PAULA MIDI SYNTH BOX Like SID BOX?

[bbond007]

Oh pshaw. The SID will blow any generic-ass wavetable GM box completely out of the water for sheer sonic character. Hell, even Yamaha's old FM chips would outshine the generic XG crap they poop out now, if used well. And hey, Paula as well has its own particular character (thanks to the gritty early digital sound tamed by a bit of filtering,) even if it is just a sample-playback affair.

But it's silly to think that it'd be worth the trouble trying to create a dedicated module version; for one thing, as freqmax points out, Paula itself is only DACs and filters, and requires Agnus to actually get its data. For another, you need a system to load samples into memory, interpret incoming MIDI events, assign channels, and apply effects like volume envelopes anyway. At that point, you're already halfway to an Amiga.

MT32 is still the best

[bbond007]

I had bought one of these things:

CMS / Game Blaster.

Perhaps the worst sound card ever.... man did SID really blow that thing away...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlPJcWf1DeA

fortunately I returned it and got Adlib

[bbond007]

How was the soundchip "Philips SAA1099" btw?
(speaking of OPL..)

it was not OPL but early competition for it(Adlib).

Anyway, it was horrible and really sounded like just more PC speakers separated into right and left channels. Stereo sound was the only real advantage it had over the Adib(OPL).

Creative knew the chip was truly horrible which is why they probably transitioned to OPL.

What you see in the video is a hybrid sound blaster with game blaster backwards compatibility.  I had the actual game blaster which only had the Philips SAA1099 and no additional digital or analog sound sound channels.

haha, from wikipedia : "The chip could produce several different waveforms by locking the volume envelope generator to the frequency generator, and also had a noise generator with 3 pre-set frequencies which could also be locked to the frequency generator for greater range. Its outstanding feature was that it could output in fully independent stereo."

[bbond007]

Back then I had an A500 and was getting into PCs and had a lot of the early sound cards.

To me the real thing about Amiga Paula sound is that it sounded crisp (for 8 bit sound), not like you are talking to someone on the phone long distance like the Creative Sandblaster 1.0. It offered multiple sound channels in stereo, low CPU overhead... It was hard to beat, for a long time, but there is nothing really that much distinctive about it. Its more down to the sound samples and talent of the people that wrote the software and composed the tunes...

I would not be able to tell the difference between my Minimig 1.1 and my A1200 as far as sound, so if I really wanted a Paula Midi synth, using the real chip(like SidStation) would be foolish.

I'd simply do a new PCB based on Mimimig with a built-in midi port. Perhaps you could do it as an expansion to Chameleon 64, although I know less about that device.

[bbond007]

Oh I had suppressed the evil ear bleeding memories of that abomination!

When I got a GUS to replace mine I was in comparative heaven.

I had GUS too.

It was one of those products you just wanted to keep trying to convince yourself how awesome it was because of the raw capabilities and specs and demos, yet the TSR that have it SB/Adlib compatibility was a huge disappointment at a time were native support was extremely lacking.

I ended up selling that card and got the SoundScape 2000. Much better backwards compatibility and even GM Also it featured a 68000 CPU which we all know spec-wise, make it totally bada$$

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_Soundscape_S-2000