The improbable music of the ZX Spectrum's one-bit speaker
Ingenious coders coaxed multichannel chiptunes from the humblest of sound hardware
Even for 1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum had poor sound: a piezoelectric speaker that could beep. But you can do a lot with a single bit if you turn it on and off really fast.
Michael Martin's Bumbershoot Software site has done some fascinating deep dives into several long-gone computer systems, including a whole series on implementing a game on the ZX Spectrum, starting in May with Giving the ZX Spectrum a Fair Shake.
More recently, though, Martin turned his attention to the Spectrum's very limited sound capabilities. As we write, his newest post is Experimenting With 1-Bit Sound. The post concerns the original 16K and 48K ZX Spectrum models, not the Spectrum 128, with its fancy AY-3-8912 sound chip (also found in the US Timex Sinclair 2068).
Even as devoted Spectrum enthusiasts, we didn't expect an...
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