Best Amiga for music production? (new to Amiga)

[Spawn-of-Jack]

Hello everybody I am new to the Amiga "scene". I have not purchased an amiga yet as there are so many models and im not sure what would best fit my needs.
My main purpose for owning an amiga is for music production, I have always loved the sound of amiga music and would love to incorporate that into some ios games i am developing.
I was lerking around several forums it seems like a 1200 would be a pretty decent choice for the price, upgradability is also a huge plus for me.

Also what are the main differences between the graphic chipsets such as aga, and do these chipsets greatly affect software compatibility?

oh and recommended software for music production would be a plus

(hope i put this in the right category)

[itix]

AGA allows 256 colours on screen at once but Amiga 1200 is less compatible than previous generations. On the other hand Amiga 1200 is easy to expand with a harddisk and an accelerator board/ram expansion and therefore better buy than Amiga 500.

[Spawn-of-Jack]

So with the 1200 would there just be compatibility issues with graphic oriented programs such as games, or would that also affect my choices for sound software?

[itix]

So with the 1200 would there just be compatibility issues with graphic oriented programs such as games, or would that also affect my choices for sound software?

There will be problems with games and productivity software. Many games can be patched using WHDLoad but you have to own the original copy.

What sound software you are going to run? Newer software run just fine (from 1995 and newer) but if you prefer using sound editors from soundtracker era (late 80s and early 90s) then you have issues.

Nevertheless I still recommend getting Amiga 1200. If you run into compatibility issues you can try to find replacement software or run downgrader utilities.

[Spawn-of-Jack]

There will be problems with games and productivity software. Many games can be patched using WHDLoad but you have to own the original copy.

What sound software you are going to run? Newer software run just fine (from 1995 and newer) but if you prefer using sound editors from soundtracker era (late 80s and early 90s) then you have issues.

Nevertheless I still recommend getting Amiga 1200. If you run into compatibility issues you can try to find replacement software or run downgrader utilities.

I would prefer soundtracker era unless i can still achieve the same signature sound with newer editors. Of course it might be ideal to have both of best worlds depending on my different projects. Im also fairly new to tracking in general so I dont know what the advantages or disadvantages would be.

Thank you so much for your advice so far, really appreciate it

[Borut]

95 % or even more runs fine on A1200! All Amigas have the same soundchip Paula. Most of the software which don´t run can be made to run with some little easy tweaks.

An appetizer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IKTNSux0Rc

[polyp2000]

Hi Here's my opinion

Back in the day i started out with an a500 using "noisetracker" and later an early version of Octamed Soundstudio. eventually i upgraded to the a1200 and used Octamed Soundstudio on that almost exclusively. It has the tracker interface you are looking for - yet it has a lot more features not found in those earlier soundtracker programs such as MIDI, support for improved sound cards and a UI for creating "synth / chip" sounds plus a bunch of effects .

I used my amiga 1200 for many years cranking out tunes on the beast. Id have to reccommend based on my experience to go with the 1200 which has much better options for expansion. The only reason i retired the Amiga from the music studio was the arrival of the PC version of Octamed. This was short lived though as having later discovered Linux i removed windows from my life completely. Now i use Renoise on Ubuntu which is the best tracking software i've ever used (it almost seems wrong to call it a tracker) and many of the key bindings are the same as i was used to with Octamed.

Im not trying to put you off getting an amiga though - in fact im in the process of bringing mine back to life with some upgrades i could never afford in the day.

So ... unless you can afford one of the big box amigas - in my own personal opinion - grab an a1200. While you may have some compatibility issues with older software - it has more base memory to start with (2mb you will find even this is quite easy to fill up with decent quality samples)  and you can still buy new expansions from the likes of amiga kit and vesalia. Octamed Soundstudio if you can find a copy is the only tracker you will ever need !

Heck -- i knew someone who ran an ST emulator on his amiga and used a very early version of cubase! (seems a bit extreme to me but there you have it)

N ...

[Ral-Clan]

If you're just interested in making Paula-generated music (i.e. tracker stuff) then choice of Amiga isn't really important - every Amiga used the same Paula chip.  You won't be caring about graphics or even a really fast processor for this type of music software.  So an Amiga 500, 600, or 2000 would be a lot cheaper and do fine for running Protracker or any of the late 1980s, early 1990s trackers.

If you DO buy a 500 or 2000 you will want to make sure it has the ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) upgrade - that will give you the ability to have 1MB of CHIP RAM which is really important to tracking programs when storing sound samples.  An AGA Amiga such as the A1200 will have 2MB chip RAM, which is nice.  You can expand the chip RAM of an A500 or A2000 to 2MB with a DKB MegaChip (which is a little hard to find, admittedly), but you can still get a lot done with 1MB of chip RAM.

One big recommendation AGAINST getting an A1200 for tracker music (over an A500 or 2000) is that the A1200 has capacitor dry-out problems which can cause the audio to crackle or die out until these are replaced.

The A500 and A2000 are much better in this regard and don't often suffer from capacitor dry-out.  They eventually will, but the A1200/A4000, despite being later computers, were made with capacitors that dry out much sooner than the earlier machines.

I'm not 100% sure, but it might also be that the A500/2000 designs use fewer capacitors as well.  Certainly the circuit boards of the earlier machines make it easier to repair or replace components than do the later, multi-layer, more densley packed A1200/4000.

[Dr.Bongo]

My opinion: Get a 1500/2000. You can pick one up for about the same cost as a nice 1200.
 Fit a GVP HD8 and fill it with memory and add a nice fast SCSI hard disk and Workbench 2 or 3.
This would give you a good solid machine with 9mb of memory which would be fine for tracker work.
Of course if you spent a little more you could hunt for a GVP Geforce instead of the HD8 and gain the speed benefits of a 030 processor while still getting the memory and SCSI.
The other good point is that you'd have Zorro slots
 To echo what others have said though try and make sure it's ECS and upgrade the Kickstart rom if it's still on 1.3.

[XDelusion]

Depends on what you want to do and what you want to spend...

If you want to use Audio Evolution, HD-Rec, and so forth, then you will want a 1200 with 060 which is going to cost you A LOT!!!

An alternative would be to pick up a cheap Mac, register MorphOS and go that route. You can still use Audio Evolution, HD-Rec, Digit Booster and a few other apps, plus you'll have a plenty of resources to spare.

Personally I like the A600 with 030. It gives me all the power I need to run OctaMED Sound Studio. I can plug in my DSS sampler, my MIDI controller, etc. and it's all very portable and small.

Hello everybody I am new to the Amiga "scene". I have not purchased an amiga yet as there are so many models and im not sure what would best fit my needs.
My main purpose for owning an amiga is for music production, I have always loved the sound of amiga music and would love to incorporate that into some ios games i am developing.
I was lerking around several forums it seems like a 1200 would be a pretty decent choice for the price, upgradability is also a huge plus for me.

Also what are the main differences between the graphic chipsets such as aga, and do these chipsets greatly affect software compatibility?

oh and recommended software for music production would be a plus

(hope i put this in the right category)

[Ral-Clan]

If you want the quintessential Amiga "sound" then you basically want to compose music using a tracker (ProTracker, OctaMED, etc.) and use the Amiga's internal Paula chip to generate the sound.

If you buy an expanded Amiga to run multitrack DAW software (i.e. Audio Evolution) and install an AHI compatible high quality audio card then you'll be able to make nice-sounding music, but you'll be bypassing everything that gave the Amiga music its special character in the 1980s/90s.  You might as well just use a DAW on the Mac or PC then.

Most of the famous Amiga music of the 1980s/90s was produced on stock, low-end unexpanded (or slightly expanded) machines such as the A500 and A1200.  Only four (or eight mixed to four) "tracks" were used.  You'll get the most authentic experience on those basic machines.  But as I said before, any Amiga running a tracker and using the Paula to generate the sound will be suitable (same Paula in all of them).

If you just want to experiment, most trackers run well under UAE (emulator).  Although you won't get the perfect Paula sound through emulation, it will still sound pretty nice.