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Comment by JetSetIlly | Hacker News Reader

> Well, that and the fact that after the 48K beeper the 128K was never going to sound less than incredible

Some of the stuff people do with the 48k beeper is incredible though. Tim Follin's tunes for example are basically treating the beeper like a 1-bit DAC, with amazing results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE

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Yeah, when I had the 48K Speccy I bought this and a shoot em up called Chronos, which wasn't by any means an amazing game (not bad for the £1.99 or £2.99 I paid for it, mind), but it was blessed with incredible intro music, which I think might have been another Tim Follin special.

It's not to say amazing results from the 48K beeper were impossible, but you had to work pretty hard for them, and you were definitely into wizardry territory.

But, it's also true that the sound capabilities of the 128K machine were a big step up (also worth bearing in mind you had the beeper and the AY chip - you weren't losing the beeper).

Follin also experimented with using both the beeper and the AY chip at the same time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1e2MOeo5eU

Aha - and as if by magic... yeah, I just mentioned that the 128K machine had both the beeper and the AY chip, and this is a great example of them in use together.

And there was Wham! The Music Box if you wanted to compose music :).

Here’s how it sounded on the original ZX Spectrum, equipped with only the beeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNDVJLma-W4

As rudimentary as it is that actually sounds a lot better than I was expecting, and I think as a kid in the 80s I'd probably have been happy with it.

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