will now come to know his genius.
> Agent X ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE ) or Agent X II ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNc_xczyGLc ) or Chronos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-D24A_N4d4 ) or Raw Recruit ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8dAVybwq8 ) or Future Games ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orEXKOBIv_8 )... // A modern attempt, the ON and OFF album by Rich 'Tufty' Hollins ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nEfO4Yu7Mg )
(Repost originally for submission Furnace - the biggest multi-system chiptune tracker ever made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41609254)
Reminds me of an experiment that we did with TI calculators in the late 90s. Someone found that you can put an AM radio next to the calculator and it would beep based on what instructions were run on the Z80. There were some demos that played songs via 1 bit beeps like this, but since games actually have to run instructions, you couldnt reliably play background music during gameplay.
The article ends to a link to a video that shows off the technique and it blows my mind the Spectrum beeper could produce this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cOu32m3wvQ
I created a program like that back in the day. In my case, I recorded my voice through the "MIC" input and played it back through the TV. A few seconds of sampled audio required the entire available memory. While I fully understood what was going on, I thought it was magical that the Spectrum could "speak with my voice".
More mind blowing, that entry took _second_ place! First place would probably break my brain for the day so I won't look it up.
Release party: DiHalt 2026 summer Compo: Demo Platform: zx spectrum Ranked: 2nd
Sounds pretty good. Reminds me of the Demo Scene and the types of music they were able to create.
People may enjoy this too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6f8PURcPEE
End result of it playing 1-bit music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjTihhFG03o
Turns out 1-Bit encoding is the most efficient solution, even for the highest end of audio quality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-sigma_modulation
Some apparent links don't appear to work at the start of the page, and I couldn't see any links to listen to the output?
It would be interesting if someone could implement or adapt Roman Black's BTC algorithm to model the Speccy beeper. https://www.romanblack.com/BTc_alg.htm
reminds me of: https://github.com/protodomemusic/mmml