Cubic Player will make the samples smaller one by one, using some algorithm to guess which sample has the least impact, and it does this in the following way:
First it finds all 16 bit samples and reduces them to 8 bit (only as long as it doesn’t fit in memory)
Then it reduces the sample rate (and thus size) in half until it fits
Then if it still doesn’t fit it will reduce samples to a quarter of the sample rate

If this behavior (or the allocation of too many channels) is not what you want you can setup (in the ini file) a playback method for those specific files that uses software mixing. Then, you can in the file browser mark files that you want to have software mixing with ALT-B if I recall correctly.
In the ini file you can also force Cubic Player to use a lower mixing rate depending on the number of channels if you cpu isn’t fast enough. This is all in the documentation😉

I personally use open cubic player version 0.2.6 but I think this behavior is pretty similar in older versions.

there is another wrench to be aware of, gus (NON PNP) has memory window size of 256kb. samples cannot cross 256kb block. ie: with a 1mb gus, if a song has 5 x 150kb samples.... it wont fit in memory even tho its less than 1024kb of samples... because two would cross a 256kb block size.

gus pnp removed that limitation (I think it became a 4mb block size, or maybe no block size at all...)

Interesting.

Digistorm, would OpenCP be advised for a 5x86 160 over the older CP versions (1.6 is from 1995, I believe)? DOS 6.22, ISA GUS.

blakespot wrote on 2024-01-20, 16:04:

Digistorm, would OpenCP be advised for a 5x86 160 over the older CP versions (1.6 is from 1995, I believe)? DOS 6.22, ISA GUS.

You could run it even on a 486 DX/2, but in the case of software mixing you have to change the ini file because by default OpenCP uses the FPU to do the software mixing and that may be a bit much for a 486 class CPU, although at 160 MHz maybe it is okay.
The benefit of OpenCP is primarily less replay bugs and support for the latest features of Impulse Tracker like filters and compressed samples. You could check in the documentation if version 1.6 supports sample size reduction, I don’t remember that far back 😉

I had tried OCP initially and could not get it to play on the GUS. On track load the player screen comes up but just sits there. I've just been reading the in-app help on config and editing the config file - still no luck. Selecting devwGUS via @ list doesn't help - tho it seems it shouldn't be necessary if properly configured.

I will keep fiddling with it. Thanks.

UPDATE:: I got GUS working great on under OCP. What remains is the software mixer. I've tried both devwMixF and devwMix and they play, but there is a rhythmic double-popping happening loudly over the audio. I've disabled filtering in the config (and rotating settings with BACKSPACE) but it has no effect. Would be nice to get this working to play w/ quality hard vs soft, but I don't see any further obvious changes to make. Still playing with it.

bp