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NAME

       aylet, xaylet - play Spectrum ‘.ay’ music files

SYNOPSIS

       aylet/xaylet  [-BehlmnNsS]  [-A  stopafter] [-F fadetime] [-t tracknum]
       [file1 [file2 ... ]]

DESCRIPTION

       aylet  plays  music  files  in  the  ‘.ay’  format.  These  files   are
       essentially  wrappers  around  bits of Z80 code which play music on the
       Sinclair ZX  Spectrum  128’s  sound  hardware  -  the  beeper,  or  the
       AY-3-8912  sound  chip,  or both. Files using the Amstrad CPC ports are
       also supported.

       ‘aylet’ has a curses-based interface, and ‘xaylet’ has an X-based  one.

OPTIONS

       -A     set stop-after time in seconds (this is the time at which tracks
              start fading out), or 0 to disable fading. The  default  is  180
              seconds (3 minutes).

       -B     use  ‘ABC’  stereo positions, rather than the default ‘ACB’. ACB
              effectively pushes channels A and B to the left and right (using
              a  stereo  delay), with C remaining central; ABC puts A and C to
              the left/right instead, leaving B central.

       -e     force 8-bit playback, even if 16-bit is available.

       -F     set fade-out time in seconds (the time tracks take to fade out).
              The default is 10 seconds.

       -h     give terse usage help.

       -l     list  the  contents  of  files  (track  names  etc.) rather than
              playing them.

       -m     use mono rather than the default stereo playback.

       -n     rather than the usual interface, use a simple batch-playing  tty
              style, a bit like mpg123. (Only works in the curses version.)

       -N     use  ‘narrow’  stereo  separation  (so the channels sound closer
              together) rather than the default ‘wide’ separation.

       -s     output sample data to stdout rather  than  playing  it;  implies
              ‘-n’.  The  sample  is  44.1kHz  16-bit stereo (or mono if using
              ‘-m’). Don’t be surprised if the sample takes a little while  to
              generate, as it still has to emulate the Z80.

       -S     apply a pseudo-stereo effect to the beeper output. Works well in
              some cases, but can make things sound a bit  shaky  (or  rather,
              more so than usual :-)).

       -t     play only the specified track, then exit. (Strictly speaking, it
              starts playing the given track, and exits when any  track  fades
              out.)    Mainly   useful   when   playing  a  single  file  non-
              interactively.

       file1 etc.
              the file(s) to play. Currently these can only  be  specified  on
              the command-line.

BEHIND THE SCENES

       The  way  aylet  works may seem a little strange if you’re not familiar
       with how the ‘.ay’ format goes about things, so here’s some  background
       on how it all works.

       As  mentioned above, the files basically contain chunks of machine code
       to run on an emulated Z80 with certain  sound  hardware.  Since  you’re
       just  running  a  program,  you  can’t really fast-forward or rewind as
       such, but you can move between tracks  specified  in  the  file.  (Some
       files only have one, but others have several.)

       The  whole  just-running-a-program  thing  leads to two other problems,
       too. You can’t tell where a track ends, other  than  to  see  when  the
       sound  stops;  what  aylet  does  is to exit a track after 4 seconds of
       total silence. And a track may never end at all;  aylet  fades  it  out
       after  3  minutes  by default. (Yes, 3 minutes be may too soon to allow
       some tracks to ‘finish’, but you have to strike the balance  somewhere,
       and it’s only a default. Use ‘-A’ or press ‘s’ to change it.)

KEYS

       Both  the  curses-based  and X-based interfaces use these keys (some of
       which are based on those used by XMMS):

       q or Esc
              exit the program.

       z      previous track.

       x      play.

       c      pause.

       v      stop.

       b      next track.

       r      restart track.

       Backspace or Delete
              previous file.

       Space  next file.

       s      increase stop-after time.

       S      decrease stop-after time. Setting it  to  zero  disables  fading
              completely.

       f      increase fade-out time.

       F      decrease fade-out time.

       h      enable/disable  high-speed mode, playing four times as fast when
              enabled (in a way), as a sort of substitute  for  a  real  fast-
              forward control.

       In xaylet, you can also use the matching buttons for most of the above.

       When using ‘aylet -n’, the interactivity is scaled  down  dramatically,
       leaving just the one control:

       Ctrl-C if  the  current  track  has  been  playing for less than half a
              second, exit the program; otherwise, skip to the next track.

       Note that the key used to do this is really whatever you have set up to
       generate a SIGINT signal, but it’s generally Ctrl-C.

EXAMPLES

       To play all .ay files in the current directory:

       aylet *.ay
       or
       xaylet *.ay

       To  convert  ysfollin.ay  to  a  mono  sample  in .wav format (requires
       ‘sox’):

       aylet -sm ysfollin.ay |sox -r 44100 -t sw - tune.wav

BUGS

       The AY is probably too loud relative to the beeper. This may  be  fixed
       in  the next version, though it’s more likely to be an option to choose
       between the current more reasonable balance and the real thing. :-)

       Several options which it  could  reasonably  allow  to  be  changed  at
       runtime  (e.g.  AY  stereo, beeper stereo, ACB vs. ABC) can’t be at the
       moment.

       The X version is currently a bit too much like the curses one,  at  the
       expense of GUIness in some respects.

SEE ALSO

       fuse(1)

AUTHOR

       Russell Marks (rus@svgalib.org).

       The Z80 emulation was written by Ian Collier, for xz80.

       Chris Cox wrote the OpenBSD sound code.

       Matan Ziv-Av was partly responsible for the OSS sound code.