PAULA MIDI SYNTH BOX Like SID BOX?

[nicholas]

With a some tinkering and soldering the Amiga could be wedged internally into a controller midi controller keyboard, and used for sample reply via midi - although an external LCD display or monitor+mouse would still be needed to choose samples and so on through a suitable programme.

I know Karlos uses an A1200 controlled by MIDI for sample playback if that counts.  Basically an AKAI sampler clone.

[nicholas]

Didn't Musicline Editor do actual realtime synthesis using Paula?

http://www.musicline.org/software.html

[nicholas]

If that featurelist is accurate, yes. For a 68k-based softsynth, that's  impressive - resonant filters and effects? Hell, a lot of hardware  ROMplers didn't even have that.

Its modules are supported by the UADE replay engine (For *nix, MorphOS and Haiku) that emulates the 68k CPU + Agnus + Paula to (almost) recreate the authentic sound.  The Droidsound player in the Android Play Store plays them nicely for when I'm on a journey.

[nicholas]

Cubase 64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDrqBYkco-Y

[nicholas]

Not the same sound, BETTER sound using any old Win XP laptop costing $50 and a copy XMPlay. The only unusual thing about my setup is it's sitting in my home cinema and the music is sent digitally to the amp so it is the purest possible sound of what the MOD is supposed to sound like before the cheap ass components on the A500 motherboard destroy the quality even more.

People who think a real Amiga playing a MOD sounds as good as XMPlay on a PC are tone deaf (usually in the tones from about 8khz to 20khz deaf actually lol). Signal to noise ratio on a real Amiga is terrible, total harmonic distortion is about the same as a 1978 Alba/Binatone clock radio and the hard separation of channels 1,3 and 2,4 with no possibility for even 1% cross fading all go to making MODs sound worse on a real Amiga....and that's before you even talk about pre-amp tweaks to the frequency spectrum and smoothing of 8bit samples to pseudo 16bit samples (which is actually what the Ensoniq 8bit sample keyboards of the late 80s did...and as they were all designed by Bob Yannes the designer of the SID and the IIGS awesome synth chips you can bet your ass there is a good reason for this upscaling of 8bit samples).

A simple test is either the Level 1 music for Super Stardust or the intro on It Came from the Desert, play it on a real Amiga linked to the line input on the same amp and again on any old Win XP PC playing the same MODs attached to the same amp via a coax/TOSlink cable to the digital input line.

Emulation of the computer as a whole will never come close to the frame accurate code running on Daphne/Agnus I agree but MOD playback is something PCs were doing better since the start of the century with standalone players so Paula IS technically nothing special at all, only the creative talents of the people who used it well and the genius decision by Jay/RJ/Dave to stick a 4 channel DAC on the motherboard of Lorraine

Play the Super Stardust Level 1 module with XMPlay then play it again with UADE and compare the difference.

Then play it on an A500 and hear the dirt that makes it all the more delightful.

[nicholas]

They are still around.
There is even a PLCC 44 pin square version.
The 3 Mhz version can be clocked anywhere between 3.58 to 5 Mhz.

And there are 20MHz versions of the Z-80 and 8MHz (or higher) 6502 and 6502 derivatives.

The eZ80 is very fast and the 32bit Z380 looks rather nice too. Shame it was only ever used in washing machines.

[nicholas]

I've worked with the eZ80 professionally, and I say avoid it like the plague if you're planning to use the compiler toolchain.

A C compiler or do you mean a cross assembler? I can't imagine compiled C code would be much fun running on such a weak CPU.

[nicholas]

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

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.

[nicholas]

Speaking of Adlib and YM there are some cracking tunes to download here:

http://chiptune.de

[nicholas]

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

Phwoar that looks like a lovely piece of kit indeed. I must scour eBay immediately!

I loved my first revision GUS so much. It was hardly supported in games but that didn't bother me really as it was a joy to code for and all the best demos were written for it.

Many years later I bought a GUS PnP which was a major disappointment.

[nicholas]

Nah, that's software synthesis, made all the more impressive by being able to run well on a basic A1200. IIRC it uses looped wave segments (always powers of 2) as a starting point, much like a chip tune does, though samples are also supported. Instruments are defined using sets of these waveforms that are blended in a variety of real-time controllable ways. On top of that there are software effects such as phasing, low pass resonant filters and so forth. It even has an OctaMED-style 8 channel mode, but you need a bit more horsepower than a stock A1200 can provide to get the best out of it.

Interesting indeed. VST 10yrs before Steinberg.