Something Unreal

This update lets Bawami write WAV files in paths containing non-ASCII characters (something long-overdue), and fixes a bunch of complicated interwoven bugs related to the handling of “bad” MIDI files and of percussive notes. There’s also a load of other fixes, including for portamento-related bugs, crashing in /translator mode, and visual fixes, and a couple of new instruments.

You can grab the latest version from here (7.81 MB), and see details of the changes below the page break:

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This is a nice big bunch of fixes – mostly related to /console-mode, but a couple of more serious things (which affect more people) are fixed, too.

You can grab this latest version from here (7.87 MB), and see details of all the changes below.

General bug fixes

• Fixed bug where button to browse for a new MIDI file remained disabled after opening a MIDI by dropping it onto the main window.
• Now recognises when a filename is passed on the command line without speech marks (and without any command line parameters). This fixes the problem of Bawami not opening a path+file containing no spaces if such a file was dragged onto its icon (or if Bawami is associated with .MID files), because Windows does not automatically surround such a path+file with speech marks when passing it to the program.

Fixes for when using /console

• No longer crashes if you’re redirecting Bawami’s output to a file or other program.
• When using “/infolevel 2“, log file text is now sent to StdOut instead of (accidentally) to StdErr.
• “Finished.” is now (always) displayed when shutting down.
• Key prompts for answers to questions are now sent to StdErr instead of StdOut (as was already being done for the question’s title and message), so that they’re visible on the console even if you’re redirecting Bawami’s StdOut to a file.

Visual-related fixes

• Green “settings” button’s tooltip is now loaded in the chosen language (instead of having no tooltip) (broken in revision 128).
• Corrected Z-order of several controls on the config window so that the dotted border that indicates a control that has focus isn’t having one of its horizontal edges cut off unnecessarily.
• Corrected a reference to how green “settings” button appears in info.txt.

Logging (also affects text shown when using /console /infolevel >=1)

• No longer shows “Closing MIDI input port” when shutting down, if MIDI-in wasn’t in use.
• No longer shows “Decoding absolute timings” a few lines after the last track has finished being decoded.

This version includes a whole load more bug fixes, plus some serious support for running Bawami from the console (command prompt), which also guarantees to never display message boxes, along with several other fun new command line parameters.  It should also start slightly faster (less writing to log file, and some language files are now only loaded when they’re needed), seeking to a different playback position is easier on the ears, and there’s a bunch of safeguards added to the code related to writing OGG files. A few command line parameters have been renamed to make them less long-winded, they all begin with a slash instead of a hyphen now, and Bawami now lets you know exactly which ones it didn’t understand (if any). But despite a lot of work being focussed on command line parameters, there are several GUI-related bug fixes, too!

NOTE: In order for Bawami to be able to output to the Windows console (command prompt) when using /console option, the EXE file is now compiled as a console-mode program. Annoyingly, this causes a console window to appear for a brief moment before Bawami’s main window appears. However, this doesn’t slow anything down; it’s only for part of the amount of time where, previously, nothing at all was displayed.

You can download the new version here (7.87 MB). Full details on all of the changes and bug fixes are below, but allow me to first introduce a new feature of Bawami:

The /console command line parameter

If you run Bawami from the command line, this option should be very useful, and is highly recommended instead of /invisible. Text is output to “standard output” (meaning you can see what Bawami’s doing in the console), and you can respond to any messages by pressing keys on the console, too. In this mode, Bawami also starts faster and is safe to crash in the middle of playback (nothing is leaked – but for now, make sure that you also kill the OGG encoder if you crash it in the middle of writing an OGG file). Just for fun, you can also view every single raw MIDI message scrolling up in the console as it plays (/stdmidi) , and use /infolevel 1 or 2 to get a more in-depth look at exactly what’s going on internally. Of course, these options which spam text to the console will slow Bawami down a bit. Please check the “COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS” section in info.txt for full details, and see below for an overview of all changes/additions.

View all changes below the page break:
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When I first published revision 127 of Bawami about 25 minutes ago, the download included a 64-bit version of “vcut.exe” (official Vorbis splitter, used by this version of Bawami) which would not work on 32-bit Windows. A universally-compatible, 32-bit version is now included instead.

To avoid problems (OGG file export not working), I highly advise that you re-download it if you downloaded it within the past 25 minutes. I am sorry for the inconvenience.

This is essentially a whole bunch of bug fixes, including one that I really should’ve released sooner (no longer freezes at the end of exporting a WAV/OGG file under certain conditions). There aren’t really new features, which should mean that, for once, the total number of bugs has actually decreased! ^^;

Most fixes are regarding WAV/OGG file-writing, click artifacts due to release times, and a couple of visual glitches. Full details are below the page-break.

You can grab the latest version from here (7.86 MB).

EDIT: When I first published this post, the download included a 64-bit version of “vcut.exe” (official Vorbis splitter, used by this version of Bawami) which would not work on 32-bit Windows. A universally-compatible, 32-bit version is now included instead. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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Here’s the Roland SC-88Pro synth being pushed quite hard by the power of moe (ending theme of the anime Moetan, “Skip!”, originally sung by Nomico, to my surprise). MIDITrail’s fancy 3D view is good for notes, but doesn’t show any control changes, so I included a scrolling view of those, too, next to the synth’s display. And hey, why not 60FPS for those who can view that? =)

[Watch in HD]

This MIDI took me about 5 days to make, plus a few hours of tweaking at the end. It sounded like it was nearly finished after 2 days, but the hardest stuff was still left to do at that point (I do hate struggling to transcribe barely-audible parts, but they really fill in the gaps and make it sound complete).

Firsts for me include the fast arpeggio effect (surprisingly, the 88P never complained about this), wah effect on the quiet guitar (on the right), and gratuitous use of “All Sound Off” whenever possible, to try to keep things running quickly enough. Also, 4 sound effects I’ve never used before!

3 channels get re-used for different instruments (16 channels has never been so insufficient), but more annoyingly, the synth’s update speed drops really low during the chorus because of all the playing voices, making pitch-bends sound jumpy, and it took a lot of tweaking and quite some luck to get a clean recording. I kind of wonder if it’s just my 88P which slows down so much when many notes are playing (even if there are not many MIDI messsages), or if it’s simply a limitation of its CPU speed. It might just be a coincidence, but it seemed to handle it better immediately after power-up, so perhaps it becomes worse as it gets hotter. In that case, maybe I could attach a heat sink to the CPU, or just put a fan in there (I don’t really want to drill holes, though). The case doesn’t really get very hot, though. I kind of wish I could limit it to playing only 32 voices at once, instead of letting it struggle with 64. Lowering release times only gets you so far.

Somehow, the fact that an anime of Moetan had been made eluded me for 8 years and I only recently discovered it. “YOU MAGGOTS ARE HUFFING AND PUFFING–” oh wait, wrong English-teaching mahou shoujo.

Something a little different this time. I had a burst of nostalgia and got this theme stuck in my head, so I decided to try to remake it for the SC-88Pro synth. It’s the first MIDI I’ve made in less than 18 hours (including sleep)! It’s also the first I’ve made for the 88P which doesn’t use all the sound channels (4 are untouched), despite using 3 just for trying to emulate the FM snare. And the first that messes around with time signatures to keep in-sync with the original while still having the notes align sensibly in my MIDI editor…

[Watch in HD]

This is a remake of the music from the DOS version of the game “Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk”. It was released on many different platforms, and I’m sure the instruments vary a lot on the different versions, but I’ve only ever played the DOS version. It used AdLib music (technically, the Yamaha OPL2 FM synth).

I’ve seen some remixes of this, but I tried to stay faithful to the original (including overlapping notes, monophonic channels and notes that get cut because of the limitations of the AdLib hardware). Originally, I was going to use a synth trumpet sound to really match the original, but I couldn’t find a suitable FM-style harpsichord to go along with it, and synth trumpets sounded stupidly out-of-place when paired with the realistic harpsichord, so I had to go for modern-sounding brass instruments.

Yamaha music on a Roland synth… heresy!

This release fixes the bug where, if pan changed on a MIDI channel playing more than one note, only the panning of one note would change (bug added in revision 122). I only just noticed this, and it annoyed me a lot, so I’m releasing this version with only this change.

You can get it here (7.82 MB).

Instrument menu appears correctly again (with a circled tick to indicate category of the chosen instrument). Once again, I left this disabled while testing and forgot to re-enable it…

Usual download link is here (7.81 MB)…

Bawami now works correctly on Windows XP again! I never did test revision 122 on XP, which is where I switched to a newer version of FMOD, dedicated chorus DLL, and tested for another font being installed, none of which worked well on XP. Sorry about that. This release reverts to the older version of FMOD (but still keeps many speed improvements of r122) and brings a new chorus DLL, courtesy of Patrick Kunz of TAL, which works on XP and has more of a stereo effect with less detune. It also doesn’t make the panning sound less significant when the chorus mix is high, as the old chorus did.  There are also new command line parameters, as well as the usual helping of bug fixes and a few other improvements.

Please grab the latest version from here (7.84 MB), and see details of all changes below the page break:

Crash fixes

• Fixed crash on playback on computer with very long uptime (e.g. 70 days) (bug introduced in revision 121).
• Fixed crash when setting channel aftertouch (bug introduced in revision 122).
• If MIDI file duration is less than 1 millisecond (e.g. only contains setup messages), playback no longer loops (caused program to stop responding).

Changes prompted by failing on Windows XP

• “jsmalle.fon” font (“Small Fonts”) is no longer included or checked at startup. The check was failing on Windows XP for some reason and preventing Bawami from starting. It’s included with Windows anyway.
• Reverted to previous FMOD version (4.6.21) because version 4.8.2 (switched to in revision 122) causes errors during startup (specifically, checking ASIO support) on Windows XP. This might be slightly slower, but is still faster than revision 121.
• Chorus processor has been replaced again and now works on Windows XP (without errors). Instead of “achorus.dll” (added in revision 122), “TALChorusLX.dll” (by TAL – Patrick Kunz) is now used. Many thanks for their permission to use this, which I believe sounds even better than the previous one.

Sound improvements

• Reduced ModAutoDelay in default instrument file from 0.35 to 0.31 seconds. This results in VIBRATO DELAY messages setting the delay much closer to how the SC-88Pro does.
• When overriding release time to reduce it to “instant”, and it wasn’t originally truly instant (linear, speed 1), it is now set to “unnoticably fast” (non-linear, multiplier 0.1) instead of “truly instant” to avoid clicking artifacts on note-offs.

Miscellaneous

• Added command line parameters -ocr and -occ to override a MIDI channel’s reverb mix and chorus mix, respectively. They work in the same way as -ocv and -oce (e.g. “-ocr 2 127″ sets MIDI channel 2′s reverb mix to 127 (maximum) and locks it so that the MIDI file can’t change it).
• When using -invisible command line parameter, fractionally faster program loading and slightly lower CPU usage.
• “Override Other Controls” window now wastes a little less space.
• Fixed “being loading” typo on “Interface” tab of config window.