Advice on composing music

[Karlos]

mooncloud wrote:
Hi Tomas.

This sampler business.........what exactly does a sampler allow you to do? - bearing in mind I don't play any instruments. I'm thinking that you hook up a keyboard, for example, to your Amiga...??

Nah, it's just a little gizmo that plugs into the parallel port and allows you to record sounds as samples. The quality is invariably quite bad (typically 8-bit up to 56kHz in mono, 27kHz in stereo) but at the same time has a unique 'mod' sound without having to buy that expensive LoFi effect's unit :-D

[InTheSand]

The original MED was cool - remember the "jumping man" mouse pointer?!

@mooncloud:

As for sampling - a sampler at its most basic level turns an analogue waveform (in this case, an audible sound) into a digital pattern that the Amiga can use to subsequently play back at different rates, generating different pitches.

As you're no doubt aware, the Amiga has four audio channels, meaning it can play back four of these sampled sounds simultaneously. There are various software tricks, however, as used by OctaMED and Octalyzer that will increase the apparent number of channels at the expense of sound quality.

 - Ali

[Karlos]

mooncloud wrote:
Thanks, Zero.

Are there external hard drives you can hook up to the A500 to increase memory size etc? I'm new to this and the jargon goes over my head a little.

Well, the memory we are talking about here is RAM, hard drives  are media storage. However there were some decent sidecar expansions for the A500 that gave you not only a hard drive, but a faster CPU and also more RAM too. A company called Great Valley Products (usually abbreved GVP) made a range of such expansions if I recall correctly.

If you can find one of those, it can transform your A500 in one step :-D

A hard drive will make your amiga a lot more productive, however. No swapping floppy disks all over the place for starters.

[mooncloud]

Thanks. Is TRILOGIC MK2 STEREO SAMPLER and good, or TECHNOSOUND TURBO 2??

[InTheSand]

Karlos wrote:
However there were some decent sidecar expansions for the A500 that gave you not only a hard drive, but a faster CPU and also more RAM too. A company called Great Valley Products (usually abbreved GVP) made a range of such expansions if I recall correctly.

Yep - these are solid and reliable, even after all these years! I have an A500 with a GVP A500-HD8+, which provides extra RAM, a SCSI interface (internal and external) plus an internal SCSI drive.


@mooncloud:
I have found an original MED 2.13 version on Amiga Computing's December 1990 cover disk - this will work fine on an unexpanded A500 with Workbench 1.3.

I've also located OctaMED v5, on Amiga Format Disk 62A - but this requires Workbench 2.x or later.


Let me know if you'd like ADFs of these (PM me with your email address if required).

 - Ali

[mooncloud]

These replies are awesome!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks everybody.

Okay, I'm getting there! How about, in terms of memory, if I whack in an 'Amiga A600/A1200 2.5’’ IDE Hard Drive - 2160MB (2.16GB)' - as I've heard about. Only about £10. Of course I then need an A600 or A1200 - but as they are cheap, I don't mind as much. I can always sell the A500, even thought I just got it! Should have thought about this a little more......

[mooncloud]

Oh yeah, just realised about the hard drive thing....I'll go back and read what you said.

[Zero]

I have a TechnoSound Turbo, and I used quite it recently.
Its great in a LoFi sort of way.
You can also find lots of MED/OctaMED samples on Aminet, some of these are great to get started with.

 :-D

[mooncloud]

I checked Aminet out - sure seems to have a lot of stuff there. I'm mailing Ali at the mo, asking if he can explain in laymans terms how to transfer such files etc. from the PC I'm using now, to the Amiga - I haven't a clue apart from a few links which are too in depth for me really. All suggestions greatly appreciated!

Thanks again.

[Zero]

http://www.amigaforever.com/

Good way to link your PC to your Amiga,using Amiga Explorer, there many other options, but that's the only one I have ever needed.

 :-D

[mooncloud]

Any ideas how I could get:

'an A500 with a GVP A500-HD8+, which provides extra RAM, a SCSI interface (internal and external) plus an internal SCSI drive.'???

[InTheSand]

mooncloud wrote:
...Of course I then need an A600 or A1200 - but as they are cheap, I don't mind as much...

Well, an A1200 will open up your possibilities quite a bit above and beyond what's possible with an A500.

You'll end up with a (comparatively) recent version of the OS, and the A1200 has lots of upgrade potential if you wish to do that at a later stage.

 - Ali

[mooncloud]

Hi Zero.

How does Amiga Explorer work? How can I get it?

This is like being in college! Very educational.

Ali's helping me out a lot, too.

Cheers. :-D

[InTheSand]

mooncloud wrote:
Any ideas how I could get:

'an A500 with a GVP A500-HD8+, which provides extra RAM, a SCSI interface (internal and external) plus an internal SCSI drive.'???

As with any "vintage" hardware, eBay is your best bet, or local garage / car boot sales can often yield surprises!

 - Ali

[Zero]

mooncloud wrote:
Hi Zero.

How does Amiga Explorer work? How can I get it?

This is like being in college! Very educational.

Ali's helping me out a lot, too.

Cheers. :-D

You can get it here;
http://www.amigaforever.com/ae/

The page also tells you a bit about the program.

Glad to be of help, I have always found people here to very helpful, its a great place to be!  :-)

[Karlos]

@mooncloud

Okay, I'm getting there! How about, in terms of memory, if I whack in an 'Amiga A600/A1200 2.5’’ IDE Hard Drive - 2160MB (2.16GB)' - as I've heard about. Only about £10. Of course I then need an A600 or A1200 - but as they are cheap, I don't mind as much. more......

An A1200 with a hard drive is a much better starting position:

You'll start with at least version 3.0 of the operating system which opens up more software options.

The A1200 comes with a 2MB of RAM (called Chip RAM as it is shared between the CPU and the sound / graphics chips) as opposed to the 0.5MB or 1MB an A500 typically has. Chip RAM is important for many older music packages as this is where the sound samples are held during music playback. Note that OctaMED SoundStudio is not restricted to using only Chip RAM for sound samples, you can use as much memory as you have fitted. And speaking of memory...

The CPU in the stock A1200 is 2-3x faster than the one in the stock A500. Just adding more memory to the A1200 (via the trapdoor slot) can double that too. The reason for this is that in a Chip RAM only A1200, the CPU has to share access to the memory with the sound and graphics chips. This  basically slows the CPU down since it has to wait for the graphics/sound chips to have their share, which is usually 50% of the time (or more). So just adding 4MB of memory to the trapdoor not only gives you 3x more memory than you had to start with but can double the performance to :-)

However, it doesn't stop there. Many cards exist for the trapdoor slot that add not only more memory, but an even faster CPU to start with. If you get a 50MHz 68030, you can happily use OctaMED soundstudio with 16 sound channels at once and have enough CPU power left to comfortably use the system. With a 25MHz 68040 I've had 32 sound channels without problems, and that's good for making some noise :-D

Also, a faster CPU in your A1200 with a hard drive gives you more scope for mixing your finished many-channel song to hard drive for, perhaps burning to a CD later? :-)