What processor for OctaMED?

[Cyberus]

I actually got back into the Amiga because of OctaMED (see my thread on Software Discussions...). Obviously, I can see how it works for myself with my 040 accelerator, but I was just wondering what other users' experience with OctaMED has been in terms of hardware required.

Of course, I'd like one of the Blizzard 060 cards with the SCSI-II controller, as the extra ram would no doubt be a real boon for working with samples. Is direct to hard disk recording feasible? If my 040 is okay, how would I go about dealing with the hard disk solution (I'm guessing a Squirrel or the Amiga's std IDE solution isn't good enough!)

Are there any OctaMED users out there who'd recommend the use of a PPC board? Would it be the RAM rather than the processor that'd be of more importance for this kind of application?

I'd be grateful for any suggestions! thanks!

[Darth_X]

I used to have a Cyberstorm PPC/060 processor card in my A1200T.

OctaMED runs very nicely on the 060 (with a minimum of 4MB RAM, I had at least 16MB), and was even nicer with a Toccata 16bit audio card. I never owned a Toccata but borrowed a friends for a while.. what a difference the upgrade to 16bit makes! :-D

OctaMED was coded for the 68000 series processors (up to 060s), so it wouldn't gain much performance on PPC unless the PPC was running a really good 060 emulator/JIT.

What kind of Amiga do you have? A1200?

[Cyberus]

Yep,
A1200 with apollo 040/40, and I know this sounds sad,  but i can't remember the size of the SIMM, I think 32Mb..

[Staticman]

anything 030 or above should cut it  ;-)

[Zadoc]

Well the CPU horsepower that will make OctaMED run smoothly all depends on how many samples and tracks you're using.

I actually run alot of MIDI and few samples and get away with running OctaMED SoundStudio on a bare 68000 A500 (with 2.04 roms).

My first jump up from the A500 was an A3000 with 16Mb of RAM that I ran both OctaMED 4 and Soundstudio off of and never encountered any problems using 8-bit IFF samples.

It really depends on your setup, whether you have a soundcard or not, but an '030 (even with just Paula) and 16Mb of FastRAM should still give you a healthy dose to play with.

OctaMED soundstudio will let you 'record' your module directly to hard-disk in either an 8-bit or 16-bit AIFF file.  This shouldn't pose any problem using just the standard IDE port.

[Karlos]

My mates all go on about how fab their PC music software is, but OctaMED SoundStudio kicks a*se - they are usually left silenced by the sheer power hidden away behind the 'primitive' (their words, not mine) interface and the fact that it ties up sampling / midi so nicely together.

If trackers were cleaning products, OctaMED SoundStudio would be the Mr. Sheen of them all :lol: ;-)

My PC just gets used for audio capture (via an SBLive5.1) and that's about it.

I use it on a 68040 (BlizzPPC) @ 25MHz and only get into trouble if I want to use smoothing in the mixer with more than four stereo channels.

But then I just render the output to disk anyway, so it doesn't matter.

My mates all go on about how fab their PC music software is, but OctaMED SoundStudio kicks a*se - they are usually left silenced by the sheer power hidden away behind the 'primitive' (their words, not mine) interface and the fact that it ties up sampling / midi so nicely together.

Your telling me that OctaMED SS is better than Cubase SX?  Or even FruityLoops or Acid come to think of it? My arse! ;-)

Would Octamed SS feel the benefit of WinUAE-JIT + the UAE-AHI Drivers?  Or does it not use AHI?

Reason I ask, is I have to see for myself what the fuss is about.  I really can't believe it's as good as people say.

[Hooligan_DCS]

It doesn't support AHI, only direct support for paula and some soundcards.
It's a great program, bugging a bit though.. when using midi channel and samples, you can hear a high pitch noise after the sample has stopped, and at least on P96+PIV marking areas is graphically bugged. Both of these problems doesn't make it unusable at all, I have found  myself going around these problems naturally without even noticing doing so .. after a few years of use of course

It doesn't support AHI, only direct support for paula and some soundcards.

So would the PuhDaBear Paula to AHI wrapper on Amithlon would make a big difference?

[Karlos]

mdma wrote:
Your telling me that OctaMED SS is better than Cubase SX?  Or even FruityLoops or Acid come to think of it? My arse! ;-)

:-)

If you read what I wrote, I didn't criticise / compare any PC apps, I just pointed out that mates I have that use all these 'state of the art' apps on their high end pc's are still awed by what I can achieve on OSS :-)

It's perfect for my Yamaha MU100R tone generator, which doubles as a realtime fx unitfor the amiga audio, so even Paula comes up nicely.

I record the result on my PC at 96kHz / 24-bit then compress to -16bB and downsample to CD rate.

If only my compositional skills were better :-D

[Hooligan_DCS]

Cubase is sequencer while SoundStudio is a tracker. Can't understand how these two programs can be even compared. Octamed has note-editor but surely can't be called sequencer or compared to Cubase on the same day.

[Karlos]

Well, both applications are used to create music so I'm sure that rightly or wrongly people will make comparisons.

But as I said, Soundstutio is the holy grail of amiga trackers :-)

In my not-so-humble opinion :lol:

[Cyberus]

Just in response to some of the above posts...
I wanted to use OctaMED because that's what I used when I was younger to play around with.
I've used Cubase (I started an audio course at Salford Uni and we had to use it as part of the course) and whilst it may be more 'powerful' I just LIKE OctaMED, pure and simple.
Once again, the X is better than Y argument is coming out. But what if I happen to prefer Y?

Thanks for all the replies

Cubase/FruityLoops/Acid are the only reason I keep a Windows PC up and running.  I'd get a Mac, but no FruityLoops.

If someone was to code a FruityLoops style app for AOS/MOS it would be a "Killer" app IMHO.  Fruityloops itself is written in Delphi AFAIK so no chance of a port.