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

[Foebane]

I can take any demo or game and run in on WinUAE, or even real hardware, and it will sound as intended, but when I take the .mod file and run it on something like XMPlay, it will invariably sound different - why?

I'm specifically talking about some of the samples sounding like they have a low-pass filter on, but not all of them. Why is that? As far as I'm aware, music modules don't have a filter on/off for each sample.

So what's going on?

[ross]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I can take any demo or game and run in on WinUAE, or even real hardware, and it will sound as intended, but when I take the .mod file and run it on something like XMPlay, it will invariably sound different - why?

I'm specifically talking about some of the samples sounding like they have a low-pass filter on, but not all of them. Why is that? As far as I'm aware, music modules don't have a filter on/off for each sample.

So what's going on?

All information you need is here:
https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt

There is also Toni's intention to further improve the emulation by adhering better to what the Paula internal PWM does regarding volume.

[chip]

I always used EaglePlayer under WinUAE to listen to Amiga music modules

Never liked the XMPlay or Deliplayer playback

So, your observation Foebane is right, there's a lot of difference

I simply think (but i could be wrong) that if the module is born with the Amiga, the Amiga software is probably mandatory

Any other software used can't replicate in the correct mode the original playback

[Zoltar3.1]

Well, you gotta bear in mind that there is a 16bit sound interpolation, meantime you get 8 bits of sound quality in your Amiga.
That is one of the things that makes sound very different, besides the way samples are recorded in their primitive format (8 bit).

Even so, in the same Amiga using different players, there's still a chance that you find differences in the sound you get in all of them, specially if you use such older players like Amos, Deluxe Music 2, etc...
Some mods use extended commands which are no supported by other players like Octamed, Digibooster, specially when mixing more than 4 sound channels.

That's why the best thing is to export'em to MP3 and you will get the real thing in every computer you use.

[chip]

Exporting to MP3 must be done with the Amiga anyway

Otherwise with tools like XMPlay you will get again MP3s that play different than the real thing

[saimon69]

I did disable interpolation both on Milkytracker and modplug player - that i use respectively to compose and to create .wav files that later i convert in mp3 with audacity - in order to have a more real sound because was bothered by the interpolation too; by the way i hope you don't mean that since my Amiga is 10,000 km from me i CANNOT use anything else to compose music...

[Hewitson]

Most PC mod players enable a low pass filter which makes all the high-frequency sounds sound muddy and muffled. I can only assume they've all been programmed by idiots who have never actually heard a MOD being played back on an Amiga.

[Zoltar3.1]

Originally Posted by chip

Exporting to MP3 must be done with the Amiga anyway

Otherwise with tools like XMPlay you will get again MP3s that play different than the real thing

Well, this is my job since years, and one of the reasons you find useful making MP3 from Amiga sounds is exactly this: making it sound like "the real thing".

When you render a sound you get the same result you are getting from the original source... If the source sound is not accurate, final rendering won't, too.

Obviously you need an Amiga or an emulator. We are talking about Amigas, right? so, it's meant to have one to play the sound, or via emulator, which does the same work.

I rather like sending all my works in rendered audio format if possible, as you make sure the real mixing will take effect in every computer you use.

[Zoltar3.1]

Originally Posted by saimon69

I did disable interpolation both on Milkytracker and modplug player - that i use respectively to compose and to create .wav files that later i convert in mp3 with audacity - in order to have a more real sound because was bothered by the interpolation too; by the way i hope you don't mean that since my Amiga is 10,000 km from me i CANNOT use anything else to compose music...

You don't really need Audacity for MP3 rendering using Modplug... Modplug will do that for you perfectly well.
File>Save as Mp3, Save as Wav, these are the options you need.

[FromWithin]

In XMPlay, go to "Options and stuff", select MOD in the left panel, then set "Interpolation" to off and set "Pan separation" to 100.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

There is also AIMP-Audio Coverter excellent Multiconverter.

[Foebane]

I don't really want to encode to MP3, as I used to do that and the results took up too much space, and ultimately I don't make MP3s anymore.

Originally Posted by FromWithin

In XMPlay, go to "Options and stuff", select MOD in the left panel, then set "Interpolation" to off and set "Pan separation" to 100.

Pan separation to 100? So that means no mixing of the stereo sides? I don't like totally separate stereo sides, that's the problem. For WinUAE, I use just 50% separation, so as to achieve a nice balance.

I would also like to use one player for everything on PC (hence XMPlay) and MX Player Pro for my Android phone.

[Hewitson]

One thing no one has touched on in this thread is the loss of quality suffered from playing back modules on PC hardware.

PC audio hardware generally requires everything to be resampled before it can play it back. Obviously, this must result in some loss of quality.

No such conversion takes place on the Amiga, Paula just dumps the sample out without any modification.

Edit: One more thing, why bother with the crappy Modplug player when UADE exists?

[ross]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

PC audio hardware generally requires everything to be resampled before it can play it back. Obviously, this must result in some loss of quality.

No such conversion takes place on the Amiga, Paula just dumps the sample out without any modification.

It's not that easy, is everything explained in post #2.
It is interesting how this fact is considered asserted by a large number of users (even Amiga users) but it is by no means exhaustive.
This is the same reason why modules not played on Amiga do not feel the same as on real machines.
Paula output is EVER at 3.5Mhz, but double filtered and the waveform created from mixed and elaborated PCM and PWM sources.
Even the sentence that "normally" the max frequency reproducible by DMA in NTSC/PAL Amiga is somewhere at 28/2Khz is too "simplicistic".
You can ear very high frequency from a non-filtered output..
See this very interesting thread about Paula output:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=86880
(there is an intervent of mine where I explain why for me Paula output is >12bit)

Never ever Paula just dumps the sample out without any modification.

[Hewitson]

"Any modification" probably wasn't the right term to use, I was referring to the samplerate. I agree that mods played on an actual Amiga sound different (and considerably better) than on a PC.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

PC audio hardware generally requires everything to be resampled before it can play it back. Obviously, this must result in some loss of quality.

Want to elaborate on this because that might explain the reason a sound that i did work on Deflemask sound crappier in the playback once rendered in .wav; so with the rendering am "resampling a sample"? Or is just that probably the rendering does not cover all audible spectrum and some frequencies are left out?

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Edit: One more thing, why bother with the crappy Modplug player when UADE exists?

Not everyone can afford the latest and fastest hardware; am stuck with an Atom Netbook for the foreseeable future. Modplug is pretty small and portable and when well configured the wav sound very good! (for mp3 rendering have some joint stereo does help in my opinion, especialy if you want to play in the car stereo)

[Axxy]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Edit: One more thing, why bother with the crappy Modplug player when UADE exists?

See, I don't buy this Modplug player is crap.... It plays most tracker music just fine, even today, and it's not been supported for what, 10-15 years?

Although I use mainly XMPlay, MPP still plays multi-channel PC formats better than XMPlay. 150+ channel Impulse tracker mods still sound superior to my ears in modplug player, always have.

It's a shame Deliplayer wasn't still working properly on PC because I liked that program...

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Want to elaborate on this because that might explain the reason a sound that i did work on Deflemask sound crappier in the playback once rendered in .wav; so with the rendering am "resampling a sample"? Or is just that probably the rendering does not cover all audible spectrum and some frequencies are left out?

It was probably a 44.1khz WAV, so likely would have been upsampled to 48khz. But I'd say that it was a limitation of the WAV writing function. It could also be the software you're using to play back that WAV.

Originally Posted by saimon69

Not everyone can afford the latest and fastest hardware; am stuck with an Atom Netbook for the foreseeable future. Modplug is pretty small and portable and when well configured the wav sound very good! (for mp3 rendering have some joint stereo does help in my opinion, especialy if you want to play in the car stereo)

UADE has pretty low system requirements. I reckon even an Atom would run it.

Originally Posted by Axxy

See, I don't buy this Modplug player is crap.... It plays most tracker music just fine, even today, and it's not been supported for what, 10-15 years?

The problem is, it sounds like shit! Also, it doesn't support many of the exotic Amiga formats. UADE can play just about anything (and at much better quality too, since it emulates an actual Amiga to play back the mod).

[Axxy]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The problem is, it sounds like shit! Also, it doesn't support many of the exotic Amiga formats. UADE can play just about anything (and at much better quality too, since it emulates an actual Amiga to play back the mod).

It doesn't support those formats because it was written to playback tracker modules (mainly PC formats), not exotics. I have well over 50,000 amiga modules on my HD, and the vast majority play just fine.

The only exceptions seem to be the small chiptunes that get mangled by modplug player, cia timed modules and those that use pattern jumping or that E loop command thingy.

Back in the day we had

Oldskool plugin for Winamp
Deliplayer just about played everything
XMPlay many plugins for exotic formats
BRZ Player
MED Player

to play all those other formats.

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.

[bLAZER]

Originally Posted by Axxy

Back in the day we had

Oldskool plugin for Winamp
Deliplayer just about played everything
XMPlay many plugins for exotic formats
BRZ Player
MED Player

to play all those other formats.

You mean BZR Player?