Why do music modules sound different on anything other than Amiga?

[Axxy]

Originally Posted by bLAZER

You mean BZR Player?

It was a deliberate typo to see if you would spot it. Well done, you did...

[th4t1guy]

XMPlay has a Delix plugin that is basically just a wrapper for a port of uade.
If you give it the wrong file sometimes it'll bomb with a guru error.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Axxy

Anyways, the exotic formats I'm not interested in, just tracker modules that I can play on my PC, as I no longer have an amiga.

Well thats a shame as you're missing out on the best music the Amiga has to offer.

In my opinion the best music is in formats like TFMX, Future Composer, SIDmon, etc. Not Protracker MOD.

[chip]

I really think best music it doesn't depend on the kind of format

I mean, i love Exotic formats, but beautiful tunes are also in Protracker format

The thing different between the various formats is the sound

I'm able to spot most of them, but not all

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by chip

I really think best music it doesn't depend on the kind of format

I mean, i love Exotic formats, but beautiful tunes are also in Protracker format

The thing different between the various formats is the sound

I'm able to spot most of them, but not all

Whilst I agree with this, it has to be said that many of these exotic formats offer better/more interesting capabilities than the standard Protracker mod.

[Axxy]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Well thats a shame as you're missing out on the best music the Amiga has to offer.

In my opinion the best music is in formats like TFMX, Future Composer, SIDmon, etc. Not Protracker MOD.

It's not to say that have haven't listened to those formats, especially when I had an amiga back in the day. (My favourite tune back then was Allister Brimble' Alien Breed in BP2 format).

But I was very much more interested in the demoscene, which were predominately tracker based music back then. When the amiga and demoscene were falling off, I migrated over to the PC where a more tracker orientated mod-scene began (pre-mp3 era) and I carried on collecting PC formats as well as amiga modules...

[chris70c]

You may want to try this:

https://www.neoartcr.com/flod.htm

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by chris70c

You may want to try this:

https://www.neoartcr.com/flod.htm

Yuck... There's only one player worth using and that's UADE.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Axxy

When the amiga and demoscene were falling off

Never happened. The Amiga is still an active and vibrant part of the Demoscene to this day.

[Steffest]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Yuck... There's only one player worth using and that's UADE.

No, there's only one player worth using and that is the player/program used by the composer of the song.
That's the only way to hear it exactly like the composer intended.
The mods that are being produced today are almost certainly not made on a real Amiga or with Amiga software, so they will sound "not as intended" on Amiga, or UADE, or whatever.
And even if it IS an original Amiga tune: an A500 sounds different then an A1200 so you're still not sure ...

It reminds me of those discussions that Vinyl sounds better then CD.
Or how certain bands produce their albums on cassette tapes, so you should listen to them on one.
Or how mp3 compression squeezes everything to shit.

Bottom line: it's pointless: there is no "best player" - just use what you like and enjoy the music, no need to be dogmatic about it.

[chip]

I'm probably dogmatic then

My ears hear a lot of difference between a PC player and an Amiga one

Is for this reason that i always use EaglePlayer under emulation and not XMPlay under Windows

Result is that EaglePlayer playback is identical to the original playback

That doesn't happen with XMPlay

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Steffest

No, there's only one player worth using and that is the player/program used by the composer of the song.
That's the only way to hear it exactly like the composer intended.

Rubbish.

Originally Posted by Steffest

The mods that are being produced today are almost certainly not made on a real Amiga or with Amiga software, so they will sound "not as intended" on Amiga, or UADE, or whatever.

Well if that's the case, then the tracker is bugged.

Originally Posted by Steffest

And even if it IS an original Amiga tune: an A500 sounds different then an A1200 so you're still not sure ...

Only slightly.

Originally Posted by Steffest

It reminds me of those discussions that Vinyl sounds better then CD.

It does. If you disagree we're wasting our time even having this discussion.

[brett71]

Say what you guys like about Deliplayer, but there were a few Protracker MODs and some exotics that would only play correctly, i.e. the same as an actual Amiga, using Deliplayer for me. And I promptly used Deliplayer to output them as MP3's so I wouldn't have any problems in the future.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

It does. If you disagree we're wasting our time even having this discussion.

Vinyl sounds better than CD?

Sorry, Hewitson, you've just lost ALL credibility. No coming back now.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Vinyl sounds better than CD?

Sorry, Hewitson, you've just lost ALL credibility. No coming back now.

Try listening to a brand new record on a Technics SL-1200mkII with a good quality preamp and hi-fi system. The sound quality will blow you away.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Try listening to a brand new record on a Technics SL-1200mkII with a good quality preamp and hi-fi system. The sound quality will blow you away.

No, I won't. Everyone knows that records favour the LOW frequencies because of their physical nature, and so higher frequencies will not fare anywhere near as well. You're talking about vibrations in a solid groove combined with electromagnetic induction, which work fine with low frequencies but obviously struggle with high pitches, unlike compact disc which treats ALL frequencies equally, with error correction. As soon as records get dust or even scratches, they're screwed.

And you favour records? Please. Everyone knows vinyl collectors buy records for the cover art, nothing more.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Foebane

No, I won't. Everyone knows that records favour the LOW frequencies because of their physical nature, and so higher frequencies will not fare anywhere near as well. You're talking about vibrations in a solid groove combined with electromagnetic induction, which work fine with low frequencies but obviously struggle with high pitches, unlike compact disc which treats ALL frequencies equally, with error correction. As soon as records get dust or even scratches, they're screwed.

And you favour records? Please. Everyone knows vinyl collectors buy records for the cover art, nothing more.

Seriously? Records have FAR superior high frequency response to that of CD's. Obviously, you've heard very few, if any!

A CD is limited at 22.05khz (half the samplerate of 44.1khz). A record suffers from no such limitation since it's an analogue source. In fact, some records contain frequencies all the way up to 50khz!

The difference is like night and day. You'll hear sounds on vinyl you didn't even know were there on the CD. The compact disc was a giant step backwards in sound quality.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The compact disc was a giant step backwards in sound quality.

I'd rather do without the crackles and hiss and ZZZZRRRRPPP scratches, thankyouverymuch.

To be honest, I do like the aesthetics of records and their players, the way the stylus arm follows the curve of the record, the skill of putting the stylus on the right spot, even the way the LPs hang over the side of the players. Last of all, my childhood record player had a multi-record holder that would release a single record after each song had played, and a forked arm at the top to help push the records in the pile down - I always marvelled at how it didn't drop more than one record at a time. And of course, the way the arm raises at the end and moves back to the start and even parks itself.

So I can appreciate what you're saying about records, and CDs do skip even more annoyingly than records, and records can achieve high frequencies like that, I did not know, but then again, I don't listen to either these days, it's all Spotify Free for me. I was always more into computer music than "pop" music.

[Hewitson]

A well looked after record collection won't suffer from many pops and crackles. Also doesn't suffer from the horrible compression that is used in all CD mastering.

It's a shame that most people (including myself) listen to most of their music online these days. If you'd have told someone in 1970 that we'd be listening to worse quality music in 2018, they'd have laughed.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Seriously? Records have FAR superior high frequency response to that of CD's. Obviously, you've heard very few, if any!

A CD is limited at 22.05khz (half the samplerate of 44.1khz). A record suffers from no such limitation since it's an analogue source. In fact, some records contain frequencies all the way up to 50khz!

The difference is like night and day. You'll hear sounds on vinyl you didn't even know were there on the CD. The compact disc was a giant step backwards in sound quality.

While the frequency response of vinyl can be better in theory, it often isn't.

The vast majority of record players can't reproduce sounds anywhere near 50KHz due to limits of the stylus/cartridge used. Furthermore, record mastering imparts all sorts of limitations on source audio that do not exist for CD audio mastering (I found a small list of stuff to think about here: https://www.gottagrooverecords.com/vinyl-mastering/).

Moreover, vinyl mastering tends to use low-cut and high-cut filters to filter out very low and very high frequencies. I could not easily find sources for the usual values used*, but the article I linked to did note:

Originally Posted by bass on vinyl

Always center your bass frequencies. Drums, bass guitar and low synths need to be in the center of the stereo image to ensure proper groove geometry.

and

Originally Posted by high frequencies

The vinyl medium does not “like” a lot of high frequency information — brightness/hotness of certain high frequencies are the most common issue we see on the audio masters we receive. Instruments such as hi-hats, cymbals and tambourines often cause distortion if all high end is allowed to pass through to the cutting lathe. Vocals that contain a lot of “SSSS” sounds (sibilance) will also cause a distorted sound on your master recording if not properly treated.

Those are limits that simply do not exist for CD's in the same way.

What I'm getting at here is that it's not as simple as you're claiming here - yes, vinyl can in theory support higher frequencies. But many records didn't contain such high frequency information regardless of the theoretical abilities. And that aside there are some clear drawbacks to vinyl audio quality as well - CD has no limits on what is in what channel and doesn't care if high frequency sounds are low or high volume, while vinyl does and can/will distort these types of sounds.

Edit: there is more to be said about vinyl frequency response (such as how it's anything but flat when compared to CD), but it's also just a small part of the total picture. Signal to noise ratio on vinyl is much worse than CD, stereo separation is much worse as well and to top it off vinyl has wow & flutter which is totally absent on CD's (CD's can have jitter, though this tends to be well below the hearing threshold in all but the cheapest of players). And then there is the issue of degradation - each playback of a vinyl record will destroy part of the data on there, usually starting at the high end of the frequency range.

I can't get behind the idea that CD's are overall worse in audio quality. They may have a theoretically lower FR than vinyl, but they score very well on some other really relevant elements. The problems with CD audio quality have much more to do with how sound is being mastered today - not the medium itself. I'm willing to bet that modern vinyl records containing non-classical music will also be much more compressed than before.

*) I did find values of 100Hz for low-cut and 18KHz for high-cut, but these are apparently not universally used.