which is best for music Atari or Amiga

[bloodline]

That's an easy question to answer now, as the Amiga has a distinctive and unique grungy 8bit audio ability, the Atari only really had MIDI capability. Any modern computer will have infinitely better midi capability (most midi is sent via USB now), and also better software than any Atari... But I can still throw some Audio through my A1200 and use it as an FX box!

In 1987, I might be tempted to use an Arari... In 2014, the Atari is just a door stop.

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There was some talk before about the Falcon being the preferred music tool of the time. A quick look at the specs confirms this:

Falcon: 16-bit with 8 stereo channels.

Amiga1200: 8-bit with 4 stereo channels.

I don't know much about Atari's though. I'm just looking at the specs. I think Bloodline might know.

*EDIT: shhit he already posted.

The Falcon was a better machine for 1993, but I took the OP's question as looking at the machines now.

Back in the day, the Atari had better MIDI support and consequently more mature software. The Falcon just added good quality Audio to that.

Now, the cheapest PC/Mac will have better quality Audio, better software (for free), and better support for modern instruments (which tend to use USB over MIDI ports) than any Atari.

The Amiga on the other hand, can have a cheap MIDI box added, has some interesting software (some find these strange packages very creative, myself included) and still as a unique audio sound that can't be reproduced easily on modern hardware.


And yes. I will always throw my tuppence in a music thread

-edit- for the record I do actually have an Atari ST here, but I'm only keeping it around so I can see AROS run on it one day hahaha

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Hi I have just read this about how the Atari st was musically tight with its midi arrangements ,{
The winner?
The Atari STe:
The Atari STe is monochrome in 640×480 max res, 8mhz, yes, 8mhz motorola 68000 processor, with 720k floppy drive and no hard drive, external mouse and monitor, a space hog. Doesn?t make noise though.
The timing is super tight with drums, if you put the drums on midi channel 1 and bass on midi 2, and put the hardware for the drums and bass 1 and 2 on the midi out chain, the drums and bass will be super tight. You can throw 170 bpm 32nd and 64th notes at it and doesn?t choke. It?s amazing.
If you are doing aggressive electronic, high temp, or glitchy stuff with hardware, these are the best sequencers. No PC or modern MAC can match it.
How tight is the Atari STe?
Tight to 1ms.  of course this must be talking 20 yrs ago

If you want tight sequencing, you probably won't be using MIDI

To be honest, the human ear can't really determine any discrepancy below about 12ms, and at high tempo it is even less sensitive. A modern PC/Mac would easily be able to get timings in at, or under, 5ms using USB2 or FireWire interfaces.

-edit- I would note that back in the day, latency of up to 100ms could be found at the end of long MIDI chains... It was awful, every device on the line would add a bit of lag... And the bit rate was only 32k, so long MIDI messages would cause delays on the bus... Thankfully MIDI over USB has basically solved that

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Hi Bloodline ,thanks for your help my friend ,I never thought it would be so complicated lol  and I know the Atari is dated but I would like to try some thing a little different from todays music which to me has become totally dull and lacks imagine nation or it might be me ,hence the dabble with the Atari ,just my thoughts .

Well, Atari music software was always written for trained musicians... So wouldn't allow for the creatively that comes with ignorance

As for what the Atari would actually output... Unless you have some interesting and unusual MIDI kit to hook it up to... Then you aren't going to making any noise at all!

Music now has been commoditised, most people just want to hear something that sounds like what they have already heard, they don't have the same relationship with music that we would have had many years ago. Music is easy to get and free. There is no discovery or investment from the audience, hence little incentive for creativity by the artists.

Back on topic, you are far more likely to make something unusual and exciting with the Amiga, which will not try and force traditional music values upon your work,than you can with an Atari.

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Ral-clan is quite right, Atari music software didn't really get much love after the early 90's... Mostly just updates and bug fixes to existing software, from Steinberg etc...

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To me it looks Atari was preferred by professionals and Amiga by amateurs :-)

That split is basically correct, and is down to two things... Cubase and Notator.

Both of which were never released for the Amiga (though I understand ports existed at least internally at C-Labs and Steinberg).

These packages were the pinnacle of MIDI sequencing software and by 1993 were available on Mac and PC... And are still available now (as Logic Pro and Cubase), in vastly developed forms on modern hardware, no need to struggle with their dinosaur versions on a relic of a bygone era.

If mr moonlight is just wanting to play around with some vintage hardware, then the ST is a reasonable platform... Though I used the ST that's in my cupboard for about 5min, with the copy of cubase that came with it, before getting fed up it. A GUI should have at least 4 colours or everything looks the same! :-(

I mean, music productions created on Amiga are mostly mod songs while on Atari some composers got their creations to hit charts.

There were a few chart hits produced on the Amiga back in the day, difference is, the Amiga is still used... The Atari is just a museum piece.

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To be perfectly fair, the weird combination of sporting an at at the time quite primitive YM2149 together with the comparably modern 68k affords the Atari ST to have a quite unique and grungy sound of its own that I would say surpasses the Amiga by far in the qualities you mention.

I rather like the YM2149, so much so I've included it in a few projects recently.
Given a choice between an OPN2 or OPN3 chip and Paula, I'd take the Yamaha sound chip.

Each to their own here, I find the YM2149 absolutely horrific. Though, I was able to easily reproduced a YM2149 like sound using Logic Pro X's built in Retro Synth for a friend who does like the sound.

Back on topic, none of the Professional Music packages on the Atari wasted time with the Atari's internal audio hardware.

Also we can add Depeche Mode's Ultra to the list of Albums that used an Atari ST for sequencing, as I noticed in a 1997 copy of Future Music.
-edit- actually three STs! Two running Notator and one running Cubase, plus a Mac running logic  Pro (which was developed from Natator).

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An interview with an old Amiga user a few people may know...

Amarok was composed on the Amiga!? Wow! That I didn't know, and basically nullifies any argument the ST guys can come up with.

Mr Moonlight will have post back here, his experiences with the platform when he has had a chance to play with it

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I think that was an Atari, because of the sw used, he mixed up the names - someone checked the facts in some forum.

Yeah, I thought that too, His mention of Notator is the giveaway, but the ST couldn't do sampling... So my guess is that it was an Amiga with something like SequencerOne, which was available for both platforms and worked much like Notator.

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If you read this article the Atari was mentioned... http://tubular.net/articles/1991_03

This article doesn't mention the method of composition using the "Amiga sketching" approach he mentions in the other interview. The Atari is simply listed as studio equipment, I would be more surprised if he didn't mention an Atari in a studio equipment list, the Atari MIDI sequencing software at the time was much more mature

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I'm still not sold... If Mike Oldfield didn't use an Amiga, how would he know the name. I've never seen him confuse the names of hardware before, in fact he has always been very pedantic about the hardware he uses. I'm not saying he did use an Amiga, I just don't see enough evidence yet to show he didn't

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Hi Karlos  I have to agree the Amiga is a fine machine /instrument and I have been very impressed with the quality of the sound ,but after reading so much about the Atari and all the brilliant Artists that have used it ,the Atari must hold some thing very special for so many to have used it ,which is why I have just ordered but not yet received, this does not mean the end of my Amiga journey as the the Amiga are my pride and joy and will remain so .best wishes Brian

What made the ST fantastic for music was the software, not the hardware. And, it is important to note that software still exists (on modern platforms). That said, I do have an ST here and I'm sure that you will get a lot out of it as a lover of vintage computer hardware

All true Amiga lovers should probably own an ST anyway

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I would love to see someone do an A/B comparison between Amiga & Atari to see if this claim of "rock solid timing" is actually true.

It's not that I don't believe the Atari had rock-solid timing, it's just that I don't believe that the Amiga had sloppy time in comparison.  In my personal experience, the Amiga has always been just great with MIDI timing.

I'd like to see solid data to back up this Atari vs. Amiga claim - then I'll believe it.

The standard MIDI serial link has super sloppy timing anyway, it's a really slow data bus and as soon as you load it up with messages, it jams up randomly. When we used to use it in the studio back in the late 90's we would break the track up and record them to tape in separate passes if any of the synths bogged down. At that time I was still heavily using OctaMED SS and Amiga samples so latency wasn't an issue (or at least a known quantity when using 64Channel mode).

If I had a working Atari monitor I would do a MIDI AB test with my A500 and ST :-/

My guess is that they would show almost identical results... But I'm now curious as to how each would handle a large number of messages at a high BPM, I need to see evidence!

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WTF!? You must have grounds to make a claim for the loss of the package! Whoever stole it probably dumped it as soon as they realised it was anything "of value"