Intense Tech #14 — Let's Appreciate Version 8 (Defense Mechanism)

The changes from lsdj 7 to 8, listed by defense-mechanism (intense-tech): the two-row screen map, ADSR on pulse and noise, Z on almost every command, renamed table modes, and playback optimisations that ended the three-V-command crash.

Key claims#

• The official manual was updated for version 8 (littlesounddj.com, documentation section).
• Screen layout: two rows instead of three — main row Song, Chain, Phrase, Instrument, Table; top row Project, Groove, Synth, Wave. Going up returns to the screen last used in the top row; up from Song always goes to Project, up from a G command to Groove.
• ADSR replaces the ENVELOPE of pulse and noise instruments: three stages of two digits, the first 0–F a volume, the second 0–7 a duration where 0 holds forever. 51/00 behaves like the old envelope 51; 24/67/32 starts at 2, rises fairly quickly to 6, decays slowly to 3, then fades. RFx on top of an ADSR works like tremolo. E commands and the table volume column still override the ADSR.
• Z now works with every command except H (and Z) — article 03 had reported it did not work with D, G and H. Randomised grooves become possible.
• Small changes: tables switch between PLAY (one tick per line) and STEP (the former "Automate"); FX/SPEED is renamed CMD/RATE; the wave instrument shows LOOP POS (position of the loop point; 0 repeats every frame within LENGTH) instead of REPEAT; R on the wave channel retrigs the synth from its first frame; wave instruments default to MANUAL; synths can be cloned from the wave instrument screen with SELECT+(A,B) on the synth number; a new instrument takes the type of the channel it was created on; xF in the table volume column hops to row x; prelisten works with a PS/2 keyboard and key delay is configurable in the Project screen; CLEAN SONG DATA / CLEAN INSTRUMENT DATA now remove duplicate chains, instruments and tables.
• Optimisations: V commands in three channels no longer slow down, freeze or crash the Game Boy; the DMG copes with tempos above 250; A,A for a new chain and screen scrolling are faster.

Practical takeaways#

Read pulse/noise volume as volume/duration pairs, use STEP tables where you used Automate, and Z is now safe on grooves and delays.

Notable quotes#

"…making improvements that almost seem like they should be impossible!"

Pages touched#

lsdj · adsr-envelope · instrument-tables · randomization-and-probability · retrigger · wavetable-programming · intense-tech · defense-mechanism