DOKK / manpages / debian 11 / hxtools / bsvplay.1.en
bsvplay(1) hxtools bsvplay(1)

bsvplay — convert BASICA music data to PCM

bsvplay [-i part] [-q part] [-r rate] [file...] | aplay -f dat -c 1

bsvplay will convert BASICA binary music data to linear 16-bit raw PCM. Normally, you will be wanting to pipe it into a raw PCM player like aplay(1) to actually output it to a sound device. Be sure to lower the volume beforehand to avoid nasty surprises that come with square waves. By default, bsvplay will mix 1:1 square:sine waves to give a medium tone hardness.

Do note that the music data is embedded in BSV/EXE/COM files and needs to be manually located. It is usually very evident from a regular pattern in hexdumps.

Part to mix square waves in (default: 1.0)
Part to mix sine waves in (default: 1.0). If -q2 -i1 is specified for example, the final PCM output will consist of 2/3*squarepcm + 1/3*sinpcm.
PCM sample rate (default: 48000 Hz)
Assume the input is Pianoman MUS.

The BASICA format is defined 6-byte tuples of divisor, duration and pause.

	struct bsv_insn {
		uint16_t divisor;
		uint16_t duration; /* in ticks */
		uint16_t af_pause; /* in ticks */
	};

where divisor specifies the divisor value that it directly handed to the x86 PC speaker. The following formula holds:

	frequency = 1193181 / divisor;

aplay(1), qplay(1), hxtools(7)

2008-02-06 hxtools