View source for AY

AY is the nickname of the AY-3-8910 programmable sound generator family. The Amstrad CPC sound processor is more exactly the AY-3-8912.
This chip was very popular and was used in a lot of machines.

[[MSX]], [[ZX Spectrum]], [[Atari]], [[Oric]]... all used chips from this family (sometimes it was the YM variant instead of AY...). The YM variant differed only in the hardware envelopes where it used 32 steps compared to 16 steps for the AY.

As a result it is still quite popular in the actual Chip Tune movement as a vintage sound processor. 

Many [[Chip Tune]] sites include AY files.

Alas, the [[ZX Spectrum]] is more often used as reference. But a huge library is available.

==Amstrad Plus specificity==

The Amstrad Plus range include DMA sound channels. Each HSYNC, 1 instruction per active DMA channel is read. Each channel executes an instruction which allowed looping and sending data to AY registers. Each DMA channel is effectively a AY register playlist and once started is executed without CPU intervention. It was meant to reduce the strain on the CPU.

This feature offered extra capabilities including 15Khz sample playback.

==Technical references==

*[[Datasheet AY-8913]] on CPCwiki.

== Chip tune ==

Check the [[Chip Tune]] page.

== Emulators ==

Many emulation softwares do exist in order to play chiptunes from AY-YM on you modern machines.

* ZX spectrum computer sound chip emulator  :[http://bulba.untergrund.net/emulator_e.htm there!]
* Project AY at worldofspectrum.org [http://www.worldofspectrum.org/projectay/ayplayers.htm there!]
* Arkos Tracker to compose tunes for CPC on modern PCs : [http://www.julien-nevo.com/arkos/tools.html there!]


* Also a lot of projects using components such as [[Arduino]] hardware would include AY chips, as those are widely well known and iconic of so many old school computers... and quite easy to connect on electronic circuits.
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==Links==

*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_AY-3-8910 Wikipedia's opinion on the matter...]

==Some Chip Tunes sites==

*[http://ay-riders.speccy.cz/ The AY riderz] a "famous" Speccy music group.

*[http://www.creamhq.de/ymrockerz/ YM rockerz...] the same concept, but with the YM, so the Atari version.

*[http://ultrasyd.free.fr/ ultrasyd.free.fr] Ultrasyd's Website.

[[Category:Music and sound| ]][[Category:Electronic Component]][[Category:CPC Internal Components]]