PAULA MIDI SYNTH BOX Like SID BOX?

[Thorham]

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.

I keep reading that, but I sure don't hear it when I playback CD audio in 14bit at 44Khertz. The only thing I hear is some noise in very soft parts of the music.

[Thorham]

I'd count that as a bit different, though, since the 14-bit trick is circumventing one of the chief aspects (the 8-bit sample depth) that adds that grit in the first place

Sure, but all 8bit samples, regardless of hardware, will sound like that.

All told, you're working around a number of things that non-AHI audio does to the signal.

Well, I'm not using AHI (don't have it installed), and play CD audio back with Hippo player. The only non-standard thing here is the playback rate of 44Khz (using a 31Khz screen mode). It's still Paula playing a few samples with DMA however (and Paula can go much faster than DMA), so I'm still not convinced

It's also possible that my perception of the "Amiga sound" is affected by the speaker characteristics of the 1084, but I recall it being pretty noticeable over external speakers as well...

Perhaps it has something to do with it. My Amiga is connected to an amp with reasonable headphones, and when I listen to CD audio, I just hear sound that sounds almost the same as what my peecee produces. Back in the day they used to say the Amiga has CD quality sound. Turns out to be almost true.

Anyway, you've gotta use an amp with proper speakers or phones for your Amiga. Those internal monitor speakers do the thing justice