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Mark Wright · 19 December 2013, 04:09

When I was making music for commercial release using my Amiga back in the early 90s, I had it wired through an external mixer to give all four channels as one mono input (fader up to the top) and another input with the usual Amiga stereo image (fader about half-way up) which worked great. Adding an Alesis Proverb to the quieter stereo image gave a nice depth without drowning the mix.

Here's one of my tracks (from 1990 but released in 91) which was mastered *direct* from the output of my crappy old Maplin mixer. It's just an A500 running Linel's SoundFX without any EQ or post-processing but using the technique described above. Hear for yourself (in glorious YouTube quality) the scratchy result once it hit vinyl:

[ Show youtube player ]

I have tried several times since to update some of my ancient Amiga tracks, deliberately choosing ones that lend themselves to 2013-style post-production, but the results have always been awful. I've got various unfinished Pro Tools/Audition projects lying around because, even after recording all four channels separately using Delitracker and carefully adding pseudo stereo effects/delay/reverb/phasing/filtering to things like strings, synth stabs and so on, I just can't find the "sweet spot" to make the end result superior to the original.

I've tried EQing things individually, cleaning up original samples, attempted various processing/compression settings before mastering, but the eventual mixdown always sounds horribly over-produced and completely unnatural. Maybe it's because I'm so used to how they sound naked that I can't appreciate them covered in studio make-up. And of course, the old adage - garbage in, garbage out :-) It's not nice having your treasured archive masterpieces exposed for the ton of junk they truly were/are. So I've given up :-)

Anyway.

Here's the only experiment I considered to be at least partially successful, and that's only because I propped up the original with more contemporary overlays and FX.

A 2007 mix of a track I originally made in 1990, produced entirely digitally using unenhanced WAV recordings from WinUAE and sexed up within Adobe Audition:

http://www.radiofriendly.co.uk/trueenergy2007.mp3

And the original, from my 1990 Silents UK "Full Power Music Disk" written using Linel's SoundFX (I had my Amiga wired mono through a mixing desk at the time - and the voice you hear is a 16 year old me):

http://www.radiofriendly.co.uk/trueenergy.mp3

Sorry for the off-topic ramble - maybe I should start a "Remastering Amiga Audio" thread :-)

19 December 2013, 04:09	#7
Mark Wright Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Hove, actually Posts: 218	When I was making music for commercial release using my Amiga back in the early 90s, I had it wired through an external mixer to give all four channels as one mono input (fader up to the top) and another input with the usual Amiga stereo image (fader about half-way up) which worked great. Adding an Alesis Proverb to the quieter stereo image gave a nice depth without drowning the mix. Here's one of my tracks (from 1990 but released in 91) which was mastered direct from the output of my crappy old Maplin mixer. It's just an A500 running Linel's SoundFX without any EQ or post-processing but using the technique described above. Hear for yourself (in glorious YouTube quality) the scratchy result once it hit vinyl: [ Show youtube player ] I have tried several times since to update some of my ancient Amiga tracks, deliberately choosing ones that lend themselves to 2013-style post-production, but the results have always been awful. I've got various unfinished Pro Tools/Audition projects lying around because, even after recording all four channels separately using Delitracker and carefully adding pseudo stereo effects/delay/reverb/phasing/filtering to things like strings, synth stabs and so on, I just can't find the "sweet spot" to make the end result superior to the original. I've tried EQing things individually, cleaning up original samples, attempted various processing/compression settings before mastering, but the eventual mixdown always sounds horribly over-produced and completely unnatural. Maybe it's because I'm so used to how they sound naked that I can't appreciate them covered in studio make-up. And of course, the old adage - garbage in, garbage out :-) It's not nice having your treasured archive masterpieces exposed for the ton of junk they truly were/are. So I've given up :-) Anyway. Here's the only experiment I considered to be at least partially successful, and that's only because I propped up the original with more contemporary overlays and FX. A 2007 mix of a track I originally made in 1990, produced entirely digitally using unenhanced WAV recordings from WinUAE and sexed up within Adobe Audition: http://www.radiofriendly.co.uk/trueenergy2007.mp3 And the original, from my 1990 Silents UK "Full Power Music Disk" written using Linel's SoundFX (I had my Amiga wired mono through a mixing desk at the time - and the voice you hear is a 16 year old me): http://www.radiofriendly.co.uk/trueenergy.mp3 Sorry for the off-topic ramble - maybe I should start a "Remastering Amiga Audio" thread :-)