Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: mooncloud on February 14, 2006, 08:12:41 PM
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Hi.
I had an Amiga back in the glory days and just acquired another A500 from Ebay with a 1mb upgrade.
The question is, now I am wanting to get back into composing and want to compose using the computer solely (I don't play an instrument I can hook up) and would like to know: WHAT DO I NEED? I am thinking of getting an A1200 also - should I really bother? What's the best piece of software I need and where can I get it?
Thanks in advance to anybody who can help!
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Hi,
Welcome to A.Org!
If you want to go "old-skool", you can grab a Protracker variant and some sample disks from the Internet.
However, in order to do this, you'll need some way of transferring data from a PC to the Amiga. There are various methods for this, have a search of the forums on this site and look at this page (http://adfsender.stoeggl.com/adfsenderterminal/methods.html) for some tips.
- Ali
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mooncloud wrote:
Hi.
I had an Amiga back in the glory days and just acquired another A500 from Ebay with a 1mb upgrade.
The question is, now I am wanting to get back into composing and want to compose using the computer solely (I don't play an instrument I can hook up) and would like to know: WHAT DO I NEED? I am thinking of getting an A1200 also - should I really bother? What's the best piece of software I need and where can I get it?
Thanks in advance to anybody who can help!
If you want to make stuff a bit more complex, I can't recommend OctaMED soundstudio enough. However, you'll need a somewhat expaned machine to run it to anything like its full potential.
If you fancy something a little different, MusicLine Editor is great. Another tracker, but this one is based around synthesised sounds rather than samples (which it can still use, of course).
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Hi Karlos - and Ali,
Thanks for replying.
I would prefer the OctaMED for sure as I've done some digging and it sounds great. I guess this is based around synthesised sounds rather than samples (which it can use) - right? If I go for this, any ideas where I can get it from with manuals etc? I would prefer to get a hardcopy - am I right in guessing it's better than trying to download from PC to Amiga?
Once I get OctaMED - is there anything else I need, or can I just crack on? Is an A500 good enough to get some decent stuff done?
Good gosh - the questions..............!!!
Thanks for your time.
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@mooncloud
OctaMED Soundstudio uses samples like most trackers. It also supports MIDI quite well, I have have no problem controlling MIDI gear with it. Also, it does also support a type of synthesis that, IMHO isn't very good. You can make some quite interesting sounds with it, but they aren't that useful IMO. However its support for up to 64 channels, 16-bit direct to disk rendering etc more than make up for it.
MusicLine Editor is again a tracker but this one focuses more on synthesis, as I said. It uses very short waveforms that can be morphed about with envelopes, phasers, mixing, resonant filters etc into some really cool sounds. I only wish it too had some sort of direct to disk recording :-/
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Nice 1, Karlos.
OctaMED is the one, I reckon.
If you know where I can get it.............
I'm hoping the A500 is good enough, eh?
Cheers.
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To be frank, you will struggle with OctaMED SS on a base A500. It'll eat a good chunk of memory 1MB is about enough to load the program and maybe a few small samples only, in fact I had problems on a 2MB A1200.
If you want to use anything more than the 4 basic sound channels (ie the hardware sound channels) you will find the stock 68000 in there doesn't have the muscle to mix sounds at a decent rate.
If you can expand the memory of your A500, that is the very least you should do if you want to make any serious tunes with OctaMED.
Alternatively you could go for a lower spec tracker like Protracker which manages better in lower memory situations (used to run it on my old 1MB A600 booted from floppy).
Whatever creative thing you do with your amiga, upgrading can only help ;-)
Versions of octamed, protracker etc have been given away on magazine coverdisks many times. If you can find someone with one you are away. I am not sure where you can download them from but aminet is the first place to look :-)
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THANK YOU SO MUCH for your time, Karlos.
I'll be on my way, hunting down the software!!
Regards.
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I am not a good at tracking at all, but i did have quite a bit of fun with OctaMED anyways, so that is what i recommend :-P
You should also probably invest in a sampler if you want to make use your own samples.
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Hi mooncloud,
Heres where you can get OctaMED,
http://www.medsoundstudio.com/
:-D
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Thanks, everybody. This is great!
Zero: awesome link! Cheers.
From your point of view, what memory do I require on an Amiga? I only have an A500 with 1mb upgrade at the moment.
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Hi Tomas.
This sampler business.........what exactly does a sampler allow you to do? - bearing in mind I don't play any instruments. I'm thinking that you hook up a keyboard, for example, to your Amiga...??
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I would have to agree with Karlos, as regards the memory reqs.
You could try looking on Aminet http://www.aminet.net
and do a search for MED, this was the forerunner to OctaMED.
I remember using this on a A500 with 1mb, a very long time ago! :lol:
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Thanks, Zero.
Are there external hard drives you can hook up to the A500 to increase memory size etc? I'm new to this and the jargon goes over my head a little.
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mooncloud wrote:
Hi Tomas.
This sampler business.........what exactly does a sampler allow you to do? - bearing in mind I don't play any instruments. I'm thinking that you hook up a keyboard, for example, to your Amiga...??
Nah, it's just a little gizmo that plugs into the parallel port and allows you to record sounds as samples. The quality is invariably quite bad (typically 8-bit up to 56kHz in mono, 27kHz in stereo) but at the same time has a unique 'mod' sound without having to buy that expensive LoFi effect's unit :-D
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The original MED was cool - remember the "jumping man" mouse pointer?!
@mooncloud:
As for sampling - a sampler at its most basic level turns an analogue waveform (in this case, an audible sound) into a digital pattern that the Amiga can use to subsequently play back at different rates, generating different pitches.
As you're no doubt aware, the Amiga has four audio channels, meaning it can play back four of these sampled sounds simultaneously. There are various software tricks, however, as used by OctaMED and Octalyzer that will increase the apparent number of channels at the expense of sound quality.
- Ali
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mooncloud wrote:
Thanks, Zero.
Are there external hard drives you can hook up to the A500 to increase memory size etc? I'm new to this and the jargon goes over my head a little.
Well, the memory we are talking about here is RAM, hard drives are media storage. However there were some decent sidecar expansions for the A500 that gave you not only a hard drive, but a faster CPU and also more RAM too. A company called Great Valley Products (usually abbreved GVP) made a range of such expansions if I recall correctly.
If you can find one of those, it can transform your A500 in one step :-D
A hard drive will make your amiga a lot more productive, however. No swapping floppy disks all over the place for starters.
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Thanks. Is TRILOGIC MK2 STEREO SAMPLER and good, or TECHNOSOUND TURBO 2??
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Karlos wrote:
However there were some decent sidecar expansions for the A500 that gave you not only a hard drive, but a faster CPU and also more RAM too. A company called Great Valley Products (usually abbreved GVP) made a range of such expansions if I recall correctly.
Yep - these are solid and reliable, even after all these years! I have an A500 with a GVP A500-HD8+, which provides extra RAM, a SCSI interface (internal and external) plus an internal SCSI drive.
@mooncloud:
I have found an original MED 2.13 version on Amiga Computing's December 1990 cover disk - this will work fine on an unexpanded A500 with Workbench 1.3.
I've also located OctaMED v5, on Amiga Format Disk 62A - but this requires Workbench 2.x or later.
Let me know if you'd like ADFs of these (PM me with your email address if required).
- Ali
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These replies are awesome!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks everybody.
Okay, I'm getting there! How about, in terms of memory, if I whack in an 'Amiga A600/A1200 2.5’’ IDE Hard Drive - 2160MB (2.16GB)' - as I've heard about. Only about £10. Of course I then need an A600 or A1200 - but as they are cheap, I don't mind as much. I can always sell the A500, even thought I just got it! Should have thought about this a little more......
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Oh yeah, just realised about the hard drive thing....I'll go back and read what you said.
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I have a TechnoSound Turbo, and I used quite it recently.
Its great in a LoFi sort of way.
You can also find lots of MED/OctaMED samples on Aminet, some of these are great to get started with.
:-D
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I checked Aminet out - sure seems to have a lot of stuff there. I'm mailing Ali at the mo, asking if he can explain in laymans terms how to transfer such files etc. from the PC I'm using now, to the Amiga - I haven't a clue apart from a few links which are too in depth for me really. All suggestions greatly appreciated!
Thanks again.
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http://www.amigaforever.com/
Good way to link your PC to your Amiga,using Amiga Explorer, there many other options, but that's the only one I have ever needed.
:-D
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Any ideas how I could get:
'an A500 with a GVP A500-HD8+, which provides extra RAM, a SCSI interface (internal and external) plus an internal SCSI drive.'????????????
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mooncloud wrote:
...Of course I then need an A600 or A1200 - but as they are cheap, I don't mind as much...
Well, an A1200 will open up your possibilities quite a bit above and beyond what's possible with an A500.
You'll end up with a (comparatively) recent version of the OS, and the A1200 has lots of upgrade potential if you wish to do that at a later stage.
- Ali
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Hi Zero.
How does Amiga Explorer work? How can I get it?
This is like being in college! Very educational.
Ali's helping me out a lot, too.
Cheers. :-D
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mooncloud wrote:
Any ideas how I could get:
'an A500 with a GVP A500-HD8+, which provides extra RAM, a SCSI interface (internal and external) plus an internal SCSI drive.'????????????
As with any "vintage" hardware, eBay is your best bet, or local garage / car boot sales can often yield surprises!
- Ali
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mooncloud wrote:
Hi Zero.
How does Amiga Explorer work? How can I get it?
This is like being in college! Very educational.
Ali's helping me out a lot, too.
Cheers. :-D
You can get it here;
http://www.amigaforever.com/ae/
The page also tells you a bit about the program.
Glad to be of help, I have always found people here to very helpful, its a great place to be! :-)
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@mooncloud
Okay, I'm getting there! How about, in terms of memory, if I whack in an 'Amiga A600/A1200 2.5’’ IDE Hard Drive - 2160MB (2.16GB)' - as I've heard about. Only about £10. Of course I then need an A600 or A1200 - but as they are cheap, I don't mind as much. more......
An A1200 with a hard drive is a much better starting position:
You'll start with at least version 3.0 of the operating system which opens up more software options.
The A1200 comes with a 2MB of RAM (called Chip RAM as it is shared between the CPU and the sound / graphics chips) as opposed to the 0.5MB or 1MB an A500 typically has. Chip RAM is important for many older music packages as this is where the sound samples are held during music playback. Note that OctaMED SoundStudio is not restricted to using only Chip RAM for sound samples, you can use as much memory as you have fitted. And speaking of memory...
The CPU in the stock A1200 is 2-3x faster than the one in the stock A500. Just adding more memory to the A1200 (via the trapdoor slot) can double that too. The reason for this is that in a Chip RAM only A1200, the CPU has to share access to the memory with the sound and graphics chips. This basically slows the CPU down since it has to wait for the graphics/sound chips to have their share, which is usually 50% of the time (or more). So just adding 4MB of memory to the trapdoor not only gives you 3x more memory than you had to start with but can double the performance to :-)
However, it doesn't stop there. Many cards exist for the trapdoor slot that add not only more memory, but an even faster CPU to start with. If you get a 50MHz 68030, you can happily use OctaMED soundstudio with 16 sound channels at once and have enough CPU power left to comfortably use the system. With a 25MHz 68040 I've had 32 sound channels without problems, and that's good for making some noise :-D
Also, a faster CPU in your A1200 with a hard drive gives you more scope for mixing your finished many-channel song to hard drive for, perhaps burning to a CD later? :-)
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Absolutley brilliant!!!!!!!
I have learnt so much in the past hour or so. It would have taken me ages otherwise.
I conclude that an A1200 would be best, with a possible upgrade - OctiMed for music composing and samples downloaded off the Aminet site (for example) using a PC/Amiga emulating program.
I'm on my way!!
And all I wanted to do originally was play games! :lol:
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Thanks, Karlos. I'm on it!!!!!!!!
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This sampler business.........what exactly does a sampler allow you to do? - bearing in mind I don't play any instruments. I'm thinking that you hook up a keyboard, for example, to your Amiga...??
It is a device that let you record a small audio clip onto your amiga, so that you can use it a as a sample. You can for example record a dogs bark, piano or whatever you want and use it as a instrument in a tracker program like octamed.
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Of course I then need an A600 or A1200 - but as they are cheap, I don't mind as much. I can always sell the A500, even thought I just got it! Should have thought about this a little more......
If you are planning to buy a new Amiga, then you should definitely go for the a1200 and not the a600. The stock a1200 comes with more ram as default and you can also buy a model which already includes a hard drive. The a1200 also has faster cpu, better graphic card and is more expandable than both the a500 and the a600.
What would be the best, is to get an already expanded a1200 with cdrom and such. I am sure you find a bunch of those on the ebay. The a4000 and a3000 is also a great choice, though probably more expensive than the a1200.
An a1200 is probably easier to get than a hd and ram upgrade for the a500 anyways, so i think you should definitely go with an a1200, a4000 or a3000.
You can however nicely use the a500 with octamed, as long as you dont use a bunch of big samples and use more than 4 audio channels.
Though a1200 is much more capable in most areas, but it should not stop you from using your a500 in the meantime. :-)
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Thanks, Tomas. Great advice!