Hi there
I just wanted to share with you my new software. I'm a big fan of OpenMPT, I use it since 10+ years when it was still called Modplug Tracker... so yeah, I'm very familiar with trackers :)
As a developer, I always wanted to create my own. I though it would be fun not to use samples, but FM synthesis instead. I like the way it sounds when well programmed, and I find FM more inspiring than plain samples. If you don't know what FM is, it's Frequency Modulation, a way to generate sounds, like the Sega Genesis did, and some Yamaha synths from the 80's (which had a lot of influence over the 80's music). Now it's used mostly for electro stuff.
Anyway, I started to build this software in C and C++, and after a lot of work I'm proud to release this first version, the "finished product" :) It's got a 6-operator FM engine with 24 voice polyphony, a user-friendly GUI for creating sounds, and more.
It's open-source and free, so if you'd like to give it a try.. I'd be really pleased :)
Check this little tune made with it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT__3KI3Lt4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT__3KI3Lt4)
Download page : http://fmcomposer.org/en/download.php (http://fmcomposer.org/en/download.php)
I'd be infinitely grateful if my software find some users :) Any feedback appreciated !
Some screenshots :
(http://fmcomposer.org/img/song_editor_mini.png)
(http://fmcomposer.org/img/instrument_editor_mini.png)
(http://fmcomposer.org/img/piano_roll_mini.png)
Nice work! The program seems lightweight and very responsive, although it's sitting here constantly consuming around 15% CPU (on a dual-core system) even when doing absolutely nothing, occasionally even going up to a whole core for no good reason.
Some minor things in the GUI seem distracting to me: The use of a proportional font for pattern data just feels wrong, especially when the octave alignment is inconsistent between e.g. C 5 and C#5. The other thing is that the row highlights do not seem to be consistent with the rows per beat setting, as it seems like every 4th row is always highlighted. However, if the row highlight was dynamic, then the lack of distinction between non-highlighted rows would also be confusing (try telling e.g. 7 empty rows apart from each other).
Being able to import classic AdLib formats would be a big plus, although I'm not sure how easily their 4-op instruments would map to a 6-op implementation.
And last but not least... ;)
Quoteand I find FM more inspiring than plain samples
I find FM complements really well with sampled drums. Most FM drums are simply very dull-sounding, and I'm afraid the YouTube demo video is a perfect example for that. ;) The golden era of FM soundtracks were certainly games like Zone 66 that mixed FM with samples.
Good luck with the project! If you need any more inspiration for new features: Add a chorus effect. FM *always* sounds better with chorus. ;)
Thank you very much for your advices !
For the CPU usage, it's probably the famous nVidia bug with old-style OpenGL apps, it has never been corrected... Try setting the 'Threaded optimization' parameter to Disabled in nVidia control panel, CPU should be fine after that (about 1% on my computer during playback)
The row highlight is editable in the Settings page. I thought about sync'ing it to the row per beat settings, but I faced some design problems, how should I handle this if the song uses different time signatures in several places ? I thought about adding an effect which only purpose would be to tell the tracker what the composer is doing (telling the time signature or the key), it would also allow the tracker to display flats instead of sharps when needed.
You're right about the FM + sampled drums, remembering of the Sonic soundtracks on Genesis, that sounded very good that way ! Maybe in a next version, although it requires a lot of development to provide basic sample editing features :)
Quote from: phanoo on February 20, 2018, 09:11:25
For the CPU usage, it's probably the famous nVidia bug with old-style OpenGL apps, it has never been corrected... Try setting the 'Threaded optimization' parameter to Disabled in nVidia control panel, CPU should be fine after that (about 1% on my computer during playback)
I don't think that's going to work, as it's AMD graphics. ;)
Quote from: phanoo on February 20, 2018, 09:11:25The row highlight is editable in the Settings page. I thought about sync'ing it to the row per beat settings, but I faced some design problems, how should I handle this if the song uses different time signatures in several places ?
I think the row highlight should
always be consistent with the time signature (so if it changes, the row highlight also has to change). Otherwise I think it's not of much use.
In OpenMPT, there is only one time signature per pattern so it's easily solvable, but if you can change the time signature in the middle of a pattern it might get more complicated - and at the same time a consistent row highlight will become
much more helpful for the user, because they instantly see where the changes are.
Can you tell me which graphics card and CPU you have ?
My tests reported the following:
~1% cpu on i7-4790k (Win10)
~5% cpu on i5 laptop (Win10)
~15% on atom netbook (Win8)
~50% on pentium3 933mhz (WinXP)
I think the audio engine is pretty well optimized, but the GUI isn't, because SFML (the lib I use) uses OpenGL in immediate mode, which has some overhead when drawing lots of elements. If you want to help tell me, I could send you a Debug build so you can run Very Sleepy on it and see where your CPU spends its cycles.
CPU is a Core2 Duo T9400 and graphics card is a FireGL V5700 (equivalent to Radeon HD 3650). Quite dated but still a simple GUI should not produce that much of CPU overhead even on that configuration. I don't think you need to send me a debug build; just the corresponding PDB file for the Release EXE is enough.
OK i'll send you the files this evening ;)
Does the CPU usage depends on the page displayed ? You can try a simple page (e.g. the General tab) vs the Pattern view fully zoomed out or the Instrument view which has lots of elements. And check the delta % between idle and playing with most channels active
In the general tab it's about 5%, while on the instrument tab it's closer to 20%. Playing a song only adds a few more percent to that.
By the way, "save and quit" does not work if the song has not been saved yet. It should present a save dialog, instead an error message is shown.
I think adding tooltips for icons and abbreviated button labels (such as the M/S/R) buttons will be helpful to people who are not familiar with the program yet.
In addition to being able to select the operator waveform through a slider, I would also suggest adding a popup menu with a list of all waveforms when clicking on the waveform. It's more obvious and also easier to grasp when the user does not know all the waveforms.
Thanks for your findings I'll correct the "Save and quit" bug and take your ideas in account !
For the CPU usage it seems it's related to the number of draw calls, as I expected. I'll try a different approach, instead of each elements drawing their own stuff they'll reference them in a "Display manager" that will display them all in 1 draw call. I guess it would at least divide CPU usage by 2. But keep in mind it'll be still more expensive than a native GUI. The full screen is redrawn at 60fps (or whatever is your monitor refresh rate) like in video games
Wow, this is really inteteresting, definitely gonna try it out! I like the idea of having the hybrid GUI, with both tracker grid and a standard horizontal pianoroll. The only thing that really stands out in the bad way for now is that very high CPU load issue, even in idle state, but hopefully this can be sorted out sometime. Also, as far as the redraw rates are concerned, you could possibly add a user-adjustable setting to control it.
Hi ! Thanks ! The piano roll is more for viewing and correcting wrong notes than for real editing but it may change in the future :)
How high is your CPU usage ? Can you PM me all the info ? (CPU % depending on the page, with/without playback, CPU type, GPU, OS...). It's 1.5% idle max on my i7, i will bring it to 0.8% in the next release which should be <10% for Saga Musix' Core2duo. Not sure it's worth to go further
No need to use PM, i don't consider this information secret :)
I'm running Windows 8.1 x64, with minimal set of background services on a notebook machine with this CPU (http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i5/Intel-Core%20i5-5200U%20Mobile%20processor.html) and 6GB of DDR3 memory clocked at 1600MHz. It's a dual-GPU computer, with Intel HD Graphics 5500 and nVidia GeForce GT 920M, each with 1GB of dedicated memory, running at stock clock rates.
The CPU usage isn't anything strikingly high here, but there's still a room for improvement imho, especially in the idle state.
Here are my readings from Process Explorer:
pattern tab ~1.5-4%
piano roll ~1.5-4%
instruments ~3.88-5%
general ~1.16-3%
(it's probably gonna hit pretty high values during playback of modules with complex instruments and high channel count anyway, so i didn't bother measuring that)
More active channels adds some computations but the sound engine is already quite optimized, FM requires more processing than sample playback.
I worked on the instrument page, it should be fine cpu-wise for the next version, and the program will use a bit less cpu in overall :)
Really nice program. But I also have some problem with cpu usage, its around 10% with no playing, funny that playing the demosong barely affect cpu usage. My cpu is core i7-4600u.
Really nice program, it really does merit the positives of OpenMPT itself and FM synthesis.
I don't think that's it's inappropriate to ask if you're going to support 4k natively? I have to use the DPI scaling hack in Windows 10 to make it appear on my screen in a readable fashion. Also, what sound chip are you emulating? It sounds quite clean!
Quote from: IsaacNorman on February 23, 2018, 15:48:17
Really nice program, it really does merit the positives of OpenMPT itself and FM synthesis.
I don't think that's it's inappropriate to ask if you're going to support 4k natively? I have to use the DPI scaling hack in Windows 10 to make it appear on my screen in a readable fashion. Also, what sound chip are you emulating? It sounds quite clean!
I don't emulate an existing chip it's my own FM engine desgined from scratch. I read a lot about how Yamaha's FM chips works and how the software emulations were done. I re-used some of the ideas while adding some new ones. It sounds cleaner than a YM2612 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM2612) for example, but still has some aliasing that you can notice in bass sounds. It's due to the oscillator waveforms that are pre-computed to save CPU. Each one has 2048 steps, while the YM2612 and most OPL-series use 1024 steps tables. I think Yamaha switched to 2048 for their SY-77/99 synths. You get cleaner sound with a slight bit of 'dirtyness' sometimes ! :)
For the 4K I'd like to support it, however I don't have a 4k monitor. I'd need some sort of 4k emulation on a full HD screen, but I have no idea if such a thing exists :o
I didn't have a look at how your graphics work, but you don't really need a 4K screen to test high-DPI scaling. ;)
4K screens have a higher pixel density, so all you need to do is scale up the fonts and icons accordingly. On Windows it works somewhat like this:
HDC dc = ::GetDC(hwnd);
int dpi = ::GetDeviceCaps(dc, LOGPIXELSY);
::ReleaseDC(hwnd, dc);
For "normal" screen resolutions, you get a DPI value of 96. On a 4K screen, it may be e.g. 192, meaning that you have to scale all graphics by a factor of 2. In particular, the window size itself also needs to be scaled of course.
If you want to test your code, you can also change the scaling settings in Windows to e.g. 125% or 150%.
Mmh i see, thx for the example.
Currently SFML doesn't provide any way to know the current DPI, so i'd have to use Windows code. I can easily stretch the whole window, it does the job but will be slightly blurry. The best would be to use bigger font size and make all elements bigger and scale all positions, which may require a lot of work. I need to check before I confirm i'll implement that ;D
Hi, Mr Phanoo.
I have tried your software and it was really a great software ;D. One of feature that was missing to me is exporting to more common tracker format, such as Impulse Tracker (.it) format so the resulting song can be played with common module library without relying to convert it to streaming format which resulting huge filesize.
The MIDI export is already present, then the alternative maybe you can just add a feature to generate SF2 along with the MIDI file (like VGM Trans (https://github.com/vgmtrans/vgmtrans)) so OpenMPT can just import it and exporting as IT or MPTM.
Quote from: phanoo on February 23, 2018, 22:08:37
I don't emulate an existing chip it's my own FM engine desgined from scratch. I read a lot about how Yamaha's FM chips works and how the software emulations were done. I re-used some of the ideas while adding some new ones. It sounds cleaner than a YM2612 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM2612) for example, but still has some aliasing that you can notice in bass sounds. It's due to the oscillator waveforms that are pre-computed to save CPU. Each one has 2048 steps, while the YM2612 and most OPL-series use 1024 steps tables. I think Yamaha switched to 2048 for their SY-77/99 synths. You get cleaner sound with a slight bit of 'dirtyness' sometimes ! :)
For the 4K I'd like to support it, however I don't have a 4k monitor. I'd need some sort of 4k emulation on a full HD screen, but I have no idea if such a thing exists :o
That's pretty sick mate. I would never have guessed that it was your own FM Synthesis design, because when I was listening to it (aside from noticing the 6 operators), I was going to guess that you were aiming for the DX7 level of quality, as it sounds quite clean as well. However, like you said, it does have the ability to sound similar to the YM2612. I love how you made the oscillators and operators easy to program. VOPM and Dexed are both good options as VST plugins for OpenMPT, but are not as easy as your program. :)
About the 4K, it'd be nice if you could implement that. If it's too much to ask, then no need to worry, I can override the DPI scaling in "File Properties > Compatibility > Change high DPI settings" on Windows 10. - - I must ask, will it be possible to export as FLAC in the future? Or maybe the ability to choose our own bit depth when writing to a file as well? (For example: 8 bits, 16, 24, or 32 integer/floating point?)
QuoteOne of feature that was missing to me is exporting to more common tracker format, such as Impulse Tracker (.it) format so the resulting song can be played with common module library
I bet this wouldn't be trivial and kinda mising the point of faithful sound reproduction, siince this tracker, unlike most of old DOS ones isn't a sample-based one, it does realtime synthesis, much like AdlibTracker, VGMM or DefleMask for example, so you would need to convert everything into the samples, effectively losing (almost) all instrument-specific information. Consider the case when an FM instrument sounds totally different at various velocities, as the easiest explanation of this problem. What would you do to keep the original timbre after the conversion? You could possibly try approximating it and sample it multiple times, creating relevant samples for several velocity ranges, but this would obviously result in much bigger .IT files. Not even mentioning other problems, like the fact that you can't keep some characteristics of the timbre that occur at fixed intervals of the time (like phasing filters etc.). since they would need to be "baked" into the samples themselves, making them dependent of the pitch (and, in turn, the speed) at which the sample is being played back at.
Exactly, a faithfully exported IT file would be much bigger than any streamed version unless only very basic instruments are used.
QuoteI was going to guess that you were aiming for the DX7 level of quality
DX7 level of quality would be quite noisy, wouldn't it? ;) The whole design is definitely very close to various FM implementations by Yamaha, but naturally these days when implementing it from scratch, you can ignore various comprises that had to be done back then, because the hardware is much more powerful.
Yeah exporting to .IT would be hard to do in an automated way, MiDoRi explained well the problems for such a conversion.
If your goal is to make tracker music with some FM sounds, I suggest you use FM Composer to create the sounds, then export the single notes as wave and create the song with OpenMPT.
For the export bit depth yes sure, I'll add this soon ! For the .FLAC format I need to check the license, if it's ok I need to find which library to use and implement it. It was quite easy for MP3 so it should be doable for FLAC :)
The official libFLAC is BSD-licensed and easy to use. It shouldn't be a problem for you. ;)
Hello !
I've published the 1.4 version, taking in account most of your requests :)
- High DPI screen handling (special thanks to IsaacNorman for taking time for testing this feature)
- Lowered CPU usage in idle (expect 50%-70% reduction depending on the page)
- FLAC export
- Editing step (row skipping when you enter notes)
+ several small bug fixes
Thanks for making FM Composer better ! ;)
http://fmcomposer.org#download (http://fmcomposer.org#download)
I've also slightly modified the website, you can download the old versions if needed for some reason
Hi, I thought I would have a look at the software and I like it very much, it has a great sound and it seems like there is a lot of flexibility in it. Just picked it up tonight to have a good look, and 2 things struck me in particular:
The first is on my stock resolution on this laptop (1336/768) and with the dark theme, the text was illegible... so I changed my resolution and had a bit of fun anyways, then I changed it to the light theme and it now seems to work with my res.
Second, I went searching through your instruments for a piano... and I eventually found it :) I thought it would be in melodic percussion, since that is it's classification... I'm mentioning the second one, I admit, just because my confusion was there.
:) anyways, enjoyed the software, the demo melodies were pretty and demonstrated what I thought was a heck of a lot of range, I will certainly give it some time in the future.
I am using a 4K screen. And there is a noticeable problem: the program will make my cursor looks very small and hard to work with this program.
Opening the new version gives me a warning on every startup that some file cannot be found. Apart from that, the CPU load definitely went down.
Isn't that the last file you opened doesn't exist anymore ? (or renamed folder)
At launch FM Composer will try to re-open the last file, except if you unchecked the option in the Settings page
Quote from: LovelyA72 on March 07, 2018, 05:10:40
I am using a 4K screen. And there is a noticeable problem: the program will make my cursor looks very small and hard to work with this program.
By cursor do you mean the mouse cursor ? I'd be very grateful if you could send me a screenshot so I can see what happens ;)
Quote from: phanoo on March 11, 2018, 10:12:42
Isn't that the last file you opened doesn't exist anymore ? (or renamed folder)
At launch FM Composer will try to re-open the last file, except if you unchecked the option in the Settings page
There was no last saved file (clean installation), but now it doesn't happen anymore. I will let you know if I encounter the behaviour again under unclear circumstances.
Depends on what you mean by 'clean install'. If you had a previous installed version on the same computer it *may* be a previously opened file even if you did a new install in another folder, since all versions use the same path for persistent data and settings :
(your system drive letter):/ProgramData/fmcomposer/config.ini
Anyway, the popup shouldn't show up again since FM Composer removes it from the history if it doesn't exist anymore :)
Quote from: Saga Musix on March 07, 2018, 22:23:49
Opening the new version gives me a warning on every startup that some file cannot be found. Apart from that, the CPU load definitely went down.
Strange, program works fine for me, no problems here.
I'm bumping this to report a regression. In version 1.6, the CPU usage is hitting very high values (around 26%CPU time) on both pattern and pianoroll tabs. The rest doesn't seem to exhibit the problem.
Hello!
The website http://fmcomposer.org/ no longer works...
It's there any downloadable windows copy that still available?
Wow, i wonder what happened, it seems to have literally evaporated from the web. In any case you're lucky, i have 3 builds of it archived on my disk, here you go, i uploaded them on Discord
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519919301562597406/553577089329266688/fmcomposer-1.3.zip (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519919301562597406/553577089329266688/fmcomposer-1.3.zip)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519919301562597406/553577189526863872/fmcomposer_v1.4.zip (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519919301562597406/553577189526863872/fmcomposer_v1.4.zip)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519919301562597406/553577181150707722/fmcomposer_v1.6.zip (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519919301562597406/553577181150707722/fmcomposer_v1.6.zip)
Wow! Thank you so much!
Sad to see that site die in the arse! Seems to be the norm around the world these days with many things. At least i downloaded all the files before it did get the arse!
it was a great tool!
What's more weird is the fact it was a FOSS piece of code and its GitHub seems to have evaporated too
Luckily someone forked it sometime last year: https://github.com/Marukyu/fmcomposer
This might be missing some of the latest commits but it's better than being completely lost.
Edit: There is also a fork of that fork (lol) which includes both the modifications of that fork as well as some later commits from the original repository: https://github.com/BobDeng1974/fmcomposer
I made a fork of that fork as well, just in case.
Saga must be hungry if he is playing with that many eating gear. :nuts:
The website is back, including the download of version 1.7. Official source repository is still gone, though.
Hi all,
Sorry for not maintaining the FM Composer website, I've been quite busy lately.
I restored the Github project (thanks for the forks they are really helpful to keep open source projects alive !), I also uploaded the Windows builds : https://github.com/stephanedamo/fmcomposer/tree/master/windows_builds
But I won't have enough time to keep the website up, please consider it as a pure community-driven project now.
A lot of great tunes have been made with FM Composer and i'm really pleased to see some people are still using it :)
I work on a new project now, the EssenceFM. As the name suggest, it's again about FM synthesis... It's a hardware FM synth !
It takes some inspiration from FM Composer for the GUI and has a totally new sound engine providing a lot more synthesis capabilities. I'm working hard to make it the most powerful and still the most easy to use FM synth... Feel free to check it out (https://kodamo.org).
Happy tracking to the FM Composer users ! ;)
Thanks for restoring everything! That's all we ask for. ;)
That hardware synth looks really interesting! Do you consider showing it off at Superbooth (https://superbooth.com/) next year? I'll be there for sure. ;)
Yes we'd like to show it at Superbooth !
The next date is the SoundMit in Italy (https://www.soundmit.com/en) in november. It will be still a prototype at this stage, but we are making progress ;)
Damn, that's so fantastic and smooth sounding! And absolutely nice looking too! I especially found the mix of scroll-down-tracker-style and piano-roll incredibly genius.
Really really great work!
Seems like the website is dead again?
Oh well 😔 such is life with software, they live and die by the sword ⚔️