Why do ST fanboys say ST has better sound ?

[dougal]

I have always had Amigas since i was 9 , so i am always going to be biased towards Amiga .

But i always here the ST fanboys say that the ST has better sound .

The ST is a fine machine , and granted , it has MIDI ports as standard.

But i have heard the sound from ST games , and they sound rubbish , not much better than PC Speaker , even the C64 is probably just as good if not better .

I have compared the music of the same games on both Amiga and ST and the ST does not even compare with the Amiga .

Games i have tried are : Xenon II , Ninja Warriors , SWIV , SOTB and a few others .

On a side note: Ninja Warriors has in my opinion the best music in a game ever .. Especially the Amiga version

[Raffaele]

dougal wrote:

But i always here the ST fanboys say that the ST has better sound .

Because they are deaf blind...  :lol:

[mongo]

They wouldn't be very good fanboys if they didn't.

[Crom00]

The st had midi built in so you could connect it to pro music equipment out of the box. Thus the preception of better audio.

Just like the Mac had the ability to integrate with Adobe postscipt and laser printers, hence the poplularity of the Mac as a DTP solution...

The Amiga had it's video abilities so it became the DSKTOP video leader for a time.

The ST Falcon actually has a sound DSP at 16 bits so TECHNICALLY yes some of the ST's have better sound compared to the amiga as the sound hardware on the amiga never got the dsp chip. The aA3000+ was slated to have the chip included but that never happpened.

BUT the vast majority of games use the ST's builtin sound chip (not MIDI, not 16 bit dsp) as the Flacon only saw limited release compared to say the A1200/A4000.

[countzero]

the ST sound is chip music based, like SID. Amigas paula can play samples, so it's more sample based music. It depends on preference, some people like chip music ...

but for music production, I think paula is much more useful than a YT. MIDI port is a very cheap and easily obtainable add on for an Amiga.

Falcon is totally another beast, if you talk to Atari folks, you'll see with amusement that they don't even consider it as an ST.

[dougal]

I agree with all the arguments here .

But lets be honest , for normal practical gaming music the Amiga is way ahead of the ST .

The games on the ST sound like a typical 80's computer which is good as all other computers in the 80's sounded similair to the ST .

The Amiga was just way ahead of its time .

Personally i prefare the Amiga sample based music rather than the ST chip music .

I guess another argument could be that the Amiga has custom chips , including the Paula and the ST does not .

[klx300r]

well the 1040STe is not a bad sounding machine at all...I just recently found one at a garage sale for cheap & am slowly playing around with some music on my first Atari..for tracker style music (Amiga has 4 channels opposed to Atari's 3) and samples the Amiga is the clear winner but the Yamaha chip in the Ste is great for chip tunes and the midi appears to be alot tighter than the Miggy's (although I'm just a beginner in Midi)..just my 2 pesos

[Linde]

From a technical point of view the Amiga sound is better, of course, but I do agree that the Atari has character (and some great video game and demo music to boot)... And there is a lot of recent development of "tricks" on the Atari. For some superb modern Atari music, have a listen to Stu: http://www.retinascan.de/phpshop/themes/kategorie/detail.php?artikelid=649&kategorieid=84&source=1

In short, it's all a matter of taste, because technically all these old machines have horrible sound features.

[TjLaZer]

I own both ST's and Amiga's and the Amiga hands down has better sound.  Heck I think the C64 has better sound than the ST!

[InTheSand]

Ah, the good old AY-3-8910 / YM2149, as used in ZX Spectrums and Amstrad CPCs, where it should have stayed!

Any sound you like, as long as it's a square wave!

And yes, using the "out of the box" features of the soundchip, e.g. not cheating by using the CPU to drive the sound generation, the good old SID of the C64 was far better.

I remember being very disappointed when upgrading from a Spectrum 128 to an ST and discovering the in-game soundtracks at the time (late 1988) to be identical. Only had the ST for a year, before getting a computer that could generate decent music!

 - Ali

[drHirudo]

The Atari ST soundchip is the same as in the Amstrad, Oric and ZX Spectrum - Yamaha YM. The ST is a 16 bit "monster" with 4 bit soundchip. On the other hand even the A1000 have Paula which is 8 bit sound chip. On my Amiga 500/1200/4000 I had no trouble playing YM/SID/NSF songs with DeliTracker, while try playing Mod/Octamed songs on the Atari ST and you will decide by yourself which machine had the better sound. The Atari Falcon have better sound than the Amiga, but the Falcon had very limited production and it is not really an ST.

[klx300r]

TjLaZer wrote:
I own both ST's and Amiga's and the Amiga hands down has better sound.  Heck I think the C64 has better sound than the ST!

the almighty 64 with dual SIDS kicks both the Amiga and ANY Atari's A hole ;-)

[amigaksi]

by klx300r on 2009/4/19 16:54:43

>the almighty 64 with dual SIDS kicks both the Amiga and ANY Atari's A hole

If you're going to upgrade the hardware, any system can be made to look like they have better sound than another system with standard hardware.

They also made quad POKEY board for Atari 8-bit which would give it 16 DACs and voices and given the faster CPU cycle time over C64 it would be able to update it's DACs to generate arbitrary waveforms better than C64.

[TheMagicM]

.. for the same reason Amiga fanbois think that workbench is still the best OS out there when its clearly dated along with its hardware.

they just like their systems while Amiga fans like theirs.  :-?

[klx300r]

@ amigaski

nothing that I've heard sounds like the SID chip..you can 'upgrade' (as you call it) any Atari all you want and you still wont get the sound a 6581R4 SID can come up with :inquisitive: