Best Setup for Music ( octamed )

[detz]

Ok,so UAE has decided to start working again, after filing fro no apparent reason (They really did accurately emulate my real amiga ) and i've sorted out a MIDI cable for my PC. My only problem now is getting the emulation to run smoothly enough. It's generally fine but when using octamed there is the odd pause which obviously affects the MIDI being output. I've played around with various settings, but is there a fool-proof rock-solid config, I mean octamed isn't so processor hungry surely?

My PC spec is
AMD Athlon 2600+
512 Mb Ram


Also not updated to the latest UAEP96 libs yet, how much difference do they make?

[Karlos]

How odd. I have no such problems on a far lower spec PC than that.

However, emulating the amiga audio is a problem here, which frankly I don't bother doing (I sometimes use OctaMED to render to disk on the PC, but not for realtime audio playback).

MIDI playback is fine here. I use a JIT 68040 emulation with 8MB translation cache, ECS chipset emulation, 32MB fastmem amd P96 display drivers.

[blobrana]

@Karlos
Same settings as you...
CPU is set on fastest while still maintaining chip timing. (AGA)

@detz
same hardware...



No problems though....

[detz]

Hmm, seems to be alright now , not using JIT compilation, does just spaz out every now and again and skip a bit. Just started using the audio actually so that is important now, getting into my chip-based music!

[Chain]

Can we hear it?  :-D

[crosis]

hi guys my first post here!

I used to use octaMED about 11 years ago on a friends amiga and Detz (who started this post :-D ) just convinced me to put WinUAE on my PC so I could get back to those 8bit octaMED roots!

However,I am having loads of problems configuring WinUAE to work properly with octaMED.Basically it runs fine for about the first 16 bars then starts to stutter and it gets worse from there,if I change the settings in WinUAE it goes back to normal then repeats.I am a total n00b to configuring an Amiga so any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am running it on the following setup:

Acer Aspire 1500 laptop
AMD64 3000+
1GB RAM
ATI Mobility M10 64MB
Internal Realtek AC97 soundcard
WinXP Pro with SP2

I have Kickstart 3.1  rev40.68
and Amiga OS 3.9.

My WinUAE config is as follows:

EDIT: sorry guys my WinUAE is v1.0.0

CPU = 68040 with JIT enabled
Fastest possible...with min. cpu idle (slider to left)
8MB cache with Force Settings,Const Jump,FPU Support and No Flags all enabled

Chipset is AGA with Cycle exact CPU and Blitter enabled.
Collision Level is set to Sprites and Sprites vs. Playfield
Sound Emulation is Emulated 100% accurate

RAM settings
Chip 2MB
Fast none
Z3-Fast 64MB
RTG 16MB

Displaying in 640x480 16bit windowed FPS 50

Sound settings:

Enabled 100% accurate
Buffer Size 5 (371ms)
44100 (although I have tried 22050 and 11025 with the same results)
Stereo 70%
Interpolation disbaled
Audio Filter emulated
67% Disk Drive Sound Emulation
0% lag compenastion

I hope these settings are detailed enough for anyone to see where I'm going wrong.

Thanx

crosis

[Tempest]

Hi crosis

Did you try setting the CPU to 68020+FPU? There's no need to use the 68040 CPU. And 4 MB RTG ram is more than enough.

[Karlos]

There's no reason not to use 68040 emulation. Octamed 6 and Octamed Soundstudio work fine with 040.

Things to look at:

1) OctaMED Soundstudio. If using Mix mode, watch out for the smoothing option. It's extremely CPU intensive. As more channels kick in, the CPU loading goes up a lot.

2) Emulating the amiga sound filter and disk drive sound emulation are not really useful and depending on how they are emulated may be a waste of CPU time (the LPF filter antway).

3) Make sure you are running the emulation on an Picasso96 RTG screenmode. Emulating a fullscreen 1024x768x8-bit RTG screen (ideal for OctaMED) is *far* less resource intensive than emulating a basic 16-colour AGA PAL display. In fact, use the native chipset emulation only for apps that don't work in RTG mode.

[detz]

I was using 040 emulation as I wanted to be able to use everything as I would on my real amiga, and to make sure the timing in octamed was the same.

[Mike_Amiga]

Why emulate at all when the PC version of Octamed is FREE!?!?!

***Just a thought***

[blobrana]

Hum,
I have both.
i used the pc version until uae managed to sort the sound out;
and now i prefer to use the amiga version ...

(BTW, i used the time limited version as well as the free 1.0 version - both are now consigned t the storage folder :-) )

 

[magnetic]

I know one thing you guys are NOT going to get that PHAT AMIGA sound of Paula pc emu sound suxxxxx get a real Amiga !

[minator]

It took you 5 1/2 years to think up that reply?

[magnetic]

and it took u less than a second for your lame one?

What Octamed is the best one? why does everyone prefer V4? when did they remove the built in synth?

[nicholas]

I know one thing you guys are NOT going to get that PHAT AMIGA sound of Paula pc emu sound suxxxxx get a real Amiga !

How helpful of you.