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Sound
The Sound tab defines named sound effect presets — reusable AUDC/AUDF/AUDV/duration combinations your game can trigger with the "Play sound effect" block, or use as instruments on the Music tab.
Two icons sit under the "Sound" title, same spot as the Project tab's Save/Open icons:
Export bank — saves every sound effect/instrument currently on this tab into a single .vcsbnk "sound bank" file, for sharing a whole set of sounds between projects or keeping an external backup.
Import bank — loads a previously exported sound bank file, then opens a picker listing every sound effect it contains (checked by default) so you can choose which ones to actually bring in. With Replace existing ticked, a sound effect you import whose name matches one already on this tab has its parameters replaced (its ID, and anything already referencing it - a "Play sound effect" block, a Music tab track - stay intact); a sound effect with no name match (or every sound, with Replace existing off) is added as a brand new card. The same popup is used by the Project tab's Sound Banks screen. A .vcssnd file with a single sound opens it without the list.
Sits in the toolbar to the right of the Stop/Play buttons.
- DIM (switch) / percentage slider — when on, every sound effect (and every Music tab instrument note) plays at this percentage of its set volume, instead of its full volume. The emulator's sound follows it too: a game running in the emulator plays at the DIM percentage while DIM is on (the ROM itself is not changed). This is a device-wide app preference, not saved with the project - it stays as you left it across different projects on the same browser.
Show and Columns also sit in the toolbar, after DIM.
- Show — filters the list to All, Instruments only, or plain Sounds only (see the instrument tag below). Purely a display filter for this tab - every preset can already be used both ways regardless of this tag.
- Columns — lays sound effect cards out in multiple columns when there's room, instead of one full-width column.
Click the + button in the bottom-right corner to add a new sound. Each card has:
- Note color swatch — sets this instrument's note color on the Music tab's piano roll. Defaults to an automatically assigned color if never explicitly set.
- Sound name — shown in the "Play sound effect" dropdown and the Music tab's instrument picker.
Instrument tag (piano icon) — purely a tag for this tab's Show filter above; doesn't gate or change anything else.
- ID (the badge in the card's top-left) — a permanent number, separate from the name or list position.
Play (Space) / Stop — preview this sound effect directly in the browser. Space re-triggers the preview from the start even if it's already playing. Requires a sound card to be selected first.
Export (Shift+E) / Import (Shift+I) — save or load a single sound effect preset as a standalone .vcssnd file (.vcsbnk and older .json files still import). Same selection requirement as Play.
Click the chevron in the top-left corner to collapse a sound effect down to just its name row. Drag the strip at the top of a card to reorder sound effects in the list.
- Sound type — one of the Atari's 11 distinct AUDC waveforms.
- Frequency — the AUDF value. For sound types with tunable, in-tune notes, this is a dropdown limited to the values that actually play a clean pitch (the same set the Music tab's piano roll allows); other types get a free 0-31 number field.
- Volume — the AUDV value, 0-15.
- Duration — how many frames the sound plays for. With Envelope on, Duration is always set to the envelope's full length (Attack + Decay + Sustain + Release) and the field is locked, so the sound is never cut off and never has silence on the end.
Always applies to every note played with this instrument on the Music tab - rapidly flips between the note's pitch and a second nearby pitch to fake a chord.
- Speed — how often it flips pitch, as a fraction of the song/pattern's tempo.
- Interval — the fixed pitch jump between the note's pitch and the alternating pitch.
- Range — 1 OCT cycles only between the note's pitch and pitch + interval; 2 OCT plays that pattern, then repeats it one octave up before looping back.
Shapes this sound's volume over time (Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release) instead of playing at a fixed volume until it ends. Applies both to direct playback here and to Music tab instrument use.
- Attack — frames to ramp up from silence to full volume.
- Decay — frames to ramp down from full volume to the Sustain level.
- Sustain length — how many frames the Sustain hold itself lasts before Release begins. 0 skips straight from Decay into Release.
- Sustain Volume — the volume level (percent of full volume) held after Attack/Decay, until Release begins.
- Release — frames to ramp down from the Sustain level to silence, ending exactly when the sound ends.
- The envelope graph lets you drag the Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release points directly instead of using the dropdowns.
Reset envelope to default / Undo (Ctrl+Z) / Redo (Ctrl+Y) — reset the shape, or step back and forward through this sound effect's envelope edit history.
With the DPC+ kernel a sound card plays on the DPC+ sound chip instead of the TIA:
- Waveform editor — in place of the sound type, each card has a row of waveform type icons (sine, square, sawtooth, triangle, noise, pulse, buzzy, rough, the TIA types and custom) above a bar graph of the 32 samples. Drag the bars to draw a waveform. The bars dropdown (4, 8, 12, 16...) sets how many bars the graph uses, so longer sounds can have finer shapes.
- Frequency — a piano-key selector instead of the TIA divider. Only the pitches the chip's frequency table holds can be played.
- Instrument, sound or percussion — each card is one of the three kinds. Percussion sounds always go in the Hit row of the piano roll.
- Channels — Ch0 voice 1, 2 and 3 are chip voices (up to three sounds at once, interleaving with music by priority per voice); Channel 1 (TIA) keeps the TIA sound types and previews separately. The chip's output is shared out (volume 15 for one voice, 8 + 7 for two, 5 + 5 + 5 for three).
- Preview — plays the sound the way the chip does, at its 4-bit quality and pitches.
- Converting — switching a project between kernels converts its sounds as closely as possible; a DPC+ sound that cannot be made a standard one shows a message. Sound banks remember the kernel they were made for and show it on their cards (a file without that is taken as Standard).
On the Actions tab, the Sound category has:
- Play sound effect [name] on [channel] — plays a preset defined on this tab, on channel 0 or 1.
- Play sound [type] with frequency [n], volume [n] and duration [n] on [channel] — plays a one-off sound directly, without needing an entry on this tab at all.
See the Actions tab's Sound category for every Sound block: playing a named preset on a channel, or playing a one-off sound directly by type/frequency/volume/duration.