Impulse Tracker is a multi-track digital sound tracker (music sequencer). Originally released in 1995 by Jeffrey Lim as freeware with commercial extensions, it was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform.[1]
Impulse Tracker was authored by Jeffrey "Pulse" Lim for the DOS/x86-PC platform.[2] Impulse Tracker was coded in Assembly language,[3] and the GUI was heavily influenced by that of Scream Tracker 3.[1]
The first version was released in 1995 and included example music, provided by Jeffrey Lim and Chris Jarvis. The software was distributed as freeware, though extra features, such as support for stereo WAV output and a personalized version of the driver for co-editing songs over IPX networks, were provided for a fee. After the stereo WAV writer plugin was publicly pirated,[4] the original author announced that he would discontinue development after version 2.14. The latest version was v2.14 Patch #5 released on April 8, 1999.
On February 16, 2014, Jeffrey Lim announced that he would release the complete source code of Impulse Tracker as part of its 20-year anniversary.[5] On October 19, 2014, the first part of the source code was released on a Bitbucket repository. On December 25, 2014, the missing parts (sound drivers) were added and the code was officially released under the BSD license.