A1200 Sound Quality Issues

[bubba]

I haven't had my A1200 hooked up to speakers for a while.  My son wanted to play some games so I hooked up  out a really nice set of Monsoon speakers I had in storage from an old PC to the ol' 1200.  I used an RCA-to-mini cable with a gender changer from radio shack to connect the speakers.  We started playing ThemePark AGA and my son quickly commented that the sound was really sloppy  and distorted.   I tried some demos and he said the same thing.

I started to get confused and really couldn't remember what the Amiga was supposed to sound like.  After a while I did start to feel as if the low frequency sounds were distorted and thought perhaps I had a loose wire or bad cable in the speaker setup.  I checked these and even tried a set of stock PC Harmon Kardon Speakers as well as my iPod headphones.  All sounded the same.  

Now I was really bummed, thinking I might have a motherboard problem.  So I dug deep into my closet and pulled out a new, virtually unused A1200 I've had in storage as a back-up.  I hooked it up and the sound output was exactly the same!

So, have I just been spoiled by modern sound cards and, relatively, the Amgia sounds like crap?  Or, am I just using the wrong type of speakers for my Amiga .  Could I possibly have a problem with a component adding noise, such a my power supply, to output signal?  I might also just be playing back some really poor sound samples.  Anyway,I recall things sounding much better on my A3000 which I parted with years ago.  

I'd appreciate any suggest for speakers and cabling that would provide the highest quality signal from the A1200's RCA outs.  Also, does anyone have links to some high quality  sound files I could use to evaluate my speakers.

Thanks!
-bubba and little bubba

[bloodline]

Can record the audio output in a high quality format and post it on here?

As a quick check, run the same games in WinUAE and see how they sound through there. The audio should sound similar, if it doesn't then your A1200s have a problem.

[bubba]

Great idea.  I will try WinUAE with the same speakers and sound samples.

-bubba

[bloodline]

bubba wrote:
Great idea.  I will try WinUAE with the same speakers and sound samples.

-bubba

Any results?

[TjLaZer]

I also noticed this on my A600HD and on a A4000.  Must be bad caps on MB.

[bubba]

I fired up UAE on my iMac last night, but version 0.8.28 does not seem to like OS X Tiger (10.4).  I'm going to try it on a PC laptop next.

I also found this great site that talks about the bad capacitor problem and even includes a sound test application:

http://amiga.serveftp.net/audio_repair.html

[bubba]

Problem Solved :-)    Noisy power supply at the root of the problem.

I switched power supplies from an A500 power brick to a bigfoot power supply.  The noise is gone.   This explanis why I heard the distortions on both my A1200's.

Thanks for the suggestions!

-bubba

[Tomas]

My son wanted to play some games so I hooked up out a really nice set of Monsoon speakers I had in storage from an old PC to the ol' 1200. I used an RCA-to-mini cable with a gender changer from radio shack to connect the speakers. We started playing ThemePark AGA and my son quickly commented that the sound was really sloppy and distorted. I tried some demos and he said the same thing.

Those speakers do have a built in amplifier right?? If not, then the problem could be as simple as the amiga audio ouput not having enough juice to power those speakers. If this is the case, then unhook them fast, or you could blow the audio output on the amiga.

If you have a regular stereo amplifier, then you could just try to hook it up to that and see if it makes any change.

[bubba]

Both sets of speakers I tested were powered.  The problem was a quality issues with the power source (noise), not a quantity issue (watts).

-bubba

[klx300r]

Both sets of speakers I tested were powered.  The problem was a quality issues with the power source (noise), not a quantity issue (watts).

-bubba

SNAP! bringing this thread back to life to say thanks for the advice bubba!

my hiss problem was solved by using an A500 PSU as the modded PC PSU I was using for a while was giving my an annoying hiss when I had the speakers over mid level

[NovaCoder]

Just to adding to this thread with some more knowledge.

I recently brought some new high-end PC speakers (2.0 setup) for my A1200, when I connected them up I was really disappointed with the sound quality

Then I plugged them into my PC and they sounded really good.   It seems that certain speakers only sound good with modern HW so be careful.

These are the speakers I brought -> Creative GigaWorks T40 Speakers

It's also a good idea to replace your CAPS, really helped improve the sound quality for my 1200.

[giZmo350]

Just to adding to this thread with some more knowledge.

I recently brought some new high-end PC speakers (2.0 setup) for my A1200, when I connected them up I was really disappointed with the sound quality

Then I plugged them into my PC and they sounded really good.   It seems that certain speakers only sound good with modern HW so be careful.

These are the speakers I brought -> Creative GigaWorks T40 Speakers

It's also a good idea to replace your CAPS, really helped improve the sound quality for my 1200.

Wow, those are damn nice! Odd that they didn't work as the Miggy has quite a hot output. I was thinking of getting something a bit smaller like these USB speakers http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003XE3X8Q/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_6?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER . But I was thinking instead of powering them from the USB port I would power them from a USB phone charger (little square one that plugs into a wall socket). Anyone tried any USB speakers on an A1200? Is the Miggy output too much for them and/or do they sound real tinny? NovaCoder, you might pop up a youtube on those bad boys and let us hear them!

[magnetic]

The amiga has an awesome analogue type sound. THere is something wrong with your 1200 if it sounds like that.

[Thorham]

Audio problems I use an ATX power supply and one of the voltage lines came loose. That screwed the sound over quite nicely (and yes, the A1200 booted up and worked normally otherwise).

The amiga has an awesome analogue type sound.

That's because of the samples that are often used. Try 14 bit in 44khz calibrated, and it will sound just like a CD player (almost, it's quite close). There's nothing special about Amiga sound, apart from the fact that it was available in 1985 :p

[klx300r]

ok so my sound problem has been solved with using my old A500's PSU but I'm noticing a 5 second delay from the time I turn power on the PSU to the time my A1200 actually starts booting? also every 2nd boot I have to ctrl-A-A to get it to boot up properly.

Checked the voltages & they seem fine at 5.2 and 11.9