OctaMED Sound Studio Install Issues & Advice.

[spihunter]

The CU Amiga version on Aminet is the latest version... There may have been a 1.03d version but I don't think anything really changed.... You just have to change a setting to get rid of that annoying pop up screen at startup.

Karlos: Yes the pop up does annoy me that much!!!

I'm not wealthy enough to run OS 4.1 anyhow. I was just hoping for an updated port that matches the features of the latest Winblows version, and was keeping my fingers crossed that it would also run on MorphOS for when I buy an old MacMini or what ever to run it.

The Goose: Is there anywhere to has the last release of this available for download that is not the CU Amiga edition?

Tension: I'll give that a try.

Methuselas: I intend to keep posting information as I find it, and will probably be setting up a section on my web page later just for OctaMED Sound Studio for the Amiga since the official site is lacking in the department.

I'm also interested in checking out DigiBooster again some day and seeing what that's all about...

[XDelusion]

Goose: So it was on Aminet. I wonder why none of my searches brought that up for me?

Anyhow, my problem isn't getting it running, I do remember enough about the Amiga to still accomplish that much, I was just curious why people release stuff with bad install scripts basically.

For poops and giggles I did copy the contents of both discs to a directory and assigned the floppies to that directory, but no matter what, it kept asking for disc two which eventually leads to failure during the install. Oh well.

In regards to the OctaMED site...

...ya, looks like us OctaMED users need to organize our own site for the Amiga original or something. Sad times!

They author seems kind of ticked that no one wants to pay for the Amiga software, but I guess if you your latest update was free, and you haven't worked on it since, then what can you expect? He should at least write a small update for the 680x0 Amigas with a few new features. I'd buy a copy for sure! I just don't care about the Windows port in the least. I have Open Mod Plug Tracker for that.

Besides, I want something for the Paula chip, not my Sound Blaster Live.


spihunter: I'll look for those settings. In the mean time care to post where they are at in case I don't find them and also in case others might want to turn it off as well? Thankx!

[Tension]

Goose: So it was on Aminet. I wonder why none of my searches brought that up for me?

Anyhow, my problem isn't getting it running, I do remember enough about the Amiga to still accomplish that much, I was just curious why people release stuff with bad install scripts basically.

For poops and giggles I did copy the contents of both discs to a directory and assigned the floppies to that directory, but no matter what, it kept asking for disc two which eventually leads to failure during the install. Oh well.

In regards to the OctaMED site...

...ya, looks like us OctaMED users need to organize our own site for the Amiga original or something. Sad times!

They author seems kind of ticked that no one wants to pay for the Amiga software, but I guess if you your latest update was free, and you haven't worked on it since, then what can you expect? He should at least write a small update for the 680x0 Amigas with a few new features. I'd buy a copy for sure! I just don't care about the Windows port in the least. I have Open Mod Plug Tracker for that.

Besides, I want something for the Paula chip, not my Sound Blaster Live.


spihunter: I'll look for those settings. In the mean time care to post where they are at in case I don't find them and also in case others might want to turn it off as well? Thankx!

The other way is to download the iso of the CD-ROM of OctaMED Soundstudio, and install from there.

Someone said they would help me in this thread:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51329&highlight=octamed

but no one ever did  

[XDelusion]

Did you ever come by the ISO then?

If so I'd really like to have it, for the extra samples if anything.

[Tension]

Did you ever come by the ISO then?

If so I'd really like to have it, for the extra samples if anything.

no sadly  

[XDelusion]

There is a copy on Ebay of 1.1, which I presume one can update. ONly $10.00

[TheGoose]

no sadly  

@ Tension, damn doood I hate that popup too! Where can we find this ISO!? BTW - I bought at least 2 versions; Octamed 6 and then SS. I still have the v6 version on floppies buy not the SS version.

I remember when I showed spihunter Med, think version 4 on my Amiga 1000, we were in high school band with a drum machine back then. He was blown away. I was like "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS MHANNNN!"

Amiga was always delivering these eureka moments, that's what people miss. And they don't get, they can't get it back. It was just part of the early evolution of computing. Be happy you were there.

@XDelusion - no, they don't upgrade, sry. But maybe we can find this no popup-CU version...

[XDelusion]

I have looked all over and there does not seem to be a setting to turn off the pop-up, and ironically, dude man above never reposted to tell us where it is allegedly at. :/

Anyhow, here's another questions:

Why do IFF files always have that static sound in the background? What file formats are you guys using for your OctaMED creations? I'm tinkering with downsampled wavs as we speak...

[Karlos]

Regarding the noise issue, there's nothing wrong with the IFF format itself. Obviously 8-bit sound has a rather limited resolution and you will notice quantisation noise with any 8-bit linear sound format (note that there are 8-bit encodings that are logarithmically delta encoded, which provide better SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) but aren't really supported as general sample formats).

The chances are that many .iff sound files you come across have been captured on an old 8-bit parallel port sound digitizer (or so we used to call them in the good old days). They didn't generally have the best SNR properties to begin with and the noise level will be in the least significant bit(s) of the sample. Add to that the fact that a lot of those sounds were captured at, or resampled to the old pro-tracker C-3 note playback rate (which is about 17kHz IIRC), then you get aliasing noise too. End result are audible hiss, ringing and other artifacts.

If you've used a 16-bit .wav or .aiff sound source, the chances are it's been captured on a reasonable recording device, perhaps even professionally, at a CD quality or better sampling rate. Scaling down to 8-bit adds quantisation noise again, but the original signal noise, which should have been in the least significant bit(s) of the 16-bit data, is now off the small end of the scale. That is to say, none of the noise in the original 16-bit recording, assuming it was recorded properly, can realistically be present in your 8-bit version as it doesn't have the precision to represent it. Only quantisation noise should be present. If you downsample the rate properly (using antialiasing) from 44kHz to say 22kHz - conveniently close to the F-3 note, you shouldn't get too much audible aliasing noise either.

Note that you can use 44kHz samples anyway, if you intend to use mix mode. It's nice  if you want to do a direct-to-disk version of a track, since the extra quality is noticable in the end result.

In short, an 8-bit sample downsampled from a 44kHz 16-bit source will always sound cleaner than one sampled on an 8-bit parallel port

[TheGoose]

"In short, an 8-bit sample downsampled from a 44kHz 16-bit source will always sound cleaner than one sampled on an 8-bit parallel port"

That is strange to me, but after I took a whole drum kit from my SP404SX, down sampled them, I thought they sounded pretty good.

[Karlos]

If you read up on sampling theory, it'll make more sense. The salient points are:

1) The sample rate should be at least 2x higher than the highest frequency component of the sound being sampled. So, don't use low sample rates for bright sounds (cymbals and the like). Keep them 22kHz or better if possible.

2) A 16-bit sampler basically has 256x the precision, per sample, than an 8-bit one. Assuming the background noise level only affects the least significant bit(s) of the sample, conversion from 16-bit to 8-bit produces a better quality than sampling at 8-bit. However:

3) Reducing the bit depth of a sample introduces quantisation noise.

If you are used to 8-bit sample quality, you won't really notice the effects of (3) so much but you should at least be able to tell the difference from an 8-bit sample that was sampled at 8-bit and an 8-bit sample that was reduced from 16-bit.

[XDelusion]

O.K. Thank you all, I think I have a better understanding now, and I'm getting the idea (through experience) that I should stay clear of 16-bit samples on a 68000 machine because it can't play them properly and turns them into industrial noise (which has it's uses actually).

When my 030 arrives in the mail I'll play with them more, in the mean time I'll tinker with the info above and try to convert what I have into the cleanest 8-bit sounds I can come up with.

I have a DSS8+, but I don't really see the need to resort to that when I can do all the conversion work on my PC then send it to the Amiga, unless you guys are suggesting I might maintain better quality going through it.



And anther question. I was once told to hit HELP in the Instrument Editor or something to bring up OctaMED's guide...

...well that never happens and I don't even see the guide on the discs I have.

Thankx again to all who are taking their time to help here!

[Karlos]

@XDelusion

In order to play 16-bit samples in OctamedSS, you'll need to enable mix mode (or alternatively have one of the sound cards for which there is built-in support. See the earlier post about using The Maestrix for 16-bit AHI output). Otherwise, the 16-bit sample data is misinterpreted as 8-bit. The first (most significant) byte of the 16-bit word in each sample probably plays fine. It's the second byte (least significant) that will be misinterpreted as another 8-bit sample, which will almost certainly have no sensible relationship to the value it just played, producing some ungodly screech.

Unfortunately, mix mode on vanilla 68000 probably isn't going to work well as it needs too much CPU.

[TheGoose]

I wish there was some library of good 8bit sounds on the web, you know of anything like that Karlos?

Well I might have to get this...

http://www.retrothing.com/2010/02/8-bit-weapon-chiptune-sound-library.html

[Karlos]

I wish there was some library of good 8bit sounds on the web, you know of anything like that Karlos?

Well I might have to get this...

http://www.retrothing.com/2010/02/8-bit-weapon-chiptune-sound-library.html

There used to be a collection of SoundTracker sample disks back in the day. You could tell when they'd been used in .mod files, they were usually called ST-.

In the end, I've gathered my own sample library over the years. More often than not, these days, I rely on MIDI stuff controlled by octamed rather than it's own sample playback.

These days, you can get high sample libraries on CD in .wav / .aiff format.


Speaking of MIDI, there's a nice MIDI triggered sample playback tool called MIDI-In which uses AHI for output. What I've done in the past is to use a spare A1200 (with just fast ram) as the sequencer, running OctaMED SS to control various other midi gear, including my main A1200T, which has 256MB of RAM running MIDI In. The sound output in calibrated 14-bit mode is superior to what OctaMED SS itself can produce in realtime and furthermore, MIDI In is a bit more capable in that it can replay 16-bit samples without some of the OctaMED limitations. The sound output of that was routed through my MIDI tone gen which has AD inputs (as well as providing the remainder of the MIDI sound). A bit fiddly but the end result was quite nice

[XDelusion]

KARLOS: And where do I go to turn on Mix Mode? I thought I had it, but I'm still getting noise, so I must be in the wrong place. Are you talking about setting it to 14-bit mode (since I am going through paula), or something else?

Also if you could ever put up a youtube video of your midi set up in action, that would be awesome!

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around midi on top of OctaMED and eventually want to control my 2600 through my Amiga and perhaps set things up sort of like how you've got it. From the sounds of it, that's the way to go, but a video would help me visualize, since I'm not totally sure I fully understand how your set up works.