Amiga audio capabilities

[Karlos]

No idea... Certainly not with any of the 68k family I would wager...

Lookup tables? You could store precomputed patterns of bits against delta values between samples that can be decoded quickly into a chain of +/-128 by simply shifting the bit pattern left and testing the sign.

-edit-

I suspect the bigger problem would be computing the required bit patterns as it would could depend on the existing low pass filter characteristics and I bet no two amigas have the same characteristics there.

[Karlos]

2 channel 8 bit modulated by 6 bit volume at audio frequencies is known as amplitude modulation (AM). Analogue synth nuts know this as "ring modulation".

You can also have chains of modulation so channel 0 mods-> 1 mods-> 2 mods-> 3.
So your ring mod can ring mod it's ring mod. Complex stuff, I don't know of anything else that can do this other than modular synths.

Modulation of this sort is uncommon as it's highly complex but on the other hand chains of modulation is exactly how frequency modulation (FM) synths work.

Guess what? The Amiga can also do FM. The set up is the same as Amplitude modulation so you can have:

2 channels modulated by the other 2 channels.
1 channel modulated by a chain of the other 3 channels.

So the Amiga can act as a pretty complex FM monosynth, the limited bit depth and playback rate means it's not exactly going to be a DX7 but it will give it a grungy quality the DX7 (or any other FM synth) doesn't have.

But it gets better - Paula can have the FM and AM on at the same time. That'll allow über complex modulation and wave mutilation possibilities. I don't know of *anything* else that can do that sort of thing.

I recall reading this in the hardware manual but don't recall ever seeing it used.

[Karlos]

Well, a mono synth isn't suitable do play a real music score, even 2 voices are quite minimalistic.
But I think what makes it even more powerful is the fact, that the Paula Chip can invoke an interrupt everytime a pair of samples is played back. So, having a little CPU involved, you can do AM, FM, WaveShaping etc. even with 4 Channels. And I think this was sometimes used in game music.

Plenty of lead synths were mono (single voice) back in the day. Even my tone generator has a mono synth plugin board.