which is best for music Atari or Amiga

[nicholas]

You could always use the superior ST software to control your Amiga by MIDI.

You'd get the best of both worlds then.

[nicholas]

To me it looks Atari was preferred by professionals and Amiga by amateurs :-)

I mean, music productions created on Amiga are mostly mod songs while on Atari some composers got their creations to hit charts.

There wouldn't have been any Jungle or DnB without Octamed (Though admittedly lots of it was made with Atari's and AKAI samplers) and commercial music is mostly sh1te anyway.

[nicholas]

http://www.medsoundstudio.webspace.virginmedia.com/infocus/12/focus_Gavin.htm
http://blogtotheoldskool.com/?tag=aphrodite

[nicholas]

The whole Atari ST sound palette isn't something you can easily capture in something that isn't specifically made for the purpose. Check this out.

I don't think you can you reasonably argue for the Atari ST sound being less distinct, unique and grungy than the Paula sound.


Back on topic? I think the above is highly relevant to the discussion. Whether the software is "professional" or not has nothing to do with the topic. As you said, the only reasonable use of these machines at this point is for whatever unique characteristics they had.

And no, the Atari ST isn't a "museum piece", people still use it for music.

Urgh! Sounds like a fax machine.

[nicholas]

My argument isn't about it being good or bad. For the record, I like it and Stu does draw crowds, but I'm arguing for its merits from the given set of parameters of being unique, distinct and grungy.

I'm not totally averse to the YM sound, I have the following archive in my Droidsound playlist on my phone.

http://chiptune.de/complete/cta-ym.zip

I even like the sound of the Adlib cards in the hands of the right musician. JCH in particular.

[nicholas]

Personally, I feel the same way about the C64s SID chip.
And the OPN2 has a lot of features that Paula lacks.
Later chips like that OPN3 are even more full featured.

But with Yamaha sound chips, it really comes down to which version you are using.
They produced several stripped down chips.

its interesting the bias here.
Yamaha sound chip produce "horrific" sound, but Commodore sound chips are somehow iconic, perfectly silly.

Not really, the TED was atrocious.

The SID is special because of the unique sound it makes, there is nothing else like it.

[nicholas]

A tribute to atari on a.org this time... is incredible how the amiga always loses on a.org, sorry for the comment but its funny.

Lol

I saw a video on YouTube not so long ago where some French guy was trying desperately to convince his viewers that the ST was superior in every way from a hardware capabilities point of view to the Amiga.

Even 25yrs later the old school yard arguments rage on.

[nicholas]

90% of original SID tunes are crap. To make good use of it you had to be good coder and also understand limitations of the sound chip.

Indeed, same as with other synths.

The Adlib in the hands of JCH is lovely, just as the SID was in the hands of Galway, Hubbard and Huelsbeck.

I actually have Ocean Loader 2 as my ringtone.

[nicholas]

Since we're discussing the musical aesthetics of some audio chips here, I'd like to voice my opinion on one I have grown fond of.

The VIC I chip from the Commodore VIC-20.

I know it's only capable of square waveforms - which one might think would make it sound like any other square wave chip.  But it's got this weird, unique sound.  The bass it produces is really growling with a lot of low harmonics.  It's not a hugely versatile chip - but I find it has a lot of character.

It does have some rather nice capabilities in terms of sound - it can do four voices and also has a noise channel.

Here is a link to VIC-I native audio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjb1orkZB-Q

People have also been able to use it to emulate a SID - so it can do SID sounds (not merely play a digitized SID music file):
http://youtu.be/8dMM4MqGuqU
http://youtu.be/YNgWU99iVIE

Listen to the sweet sound of the little VIC from 4:18 onwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxny-mqB4f8

[nicholas]

90% of original SID tunes are crap. To make good use of it you had to be good coder and also understand limitations of the sound chip.

Like these.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l21rSchAE0M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDrqBYkco-Y

[nicholas]

The D-50 is a lovely beast indeed.

[nicholas]

Interestingly on investigating the DX 7 and variants I came across FM7 from Native Instruments, an ASIO compliant Soft synth that does all the DXs in software and multi-voice. The demo on their web page sounded great. The really interesting part is it's now disappeared off their website entirely. Was there Wednesday and gone Thursday. Yamaha  flexing copyright/brand protection?

It's been superseded by FM8.