Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[no9]

Originally Posted by Steril707

To be fair, the A1200 could be equipped with a hard disk, and 16 bit would have been more useful for music production off course.

I just don't think that 16 bit was incredibly necessary for 1992s level of bedroom sampling...see my post above

I agree with all that you wrote there. And I think 16-bit sound have it's use but only in music niche. So it is difficult to argue for '16-bit is always more useful and versatile than 8-bit in sound' since it was pointed many times in this thread that in game business it is not. Amiga games was far from utilize already existing potential of Paula if we talking on bits and sample rates. But those same games were constantly choking on 4 voices sound limit since a decade because that dilemma ('music or sfx?') was well known even on 8-bit computers. Even effects like echo, flanger and more can be quite easily emulated with more voices available (to some degree of fidelity) with virtually no CPU/memory overhead.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by jizmo

But it would've given more headroom to take the sound further if you'd wanted. Many of the Amiga musicians really wanted as they were hitting the limits of what Paula offered and started migrating to other platforms because of this.

Which other platforms?

[jizmo]

Originally Posted by Steril707

The Amiga was kind of the birth place for a lot of 90ies sample based music, Jungle and DnB for example.

Yes! Especially in Europe the electric scene had sizeable roots in Amiga.

If you browse through the music catalogue of the era, the Amiga references pop up left right and center as well as cases of blatant plagiarism.

Originally Posted by Steril707

It was a cheap sampler for its time, and usually people really didn't care that much about the 8 bit, or even embraced the rawness of its sound.

This was the starting point, but as you wanted to take things further, you always did hit that hardware ceiling you wished wasn't there. Some did embrace this like some embrace the lo-fi nature of the 8-bit computers, but quite a many moved on as higher fidelity was available elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Steril707

Also, with some external effect units you could make this sound really good.

This is true. Just plugging into a cheap echo/reverb and adding a mixer takes the sound stage to a completely different level.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Which other platforms?

PC or synth workstations that began offering build-in multitrack sequencers at the time.

Originally Posted by no9

I agree with all that you wrote there. And I think 16-bit sound have it's use but only in music niche.

Sorry to hear you share the Commodore's view about music being a niche on Amiga. I'd say there were easily ten times more hobbyist musicians using Amiga primarily for composing, remixing and sampling than there were people using Amiga for spreadsheets, desktop publishing or even creating art in DPaint.

[Tigerskunk]

Not that anyone thinks I would have been against 16 bit sound quality on the Amiga.
What I am saying is, that simply adding a second Paula would have done wonders, and should have been doable without too much trouble, I guess.

I love using my Elektron Octatrack, and this thing also only has 8 Sounds playing at the same time (those are stereo, though) which I use for mixing down whole tracks.

[no9]

Precisely. We are talking about maximising benefits for the users at minimum expense from company point of view. Not saying that the 1992 computer didn't deserve whole new sound chip.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Steril707

What I am saying is, that simply adding a second Paula would have done wonders, and should have been doable without too much trouble, I guess.

I afraid it isn't quite that simple. A second Paula would have required four additional DMA slots to receive sample data, and thus Alice (or Agnus) would have to be expanded as well. In particular, you would need to allocate time slots for the four additional DMA channels from somewhere.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by jizmo

Yes, almost as outrageous than asking a 1985 machine to have four channels of sampled stereo sound – but that's what the original Amiga still delivered.

No. The Amiga delivered 4 channels of mono sound. Two output to the left RCA output, two output to the right. That is NOT stereo.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

No. The Amiga delivered 4 channels of mono sound. Two output to the left RCA output, two output to the right. That is NOT stereo.

Two channels of stereo then...

[no9]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

I afraid it isn't quite that simple.

But do you think it is impossible? For C= back then.

For games (sound effects or even some instruments) even half-rate Paula (let's say "28kHz/2" per channel) would still be useful.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by no9

But do you think it is impossible? For C= back then.

What I thought, as well...
Would have been more work, but definitely doable.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Steril707

Not that anyone thinks I would have been against 16 bit sound quality on the Amiga.
What I am saying is, that simply adding a second Paula would have done wonders, and should have been doable without too much trouble, I guess.

A "second Paula" would simply not work in the design of the Amiga-Custom Chips and Commodore had lost the original designer including documents ...

They should have hired Glenn Keller back (as they did with Carl Sassenrath for the CDTV) and upgrade Paula.

The obvious trick would have been to use "double cas" on that 16bit-chip as they did with Lisa - well Lisa is 32-bit wide in addition but uses two fetches per time-slot to get 64 bit each slot.

Double-Cas could have been introduced as early as 88 or 89, since RAM was fast enough by than ... so the chipset could have stayed 16-bit but Paula and Denise would double the throughput.
So 8 channels for Paula and 64 colors in high-res via Denise...

That is what 16bit ECS in 1988 should have been - followed by 32bit AAA in 91 or 92 skipping AGA entirely.

(the A3000 should have come with VRAM for Chip-Ram instead of Amber Flicker-Fixer allowing 1024x768 in parallel to old modes - see discussion about the use of UHRES here on EAB)

How Glenn Keller did Paula:

[ Show youtube player ]

[8bitbubsy]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Computer Games World in October 1993 had this to say about the Gravis Ultrasound:-

"Due to the need for many TSR's, lack of publisher support, and poor Sound Blaster emulation, we find it hard to recommend this card to anyone other than a Windows MIDI musician."

So which PC's came with it? None, you had to pay US$199 if you wanted one. But due to lack of compatibility you probably also had to buy a somewhat more compatible card like the Sound Blaster 16 (US$249). So now you are up for US$448, plus lots of hassle and still no guarantee that all your games will work.

32 16-bit 44.1kHz hardware channels would be pretty useless if none of your games used them, and even more useless if it couldn't even emulate the original Paula sound properly. Not 'upgrading' the sound in the A1200 might have disappointed some people, but it had one huge upside - compatibility. Amiga sound cards were available, but since all Amigas already had a Paula inside we didn't have to worry about compatibility. And 27 years later we still don't have to worry about it.

Yeah, in terms of games it wasn't that successful, but it sure was in the tracker scene, which was about making music.

Originally Posted by Steril707

The Amiga was kind of the birth place for a lot of 90ies sample based music, Jungle and DnB for example.
It was a cheap sampler for its time, and usually people really didn't care that much about the 8 bit, or even embraced the rawness of its sound.

The hiss you hear (especially on bass or low-amp samples) is basically errors in the quantization rounding. In my opinion it doesn't show the "rawness" of the sample, instead it's just a bunch of errors you wouldn't want to hear, but the noisefloor of 8-bit PCM is really high so yeah, that happens...

Originally Posted by Hewitson

No. The Amiga delivered 4 channels of mono sound. Two output to the left RCA output, two output to the right. That is NOT stereo.

I'd say it's still stereo. If you use two channels (L+R), you can actually freely pan around left and right by changing the volumes accordingly.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by jizmo

I'd say there were easily ten times more hobbyist musicians using Amiga primarily for composing, remixing and sampling than there were people using Amiga for spreadsheets, desktop publishing or even creating art in DPaint.

Yes, I would say it was the largest computer music scene worldwide at that time. Just have a look at Aminet uploads each month. Or other CD releases with a lot of mods. Then there are a massive amount of never released stuff. Or just have a look at https://amp.dascene.net/

The 8 Bit 4 channel Paula might be enough in 1993 but 2-3 years later it wasn't. I used it for making music (Protracker and later DigiboosterPro) a big amount of my live time. I still listen to recorded music through Paula each day.

For games it wasn't or still isn't important to have more then 8 Bit and 4 channels, because it only makes a "small" part of a game in most cases. Having music and sfx at the same time doesn't make a game good. Today you can listen to your favourite music while playing a game.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

But only because it was there first, not because it was a better machine for music.

Ah, but it was if you were using MIDI. Unlike the Amiga, the ST had a cheap, sharp, high-resolution monochrome screen without any flicker or 15 kHz whine which would be unwelcome in a studio setting.

Amiga did have that, but expecting it from an unexpanded A1200 (still at the same low price) is asking a bit much. To complete the system you would need a CD writer, a huge hard drive, and probably more RAM and a faster CPU, as well as the 16 bit codec - all of which was available to those who were willing to pay for it.

Or you could get a Falcon, which had SCSI as standard, a wide range of MIDI and hard disc recording software, VGA screen and a DSP for effects.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by no9

I agree with all that you wrote there. And I think 16-bit sound have it's use but only in music niche. So it is difficult to argue for '16-bit is always more useful and versatile than 8-bit in sound' since it was pointed many times in this thread that in game business it is not. Amiga games was far from utilize already existing potential of Paula if we talking on bits and sample rates. But those same games were constantly choking on 4 voices sound limit since a decade because that dilemma ('music or sfx?') was well known even on 8-bit computers.

Indeed, I think most users would prefer 8 channels of 8-bit sound over 4 channels of 16-bit sound, especially as you could combine those channels into 4 channels of 14 bits anyway.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Ah, but it was if you were using MIDI. Unlike the Amiga, the ST had a cheap, sharp, high-resolution monochrome screen without any flicker or 15 kHz whine which would be unwelcome in a studio setting.

The A1200 can do the same resolution and frame rate (640x400 at 72Hz) as the ST, but with a lot more colors.

So it boils down to simply that Atari had it first.

But I think think the key factor was having MIDI ports built into the ST. It certainly wasn't its sound capabilities, or the disk drive (which was originally only 360k), or the non-upgradeable memory, or the clunky operating system, or the crappy keyboard and horrible mouse. But a musician saw those MIDI ports and thought - "this is the machine for me!" (even though other computers could do it with a $15 cable).

So the ST got a foothold in the music market despite having much worse sound than the Amiga.

Or you could get a Falcon, which had SCSI as standard, a wide range of MIDI and hard disc recording software, VGA screen and a DSP for effects.

The Falcon was in a different league to the A1200, but it had its problems...

The Atari Falcon030: A Closer Look

As you may recall, I sold off all of my Atari equipment and bought an Amiga 1200 back in January, after the Falcon had been delayed several times. (Its original release date was September, 1992). It seemed only natural to take a look at the machine I had intended to purchase, when I decided it was time to move on. Now I'll take a closer look and decide if I made the right decision...

It has two problems right now... First, since there are no screen accelerators yet, loading MultiTOS only slows the system down further. Secondly, using it without memory protection will eat 800K of RAM. Enabling memory protection will eat another 800K. So on a 4 meg machine, MultiTOS is nearly useless...

I can pick up some used 4 meg SIMMs on Usenet a lot cheaper than buying one of Atari's boards. So, for about $1500, I could have a Falcon with 14 meg of RAM and an external 240 meg hard drive, or an internal 120 meg unit. But unless I come into some serious money...

No wonder it was discontinued only one year after being released.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by 8bitbubsy

The hiss you hear (especially on bass or low-amp samples) is basically errors in the quantization rounding. In my opinion it doesn't show the "rawness" of the sample, instead it's just a bunch of errors you wouldn't want to hear, but the noisefloor of 8-bit PCM is really high so yeah, that happens...

It's noticeable if the sample is recorded with too low sample rate, or if samples are mixed at too low volume.

With samples recorded at full volume the dynamic range should be at least as good as cassette tape, and with their playback volume controlled by Paula it's even better. If you can hear quantization noise it's probably due to poor samples or a bad player.

[daxb]

I agree to what 8bitbubsy says. Samples are not always using 100% volume amplitude. I would say the most don't. So you can't get always 8 bit resolution. Further, if you have a full amplitude sample and do a volume fade out in Protracker for example you will hear noise at the end part. The mentioned bass samples by 8bitbubsy often or always have a lot of noise with full 8 bit resolution. 8 bit really sucks in this cases.

 8 bit = 256 possible values
16 bit = 65536 possible values
24 bit = 16777216 possible values

Count the possible values if you only have 4 bit for the amplitude.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by daxb

I agree to what 8bitbubsy says. Samples are not always using 100% volume amplitude. I would say the most don't. So you can't get always 8 bit resolution. Further, if you have a full amplitude sample and do a volume fade out in Protracker for example you will hear noise at the end part. The mentioned bass samples by 8bitbubsy often or always have a lot of noise with full 8 bit resolution. 8 bit really sucks in this cases.

 8 bit = 256 possible values
16 bit = 65536 possible values
24 bit = 16777216 possible values

Count the possible values if you only have 4 bit for the amplitude.

that is still only a question of the sampling frequency in the end: you can sample with just 1-bit in high fidelity if you drive your frequency up in the MHz range. The noise is huge, but it is all very far in an unhearable high band, that gets filtered.
See "Super Audio CD".

For 8-bit and a moderate sampling frequency, you can also resort to sound-dithering to compensate for the lower resolution ... but that is of course lot of extra work and was newer used for Amiga samples as far as I know...

[chb]

Originally Posted by daxb

I agree to what 8bitbubsy says. Samples are not always using 100% volume amplitude. I would say the most don't. So you can't get always 8 bit resolution. Further, if you have a full amplitude sample and do a volume fade out in Protracker for example you will hear noise at the end part. The mentioned bass samples by 8bitbubsy often or always have a lot of noise with full 8 bit resolution. 8 bit really sucks in this cases.

On the Amiga when using four channels in tracked music, you have additional 6 bits for volume per channel, so best practice is using samples normalized to 100% volume and then use the volume registers to adapt to your needs. A fade out done this way should not at additional quantization noise, as you always use the full 8 bit range.

If you want to sample a whole musical piece with both very loud and rather gentle parts (e.g. a classical piece) within the same eight bit range, you will run into those problems you described, unless you're using an envelope follower or something like that to dynamically adjust the volume.