AYT Overview
AYT or AY Tracker (pronounced like the number Eight) is an 8 Track Tracker for the Oric Atmos and Disc Drive. The Oric has an AY-3-8912, a popular sound chip in the 1980's used in many retro computers such as the Spectrum 128, Amstrad CPC and Atari-ST.
The AY sound chip has 3 channels of square wave (known as Chipsound) and 3 volume registers for each channel with optional switches to mix noise, link Chipsound to output and link volume control to a single envelope generator. The noise and Enveloper generators are individual sound sources in themselves but must be linked into any of the three chipsounds for them to be heard. To this end it is possible to produce more channels than was originally intended.
The Tracker is based on leaving the linking of Tracks to physical channels to the User. Music is composed of a List of events, a number of patterns and a number of Effects (or SFX). The List controls the Pattern mix across 8 tracks and the patterns hold the note information. Each note is provided with an SFX.
Up to 128 List events can be entered and the List may be split into Songs. Up to 128 Patterns can be entered. Up to 64 SFX can be entered.
Each List row can have a unique configuration of Tracks to sound resources. This means the Tracker can just as easily handle a simple 3 channel chip tune as it can handle an 8 track multiplexed tune. This makes it easy to convert tunes from popular editors to the AYT system, such as Sonix and Mused (On the Oric).
Any composed music can be saved and loaded to Disc(Sedoric) using the integrated File editor.
Full Shortcut Key help is available from every editor (Control H) and every key can be changed and saved with the module to disk.
