Leaving Amiga - Need PC emulation / music recording advice.

[bloodline]

NoFastMem wrote:

mdivancic wrote:
I'm sorry, but if you are really making the move to a new OS I'd spend the time and money to run a native program. There must be programs that have passed Bars & Pipes in features significantly in the last, what, ten years?

Agreed... Give Renoise a look. Also, last I checked, MED SoundStudio was still available for Windows.

I just wouldn't trust the timing from an emulated solution. It's time to move on.  :-(

I use old Amiga programs in Emulation for making music all the time... But only contribution to this thread would be to suggest a Mac with Logic Pro... That is a complete music workstation... My last album was almost completely built using Logic Pro, I did a bit of work in UAE with OctaMED, a few of my hardware synths got used and our mix engineer like to mix the stems in Pro Tools...

But proportionally, 92.4% of the work was done in Logic Pro, on my trusty MacBook Pro...

[fishy_fiz]

If youre using some form of UAE then you'll really need something resembling a new system for it to give a reasonable result. A low end system these days can be picked up for about $200-$250 though, so its not too bad (granted these will have onboard gfx or very low spec gfx pcie card, but unless you want to play modern pc games then this wont be an issue). For that you'll get a cheap dual core system, 80-160 gig hdd space and 1 gig ram, which is enough for UAE use. Reason I mention this is 'cos you said something about $100 old pcs. Definately worth spending the extra if you have it. Another option if you can get your hands on it is amithlon. Runs a lot quicker than UAE, and a 1ghz pc will be enough to give good results. Also boots your pc straight into Amiga OS3.9, so you dont need to boot another OS to launch your emulator. Makes a better option than UAE for Amiga music software as well. Bare in mind though that with that option you get next to no custom chipset emulation, although this is only really an issue if old games and/or scene demos are your thing. Hope this info. is of some use.

[Wilse]

bloodline wrote:

 But only contribution to this thread would be to suggest a Mac with Logic Pro... That is a complete music workstation...

I'd second that.
That's exactly what I use now and you can run windows(assuming it's intel) and UAE on a Mac too.

[Wolfeman]

If you're a musician, I would go with the Mac and OSX. I've been an electronic musician since the 80s and the Macintosh has been at the center of the studio to this very day. You can find a G4 tower for the same you would pay for a 1Ghz PC and it will blow the PC away.

I would not try to emulate any other system for audio, you should check out the native programs, as I'm positive you'll find something that can do what you need, possibly even Garage Band which often comes bundled with OSX on Mac G4 systems sold used. For an audio interface you can use the built in stereo audio which is very high quality or you can go pro with a PCI expansion or a Firewire device.

My advice is to stay away from any audio or hd peripherals that only support USB as Firewire on the Mac is much faster and stable and USB on the Mac, even 2.0 is like 50% slower on a Mac than it is on a PC.

I'd also stay away from digidesign hardware and software as they are very slow to upgrade software support for their hardware and very often you find yourself stuck with an older OS just to be able to use the hardware. Unless you have thousands of dollars for a full blown pro-tools rig, just stay away from their entry level stuff, they don't support it adequately in my opinion.

M-Audio makes some very inexpensive but nicely made peripherals. I have a USB MIDI controller by M-Audio and a Tascam 8ch firewire for audio in and out and I paid less than $300 total for both on my G5. I have an older G4 with a MOTU 2408 that I got very cheaply and that works very nicely.

good luck with it, whatever you decide.

[amigaksi]

by ferrellsl on 2008/8/8 19:02:44

>What about using WinUAE? Emulated Amiga and you still get to use all of your familiar Amiga software.

>Any modern PC has the horsepower to emulate the Amiga and its custom chips.

That would be illogical.  If someone is going to start all over with a new system that assuming can do better then the Amiga in all respects, then it would be better to use the PC program rather than an emulated program since emulator is going to involve remapping stuff to affect performance whereas native PC program would not involve that.  

Of course, you can't perfectly emulate the Amiga and custom chips so other issues will be factors as well.

Didn't people use Atari ST music stuff even while Amigas were around?  

[bloodline]

Wolfeman wrote:
If you're a musician, I would go with the Mac and OSX. I've been an electronic musician since the 80s and the Macintosh has been at the center of the studio to this very day. You can find a G4 tower for the same you would pay for a 1Ghz PC and it will blow the PC away.

No way!!!! The PPC Macs simply don't have the horsepower for serious Music making. Logic Pro was horrible on my G4...  I always had to go back to a PC with Protools before the Intel Macs came along. I skipped the G5s because thy were too expensive compared with comparable PC systems (that even came in Notebook form).

Get a Cheap brand new iMac, and Logic Express... and be done with it.

I would not try to emulate any other system for audio, you should check out the native programs, as I'm positive you'll find something that can do what you need, possibly even Garage Band which often comes bundled with OSX on Mac G4 systems sold used.

Garageband is pretty good, but you are not going to do any Professional work with it.

For an audio interface you can use the built in stereo audio which is very high quality or you can go pro with a PCI expansion or a Firewire device.

The internal Audio of all Mac machines is actually surprising good, and has saved my neck a few time when my Audio interfaces have given out!

PC Notebook manufacturers have always used substandard Audio components... Grrrr...

My advice is to stay away from any audio or hd peripherals that only support USB as Firewire on the Mac is much faster and stable and USB on the Mac, even 2.0 is like 50% slower on a Mac than it is on a PC.

All my Audio interfaces are Firewire... I'm planning to get a MOTO Ultralite 3 soon... Firewire's biggest strength is that it also provides power to the unit.

But if you are on a budget USB, is suitable, and does the job.

I'd also stay away from digidesign hardware and software as they are very slow to upgrade software support for their hardware and very often you find yourself stuck with an older OS just to be able to use the hardware. Unless you have thousands of dollars for a full blown pro-tools rig, just stay away from their entry level stuff, they don't support it adequately in my opinion.

M-Audio makes some very inexpensive but nicely made peripherals. I have a USB MIDI controller by M-Audio and a Tascam 8ch firewire for audio in and out and I paid less than $300 total for both on my G5. I have an older G4 with a MOTU 2408 that I got very cheaply and that works very nicely.

good luck with it, whatever you decide.

I'm no fan of DigiDesign stuff either... I do like Edirol's FA series.

[bloodline]

amigaksi wrote:
by ferrellsl on 2008/8/8 19:02:44

>What about using WinUAE? Emulated Amiga and you still get to use all of your familiar Amiga software.

>Any modern PC has the horsepower to emulate the Amiga and its custom chips.

That would be illogical.  If someone is going to start all over with a new system that assuming can do better then the Amiga in all respects, then it would be better to use the PC program rather than an emulated program since emulator is going to involve remapping stuff to affect performance whereas native PC program would not involve that.  

Don't be weird, there are somethings that are just easier and more natural to do in an old program that only exists on the Amiga... OctaMED is one such program that in E-UAE was even used on my last Album!!!

Of course, you can't perfectly emulate the Amiga and custom chips so other issues will be factors as well.

Of course you can't... that must explain why I wasn't able to use OctaMED in UAE on my last Album... no wait, I DID use it... oh I'm getting all confused :roll:

Didn't people use Atari ST music stuff even while Amigas were around?  

Only because it had a built in MIDI interface... Since I was into sampling the Amiga pissed all over the AtariST :-) And then I got a cheap MIDI interface for my Amiga...  :-)

[Krusher]

bloodline wrote:
...

I'm no fan of DigiDesign stuff either... I do like Edirol's FA series.

Not the FA series, but I have the UA-1000, great product. I use it with a laptop running Windows XP and Steinberg's Nuendo with Rode NT1 microphones for live recordings, never failed me. Got myself a Behringer BCF2000 controller because I got tired of mousing about, great product, even greater value for money  :-D

[ferrellsl]

@amigaski

It isn't illogical at all.  Have you considered what it will cost this man to buy all new PC software and learn all new software?  I'm sure it's a rather expensive option in both time and money do this.  And no one said the PC stuff was better.  And I'm sure he'd like to use his existing data files as well.

I opted to do the same thing.  I simply wasn't willing to throw out my software investment, buy new PC software that wasn't as familiar or as capable and then learn the new software.

It was much easier and cheaper to get an XP box and WinUAE.

[bloodline]

ferrellsl wrote:

It was much easier and cheaper to get an XP box and WinUAE.

Or a nice intel Mac (though not quite as cheap, and E-UAE isn't as easy to se up as WInUAE)... But I do prefer the Audio architecture of MacOSX :-)

[Zadoc]

@ Thread:

It's all dependent on what you want to do "music wise" on a machine.

I don't have any first hand experience emulating MIDI based programs via UAE, but I'm sure (as others testify to) it will work fine.

To some (and probably a lot of Amiga based musicians) sample based trackers are the way they use machines music wise, and aside from the Windows version of MED Soundstudio, there really *aren't* any options aside from emulation.

To others, some just want to sequence MIDI, and while many PC programs do indeed sequence MIDI, you're often stuck with a huge overbloated interface that also wants to do hard disk recording amongst other things that just aren't conducive to the way a particular musician works.

I remember several years ago trying to find a simple program that would trigger samples via MIDI for the PC.  I couldn't find anything usable after hours of searching, however, a look on Aminet and there were loads of small simple programs that did just that.

People still use ST's and Amigas because they're comfortable with the old software, and may not need all the extra bells and whistles on modern packages.  I myself still bring a basic A1200 along to recording studios to provide click tracks and to do minor MIDI sequencing.  If you've got WinUAE and a MIDI interface, I see no reason to "evolve" to more complex (and often bloated) software just to do simple MIDI tasks.

[spihunter]

@bloodline,

Garageband is pretty good, but you are not going to do any Professional work with it.

That might have been true in the past but now that Garageband is 24bit and can do 4 different real time effects per track at once I see no need to upgrade to Logic.

Click on the link in my Sig and listen to "Dancing Milk Cartons"

It was done with Garageband, AU plugins, a single MIDI Keyboard, and a microphone.

As far as the original poster goes though Gargageband cant do the type of MIDI setup he has going.

It all depends on what your writing and how you do it I guess?

[bloodline]

spihunter wrote:
@bloodline,

Garageband is pretty good, but you are not going to do any Professional work with it.

That might have been true in the past but now that Garageband is 24bit and can do 4 different real time effects per track at once I see no need to upgrade to Logic.

Click on the link in my Sig and listen to "Dancing Milk Cartons"

It was done with Garageband, AU plugins, a single MIDI Keyboard, and a microphone.

As far as the original poster goes though Gargageband cant do the type of MIDI setup he has going.

It all depends on what your writing and how you do it I guess?

There is nothing wrong with the quality of GarageBand, it is after all based on the Logic Audio engine!!! But it simply doesn't give you the control required in a Professional Studio.

[Wilse]

Wolfeman wrote:

My advice is to stay away from any audio or hd peripherals that only support USB as Firewire on the Mac is much faster and stable and USB on the Mac, even 2.0 is like 50% slower on a Mac than it is on a PC.

I can't say I completely agree with this advice.
My main inteface is a Yamaha 01x, which connects to my Macbook via Firewire and is a lovely piece of kit but when I'm over at my girlfriends house I use an M-Audio Ozone which connects to my iBook via USB. This is a perfectly usable piece of equipment and much, much, MUCH cheaper than the 01x, or any other FW audio/midi i/f.
Sure, if you have limitless cash, don't go USB but if you're on a budget there is absolutely bugger all wrong with it.

M-Audio makes some very inexpensive but nicely made peripherals. I have a USB MIDI controller

See? ;-)

by M-Audio and a Tascam 8ch firewire for audio in and out and I paid less than $300 total for both on my G5. I have an older G4 with a MOTU 2408 that I got very cheaply and that works very nicely.

good luck with it, whatever you decide.

Indeed.

And you are absolutely right about Gargeband. I'd forgotten all about that programme. I used it for a few months before upgrading to Logic and got some very good results.

[Wilse]

Hi Matt:

The PPC Macs simply don't have the horsepower for serious Music making. Logic Pro was horrible on my G4...

Hmmm.... again, I beg to differ (my, aren't I the contrary one today? :-D)

My main machine just now is my Macbook but I still do work on my iBook G4 and it's perfectly fine as long as you don't go plugin-mental.

-EDIT-
I'd also point out that the iBook is much better built than the rather flimsy Macbook.

[Wolfeman]

@bloodline: Well, dude, you're obviously no Mac fan, and that's fine, there are PC people and Mac people but if you look at benchmark tests between G4s and 1Ghz era PC processors, the mac wins every time. I have never run Logic, always Digital Performer [just plain "Performer" before that] and it has always been a terrific system. I can run a full 24 tracks on a G4 AGP 500Mhz with few hiccups. Of course it was maxed out to a full 2GB of ram  

As for garage band, no way is that "pro" but in terms of what it can do out of the box and for damn near free, it's pretty good software. I don't use it though. I actually use "Reason" for soft synths/sampling.

I have not checked out the FA series stuff, right now I'm trying to find an inexpensive Tascam DAW controller for cheap on ebay. I've been seeing the US-2400 for as low as $600... hmmmm

@Wilse: The usb on a mac for some reason is bloody slow. ever try to hook up a usb hard drive or disc burner?  omg it's awful. let alone a usb flash drive, it always takes twice as long to copy files and even on my dual processor G5.

For MIDI it's fine and even some audio interfaces but for my money and time the firewire is faster and more reliable.