Glossary: Terminology

A
ADSRstands for 'Attack Decay Sustain Release' and describes a type of envelope. ADSR Envelopes are used in Pulsar to shape the amplitude of Tracks A, B & D
Arpeggio(generally) notes of a chord repeated in quick succession, often looped
B
BPMstands for 'beats per minute'. Often used in sequencers/recording devices to describe the tempo/speed of a track or song.
C
Chainsequence of Pattern numbers
D
Dutypulse width setting for Track A & B
F
FrameSteps are divided into ticks, the number of ticks depending on Song Speed, Table Speed etc. Sometimes known as a 'tick'
M
MultiFXa multi-voice Table
P
Patternsequence of notes and commands
S
Stepone row of a Song, Chain, Pattern, Table etc.
T
Tablesequence of pitch, volume and Commands
TickSteps are divided into ticks, the number of ticks depending on Song Speed, Table Speed etc. Sometimes known as a 'frame' which refers to the refresh speed of the audio engine happening once per video refresh (60hz for NTSC, 50hz for PAL)
V
VU Meterstands for Volume Unit meter. Often seen on mixing desks to show you the real-time level of each channel
U
UIstands for User Interface. Often used as GUI which means 'graphical user interface' but as Pulsar's interface doesn't really contain any graphics, I describe it as just 'UI'



Glossary: Hexadecimal and Binary Numbers

Hexadecimal is a base-16 number system (decimal is base-10) so each single digit goes from 0 to 15. Digits 10 to 15 are represented by the letters A to F.

Binary

Binary is a base-2 number system where each digit can either be 0 or 1. From right-to-left the digits represent 2 to the power of 0 to 7, that is 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128.


DecimalHexadecimalBinary
00000000000
10100000001
20200000010
30300000011
40400000100
50500000101
60600000110
70700000111
80800001000
90900001001
100A00001010
110B00001011
120C00001100
130D00001101
140E00001110
150F00001111
161000010000
171100010001
181200010010
191300010011

...and so on until:

DecimalHexadecimalBinary
253FD11111101
254FE11111110
255FF11111111

As you can see, the highest unsigned number in 8-bits is 255 (or FF or 11111111).

The most common way to represent signed numbers is using "Two's Complement".


Glossary: Two's Complement (8-bit signed numbers)

Two's Complement is used to represent signed 8-bit numbers. The explanation of how this is achieved is not for this manual but here's a handy guide to get you started.

DecimalTwo's Complement (Hex)
0 to 12700 to 7F
-1 to -128FF to 80