Quoted from Mr_Tantrum:He's been working on that for months. I know that things turned a little hectic for France during the pandemic, so not sure how much time he's been able to devote to it. The implementation of the shaker programming is superb, but we do really need the PSREC feature back.
Sorry in advance for the long post...
I've been away from active Pinsound development news for longer than I care to admit after working on a SWDE mix more than 5 years ago and was quite surprised that this very necessary tool was lost. It is very handy to help figure out how the various MPU calls interact with each other in sequence. Hopefully they can get it back for everyone.
Being a true pinhead, I decided to come up with my own method of working around this problem since I've been spending time working on a reworked Shadow mix and trying to make sense of all of various SFX, single, jingle, music, voice sounds is a very daunting task. Since I can't go and queue up a recording to see what action triggers what cue, I came up with a solution that other than the trouble of some back and forth with the USB stick - I think works even better than PSREC as long as you have an actual machine.
I took a bunch of audio recordings of spoken "numbers" and put the individual .wav files for them into the various folders I want to identify and labeled each of the files "pincount1, pincount2, pincount3, etc.". Once they are in the folder, along with a gain.txt set to 20 to boost the callout to the max, I then take the drive over to the machine, take a notepad (or virtual notepad), pop the glass off and start a simulated game and hit the switches and optos and make note of what audio cues are triggered by what actions when I hear the spoken number get triggered. After several iterations of this, you can map out exactly gets triggered and how it occurs. I strongly suggest you then modify the folders name, not number, to change it to something more understandable for future reference (e.g. changing "whoosh" to "outer loop opto").
I have a "master" copy of the reorchestration on my hard drive and then a "copy" of that on my flash drive. When I'm working on a folder, I copy the work in progress over to the flash drive and then place the "pincount" files into the various folders I'm trying to identify. I then play the game, take my notes, then come back to the computer and then search for "pincount" on the flash drive, that gives me a list of all the files and their "number". I then open the folder location and it tells me where I need to go on the master copy to rename the folder and drop in the new audio cue I create.
As to what you do to replace all of the files. Music is usually pretty self explanatory. Single and Jingle can confuse people; but, ultimately - it's what you decide to place in those folders and how you want your new audio cue to work in the game that is really important. For example, if the original game used used a special piece of music that was a jingle for a jackpot award and you decide you don't want the main track to stop and play that before continuing - you can move the folder into SFX if you want the new cue to play as a flourish over the top of the existing audio. For example, my work-in-progress Shadow mix uses some specific orchestrated flourishes as some of these types of awards. Playing them on top of the currently running track works fine since tonally - it comes from the same orchestra.
Replacing the SFX and voice are really the most time consuming and potentially, the thing that really makes your reworked mix stand out.
With both of these folders, you can really go to town and have multiple .wav files in each folder if you want to add a lot of variety to the game. For both of these folders, you also need to keep in mind that just because the original game has something specific that gets called up - you don't have to follow suit in replicating an exact replacement for the same thing. Remember that these games used many effects to often emulate layered multi-track soundscapes. So if a game fires off 2 different cues in quick succession, you can choose to have just one audio file that accomplishes your intended effect. For example, a gunshot may have the firing of the gun and an impact of that in the original game. You can choose to have your file do that all in one. When I did my SWDE, I found a ton of this type multi-cue stacking that if I tried to split apart into separate cues - it resulted in a "mess" of noise as all these new sound samples would try to fire off in ways you simply have a hard time controlling. To combat this, you can either choose to not have a file in the offending folders, or if like me you often wonder if the board may trip over a missing cue, simply put a file that has the gain down to nothing put in its place.
The voice folder is pretty fun to do as you can often think of creative clips that match the "tone" of what the action is. For SWDE, it was easy to find callouts over the course of three movies that most people know backwards and forwards. For something like the Shadow, it's a bit harder. One source film and it's one that I doubt many know enough of to know what dialog is there and then know where in the source audio dump to go find it. That's where finding a script online comes in handy. Every game is going to have challenges with game specific callouts - like extra ball and so forth. You can then either choose to either rerecord it or try to clean up the files as best you can via Audacity. I usually go with the latter.
The SFX folder is the most daunting to tackle. Tons and tons of short little noises that often don't make sense when you listen to them directly. That's where the "pincount" system above comes in handy to identify how the stock cue folders interact. What you decide to do with the files is really up to you. For things like Star Wars or Star Trek, it's easy to find sound effects online that come from source places like games and movies. For something like the Shadow, it's a bit harder. You can use websites like https://freesound.org/ to find audio samples that you can repurpose. While working on Shadow, I used things like "thunder, lightening, crash, whoosh, etc."; but, going beyond that the harder part is dreaming up what to use to replace the existing files with. Since the Shadow features various Asian cultures, I used things like Tibetan bells, gongs, singing bowls, and throat singing for sound effects. This type of creativity is really the hardest part; but, ultimately the one that is most satisfying.
I hope to share my Shadow version soon. I've got about 45 more voice folders to go through and then some final balancing (gain adjustments) to get everything working and then I'll let everyone have a listen.
Let me know if any of this makes sense or if you have any questions.
Fort Worth, TX
I was surprised ducking was lost at all. Maybe most machines don't use voices/callouts/sfx while background music stays active, but I can't imagine this 
