MSX Digitized Sound Generator

A nice tool to convert PC sounds (samples) to run on MSX PSG. Digitize voices and insert into your app!
1. Introduction

Some games included digitized voices on it in the 80's and 90's. The MSX had also some games with digitized sound like Snake-it, with the phrases “welcome to Snake-it”, “next screen” and “game over”; Bosconian with “Blast Off”; Macattack with “welcome to macattack” and “prepare your hamburgers”; and the game Oh Shit with “This is Joey, Paul, Willie and Frankie” and “oh, shiiiit!”.
Thus, some programs to digitize and reproduce sounds were also created. In Brazil, the CPM group created Video Hits, a 1-bit PCM player that could play up to 24 seconds of digitized musics. In France, the Digivoix was created and published on a French magazine. This tools is able to digitize sounds from a microphone attached on a MSX tape recorder, play digitized sounds and save/load the digitized sounds.
This project aims at demonstrating how to digitized sounds works on MSX, how to convert sound from PC to MSX and how to create MSX players. We also present a tool to help on convert unsigned 8-bit PCM data to a MSX file format.

Example of 1-bit digitized sound using MSX DSG:

Examples of 4-bit digitized sounds using MSX DSG:

2. Technical documentation In this section we present a technical documentation on how to digitize sounds for MSX. Here you'll see how to convert MP3 and WAV to MSX, the MSX sound formats and how to create players.

Docs:

3. A tool to convert 8-bit PCM to MSX A tool were developed to help on 8-bit PCM sounds to 1-bit or 4-bit formats.

In fact, this tool is able to load and convert to the following sounds formats:

Unsigned 8-bit PCM
1-bit PCM - Video Player SND
1-bit PCM - Digivoix FRED
4-bit PCM - S4b

This tool is quite simple to operate, once you select a sound format to load, load it, select the output format and then save. It can convert from one type to any type described above.
Also a MSX player panel used to help user to determine the correct sound frequency and time duration while converting data on a PC tool, based on the MSX player delay.
On PC command line, type:

java -jar dsg.jar

4. MSX players Two players were developed based on known players, in order to illustrate how to generate digitized sounds on MSX.
The first player is the 1-bit format player, compatible with Video Hits and Digivoix. The second player is a 4-bit player.
Both players has some stuff on common:

Load a binary sound file at ROM address &h9000, with a maximum 16 KB size.
Operate on data starting at RAM address &h0000 (can be modified).
Have a routine to move data from &H9000 to &h0000 to &h4000.
Adjust sound frequency through a delay.

More details on how to operate players can be found here.
MAP Player

The amazing 8-bit player for MSX PSG. Access it here.

Example of an 8-bit sample running on a MSX 1:

5. Downloads The conversion tool was developed in Java. Java binaries runs in any PC and operating system compatible with Java.

MSX Digitized Sound Generator - version 1.4 - 12/2021

dst_bin_v_1.4.zip [PC Java] - Java binaries
dst_src_v_1.4.zip [Source PC Java] - Source code

MSX Players

snd_player.zip [MSX 1] - 1-bit format player - SND
s4b_player.zip [MSX 1] - 4-bit format player - S4b
s4bp_player.zip [MSX 1] - 4 bit format player - S4b Plus
map_player.zip [MSX 1] - 8-bit format player
map_tables.zip [MSX 1] - Tables for different scales.

Extra

sons_msx.zip - MSX games digitized sounds in MP3
chaves.zip - 1-bit digitized voices from El Chavo del Ocho to MSX
s4b.zip - 4-bit digitized voices and songs from El Chavo del Ocho to MSX
bem_te_vi.zip - Images and sound of a bird singing.

Manual

tutorial - how to convert PC sound files to MSX

Articles

som_en.pdf - Article on how to digitize sounds on MSX in English
som_8bit_en - Article on how to generate 8-bit sounds on MSX in English

Author: Marcelo Silveira
License: GNU-GPL v. 3.x - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt.