SID and Paula

[CritAnime]

Just something I have alsways been curious about.

I have played a few games that had music that wouldn't have gone amiss on SID. Is the SID burried in Paula somewhere or is it Paula emulating the sound of the SID.

Might sound daft but I have wondered about this before but never asked.

[commodorejohn]

Nope, there's no SID-like hardware in the Amiga, unless you count the filters (which aren't even programmable...) It's just musicians mimicking the sound.

[bbond007]

Just something I have alsways been curious about.

I have played a few games that had music that wouldn't have gone amiss on SID. Is the SID burried in Paula somewhere or is it Paula emulating the sound of the SID.

Might sound daft but I have wondered about this before but never asked.

PAULA is very simple. its just 4 8bit DMA sound channels, 2 per output channel with a 6bit volume level as i recall.

SID is a complex analog envelope waveform generator.

what you are probably hearing is a SID sound sampled and replayed, because there is nothing like the SID in Paula. Much like the PAULA is able to talk with the "say" app, yet it has no physical voicebox.

[TheBilgeRat]

SID and Paula - not nearly as tragic as Sid and Nancy

[CritAnime]

Thanks guys. I just didn't really know what was actually inside the chip. Guess that answers that lol.

[sledge]

Commodore should really have considered a SID + PAULA in the Amiga. It would have been the coolest music machine around!

[itix]

Not at all. SID kind of waveform generator is completely useless on Amiga.

[Ral-Clan]

Commodore should really have considered a SID + PAULA in the Amiga. It would have been the coolest music machine around!

Yeah, but in 1985 people wanted to move on from synthesized sounds to sampled sounds.  When people first heard the sampled sounds of the Amiga they (most) wanted to ditch their C64s for this new amazing computer.

The SID wasn't considered cool in 1985 the way it is now.  In 1985 even musicians were ditching their analogue synthezisers to "upgrade" to digital synths and samplers.  Nowadays the analogue synths are back in vogue and everyone wants one.

It's only in retrospect that we now think the SID (and analogue synths) are cool again.

So at the time Commodore would have considered including the SID in the Amiga a step backwards (but yes it would have been cool by today's retrocomputing standards).

[CritAnime]

Like I said I didn't know if SID was burried within Paula's architecture somewhere. Regardless I loved the sound of SID back in the day. And I loved the way Paula sounded too.

[drHirudo]

So at the time Commodore would have considered including the SID in the Amiga a step backwards (but yes it would have been cool by today's retrocomputing standards).

The Paula can do SID sounds by software. Adding it by hardware would have risen the price of the machine, without any real gain. Download the AHX and MusicLine tracker editors and run some songs. They sound like C64 SID songs, only better and more clear.
Even Octamed have synth samples editor.

[Ral-Clan]

The Paula can do SID sounds by software. Adding it by hardware would have risen the price of the machine, without any real gain. Download the AHX and MusicLine tracker editors and run some songs. They sound like C64 SID songs, only better and more clear.
Even Octamed have synth samples editor.

Yeah, that was kind of my point.  The Paula could replicate in sampled/digitized form anything the SID could play (although some would argue whether or not it truely sounds like a SID).

[drHirudo]

Yeah, that was kind of my point.  The Paula could replicate in sampled/digitized form anything the SID could play (although some would argue it truely sounds like a SID).

The Paula can also almost perfectly replicate the sound of Yamaha AY-3-8910 (Found in Oric Atmos, Atari ST, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 KB), POKEY found in the 8-bit Ataris, Philips SAA 1099 (Found in the SAM Coupe) and Ricoh 2A03 (Found in Nintendo NES).

While having all these chips on the Amiga would have been uber-cool for retrospective overview, it would have made the Amiga twice as expensive, without any real audio capabilities gain.

[Ral-Clan]

The Paula can also almost perfectly replicate the sound of Yamaha AY-3-8910 (Found in Oric Atmos, Atari ST, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 KB), POKEY found in the 8-bit Ataris, Philips SAA 1099 (Found in the SAM Coupe) and Ricoh 2A03 (Found in Nintendo NES).

While having all these chips on the Amiga would have been uber-cool for retrospective overview, it would have made the Amiga twice as expensive, without any real audio capabilities gain.

Yeah, I'm saying the same thing you're saying.  Since the Paula is basically a A/D and D/A converter chip it can replicate anything really...

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, I'm saying the same thing you're saying.  Since the Paula is basically a A/D and D/A converter chip it can replicate anything really...

Yeah...but though that's technically true, it's not always as practical. If you want to do the kind of free-form filter-play you can achieve on a SID, it's much simpler to generate it than to sample and replay every single timbre you want. And I don't think any decent SID emulators will manage to run on an unexpanded A500...

[Ral-Clan]

Yeah...but though that's technically true, it's not always as practical. If you want to do the kind of free-form filter-play you can achieve on a SID, it's much simpler to generate it than to sample and replay every single timbre you want. And I don't think any decent SID emulators will manage to run on an unexpanded A500...

I totally agree with that too.  I'd rather use the real SID than SID emulation via Paula....I'm just thinking in the mindset of an Commodore-Amiga designer in 1985 with a budget to adhere to.