research/opl/novoices/README
Simon Howard 122074db7b Findings from instrument priority investigation.
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Subversion-revision: 1667
2009-09-12 16:56:37 +00:00

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Investigating how Doom decides on a voice to discard when it runs out
of OPL voices.
Findings so far:
* The instrument affects the voice that is released (different instruments
give different results). It is the instrument data that is significant,
not the instrument number (identical instruments behave the same - 87/88)
* Sometimes notes are not turned off when they should be. Sometimes notes
are turned off when they should not be (bug?)
* DMX maintains a linked list of the most recently-allocated voices. These
are searched backwards when finding a voice to free, so the most recently
allocated voices are the first to be freed.
* Different MIDI channels have different "priorities", somehow affected
by the instrument in use on that channel.
* When no voices are available, the will search back through the allocated
voices list and discard the most recently used voice from a channel of
a lower priority to the channel for the new note.
* If no lower-priority voices are available, a voice from the same
channel will be discarded.
* If no voices from lower priority channels are available, and none from
the same channel, the first voice in the list is discarded, ignoring
priority.
* Priority seems to be determined by MIDI instrument number - lower
instruments have a higher priority than higher instruments, so instrument
0 defeats 1, 1 defeats 2, etc.
* If a double voice instrument is played, and there are no free voices,
a voice will be sacrificed to play the first voice of the instrument,
but the second voice will not be played.