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Commodore Sound Expander and Sound Sampler

Posted: 25/09/2003 - 19:04
by Franksey$D012
I'm sure a lot of you guys are aware of the C64 Sound Sampler and Sound Expander devices. These were the units that commodore produced that plugged in to the 'cartridge port' on the 64. I've actually got these 2 in my loft and though I used to code 6502 I was never a musician. Since attending BitLive Brighton (wow! :D ) it got me wondering about those devices. I know these days that people use pretty advanced tools for music editing/creation, but did anyone ever exploit those devices at all? As I recall the Sound Expander had an 8 channel sound chip (im open to correction here! :roll: ). So just wondered if anyone knew of any coding/composition or executable files that run on the sound expander?

Posted: 25/09/2003 - 19:10
by Chris Abbott
The sound expander came with some software, and there was an additional extra pay-disk that had proper sequencing software. It had an FM chip on board, with a limited number of patches: ironically that sound has dated a lot worse than the SID chip.

The only thing I know of that exploited the sound sampler was that drum software from "Players" which redirected the sample playback to the cartridge if it was fitted for much better output.

Chris