which is best for music Atari or Amiga

[nicholas]

http://www.medsoundstudio.webspace.virginmedia.com/infocus/12/focus_Gavin.htm
http://blogtotheoldskool.com/?tag=aphrodite

[mrmoonlight]

Hi just had a reply from Jyoti Mishra
and this is what he kindly wrote ,best wishes Brian.


1 comment



Jyoti Mishra
21:13 +
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Yep, it was sequenced entirely on an Atari 520STFM using Sequencer One from Gajits, came free on the cover of ST Format magazine. :-D
 
 Hi just adding a little more
 
           
 What gear did you use to record ‘Your Woman?’
     The gear I used was all pretty old and most of it was secondhand. The total value was just over £2000 (in 1997). This was it:
 * Tascam 688 Midistudio (8-tracks on cassette)
* Atari 520STFM running Sequencer One (free prog off the front of ST Format magazine)
* Emax II (Akais – yeuchh)
* Casio CZ101 (cost 50 pounds)
* Roland JX3P
* Casio VL-1
* Crappy old electric guitar.
 That was also pretty much all I used for the whole of the album, although I did get enough money in early ’97 to move to a digital 8-track (DA38) and get a beautiful Yamaha O2R mixer (swoon).
 My “studio” for ‘Women In Technology’ was my spare bedroom which was approximately 9 feet square. With squeaky floorboards which you can hear on some of the vocal tracks

[mrmoonlight]

http://www.medsoundstudio.webspace.virginmedia.com/infocus/12/focus_Gavin.htm
http://blogtotheoldskool.com/?tag=aphrodite

Well I am impressed  there's a lot of talent on this forum and thanks for the post I will certainly have a longer look later ,very best wishes Brian.:banana:

[kickstart]

For making music just with a computer amiga is much better, for midi is more important the software than hardware.

[zylesea]

To me it looks Atari was preferred by professionals and Amiga by amateurs :-)

I mean, music productions created on Amiga are mostly mod songs while on Atari some composers got their creations to hit charts.

Michael Münzing und Luca Anzilotti were using Amiga and hit with some of their stuff the charts pretty successfully. SNAP was their commercially most successful project (The Power went #1 in many countries). But from the Amiga POV their project "16 Bit" is most interesting. The covers are just advertizing and praising the Amiga.

[mrmoonlight]

Madona working on Ray of Life

[mrmoonlight]

Madona working on Ray of Light
 
 
 Quote .Inspired by motherhood, Hinduism, yoga and a "dwindling" English dance producer, the world’s most successful female singer set about reinventing herself. Armed with a "gaffer-taped" Atari and with her baby daughter manning the mixing desk, Madonna made Ray Of Light.
 
 
 After hearing loads of opinions on both the Amiga and the Atari ,the humble Atari seems to be the choice of some of the best Artists whilst the Amiga which I think is brilliant has been left out in the shade some what ,it will be interesting when my Atari st arrives latter this week what hidden talent's she hides ,very best wishes Brian.

[bloodline]

To me it looks Atari was preferred by professionals and Amiga by amateurs :-)

That split is basically correct, and is down to two things... Cubase and Notator.

Both of which were never released for the Amiga (though I understand ports existed at least internally at C-Labs and Steinberg).

These packages were the pinnacle of MIDI sequencing software and by 1993 were available on Mac and PC... And are still available now (as Logic Pro and Cubase), in vastly developed forms on modern hardware, no need to struggle with their dinosaur versions on a relic of a bygone era.

If mr moonlight is just wanting to play around with some vintage hardware, then the ST is a reasonable platform... Though I used the ST that's in my cupboard for about 5min, with the copy of cubase that came with it, before getting fed up it. A GUI should have at least 4 colours or everything looks the same! :-(

I mean, music productions created on Amiga are mostly mod songs while on Atari some composers got their creations to hit charts.

There were a few chart hits produced on the Amiga back in the day, difference is, the Amiga is still used... The Atari is just a museum piece.

[bloodline]

To be perfectly fair, the weird combination of sporting an at at the time quite primitive YM2149 together with the comparably modern 68k affords the Atari ST to have a quite unique and grungy sound of its own that I would say surpasses the Amiga by far in the qualities you mention.

I rather like the YM2149, so much so I've included it in a few projects recently.
Given a choice between an OPN2 or OPN3 chip and Paula, I'd take the Yamaha sound chip.

Each to their own here, I find the YM2149 absolutely horrific. Though, I was able to easily reproduced a YM2149 like sound using Logic Pro X's built in Retro Synth for a friend who does like the sound.

Back on topic, none of the Professional Music packages on the Atari wasted time with the Atari's internal audio hardware.

Also we can add Depeche Mode's Ultra to the list of Albums that used an Atari ST for sequencing, as I noticed in a 1997 copy of Future Music.
-edit- actually three STs! Two running Notator and one running Cubase, plus a Mac running logic  Pro (which was developed from Natator).

[Linde]

Each to their own here, I find the YM2149 absolutely horrific. Though, I was able to easily reproduced a YM2149 like sound using Logic Pro X's built in Retro Synth for a friend who does like the sound.

The whole Atari ST sound palette isn't something you can easily capture in something that isn't specifically made for the purpose. Check this out.

I don't think you can you reasonably argue for the Atari ST sound being less distinct, unique and grungy than the Paula sound.

Back on topic, none of the Professional Music packages on the Atari wasted time with the Atari's internal audio hardware.

Back on topic? I think the above is highly relevant to the discussion. Whether the software is "professional" or not has nothing to do with the topic. As you said, the only reasonable use of these machines at this point is for whatever unique characteristics they had.

And no, the Atari ST isn't a "museum piece", people still use it for music.

[nicholas]

The whole Atari ST sound palette isn't something you can easily capture in something that isn't specifically made for the purpose. Check this out.

I don't think you can you reasonably argue for the Atari ST sound being less distinct, unique and grungy than the Paula sound.


Back on topic? I think the above is highly relevant to the discussion. Whether the software is "professional" or not has nothing to do with the topic. As you said, the only reasonable use of these machines at this point is for whatever unique characteristics they had.

And no, the Atari ST isn't a "museum piece", people still use it for music.

Urgh! Sounds like a fax machine.

[mrmoonlight]

 If mr moonlight is just wanting to play around with some vintage hardware, then the ST is a reasonable platform... Though I used the ST that's in my cupboard for about 5min, with the copy of cubase that came with it, before getting fed up it. A GUI should have at least 4 colours or everything looks the same! :-(



There were a few chart hits produced on the Amiga back in the day, difference is, the Amiga is still used... The Atari is just a museum piece.

 
 Hi that's not true ,The Atari is not
 just a museum piece ,I have listened to quite a lot of the Atari music ,and I think it sounds ok and there are a lot of folk still using them ,so you cant really say its a  museum piece ,I like the Amiga ,but the Atari has a sound that is interesting and different and in my opinion with todays music ,boy do we need some thing different or should we just put up with another talentless strung together boy/ Girl band ,I hope not ,best wishes Brian.

[Linde]

Urgh! Sounds like a fax machine.

My argument isn't about it being good or bad. For the record, I like it and Stu does draw crowds, but I'm arguing for its merits from the given set of parameters of being unique, distinct and grungy.

[Thorham]

I don't think you can you reasonably argue for the Atari ST sound being less distinct, unique and grungy than the Paula sound.

It's probably a lot more distinct than Paula, which is just a sample player.

Whether the software is "professional" or not has nothing to do with the topic.

Anything that you use to earn a living with can be said to be professional

[commodorejohn]

These packages were the pinnacle of MIDI sequencing software and by 1993 were available on Mac and PC... And are still available now (as Logic Pro and Cubase), in vastly developed forms on modern hardware, no need to struggle with their dinosaur versions on a relic of a bygone era.

A matter of opinion. Personally, I find modern "music studio" packages to be just too damn big and overblown. Give me a decent tracker or an oldschool bare-bones MIDI sequencer any day.

[Ral-Clan]

Madona working on Ray of Light
 
 Quote .Inspired by motherhood, Hinduism, yoga and a "dwindling" English dance producer, the world’s most successful female singer set about reinventing herself. Armed with a "gaffer-taped" Atari and with her baby daughter manning the mixing desk, Madonna made Ray Of Light.
 
 After hearing loads of opinions on both the Amiga and the Atari ,the humble Atari seems to be the choice of some of the best Artists whilst the Amiga which I think is brilliant has been left out in the shade some what ,it will be interesting when my Atari st arrives latter this week what hidden talent's she hides ,very best wishes Brian.

I think that forming the impression that the Atari is better for music by basing that opinion on big stars who used it in the past might be skewed by geographics (i.e. the high presence of USA based big stars in the music industry).

An American (USA) musician (like Madonna) in the 1980s/90s probably had a much better chance of finding an Atari for sale in a local store than an Amiga.  The Amiga was not well marketed / distributed in the States.  Atari had a better presence there - so of course more American musicians would have ended up with it.

I'm not trying to say the Atari DIDN'T have more presence in the music industry than the Amiga.  I'm just trying to say that any greater presence it did have WASN'T because it was actually more capable than the Amiga - the two machines were both quite capable. Atari's domination among musicians was rather that based on the fact that it had the built-in MIDI interface and that it was better marketed in the USA (which produces a high percentage of the commercial music the world is exposed to).  The Atari was quite capable, but until you've tried Bars & Pipes on the Amiga, you haven't seen the full picture.

I'll agree with CommodoreJohn...if all you want to do is run a MIDI based studio, the older software IS better than the newer software.  Try to find a currently developed, dedicated MIDI-only software sequencer for Windows 8.  It's nigh impossible! There are only a couple I am aware of and they are not much better than the old MIDI packages from the 1990s.  Running a full fledged DAW (Digital Audio Workstation - i.e. ProTools, CakeWalk) just to use only the MIDI section is overkill (not to mention that MIDI is often an afterthought in many of today's DAWs).

Just remember, when you're tallying all the artists that used Ataris vs. Amigas - make sure you have an equal ratio of American and non-American artists.  I'll bet that outside the USA, the Amiga is more equally represented.