Amiga (Paula) vs Atari ST (Yamaha AY)

[donnie]

that looks awesome. Graphics are incredibly good.

This just proves with modern color management. 16 colors is more than you need.

In some ways the atari st sound chip has aged better than amiga. Mainly because it does not allow for clinky clonky samples. Even today really high quality games get ruined by windows free ware esque binky bonky samples.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by donnie

In some ways the atari st sound chip has aged better than amiga. Mainly because it does not allow for clinky clonky samples.

HAHAHAHAHA! You ARE joking! Samples are better than beeps, every time.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Foebane

HAHAHAHAHA! You ARE joking! Samples are better than beeps, every time.

Depends on the samples

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by britelite

Depends on the samples

I'm late in replying, but yes, the actual samples could be as clean as possible or very bad. A low playback rate doesn't help, neither. But when the A1200 came out with its extra chipmem, I noticed a definite improvement in the clarity of audio samples compared to the A500, of course because they've got more memory to play with and can have higher playback rates.

I would also imagine that in demos that work in 64k or less, the audio samples are not stored, but generated upon execution and before the demo starts proper, according to a mathematical formula, which is why they usually have a kind of synth sound.

What I meant in my previous post is that being able to play back samples opens up a whole world of musical and sound effect possibilities. A sound chip that can only play back square waves or simple variations upon a sine wave is much more limited. The Yamaha AY chip is a cheap, budget tone generator at best, whilst the ultimate evolution of this kind of relatively simple and limited sound (albeit executed in a very versatile way) is SID.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Foebane

What I meant in my previous post is that being able to play back samples opens up a whole world of musical and sound effect possibilities.

That's not what you said though, you said samples are ALWAYS better, which I strongly disagree with. While samples do open up possibilities, the audio can still be ruined by bad choices in sound design. I'd take good chip sounds over bad samples (and I'm not talking about audio quality here) any day of the week.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by britelite

That's not what you said though, you said samples are ALWAYS better

Knee-jerk reaction on my part, I guess I'm just biased.

EDIT: And yes, I did own an Atari ST for a few months, so I know from first-hand experience how the Yamaha AY chip is.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Knee-jerk reaction on my part, I guess I'm just biased.

EDIT: And yes, I did own an Atari ST for a few months, so I know from first-hand experience how the Yamaha AY chip is.

Have to disagree.

Go listen to the ST version of Xenon (the first one), I find the music to that FAR superior to the Amiga version, where David Whittaker appeared to stick in any old crap he could find, with the worst sounding electric guitar sample i've ever heard!

Atari ST
[ Show youtube player ]

Amiga
[ Show youtube player ]

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Go listen to the ST version of Xenon (the first one), I find the music to that FAR superior to the Amiga version, where David Whittaker appeared to stick in any old crap he could find, with the worst sounding electric guitar sample i've ever heard!

Atari ST
[ Show youtube player ]

Amiga
[ Show youtube player ]

I agree, the Amiga version sounds more "stilted" and there's that weird sample that sounds out of line with the rest of them.

I didn't mention it before, but I too have preferences for ST over Amiga tunes, namely the first Shadow of the Beast intro tune, that I first heard on ST and sounds lovely and smooth. Compared with the Amiga version, which sounds (again) stilted to me, with pauses and timing issues, I always liked the ST version more, regardless of the quality of the samples.

Atari ST
[ Show youtube player ]

Amiga
[ Show youtube player ]

So yes, Galahad, you and Britelite are correct, the Amiga is not always the best at music.

[DamienD]

First time I've heard the music for SotB on the Atari ST.

...but no way on Earth does it sound better than the Amiga version

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I agree, the Amiga version sounds more "stilted" and there's that weird sample that sounds out of line with the rest of them.

I didn't mention it before, but I too have preferences for ST over Amiga tunes, namely the first Shadow of the Beast intro tune, that I first heard on ST and sounds lovely and smooth. Compared with the Amiga version, which sounds (again) stilted to me, with pauses and timing issues, I always liked the ST version more, regardless of the quality of the samples.

Atari ST
[ Show youtube player ]

Amiga
[ Show youtube player ]

So yes, Galahad, you and Britelite are correct, the Amiga is not always the best at music.

Is this a NTSC/PAL mismatch or some emulation problem?
It sounds better here:

[ Show youtube player ]

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by DamienD

First time I've heard the music for SotB on the Atari ST.

...but way on Earth does it sound better than the Amiga version

Are you saying it does or not? Your response isn't very clear: it seems you think it does, judging by the first half of your sentence, but then you bring up the "nuts" emoticon, indicating that you think it doesn't. Did you forget the "no" between "but" and "way"?

OK, the ST samples aren't that clear (they never would be as the Yamaha AY was never really designed for sample playback), but the fluidity of the playback on ST is solid compared to Amiga: I mean, on the latter, you can hear the music playback go silent for fractions of a second before it resumes, and the interval rate is nowhere even at all.

Maybe this is an issue with games only, as demos tend to have more reliable and robust music playback routines.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Are you saying it does or not? Your response isn't very clear: it seems you think it does, judging by the first half of your sentence, but then you bring up the "nuts" emoticon, indicating that you think it doesn't. Did you forget the "no" between "but" and "way"?

Yes, I left "no" out of the sentence...

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Is this a NTSC/PAL mismatch or some emulation problem?
It sounds better here:

[ Show youtube player ]

I vividly remember the actual hardware for SotB intro music playback on both ST and Amiga, even after a couple of decades, and on the games themselves, they sounded as I represented the videos I linked to.

It's got nothing to do with NTSC/PAL mismatch (they would sound different in tempo), and not emulation, neither.

I say it is down to the player routine only: the one in the Amiga game was not that good. I'm sure they changed it for the sequels, as they sound better throughout.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Have to disagree.

Go listen to the ST version of Xenon (the first one), I find the music to that FAR superior to the Amiga version, where David Whittaker appeared to stick in any old crap he could find, with the worst sounding electric guitar sample i've ever heard!

Atari ST
[ Show youtube player ]

Amiga
[ Show youtube player ]

That guitar was also one of sonix provided samples and was also played in the Amiga world with the obvious "smoke on the water" main riff!
For me in 1987 when i heard it the first time seeing Xenon was something incredible that could come out from an home machine; and Xenon was the first game i did launch and put full power in my stereo the day i got my Amiga 500 in 1988!!!

[ Show youtube player ]

Then, of course, the overuse and misuse of that same sample made it bad as we know it now!
(by the way, the Xenon 1 song sounds much better with audio filter on imo
Zeusdaz do unemulate long plays and this one make hear the difference):
[ Show youtube player ]

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by DamienD

First time I've heard the music for SotB on the Atari ST.

...but no way on Earth does it sound better than the Amiga version

I like the Amiga version more only for the reason that it is toned down quite a lot, it's a really odd tune. The Atari ST version's repeated high pitch tones hurt my ears.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Foebane

IWhat I meant in my previous post is that being able to play back samples opens up a whole world of musical and sound effect possibilities. A sound chip that can only play back square waves or simple variations upon a sine wave is much more limited. The Yamaha AY chip is a cheap, budget tone generator at best, whilst the ultimate evolution of this kind of relatively simple and limited sound (albeit executed in a very versatile way) is SID.

Absolute garbage in my opinion. Firstly, the AY chips are manufactured by General Instruments. The Yamaha variant is the YM.

Paula is a basic DAC that can only playback samples.

The AY/YM chips are fully fledged synthesizers (that can in many cases also do high quality PCM playback).

Paula is the one that's limited, she couldn't even dream of doing some of the things I've heard the YM chips do. I do agree that the chip used in the ST sucks, but I don't think you realise how many different models of YM there is, and how different they are from each other.

If you want to hear how good these chips can sound, go listen to some tunes from Thunder Force IV!

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The AY/YM chips are fully fledged synthesizers (that can in many cases also do high quality PCM playback).

He's specifically talking about the ST sound chip, which IS pretty much just a square wave generator. That there are other (more advanced) YM-chips available isn't relevant in this discussion.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Paula is the one that's limited, she couldn't even dream of doing some of the things I've heard the YM chips do. I do agree that the chip used in the ST sucks, but I don't think you realise how many different models of YM there is, and how different they are from each other.

Paula is samples, and samples can do ANYTHING. Please, tell me how samples are limited compared to synthesisers? After all, compact discs are basically huge, long samples, and I don't see modern-day PC or console games using synthesis at all, but samples throughout.

[DamienD]

Can we get back on topic please and stop comparing audio devices between different computers?

Start a new thread if that's what you want to discuss...

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by britelite

He's specifically talking about the ST sound chip, which IS pretty much just a square wave generator. That there are other (more advanced) YM-chips available isn't relevant in this discussion.

All YM chips were put in the same basket though. "Yamaha AY chip" refers to the whole AY and YM range of chips, not just specifically the one used in the ST.

Originally Posted by Foebane

Paula is samples, and samples can do ANYTHING. Please, tell me how samples are limited compared to synthesisers?

Do you not see that a simple DAC is a much more primitive device than a synthesizer which is capable of generating its own sounds?


Also, as stated in my previous post, many YM chips do offer high quality sample playback. These ones in particular make the 4 channel Paula DAC look extremely poor.

Edit: Sorry Damien, I started typing this post before I had seen yours.

Edit 2: It's difficult to get specifications for the Yamaha chips but I managed to find them for the YM2612. This is the chip used in the Megadrive, I can only imagine later YM chips had even better sound quality.

FM sample rate: 53.267 kHz (NTSC), 52.781 kHz (PAL)

PCM sampling rate: Maximum: 44.1 kHz