A bit off-topic, but I remember having that Bronski Beat PSG track back in the day! Possibly I had typed it over from a magazine... A classic, so it seems. Brings back old memories
Would putting all the music data in DATA rules and READ them on the fly make any difference, or would that cause extra delay?
You probably fill strings with those data lines, so it doesn't make a difference.
Click the bronski link here: http://msxcomputermagazine.nl/archief/mcm-3/
A bit off-topic, but I remember having that Bronski Beat PSG track back in the day! Possibly I had typed it over from a magazine... A classic, so it seems. Brings back old memories 
This!
The PLAY command returns immediately, so I reckon it puts the MML in the play queues in upper memory and the music playback itself doesn’t deal with strings at all? Don’t know why a delay would be introduced, that’s pretty odd. You could try to inspect what happens there, maybe a poke after each PLAY to erase some “end of sequence” marker could do the trick. Or possibly one could poke values directly into the play queues.
(Interestingly after _MUSIC the 2nd PLAY command does not return immediately.)
p.s. I tried the Bronski beat after _MUSIC… it doesn’t really play well anymore, drums get messed up
.
I dumped the fmpac rom... seems that if you then load the bin file it allows you to use faster MML without using the cartridge itself.... I don't think that's a perfectly legal approach if you're going to distribute software, though.... or are there fmpac versions that are technically PD/freeware?
I very much doubt all those FM-PAC clones for sale obtained any kind of official license so… no more “legal” than they are. ’tis fine…
Quite a weird way of using MSX-MUSIC ROM, LOL.
Speculation about the license... I think that this code was owned by ASCII corporation. If they had any real wish that MSX-AUDIO would succeed I think the license to use the code was integrated together with MSX2 manufacturing license. MSX-MUSIC software might have been some sort of collaboration with ASCII and Panasonic as it is clearly forked from MSX-AUDIO code, but I don't know who has made the needed changes.
Yes it is... ripping it to use the portion (MML) that speeds up the play command, nevermind whatever else it does (and of course missing the chip itself). I just figured I'd try it.
I'm not sure how legal the Dutch clones (fm-pak and such) were but we sure didn't mind 'em.
an example where one can easily hear it
10 a$="t200l16o4cccccccc" 20 for i = 1 to 5 : play a$ : next
it should be one constant tone, but it goes blblbl.
it sounds like a PLAY adds a tone-off-command to the end of the queue.
so the thing goes off in case you dont add another PLAY.
