Another Speccy DS Update

Poor CraigT. He’s been having some trouble in developing his emulator program, and it’s probably time to offer another show of support.

CraigT is the creator/developer of an emulator for the Sinclair Spectrum ZX, which everyone’s dubbed the SpeccyDS. While he’s been adding elements into the emulator for a while now, he’s come across one more hurdle to get over before releasing version 0.1: the sound.

Specifically, his problem is now getting the sound to loop properly without cracking. His idea was to use a “ring buffer,” which is a continuous loop of non-existing music, timing the loop, and then properly streaming the sound you want into the buffer in time with the loop. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done.

The theory doesnÂ’t sound too bad. It is, however, very dependent on timing. If the new sound data is mixed in too slowly, the play position of the buffer will catch up and eventually override the newly mixed data. If the new sound data is mixed in too quickly, the mix position will wrap around the buffer and override the data currently being played.

So far, his latest attempt isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest he’s gotten. It may scratch a little, but he says it’s almost ready to go into the test version of the emulator.

Expect to get a report on the Spectrum ZX once he’s released version 0.1, and cheer CraigT on, alright?

Via SpeccyDS

Poor CraigT. He’s been having some trouble in developing his emulator program, and it’s probably time to offer another show of support.

CraigT is the creator/developer of an emulator for the Sinclair Spectrum ZX, which everyone’s dubbed the SpeccyDS. While he’s been adding elements into the emulator for a while now, he’s come across one more hurdle to get over before releasing version 0.1: the sound.

Specifically, his problem is now getting the sound to loop properly without cracking. His idea was to use a “ring buffer,” which is a continuous loop of non-existing music, timing the loop, and then properly streaming the sound you want into the buffer in time with the loop. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done.

The theory doesnÂ’t sound too bad. It is, however, very dependent on timing. If the new sound data is mixed in too slowly, the play position of the buffer will catch up and eventually override the newly mixed data. If the new sound data is mixed in too quickly, the mix position will wrap around the buffer and override the data currently being played.

So far, his latest attempt isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest he’s gotten. It may scratch a little, but he says it’s almost ready to go into the test version of the emulator.

Expect to get a report on the Spectrum ZX once he’s released version 0.1, and cheer CraigT on, alright?

Via SpeccyDS