In 1995 I created the YM file format and wrote ST-Sound, a program to play ATARI-ST on your PC. I was very happy to see how ST-Sound was popular. MS-Dos player at first, I write a Windows player, a winamp and a netscape plugin. ( then some website use Atari tunes !).

And then time passed and I worked on other stuff. Quite often, some people asked me to release the source code, and I always answered that I should clean some code and add license stuff, so I never take time..

Now it's done ! 2005, ten years after the first ST-Sound creation, here is the ST-Sound library with sample project, all under GPL license. The code is not as clean as I hope but no time to change it. Don't forget almost all that stuff was written in 1995 :-)

ST-Sound library package comes with four main directories.:

StSoundLibrary

This is the most important directory. Portable ( I hope !! :-)) C++ code to play YM files into your own production. There is a simple "C like" user API, and you just need to include "StSoundLibrary.h" to work with YM files. See tutorial projects for details. Theorically should compile under windows, linux, etc.

YmToWav

Tutorial code. Portable ( I hope !! :-)) code to render an YM file into a WAV file. Works in command line. theorically should compile under windows, linux, etc.

SmallYmPlayer

Tutorial code. Non portable (windows only) real time YM player using StSoundLibrary. Works under windows (use the waveOut sound API)

YmSampleFiles

Only contains a set of YM sample files to fastly test the library without browsing the whole world wide web ! :-)

The package is done to work very nicely with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 ( Visual .NET is pure bullshit! )

For Visual C++ 6.0 users: Load StSoundGPL.dsw file into your lovely IDE and just build one of the tutorial sample or the main library. Everything should work like a charm without pain.

For other users ( .NET, Linux, Gameboy color or other strange system), just search in your head some very, very oldschool knowledge and build a nice makefile :-) ( should be easy for StSoundLibrary)

ST-Sound library, Copyright (C) 1995-1999 Arnaud Carré ( http://leonard.oxg.free.fr )

ST-Sound library is distributed under GNU GPL license. If you use it in your own production, please include at least that ZIP package and make me a little credits :-). You can find the GPL legal file within that package ( license.txt ).

As almost all YM files on the web are packed with LZH method, ST-Sound includes LZH depacking code written by Haruhiko Okumura and modifyed/improved by Kerwin F. Medina.