iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 19/09/2026

Mine somehow contrives to be simultaneously "gentleman of unimpeachably immaculate taste" _and_ "basic-bitch 90s kid who checked out mentally and culturally in the early 00s but still huffs nostalgia fumes while muttering to his kids that 'Crunchy Roll? That used to be Manga - no, not manga; Manga"

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 03/09/2026

The Jokaero spy-flies are a Greek chorus consisting of 100 of these. They participate in all the musical numbers (of which there are many, all based on Vitali Googol's libretti)

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 09/08/2026

Found this Gazetteer of Scottish Ghosts coincidentally(??!?) two days after being stuck behind a furniture van on the A75 between Dumfries and Annan, but what’s more alarming is that the author named it this despite ‘Och Aye The Boo!’ being right there (Aware of this one, @misterabk.bsky.social ?)

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 31/07/2026

Hasn’t Belfast suffered enough? Ach sure I’m only messing, ONLY MESSING - love a good pluck. A mate of mine is teaching on it anyway, it’ll be class

Billboard for Belfast Ukelele Festival off the Ormeau Road accompanied by a very tired joke which is JUST A JOKE, only messing

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 31/07/2026

Kelly’s Cellars’ Belfast Trad Fest session yesterday with the wean

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 22/07/2026

Oh it turns out Miles Davis themes are, like, a blue colour scheme called Kind of Blue. Cheers lads.

They turn out to be colour schemes with names such as 'Kind of Blue', 'Funky Fresh' and 'Jazz Club'. Nice...

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 22/07/2026

What the shitting fuck is wrong with Slack? What are "Miles Davis themes"? Genre-redefining innovation, smack addiction and guest starring on Miami Vice? I'm at work, I haven't got time for any of that

Slack has found a new way to bother and annoy me, this time with a notification that reads "Miles Davis themes just dropped" with a sunglasses emoji and a trumpet emoji in case I wasn't sure who Miles Davis was

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 14/07/2026

A £20 spring tank from a guitar amp is the summer-est dub reverb (if you drive it hard enough)

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 09/07/2026

Terrible zebra disguise, be careful out there folks

What on closer inspection turned out to be a horse wearing a zebra outfit

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 07/07/2026

Finally switched to Dear ImGui's docking branch for Metron. With only a little plumbing (after ditching my own clumsy floating panel system) it does an huge amount right out of the box. Trackers are info DENSE so split tabs, showing/hiding, toggling layout presets etc is crucial. #dearimgui #gamedev

Screenshot of Metron Tracker demonstrating the highly flexible layout options facilitated by Dear ImGui's docking branch

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 03/07/2026

New battery day for the @dirtywave.bsky.social M8. What a handsome boy.

A Dirtywave M8 tracker alongside a new replacement LiPo battery

A Dirtywave M8 tracker in the process of having its battery replaced

A Dirtywave M8 tracker showing off its smart new battery

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 25/06/2026

Undervolted the GPU, halved max CPU, capped FPS at 30 and unplugged second monitor to survive in my windowless, unventilated studio (and because I can’t afford to replace any components that die). Metron doesn’t care! My heaviest song still only hits 3.5% of CPU budget and I get to be sweatily smug

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 23/06/2026

Wrote a wee file browser for Metron with WAV and MOD importers, preview playback, and a load of gnarly samplerate conversion fixes under the hood. Also floating mixer windows and ever more sample edit features. Human-coded C++: all bugs and unwise 1990s-ish UX decisions are my own work #gameaudio

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 15/05/2026

Oblique tangent, but I spent ages trying to identify a Paper Tiger book behind you in a few of your vids last year. I couldn't match it to any of mine and I'm still dying to know what it is! Ciruelo Cabral? Mirage by Vallejo? And did I spot Woodroffe's Second Earth elsewhere?

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 01/05/2026

Repaired the transformer in this analogue bucket-brigade delay from the early 80s and gave it some new knobs that are easier to twiddle. Noisy boy.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 23/04/2026

An innocent, sweet summer child friend: "wouldn't you think even ONE of the crew would speak up about so much money being pissed away on unnecessary kit, role duplication and overtime?" Me, precariously-employed location sound crew and lifelong client schadenfreude enjoyer:

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 19/04/2026

I added some vaguely analogue-ish drift/slip/slop features to Metron's VA synth, and a very filthy oscillator sync, but I also make as many oldskool tracker effects as possible act on it the way they would on a sample instrument - arps, pitchslides, cuts etc. #unrealengine #gameaudio #demoscene

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 19/04/2026

I can never be accused of sanitising the user experience

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 13/04/2026

Welcome to my talk on realtime #gameaudio programming. I won't need the clicker thing, there's only one slide.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 12/04/2026

I spent (wasted? maybe?) Easter tweaking my ProTracker MOD importer for Metron, our #UnrealEngine DAW/middleware, so I can enjoy classic bangers like this while testing. Even implemented patternloop. Never getting that time back. Elysium.mod by Jester of Sanity (1991) #gamedev #indiedev #demoscene

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 08/04/2026

ProTracker->Metron import rabbitholes, repeating all the sins of yesteryear. Stardust Memories by jester/sanity uses A00 in PT, where A00 does nothing; it's ignored in FT2, but when importing PT mods FT2 just deletes it from the pattern. If you add A00 manually it's NOT ignored...but it sounds bad 🙃

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 07/04/2026

"Why doesn't my note-delay code work? I wrote it years ago, it should work by now" "Oh."

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 07/04/2026

Added an Amiga ProTracker .MOD importer to Metron. Some...quirks, but easy fixes. Now I can plug my 30+ year chiptune back-catalogue into #UnrealEngine and put realtime sequenced music back where it belongs: in tyrannical charge of all the other gameplay systems. #gamedev #indiedev

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 06/04/2026

The intro tune from Transmission: Shortwave on Quest 3. 3.5MB on disk, 7MB total RAM footprint including DSP buffers, and like 2% of audio CPU budget in UE5. Plays in realtime between 32 and 1530 BPM Not really necessary when RAM and storage are so cheap and abundant tho #ue5 #indiedev #gamedev

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 01/04/2026

I added a new Juno-style VA synth to Metron. Very pleased that 6 voices don't exceed ~2% CPU (aggressively optimised to run cheap as possible in #UnrealEngine). My square/saw wave code sounded terrible for years but I just learned about polyBLEP and most of the aliasing is gone.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 31/03/2026

Weird, yesterday I showed a pal the brilliant UI I made for my audio app’s ’record arm’ and he also cited Blender as his go-to worst UI example

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 26/03/2026

If you've explicitly told Windows to never automatically adjust your mic volume yet it still allows shitty team chat apps to poltergeist the fader up and down all day, you can use this tiny tray app I wrote to bruteforce it back to your desired level whenever it's changed github.com/echolevel/Mi...

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 12/03/2026

Peak pandemic programming. The fuck around phase of my current find out arc.

Unhelpful c++ comment on an instrument preset undo buffer that reads "TO DO - implement undo system properly. I can't really be arsed. For now, I will simply not make mistakes."

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 11/03/2026

Added an extra effect column and some wonky-making effects for procedurally generative-ish instrument modulations. 0xD hangs progress by a random number of microticks between 0 and your value; Shuffle does a no-repeat row reorder; pitch cents up/down are iterative until note is reset, etc.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 10/03/2026

I like trackers so I put a tracker in my tracker. Sequence Tables run at microtiming resolution and can semi-randomise incoming notes against a scale rule that I pack into a 16bit number, as it has to be read in an insanely hot loop. Scale semitones are toggled via the cutest little piano.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 09/03/2026

Use-case is really simple: I want three bits of hardware (a controller keyboard, my RME's MIDI input and my Fader3) to always be routed to a single loopMidi port which Reaper can treat as an input. Everything -> Reaper. Perfect. Btw you can make your own Fader3: github.com/echolevel/Fa...

Fader3, a compact, 3-fader USB MIDI controller with three long (120mm) throw faders which transmits 7 and 14-bit MIDI on customisable CC values and ports.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 09/03/2026

I wrote GlueMidi to replace MIDI-OX (which was always crashing) as a merger/router. I use it all day, every day, and it's the thing I'm most proud of - mainly because of the tray icon that illuminates some DIN-5 pins to show incoming MIDI messages. Free here github.com/echolevel/Gl...

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 08/03/2026

I implemented microtiming in Metron to allow stuff to occur at 192 PPQN (rather than the default 24). That means x microticks per subtick, and y subticks per row, where x is a microtick multiplier and y is tracker speed. I already had a headache, so I'm glad I chose a relaxing way to test it.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 07/03/2026

Importing a Metron Tracker song into #UE5 now gives an estimate of the song's memory footprint during playback in game - includes decoded PCM buffers, persistent DSP buffers, delay lines, etc. This chiptune is roughly 92KB on disk, takes 0.9MB RAM and costs about 1% of audio CPU budget.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 28/12/2025

Here's a Windows beta of that Metron distortion plugin. Works ok in Reaper and Ableton Live - please let me know if you have any problems. Should give very heavy guitar sounds for very little CPU! It also has my PS1-inspired reverb algo. #gameaudio #gamedev echolevel.co.uk/works/metron...

A screenshot of a VST plugin called MetronFX. It's (currently) a distortion and reverb effect, focused on high-gain heavy guitar sounds for as little CPU cost as possible

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 27/12/2025

Hey, who likes the electric guitar? That’s right, nobody! Nevertheless I wrote a very low-CPU, zero-latency amp sim for Metron and wrapped it up in a VST plugin so I could fart about with it #unrealengine #gameaudio

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 17/12/2025

Compelled to share the name of this actual person, Scan Tester - an English folk musician of the previous century, sadly born too early to pioneer late '80s EBM/industrial goth music. Scan was short for his childhood nickname "Scantelope". Brother was Trayton Tester. Paging @misterabk.bsky.social

The cover of a book of Scan Tester's anglo concertina music, compiled and edited by Gary Coover (the author of many such books)

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 15/12/2025

The ostentatiously dot-matrixed #DeathInSpace character sheet wallets have reached their final form. And I wish I’d used a sponge for the gummed paper tapes instead of licking them. #ttrpg

Cover labels for my Death In Space character sheet envelopes, printed onto strips of gummed paper tape

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 14/12/2025

Now that our game's out, I can show off Metron Tracker running on Quest (ARM) in #UnrealEngine 5! Late in dev I whipped up a pattern/VU-meter display in UMG as a backdrop for the intro, so you can see the sample & synth notes being played in realtime. CPU usage is pretty minimal #gameaudio #indiedev

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 13/12/2025

Vaguely retrofuturistic document wallets and character sheets for #DeathInSpace #TTRPG. The easiest way to achieve it was to use appropriately obsolete stuff that doesn’t quite line things up right. I had to rewrite a 1989 printer driver for Amiga to get the correct(ish) line height. Worth it…

C6 document wallets made from card-backed envelopes and dot matrix-printed gummed tape containing 4 part character sheets for the Death In Space TTRPG, the idea being that they keep people’s sheets in one place and also impart a setting-appropriate, vaguely retrofuturistic Alien/Outland/etc vibe

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 10/12/2025

Printing off some more #DeathInSpace character sheets on the printer that I keep maintained exclusively for this purpose #ttrpg

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 09/12/2025

Never flung money at anything so fast. Absynth 6! And it's backwards compatible with 20 years' worth of my nonsense! Thanks for the heads-up, @pkirn.bsky.social Wish it could bulk import said nonsense though. Also some knobs are vertical mouse drag while others are horizontal 🙃Stay weird, Absynth

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 06/12/2025

Finally I'm allowed to answer the question "why DID you write a sample/synth tracker in #UnrealEngine and optimise it for ARM?" A: so I could beat-sync everything to everything else in our 90s parcel courier training sim VR game for Quest, out next week! www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eg... #gameaudio

Enormous VR business guy towers over you while delivering the intro VO to our game. An early 90s hatchback sits in the foreground on an infinite floor of neon red grid lines while the backdrop shows a vertically scrolling music tracker display whose note-data and VU meters are driven in realtime by the music.

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 19/09/2025

My actual day job (one of them, anyway) is to compose 90s atmospheric drum and bass, in the custom tracker wot I wrote, for a video game. The game responds to the music data and vice versa. In 1994 I hoped I’d get a job doing this on the Amiga when I grew up - close enough. #gameaudio #demoscene

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 08/09/2025

Metron Tracker standalone is a feature-complete 2.4MB exe! This example song is 2.6MB on disk and its memory footprint is 3.7MB. Playback averages 2% of audio CPU budget. That leaves me ~4GB and 98% CPU to spend on ambient fart emitters with convolution verb #UnrealEngine #middleware #gameaudio

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 06/09/2025

Wrote a new sample loader for Metron standalone so all the oldskool tracker commands are back! No DSP effects here, just sample manipulation - very cheap on CPU. Multisample instruments at diff octaves played randomly, but all share 1 buffer in mem. #gameaudio #gamedev #unrealengine #middleware

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echolevel @echolevel.co.uk · 01/09/2025

I rewrote my #unrealengine tracker in raw C++ so it’s a 3.5 megabyte exe instead of a 35GB engine/project. This is a core player engine with a Win32 wrapper and a UE plugin wrapper. Testing with my hybrid FM/phase distortion synth and waveform blending LFO, and my cheesy-but-cheap reverb algo

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