from Hacker News

Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

by tomaspollak on 8/11/24, 7:42 PM with 52 comments

10 years ago I began working on Muki, a web-based MIDI and chiptune player which I eventually announced here on HN[0]. It was a fun weekend project.

Over the years I received numerous requests from people that wanted more: more music, more features, more playable formats, you name it.

Eventually I began working on a complete rewrite of the app (this time for real), and, realizing that each year another chiptune or MIDI website went offline, I decided to start archiving them for preservation.

Today, 10 years after the first release, I think it's finally time for the new, nicer version to hit the shelves. It's now called Pixeltune and yes, now you can actually turn down the volume. :)

Hope you like it!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305918

  • by tlh on 8/12/24, 9:03 AM

    Really love this, kudos for making it! Can listen to the Sonic 2 soundtrack on loop for hours.

    Just a note to say that on MacOS Safari none of the icons or fonts seem to want to load. Looking at the console it appears to be lots of CORS-related issues. I.e, "Cancelled load to <a package url> because it violates the resource's Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy response header."

  • by nyanpasu64 on 8/11/24, 9:27 PM

    Is it possible to loop a song infinitely? This is a standard feature for chiptune emulation playback programs (vgmstream, GEP, foobar2000, Audacious, Droidsound-E, etc.).

  • by fourfour3 on 8/12/24, 10:25 AM

    I'd love to see WebMIDI support similar to https://chiptune.app/

    I have a SC-8820 - it can simulate a SC-55/SC-88/SC-88 Pro (the SC-55 in particular is what a lot of VGM MIDIs were made using) and I'd love to be able to use it with this collection :)

  • by faraggi on 8/11/24, 10:23 PM

    Hey Tom! This is fantastic project, I see myself using it daily. But the best part of it all is your dedication to preserving the midi culture and the art form itself.

    (game) Music back then was truly on another level and I'm glad some people are archiving the songs and their chips.

  • by superfamicom on 8/12/24, 5:16 PM

    Love this! I've been working on and running https://sfc.fm for about 7 years now so very similar interests!

    One thing I did notice was the in the SPC emulation, particularly in Super Mario World `12a Athletic.spc` there is a lot of echo / reverb that isn't present in the actual file or game, is there secondary effect processing happening somewhere, I couldn't seem to turn it off, you can play it here https://sfc.fm/sfc/super-mario-world track 16

  • by zeta0134 on 8/12/24, 2:50 AM

    This is a really slick player! I have a feature request though. I noticed almost right away that NSF (NES/Famicom) songs are in stereo and seem to have some sort of reverb filter applied. The original console is mono only, so this suggests that whatever core is performing NSF playback is layering on these additional effects. I'd rather hear the stock audio coming out of the console. Can this be exposed as an option?

  • by snowram on 8/12/24, 7:02 AM

    Looks like there are a bunch of Famitracker modules (.ftm files) that are converted to MIDI but should actually be converted to NSF like any other NES song.

  • by s5ma6n on 8/12/24, 9:25 AM

  • by sersi on 8/12/24, 1:36 PM

    This is just lovely. Nice trip through nostalgia, when I was 12 years old, I had a period where I listened to a lot of mods from the amiga demo scene to the eternal bafflement of my parents :) It's a pity I lost the collection I curated of my favorites.

    One thing for tracks that have duration, it'd be great to see it.

  • by 29athrowaway on 8/12/24, 12:40 AM

    There's also this which you can run on a Raspberry Pi (not a web player)

    https://github.com/sasq64/chipmachine

  • by ugh123 on 8/12/24, 7:23 AM

    Amazing interface and player!

    I'm finding a lot of this music as great background for work. It seems especially the 16 bit and 32 bit game system music seemed to hit a sweet spot for me.

  • by teeuwen on 8/12/24, 8:55 AM

    I’m really digging the background visuals. It reminds me of the old Playstation home screen background animation.

  • by binary132 on 8/12/24, 11:56 AM

    Curious, but it didn’t make any sound on my iPhone in safari.

  • by loa_in_ on 8/12/24, 1:51 AM

    Works flawlessly, sounds very good. Already improved my day!

  • by squigz on 8/12/24, 2:36 AM

    Haha, love the changelog, and love the tunes; nice job!

    2024-08-11: The rewrite is done

    It took a while but it's finally here. Support for playlists, favorite songs, WASM cores, new formats, etc. The list of supported formats now includes KSS, AY, Furnace and Famitracker songs, and much more (click on Song formats to see the full list).

    ...

    (Time goes by)

    2018-05-04: Began work on new version

    This might take a while

  • by webprofusion on 8/12/24, 4:25 AM

    This is rad.