New Amiga Mp3 site

[ChrisNZ]

Hi people, Great amiga site by the way.

Just wanted you amiga fans to know that I have a section of my site that has classic amiga tunes rehashed into Mp3s. The site also has a quick preview feature first, before you download the track. More Mp3s will be added when I get the time.

My sites here below, enjoy!
Amiga Mp3s

Regards
Chris

Edit: Updated to AmigaMusic.com

[killergorilla]

Nice looking site! I hope you keep it up as I've always wanted to see a site like this!

[Bloodwych]

Yeah, great site! Nice work and thanks for sharing.

Oh, and welcome to EAB!!!!!!!

[ChrisNZ]

Cheers, hope you like it. Keep checking back for new mp3s. And I'm open to suggestions for good tunes as Mp3

Chris
http://chrisnz.com/amiga-music-mp3s/

[alexh]

Are they JUST the original amiga tunes or remixes?

[plasmatron]

Originally Posted by alexh

Are they JUST the original amiga tunes or remixes?

Originals

[quahappy]

Slick, fast, smooth, a real looker... no, I'm not talking about my dream car!

Very well presented and a fabulous site. Can't wait for more mp3s to be added.

Fab work ChrisNZ

[BippyM]

I have quite a lot of Amiga MP3s if you want any ChrisNZ..

Gimme a holler and I'll let you know how to get them

[alexh]

Nice site, but I honestly dont see the point

Deliplayer (or UADE) together with Exotica is the better way to go.

[Psycreator[mds]]

Ok checked your site Chris, but do yourself a favour. When you talk about high quality mp3, then do high quality mp3.
The Idea is not that bad between. But quality...

I do not hope you recorded direct from the Amiga Audio Outputs, and if yes, even then it could be done better.

As far as I know any PC Mod player can render Modules to a WAV or AIFF stream, if you use an Amiga for playing, the Protracker Modules could be renderd to higher quality with DigiboosterPro for example.
If you want to use a real Amiga wich should be recorded realtime, try to warm the sound a little bit up by using a real Analog Mixing desk before you put the stream to a PC Soundcard.
The streams on your website are mostly 128kbit mp3 ok... but seems you recorded from a audiotape, or you did to much denoise to a final WAV stream, both will do heavy unregular dephasing in the final mix.
You should record normal in 16bit 44,1khz, perhabs only a little bit Bandpass filtering to minimise critical noise, the rest should stay as it is. Recording in 24bit makes no sense, course quantising noise from downsampling to 16bit will only make the sound even worster, better stay 16bit and good.
But best way would be recording over a PC Module player, there the algorithms for bit quantsing from 8 to 16bit are good enough for good quality of course.

Sorry did not find any information on your site how you did the mp3, let us know perhabs we can help you more for "high quality"

[ChrisNZ]

Originally Posted by alexh

Nice site, but I honestly dont see the point

Deliplayer (or UADE) together with Exotica is the better way to go.

No your right, but not every one wants to be searching for trackers etc to play the songs. For example, trying to play wings? Not everone is into mod files, delitracker etc. My site is aimed at people just looking for a few tunes to stream and download and play without spending hours searching for the correct prog to play it.

Mp3 format is easy and nowdays, stereo and car stereos to play mp3s too.

Main reason, how do you stream the orignals on a website? If you know please let me know

Sure you could have hundreds of mod files for a few mp3s. But since most ppl dont have 1 gig harddrives....space is not really an issue?

Bah anyway there are always ones out there to knock down ones efforts.

[ChrisNZ]

Originally Posted by Psycreator[mds]

Ok checked your site Chris, but do yourself a favour. When you talk about high quality mp3, then do high quality mp3.
The Idea is not that bad between. But quality...

I do not hope you recorded direct from the Amiga Audio Outputs, and if yes, even then it could be done better.

As far as I know any PC Mod player can render Modules to a WAV or AIFF stream, if you use an Amiga for playing, the Protracker Modules could be renderd to higher quality with DigiboosterPro for example.
If you want to use a real Amiga wich should be recorded realtime, try to warm the sound a little bit up by using a real Analog Mixing desk before you put the stream to a PC Soundcard.
The streams on your website are mostly 128kbit mp3 ok... but seems you recorded from a audiotape, or you did to much denoise to a final WAV stream, both will do heavy unregular dephasing in the final mix.
You should record normal in 16bit 44,1khz, perhabs only a little bit Bandpass filtering to minimise critical noise, the rest should stay as it is. Recording in 24bit makes no sense, course quantising noise from downsampling to 16bit will only make the sound even worster, better stay 16bit and good.
But best way would be recording over a PC Module player, there the algorithms for bit quantsing from 8 to 16bit are good enough for good quality of course.

Sorry did not find any information on your site how you did the mp3, let us know perhabs we can help you more for "high quality"

No the samples (Streams) are low quality 64kbs, so of course they dont sound good. Its to keep the buffer times down and gives users a preview before downloading. Listen to a downloaded file VS the sample you'll see what I mean.

Sorry I'm no sound expert, but 128kbs is CD qaulity correct? I mean I could try 200Kbs 48htz+ , studio & hollywood dobly qaulity etc etc. I think (personaly), again im not a expert, 128kbs sounds ok to my ears. So I say thats high qaulity Vs 64kbs Mono? And it gives ok file sizes. Under 1mb / sec. The old debate file size Vs quality.

Listen to some of the tunes Vs the original with headphones. Its pretty close I think I admit some are better that others. Its file size Vs qaulity and banwidth.

Thank you for the tips tho. On a limited time scale, what do you recommend I record these tunes as. Keeping in mind the file size ?


Edit: Samples

http://chrisnz.com/lotus-series-amiga-music/

Hi for a good example download any tracks here in Lotus 2 (above link) and review the sound qaulity. This is my latest update. The qaulity I think most people will find 100% acceptable.

[Psycreator[mds]]

Originally Posted by ChrisNZ

No the samples (Streams) are low quality 64kbs, so of course they dont sound good. Its to keep the buffer times down and gives users a preview before downloading. Listen to a downloaded file VS the sample you'll see what I mean.

Sorry I'm no sound expert, but 128kbs is CD qaulity correct? I mean I could try 200Kbs 48htz+ , studio & hollywood dobly qaulity etc etc. I think (personaly), again im not a expert, 128kbs sounds ok to my ears. So I say thats high qaulity Vs 64kbs Mono? And it gives ok file sizes. Under 1mb / sec. The old debate file size Vs quality.

Listen to some of the tunes Vs the original with headphones. Its pretty close I think I admit some are better that others. Its file size Vs qaulity and banwidth.

Thank you for the tips tho. On a limited time scale, what do you recommend I record these tunes as. Keeping in mind the file size ?

Did not listen to that stream sorry, I've downloaded a few of the 128kbit mp3.
128kbit CBR encoded streams should be enough, and it is not the problem off the bitrate in my opinion. The recording seems to be to low quality, so the endresult is not so good. I can hear Noise everywhere, wich tells me that the source stream was bad recorded, some timeing problems included. PErhabs the problem is the replayer itself, on the Agony Intro Sound it seems that you used a kind of Stereo Spreader, Surround or call it whatever technique for Recording. perhabs it is better to record only Mono First without Stereo Seperation at all, no FX. Perhabs the WAV is better then so you can use some Equilizer, Exiter or Whatever to warm the sound up. Mono Is even better for listening than those extreme Stereo thing.
And do you use Lame as mp3 encoder or what do you use for doing mp3?

Hm... I test it for myself now on the Agony intro, for comparing reasons. Something is really strange....

[Psycreator[mds]]

Seems it is an Encoder problem only, perhabs your does limit the frequence bandwith to much. For comparing I've uploaded the agony intro as mp3 in 128kbit to one of my webspaces. This tune is not the best gametune, even the original quality is shit for my taste, but compare it to your mp3 and you hear what I mean. MY example got a little bit more power in th heights, I did even not overwork it, you will hear some clicks here and there, but seems to be normal. But it is closer to the original.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/psycho_moods/agony.mp3

In my opinion as I sayed only a problem of the Encoder, seems Lame standard settings are to underpowered in 128kbit, specialy the preset settings. Perhabs tweaking arround with the filters could bring a better sound, normaly lame is the best encoder, but without tweaking some filters it is not as good as weaker encoders without Band Filters, try that.

[ChrisNZ]

Your agony track is good, I think becasue the original has noise in it. You can't really improve on that.

Im using stereo in, and recording directly to mp3 by the way. Direct from the amiga. In most cases. Sometimes the result is better if the stereo is joint i find. otherwise as you know with the Amiga only one speaker at times has sound. Not so good with headphones..

[Psycreator[mds]]

Hi Chris :O)
Ok direct from Amiga is a little bit tricky I know, the Amiga Paula chip is extreme noisy, electronical hum included. But some filters can help perhabs, puting the sound trough a Analog/Digital Interace too. I know some tricks, but let's see... will connect my Miggy trough my Mixing Desk today and try to warm up some sounds there. I will check your list wich sounds you got allready, and try some you don't have, so you can use them after I recorded them, but only if the result is good of course ))

[mcbpete]

Originally Posted by ChrisNZ

Sorry I'm no sound expert, but 128kbs is CD qaulity correct?

Sorry man, I'll have to pick you up with that one but 128kbps is WAAAAY below CD quality. 320kbps is closer but still not actually cd quality (which is actually around 1400kbps) but probably overkill for this project. A happy comprimise between quality and file size is probably around 192kbps (although if you have 'super high quality equiptment' 256kbps is generally preferable)

[killergorilla]

You could always create the mp3s using the wav output from WinUAE couldn't you?

[Bloodwych]

For most MP3's, variable bit rates (VBR) have the best of both worlds - small size due to increasing/decreasing bitrates as required.

All my mp3's are in VBR (variable bit rate) "alt preset standard" setting using a recommended lame build from hydrogenaudio.org. They can go as high as the max 320kbps if necessary and right down to the min at silent parts.

They extensively tested its performance using top equipment and involved many people from the forum in listening tests before arriving at the final settings.

For Amiga tunes though I'm not sure how viable VBR is due to the 4 channel limited nature of the tunes, CBR might even be better. Those ones on your site seem fine to me, but if you want some great advice post at hydrogenaudio and they'll soon let you know!

[Psycreator[mds]]

Hope Chris will read this here )

I finished the importend maintunes of Battle Squadron today. I recorded them using Amiga Paula 8bit as source, Analog Mixer and some other Equipment for recording. Anything recorded without to extreme Stereo, I only freshen up the sound by adding some exiter, chorus, reverb and some Filters. I think it is better for hearing over Headphones and HiFi equipment. Leech it here:

http://mitglied.lycos.de/psycho_mood...lesquadron.zip

The archive includes 4 128kbit streams, and 4 short previews in 64kbit stereo. 11 MB total

Use them if you like for your homepage, no problem. Some coments welcomed, how do you like it this way? The other too, leech as long the file is up, sorry only Lycos linked... sucks but I have no other great webspace left at the moment )