Leaving Amiga - Need PC emulation / music recording advice.

[cicero790]

ral-clan wrote:
(I've also posted this message to the Bars & Pipes newsgroup - my apologies to those who've already read it there).

Whew, it finally came.  The day when my real Amiga hardware failed.  The Amiga has been the centre of my home recording studio for about 10 years now.  All the backup Amigas I have proved to have "issues" in one way or another that made them unusable for serious audio work.

So...with mixed emotions, it's time to move onto PC for audio recording.  I'll miss the Amiga, but I won't miss the unreliable, aging hardware.  The thing I'll miss most of all is Bars & Pipes (and possibly OctaMED).

So....I'm going to try and buy a PC that can emulate and run Bars & Pipes as if running on a real Amiga.  Is this even possible?  Is anyone doing this in a serious sense?  

I would really appreciate any advice you guys can give me towards running Bars & Pipes with a PC emulator.

- any advice towards buying a PC with a mind towards Amiga emulation?  What sort of microprocessor is good for UAE (Intel? AMD?)
- There is a local PC store which sells reconditioned older PC CPUs for cheap (i.e. $100 for a 1Ghz model).  What is the minimum CPU speed I should consider for smooth Amiga emulation?
- any hardware or software tweaks to get B&P to run smooth under emulation?
- what sort of PC MIDI interfaces can be used with UAE?
- Can Bars & Pipes running in UAE by synchronized with audio recording applications running in Windows (i.e. Protools?) through MTC or Midi Clock?
- Failing a successful use of Bars & Pipes on the PC, is there any Windows software which gives a Bars & Pipes like experience on the PC?

Back in the 90's I used a plain A1200 with midi interface controlling a synthmodule. Two years back I tried a file created with this setup on WINUAE running Bars n pipes and the same module. It actually produced a more tight version on the same piece of music. So if you like Bars n pipes and are happy with the program why not continue using it. If you migrate perhaps you can try SONAR as an alternative to the Steinberg programs its also very good.

[cicero790]

I used WINUAE on XP and a p4 2.6ghz intel northwood for that experiment. It worked fine no tweaks needed.

[cicero790]

amigaksi wrote:
>by cicero790 on 2008/8/11 18:25:59

>I used WINUAE on XP and a p4 2.6ghz intel northwood for that experiment. It worked fine no tweaks needed.

I just saw as much of the earth as I could and it's flat.  Sorry, but we need to modify the history books and as far as all those fairy tales of people flying around the earth, that was due to nonlinear space and using modulo arithmetic axes of space you can fly from one end and pop in on the other end and leaving the earth as still being flat fitting in with many people's observations.

I like your passion to much to answer, but my little experiment is completely valid. Also, most programs in this thread will do the job its just a matter of taste. Finally, recording in a ridiculously high sampling frequency does not replace a sky high musical IQ.  I think it’s extremely cool to continue using BnP in WINUAE on PC. Just look what Rob Hubbard did with so little on the C64.