pulkomandy/sawteeth

A sound synthetizer, tracker and replayer, similar to AHX.

Sawteeth

What?

Sawteeth is a soft-synth (with tracker) for BeOS and Haiku, meant to either create cool synthsounds to use in cubase and such, or cute chip-tunes. It uses no samples but only generated waveforms.

Originally developed by Jonas and Arvid Norberg and released in 2000, it is now open-sourced under the MIT licence.

Sawteeth generates music files that take very little space and not much CPU time to replay. It is based around base oscillators, filters, envelopes, and clipping. The pattern editor allows you to reuse pieces of melody easily (including transposing them). The instruments and patterns can also be edited in real-time while the music is playing.

Sound Quality

The sound synthesis is of high quality with little aliasing noise, 44kHz and float precision. (some of the filters and definitely the clipping adds aliasing noise, so use them with care) The anti alias method is "infinite oversampling with boxfilter" Modulation rate is static for a song but can be anything between 0.673Hz and 44100Hz (lousy performance at high modrate)

Thanks

I've been given all filter code by Stefan Hållén.

Arvid Norberg is doing big parts of the editor (close to all of the part editor and the instrumenteditor) and a lot of complaining on my bad oo design of the player :)

A big inspiration is Abyss's AHX tracker. A sawteeth song is pretty similar to a AHX song, in the future a AHX to sawteeth converter could be reality (sawteeth lacks some AHX features so it wouldn't be perfect).

Features

• Retro feel, all the way.
• All your favourite waveforms : Saw, Square, Triangle, Noise, Sinus
• Filter with many modes,
• Clipping with many modes,
• 'ADSR' for filter and amp
• Fast synthesis

Working with Sawteeth

http://www.linusakesson.net/music/elements/index.php

Compiling Sawteeth

You need cmake and make installed, as well as some version of gcc and the Haiku development header:

pkgman install gcc gcc_syslibs haiku_devel make cmake

Then you can build this way:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

sawteeth's Issues

Clicking in the sequencer should jump in the song.

Allow to set a color for each part

Like in renoise and arkos tracker.
Color should show up in part editor (window tab color? background? picker-box) and in the sequencer (box color).

Part editor : allow to listen the part

When editing a part, allow to play just this part alone to hear what you do.

Does not compile due to if.. else identation errors

Here's the error log:

~/Sawteeth> cmake .
~/Sawteeth> make | nc termbin.com 9999
/boot/home/Sawteeth/Source/stAiffWindow.cpp: In member function 'void stAiffWindow::Thread()':
/boot/home/Sawteeth/Source/stAiffWindow.cpp:116:4: error: this 'if' clause does not guard... [-Werror=misleading-indentation]
    if (sbuf[c] > max) max = sbuf[c];if (sbuf[c] < min) min = sbuf[c];
    ^~
/boot/home/Sawteeth/Source/stAiffWindow.cpp:116:37: note: ...this statement, but the latter is misleadingly indented as if it were guarded by the 'if'
    if (sbuf[c] > max) max = sbuf[c];if (sbuf[c] < min) min = sbuf[c];
                                     ^~
cc1plus: all warnings being treated as errors
make[2]: *** [Source/CMakeFiles/Sawteeth.dir/stAiffWindow.cpp.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [Source/CMakeFiles/Sawteeth.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2

Does not compile on x86_64

Attempts to compile as C++11 by default (unless I'm doing something wrong, which is very likely) and fails. I can provide specific errors if necessary, but I think this is a configuration issue. I just ran cmake ./ and then make

Sample support (WAV)

Support for WAV samples. Is required so that there can be real voices, real drums etc. Strips the need for an extra application to handle this and makes the editing experience more complete and immersive.

Highlight current row in part editor

redrawing is slow

The track view redraws slowly enough when not playing, but when playing it's pretty horrendous. This can be seen by dragging the horizontal scroll bar and paying attention to the black boxes that appear as it is redrawn... virtually the entire window is black boxes if dragged while playing.

should have ability to relocate cursor in song

currently can't change current position in the song

Part editor : zoom button should maximise to content (not fullscreen)

A fullscreen part is a bit stupid since the window is very narrow.

Update to add support for Layout Management

This application does not use the Layout API. This results in weird behavior with cut-off text, as well as a lot of other visible quirks.

Certain important labels are also cut off, and the margins between objects are not sufficient:

The Control windows should be reimplemented, and the windows should be resizable.

Add current selected instrument and octave to part window.

It is easy to get lost when having multiple parts open.

Multiple vertical tracks

A tracker gui similar to MED / Protracker / Milkytracker. The purpose is to allow vertical editing of patterns side by side.

Current position marker should be per-channel

Since each channel has its own position, speed and rloop/lloop markers, the position marker should be drawn separately for each channel and for the breakpoints.

Part editor : scrollbars are off by one

On a pattern with 20 lines, it is onlypossible to scroll down to line 1D, not 1F.

Weird splash screen behavior

The splash screen of Sawteeth seems very clunky, resulting in a lack of clarity of the portrayed information. The splash screen should either get fixed or, alternatively (and preferably) get replaced with an About window, which should be implemented using the built-in implementation of Haiku.

(The splash screen is also used as a substitute for an About window.)

Certain sections contain incorrect/outdated data as well.

Replace "Let The Music" menu item

This issue is relevant to #50.

Sawteeth currently has a menu item that allows people to control playback, which can be pretty difficult to use if you're an average user that does not regularly use keyboard shotcuts. Sawteeth plays loud generated sounds by default, so the playback must be made easier to control.

ShowImage's ToolBarIcons implementation may be a good place to start exploring potential options.

Remove st_version.h

The build version should be defined in the cmake build system instead.

Dragging a file to sawteeth sequencer should replace the opened song

Currently it opens a new window, but this action can be done as well just by clicking the file in tracker.

No build instructions - repo version blasts noise

So it's been a hot minute...maybe an hour since I touched anything Be. Went hunting for some old audio stuff, Sequitur, Sawteeth. The old html says APlayer can play st files but I can't find mention of such a player for BeOS or other. I think I remember it existing but man...that was 20 years ago. Any idea who/what can play st files outside Sawteeth because when I try to use Sawteeth is just blasts me with noise. I tried to build from source but there are no build instructions, no make file etc.

Sequencer : double clicking a part should open it for editing

changing part length doesn't update zoom limits

inserting breakpoints doesn't work with AZERTY keyboard

On AZERTY keyboards (french), typing digits needs to press SHIFT. This make the breakpoint shortcuts not working...

todolist from sawteeth 1.2

= IMPORTANT =

• Sequencer
  when you add a channel so unmute channels and volume is set to zero ... same problem when saving. It should perhaps unmute them? Anyway when saving.

r-loop Krupp up when deleted

• Part window
  When editing in a part it should be possible to play it solo.
  current instrument and octave, should be printed (perhaps in the title)

= NON-ESSENTIAL =

• library
  song.h should be called the same as the class, and class should be called stSong
• Editor : Should ask if you want to save changes when closing.
• sequencer: click ruler to jump in track
• Part window : add a button to delete the part completely from the song.

Allow to change the samplerate

currently hardcoded to 44100Hz.

Windows should be centered on startup

The Sawteeth windows appear in a very arbitrary position when the app itself is launched, as seen in the following screenshot:

The windows themselves should be near the center of the screen, in a way that's clear to the average user.

Vibrato is too deep

It's very hard to do a slight vibrato effect. Even setting the slider to 1px from the left gives bad results on high-pitched notes.
Make this slider logarithmic maybe ?

Use resource file

Add the icon to the Sawteeth executable using cmake.

Scrollbar arrow is under resize knob

cmake is broke

Error given:

Error: Failed to open input file "../../Source/Resource.rsrc": No such file or directory

Certain menu items should not be clickable

There are certain menu items that can be clicked, yet they do nothing when clicked.

Here's an example of an item:

The items should either be rendered as unclickable, or they should be given some sort of corresponding, appropriate functionality.

Scope view

Like the one in MusicLine, for each instrument. Rather useful tool to see what you're doing.
Maybe a spectrum analyser, too ?

black bars at the top and bottom of the track view

Sequencer : some parts are invisible

Happens in Lemmings.st, for example

Vumeters don't work for part-play mode

Not sure how that should work, since part-play doesnt map to song channels.

Update r-loop position when deleting the last part in a channel

Part window should have a "delete me!" button.

To delete the part, remove all it's uses in the song, and free all memory.

Swapping instruments must be made easier

This issue is relevant to #47.

I've spent a handful amount of time using the program, yet I still can't figure out how to apply or swap out instruments and use them in a specific channel.

As a person who has used other digital audio workstations (e.x. Ableton Live), where swapping instruments can be as simple as a selection and a keyboard shortcut, this can be overwhelming.

The user interface should be improved in order to make that piece of functionality that already exists within the program easier to access and use.

Improve menu bar organization

Most applications on Haiku follow a particular format when it comes to menu bars, as seen in the following examples:

However, in the case of Sawteeth, one can observe that the menu bar does not really look as organized as one would expect from an advanced digital audio workspace.

This should be worked on and the menu bar has to be reimplemented in a user-friendlier fashion.

Release checklist

Before a release:

• Check if we can compile with gcc2 and gcc8 (32 + 64bit) without warnings, both the editor and STLib
• Update readme.html, version.history, Resource.rdef which each contain at least the version number
• The "default song" title also needs to be changed as it contains the version number

Don't unmute channels in the running instance when saving (but write them unmuted to the file)

It is possible to save a song with muted channels. This makes no sense.

zoom vertically centers track view on screen

is this on purpose? I think it's rather inconvenient as it can more easily be hidden behind other windows this way... if it is on purpose, maybe we could add an option to make it zoom to different regions?

Ask to save unsaved changes when closing the application.

Mismatched versions

This issue is relevant to #48.

The versions shown in the window title and in the splash screen do not match.

Degraded sound

I've noticed a significant amount of static in the opening of the Lemmings theme by stefan (in the stefo directory of the original distro). Also, the seQ part in Infinity by biteOn doesn't play properly.

Remove txt class from libST

The txt class is essentially the same as BPositionIO. Use the system one to wipe some bytes out of libST.

Rename song.h to stSong.h

To avoid namespaces problems, also rename the class.

Improve mouse handling in ADSR and filter editors

You have to click exactly on the draggers to grab them, and they are very small.

Also add a legend (cuttoff freq / time or amplitude / time) to help know wat you're doing. At first I thought "filter" was about drawing the filter freq. response diagram!

be lib shouldn't be included

Due to Haiku moving away from references to all things Be, the reference to the be lib in the CMakeLists.txt in Source should be removed if possible.

Import AHX files

AHX is a fileformat used on amiga by AHX tracker (formerly known as THX).

Load this files in Sawteeth and add the missing features to replay them if applicable.

Fileformat spec :
http://pulkomandy.lexinfo.fr/projects/sawteeth/wiki/AHX

APlayer has a player for it already. Also, HivelyTracker, which is now open source, can import AHX files. It uses the HVL fileformat internally, but the synth engine is also quite similar to Sawteeth with some extras (ring modulator, 2 effect columns in parts, etc.)