SpritesMind.Net

I recently found out about the Echo sound driver for MD; this really looks like it's the way of the future for sound on the MD. The only problem I'm encountering so far is the "easy" generation of Echo Stream Files. It doesn't look like anyone thus far has written a tracker for Echo format.

I really like Shiru's VGM Music Maker tracker, so I though I'd start writing a file format converter (i.e. from VGM to ESF) and also an FM instrument extractor while I'm at it.

Before I get too far though I thought I'd reach out on here and see what, if any, tools are already in existence to produce Echo compatible files? (aside from the xm tools already available here: https://github.com/oerg866/xm2esf)

Did you look at https://github.com/sikthehedgehog/mdtools ?

Yes I did, it just seems like a convoluted process to write a song in MIDI, then setup instruments in some other software, then use all these tools to convert everything to Echo format. The lack of any real-time preview makes these tools un-ideal in my opinion.

It would be great if everything could be done in one software. As I mentioned earlier I really like Shiru's VGM Music Maker which is why I'd like to write a tool which can take a VGM and output all the necessary Echo files.

It's true that an Echo Tracker would be ideal, if I knew anything about YM2612 and PSG output on the PC then I would certainly try to develop one but alas I'm just a hardware engineer used to writing embedded applications. Actually, I'm quite familiar with VB.NET - I don't know how feasible it would be to incorporate a YM2612 and PSG module in VB.NET? I would be very grateful if someone could point me in the right direction...

Also, my VGM2Pre program can extract YM2612 FM presets from VGMs to Echo Instrument Format and is open-source. I want more people to use the EIF conversion it offers and let me know if there's something I need to fix about it, too.

http://www.luxatom.com/fk/vgm2pre-64.7z (prebuilt Win64 binary)

https://github.com/vgmtool/vgm2pre (source)

Great tool Neologix!

Essentially I'd want my VGM tool to convert VGM instruments to .eif like yours, but I would also convert any samples to echo format, and generate a .esf with proper references to the generated instruments.

Edit: and having a real-time preview for instruments would be awesome because that would facilitate naming and classifying them.