SuperPAULA - if you have experinece in amiga music please give feedback

[Rob]

But having a general purpose DSP with like ALTIVEC features could make sense. Such a general DSP could be used to various tasks ranging from MP3 audio decoding, to DVD playback, or acting as Texturemap shader.We are evaluating these options.

Hardware assisted audio/video would certainly be a nice feature for those wanting only to run an Amiga system.

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:

Well, provided you have registers for the basic controllers I don't think there's much harm in letting the CPU do envelope control :-)

Yeah, I was joking about Envelope control :-)

But that does raise the important issue of Buffers and latency... I don't really care about features sicne the CPU can worry about that... What I do need is a latency under 6ms!

[Fats]

biggun wrote:


3) 8-bit pan register (-127 full left, 127 full right)
I agree, that panning is useful.
Its certainly good to be able to put some voices in the center. But I feel that 8 bit panning volume is overkill and not needed for most cases. I would prefer have simpler HW  panning support for the majority of cases.

As every channel has already a volume register you could also use another approach: you could stay with left and right channel but offer the possibility that a left and a right channel play the same data but thus with a different volume.

From the other side I would also like to see 5.1 and 7.1 support and this is possibly not compatible with just left and right channels ...

greets,
Staf.

[Dennis]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but the period registers can be improved by making them "phase" registers that are added to a phase-accumulator. This is how a DDS works and (I believe) the 6581 SID works. This way you'll have far better resolution without having to use exotic clock frequencies. You do have to make a provision in the hardware to skip some samples though....

Dennis

[Karlos]

bloodline wrote:
What I do need is a latency under 6ms!

Hence the reason my hardware synth hasn't been replaced by some jumped up bit of software ;-)

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:

bloodline wrote:
What I do need is a latency under 6ms!

Hence the reason my hardware synth hasn't been replaced by some jumped up bit of software ;-)

Hahahaha, I still stand by my MBP and an Edirol FA-101 :-)

in Ableton Live 5 and Logic Pro 8; I get about 3ms latency each way (3 in and then 3 out), hence my demand for 6ms latency :-)

[A6000]

So, from a musicians point of view, would it be better to have MIDI than a superpaula?

[bloodline]

A6000 wrote:
So, from a musicians point of view, would it be better to have MIDI than a superpaula?

NO!!!! :-)

I only have one MIDI device left now (all the rest are USB)... and that is connected to my Mac via a USB-MIDI interface :-)

[AeroMan]

Karlos wrote:
That isn't really any different to having an equal resolution volume/pan pair. The advantage of volume and pan is that it's a friendlier interface.

Pan is easier to work with, but depending on the way the audio circutry was done, having one volume for each output might be easier to implement in hardware than a true pan.

The final result is pretty much the same, I agree. I was just trying to suggest another approach that could simplify the solution in some cases.

[amigaksi]

>And thus you have it, you can't possibly beat today's PC or Mac but you can come close to a 1999 PC without destroying compatibility. Given that this is retro-computing some might complain that that's not retro enough!

That wasn't what was being attempted.  If you do want to compare PC sound to Amiga sound, you would have to compare the standard hardware not some specialized card in either machine.  Taking the Sound Blaster standard in the PC and the Amiga hardware, you can easily see that the Sound Blaster cannot play 4 waveforms at the same time and uses a 1 Megahertz crystal to calculate frequencies whereas the Amiga can play 4 waveforms and uses a 3.57Mhz crystal to calculate frequencies.

While you could emulate the more channels in software, it's not comparing hardware and it's not real-time anymore.

[amigaksi]

by FrenchShark on 2008/3/17 21:33:16

>- 16 16-bit channels.
>- 2 volume control registers (one for left, one for right).
>- Better precision for the period register. I guess your SuperPaula clock will be 28 MHz at least. Even at 28 MHz, you need to have a "fractional" part for the period register so you can generate 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz sampling rate.

How does the SoundBlaster get away with it using just a 1Mhz crystal?  I guess they are rounding off to rate closest to the 22.05Khz, 44.1Khz or 48Khz.  I just thought that it would be more useful if the FPGA was in a plug-in module for the Paula socket so it's backward compatible with existing Amigas. (i.e., pin-compatible).

[FrenchShark]

amigaksi wrote:

How does the SoundBlaster get away with it using just a 1Mhz crystal?  I guess they are rounding off to rate closest to the 22.05Khz, 44.1Khz or 48Khz.  I just thought that it would be more useful if the FPGA was in a plug-in module for the Paula socket so it's backward compatible with existing Amigas. (i.e., pin-compatible).

They might use a PLL along with it.

I do not see the interest of making a plug-in.
The Chip RAM is too slow to handle these extra high resolution channels.
You need a brand new architecture to make it possible.

Regards,

Frederic

[polardark]

Dennis wrote:
I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but the period registers can be improved by making them "phase" registers that are added to a phase-accumulator.

Phase accumulators will decrease sound quality and introduce aliasing into the sound. On the SID you get away with this because the sample rate is very high (around 1 MHz?). In this case the sample rate mentioned is 96 KHz which doesn't seem enough.

[biggun]

in the SID you get away with this because the sample rate is very high (around 1 MHz?).

The sample rate of the ADA is 192 KHz
The goal for the internal clock rate of Pamela is double of the CPU clock, thats 180 MHz in the case of the NATAMI60.

[AmiDelf]

@BigGun

I`ve been an DelfinaDSP DelfMpeg betatester.  Its one of the best soundcards out there. I am not a hardware person, but for me it seems that it is the Motorola DSP cpu which is inside DelfinaDSP.

Either its 68030 or 68060. Its really nice to have a DSP that handles the sound. Ive never in my whole life heard such great musicquality as from my sold Amiga 4000 with DelfinaDSPz2 that Ive overclocked from 40MHz to 66MHz.

The sound quality of that board is one of the best I`ve ever heard! Ive listened to several Soundblaster cards and other more expensive PCI cards. But they havent beaten my old DelfinaDSP card at all. Even with my bad Creative speakers. The sound quality of Delfina showed it strength. And my ears are made for music and sound.

I am not saying this because I love Amiga, but because it is how I have captured the sound quality of DelfinaDSP which I have tested from A to Z practically. With delfinampeg.device you can listen to the music thru AmigaAMP etc.

Good luck with your NatAmi.


And have a great Easter time

Regards,
Mike

[bloodline]

AmiDelf wrote:
@BigGun

I`ve been an DelfinaDSP DelfMpeg betatester.  Its one of the best soundcards out there. I am not a hardware person, but for me it seems that it is the Motorola DSP cpu which is inside DelfinaDSP.

Either its 68030 or 68060.

it's the Motorola 56002...

Its really nice to have a DSP that handles the sound.

As opposed to?

Ive never in my whole life heard such great musicquality as from my sold Amiga 4000 with DelfinaDSPz2 that Ive overclocked from 40MHz to 66MHz.

What did you overclock?

The sound quality of that board is one of the best I`ve ever heard! Ive listened to several Soundblaster cards and other more expensive PCI cards. But they havent beaten my old DelfinaDSP card at all.

Sound blaster is hardly the gold standard of audio quaility... but the Delgina uses the same CS4215 codec... as best I could suggest that the SB had poor gound sheilding or badly written drivers... But the Delfina is hardly top quality audio.

Even with my bad Creative speakers. The sound quality of Delfina showed it strength. And my ears are made for music and sound.

You use Creative Speakers... yet you say your ears are "made for Sound and Music"... Get some Mordaunt-Short's or Celestion's if you want to hear good quality at a resonable price...

I am not saying this because I love Amiga,

Yes you are.

but because it is how I have captured the sound quality of DelfinaDSP which I have tested from A to Z practically.

Um... good?

With delfinampeg.device you can listen to the music thru AmigaAMP etc.

How nice!