SOUND

From BeebWiki
Revision as of 23:57, 28 March 2015 by Jgharston (talk | contribs) (Added Watford Electronics Speech.)
Jump to: navigation, search

SOUND is a BASIC command to make sounds.

SOUND
Availability Present in all original versions of BBC BASIC.
Syntax SOUND <numeric>,<numeric>,<numeric>,<numeric>
Token (hex) D4 (command)
Description Generates sounds.

Description

SOUND calls OSWORD &07 to generate sounds. It is most commonly used to generate sounds with the internal sounds generator, but it can also be used to create speech or MIDI sounds, as specified by the channel parameter.

Defined channel numbers

Argument Returns
&0xxx Sound generator
&1xxx Sound generator
&20xx Watford Electronics Speech system
&FExx MIDI control [1]
&FFxx Speech system [2]

Trivia

In the original development of BBC BASIC, the sound command was BEEP which can be seen from the token position for SOUND, alphabetically with other keywords starting with 'B'[3]:

 Originally:   Became:
 D4: BEEP      D4: SOUND
 D5: BPUT      D5: BPUT
 D6: CALL      D6: CALL
 D7: CHAIN     D7: CHAIN
 etc.

References

  1. *MIDI command
  2. Speech System User Guide
  3. [http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Acorn/Misc/BASICOutline.txt Outline specification of the BASIC language interpreter, 1981]

Jgharston 00:30, 2 January 2008 (UTC)