SuperPAULA - if you have experinece in amiga music please give feedback

[riftcon]

Oh I see now why you suggested 100%, 50% etc. That's obviously very fast to implement in hardware.

It would definitely make a big improvement, and musicians would still be able to make some much better stereo mixes.

If you could set a mode on, say, a left channel to be either 100% left, 50% left or %0 left (center), that would make for some much better sounding music as well! Even better if you can also move it to the right (that would require 5 panning settings per channel) so musicians don't have to think about which channel they use, but can simply set the panning in the instrument.

Yes. That would be pretty good actually. Eight of those channels, people who need better precision or stereo sweeps can do their own manual panning using two channels and volume.

[rzookol]

vote for original amiga channels + 24 bit ahi mode

[Matt_H]

The rough capabilities of the Mary chip might be worth examining, but it looks like the key elements have already been addressed in this thread. Anyway, info's here, about halfway down the page.

[biggun]

Piru wrote:
The best solution would be to allow old and new audio to co-exist, this way you can have old apps using audio.device or direct hw register banging after allocating the channels, and new apps using the high definition audio thru AHI.

Interesting point, I'll note this one.
But do you think any user will run two music applications old/new at the same time?
That like playing AmiNetradio and the Game Hybris at the same time, isn't it?


A question to AHI:
Can you tell us what feature might be helpful to run AHI/SDL sounds with low CPU usage?

Cheers

[riftcon]

Matt_H wrote:
The rough capabilities of the Mary chip might be worth examining, but it looks like the key elements have already been addressed in this thread. Anyway, info's here, about halfway down the page.

Wow, I hadn't really read that much about AAA before, that's just uncanny. Pretty close to what I would like to see in Paula. That, and a strobe register to load the location and length registers

biggun wrote:
A question to AHI:
Can you tell us what feature might be helpful to run AHI/SDL sounds with low CPU usage?

I've never done AHI programming, only audio.device and hardware banging. I would guess that it would be simple to extend the Paula AHI driver to support the new features. The only thing I would look out for in the docs is stereo sound - whether it supports separate left/right streams at 16 bit or it requires interleaved left/right samples for 16 bit stereo. As AHI is an Amiga thing it can probably handle two independent left/right streams. If nobody else beats me to it, I'll have a look at it tonight.

[alexh]

riftcon wrote:
Wow, I hadn't really read that much about AAA before, that's just uncanny. Pretty close to what I would like to see in Paula.

While it offers no real technical information to how Mary would have worked, or how the registers would have co-existed with the older Paula set there is some more information HERE

[Piru]

But do you think any user will run two music applications old/new at the same time?

Yes. It'd be really cool to be able to use old apps such as protracker, delitracker (the native noteplayers) or HippoPlayer, without rendering the new audio unusable. Since the old audio would be independent (with it's own volume) it could nicely co-exist with the new AHI controlled audio.

Think of it like having external soundcard in your amiga, only integrated.

Can you tell us what feature might be helpful to run AHI/SDL sounds with low CPU usage?

I'd take a look at some AHI driver, preferably one with 24bit support. AHI source

[Louis Dias]

Perhaps add a simple off-the-shelf Realtek audio chip that takes SuperPaula as an input and passes it through and still offers you digital output.

That way "classic" apps still work with the Paula/SuperPaula and new apps could target a more modern chip...

[Hammer]

The question was to ask experienced music developers, as what in their opinion are the minimum requirements for good sound in a Amiga home computer.

What's the target signal to noise ratio on Natami?

[warpdesign]

I'm interested in your educated opinion, whether it makes really sense to increase the number of supported channels over 4.

Of course it does... And the more the better... If mixing is not noticable in today computers, it sure will be with a slow 060 (yes, you may have memory as fast as you want, its raw CPU power is slow... and many many times than current CPUs...).

[biggun]

warpdesign wrote:

I'm interested in your educated opinion, whether it makes really sense to increase the number of supported channels over 4.

Of course it does... And the more the better...

If you are experienced in creating module music,
please tell us how many channels are in your opinion are needed for a good mod. If you have no experience in creating music, then please do not respond.

If mixing is not noticable in today computers, it sure will be with a slow 060

What you say is non true at all!

Even with a stock 68000 you can mix 8 channels.
For a 68060 mixing 8 extra channels takes no time.

[Piru]

I'm somewhat puzzled... if these new channels, new panning features, repeat/looping etc are meant for mods, who's going to write the new trackers and replay routines? Further, what will convince any tracker musician to create mods using this specific tracker program / mod format?

IMO it still would be smarter to keep the old audio hw as-is (wrapped to use the new HW obviously) and add the new stuff as common audio hw, with high quality audio output (say 8/16/24bit, 11/22/44/48 kHz, mono, stereo, 5+1, 7+1).

New trackers can use the HW thru AHI (OctaMed SS, DigiBooster, HivelyTracker etc).

If the old audio HW wrapper stuff is implemented too, you can use older trackers such as noisetracker, soundtracker, protracker and so on.

[buzz]

Even with a stock 68000 you can mix 8 channels.
For a 68060 mixing 8 extra channels takes no time.

There are many different ways of mixing though, and some are far more cpu intensive than others. There are various types of interpolation as well as oversampling and so on.

Playing a 32 channel fasttracker mod on an 060 with software mixing (oversampling) & panning @ 44.1khz uses a fair amount of cpu. And this using ptimised mixing code (I have faith that platon42 knows his stuff!).

[Ral-Clan]

I'm going to add some new audio features I'd like to see in a new Amiga (not sure if all this applies to Paula).  I currently use an Amiga in a home music recording project studio (with Repulse audio card).

- definitely 16/24 bit audio playback.
- two channels is fine with me, although I can see the need for more than two in some cases.
- provision for real-time DSP (effects) would be useful.
- some way to have audio input (analogue to digital coversion) of 16 or 24 bits (for sampling or recording audio to the Amiga at these bitrates).
- AHI support.
- compatability with legacy software (i.e. emulate the original Paula 100%).  Bars & Pipes relies on (steals) one channel of the original Paula for internal timing.  If the new Paula was not compatible, it would break Bars & Pipes (which is a big reason a lot of musicians still use Amigas).

[bloodline]

biggun wrote:

warpdesign wrote:

I'm interested in your educated opinion, whether it makes really sense to increase the number of supported channels over 4.

Of course it does... And the more the better...

If you are experienced in creating module music,
please tell us how many channels are in your opinion are needed for a good mod. If you have no experience in creating music, then please do not respond.

In OctaMED Sound studio, I would rarely ever use more than 16 channels at most in mix mode... though I would often use two channels (panned hard left and hard right) for a single sound,  and then mess around with the play back to simulate various effects and delays.

If mixing is not noticable in today computers, it sure will be with a slow 060

What you say is non true at all!

Even with a stock 68000 you can mix 8 channels.
For a 68060 mixing 8 extra channels takes no time.

I totally agree with Piru, have a decent Paula emulation... and a nice modern audio chip with an AHI driver... Audio is a commodity now, technologically it's reached a plateau... you can't really do anything innovative (as is still possible to some degree in the GFX space). Great audio chips can be bought off the shelf for next to nothing.

[biggun]

quote]
I totally agree with Piru, have a decent Paula emulation... and a nice modern audio chip with an AHI driver... Audio is a commodity now, technologically it's reached a plateau... you can't really do anything innovative (as is still possible to some degree in the GFX space). Great audio chips can be bought off the shelf for next to nothing.[/quote]

I know were you are coming from.
I think there is a very important point you are missing here. It might be my fault explaining it not good enough before.

The think is that:

-The Natami is fully Paula compatible already.
-The Natami can already switch to a new mode providing working 24bit Paula enhancements.
-And the Natami has working upsampling to 96kHz
-And the Natami has a very high quality DA converter.
The DA is of higher quality than the typical "next to nothing" sound card will have.

I fully agree with you that it makes no sense try to beat professional sound studio cards with the Natami.
If you need Studio feature the simplest solution is to buy such a card. And of course you can plug in any PCI soundcard into the Natami if you want.


But as the Natami sound device in on the board already
and as is able to produce good quality sound.
It makes good sense to think about how to get the most out of it without less effort.
Adding some extra features as panning, or 8 channels support
are only little firmware work for us now.
So if more channels is what people want, or if support for interleaved wave data is what would speed up AHI
then we can add this all "for free" now.


Please mind that adding an extra sound chip to the board is not a good idea. Putting another chip on the board would require that its DA-out gets mixed back with the Paula signal. This solution would consume a lot extra space on the board. As it would require extra wires from the FPG, we would not a more expensive FPGA to connect that extra chip.
And of course this would make the mainboard a lot more expensive as the board would need to be bigger. And this would require a new board layout.

The audio out of the Natami is quite good quality for a consumer device.
We have now the possibility to add some nice features to  the Natami audio for free.
We could as well add new features with a firmware update at a later time.

If you have input and sensible wishes now, fine
If not then this is okay for us too.


Cheers
Gunnar