Amiga Stereo tracker software

[redblade]

Hi.
Because the Amiga Paul had 4 8bit channels I was wondering if there was any stereo tracker software available for classic Amiga or did people just tracker software and load the instrument into 2 channels and use the volume command to emulate stereo?

I've seen Digibooster, Symphonie mentioned and I guess also OctaMED as it allows 8 channels so that would be 4 channels in stereo.

Where can you get stereo 8SVX from? Also when did the Mac overtake the amiga for audio production with the AIFF format?? Was it just because it came standard with the DSP??

Thanks.

[Gorf]

Because the Amiga Paul had 4 8bit channels I was wondering if there was any stereo tracker software available for classic Amiga or did people just tracker software and load the instrument into 2 channels and use the volume command to emulate stereo?

Not exactly sure what you mean...
Paula has 4 channels - two for left and two for right.
Octamed mixes two software-channels into one hardware channel - makes 8 in total.

So do you mean by "stereo" that a sound should appear not entirely on the left or the right? Yes than you would have to sacrifice two channels - one on the left and one on the right.
If your sample is already stereo, it would consist of two two mono samples, and you can play both simultaneously, without adjusting volume.

You could also take a mono sample and play it on two channels simultaneously - than it would appear in the center - adjusting the volume would move it around.

I am not aware, that the Mac did overtake anything while Commodore was still alive. First the hardest competitor was the Atari ST, that was admittedly far more popular among musicians than the Amiga.
Later sound cards for the PC offered high quality 16Bit sound...

The first Mac with real audio qualities would probably be the Quadra 660AV or 840AV from 1993 with on-board 16-bit 48 kHz stereo audio playback and recording capability and DSP (but not all Macs from that time had a DSP).

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by redblade

Where can you get stereo 8SVX from?

8SVX appears to be mono only...
But you can play two of them together if you want, one each side.

Originally Posted by redblade

Also when did the Mac overtake the amiga for audio production with the AIFF format?? Was it just because it came standard with the DSP??

The AIFF format supports 16-bit samples and is therefore useful on the Amiga because 8SVX can only do 8-bit.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Not exactly sure what you mean...
Paula has 4 channels - two for left and two for right.
Octamed mixes two software-channels into one hardware channel - makes 8 in total.

So do you mean by "stereo" that a sound should appear not entirely on the left or the right? Yes than you would have to sacrifice two channels - one on the left and one on the right.
If your sample is already stereo, it would consist of two two mono samples, and you can play both simultaneously, without adjusting volume.

You could also take a mono sample and play it on two channels simultaneously - than it would appear in the center - adjusting the volume would move it around.

I am not aware, that the Mac did overtake anything while Commodore was still alive. First the hardest competitor was the Atari ST, that was admittedly far more popular among musicians than the Amiga.
Later sound cards for the PC offered high quality 16Bit sound...

The first Mac with real audio qualities would probably be the Quadra 660AV or 840AV from 1993 with on-board 16-bit 48 kHz stereo audio playback and recording capability and DSP (but not all Macs from that time had a DSP).

I read that early musicians used the Atari because of the MIDI, I just didn't really understand how that made a big difference. I can understand them using the Falcon for the DSP, I was mainly wondering what the techno/gabba DJ's were using.

Thanks for the replies, I will download OctaMED and the tutorials from amr.abime.net and download some ST sample packs from Aminet and have a bit of a play.

But if some one has a drum and bass or gabba sample pack and want to upload it that would be much appreciated

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by redblade

I read that early musicians used the Atari because of the MIDI, I just didn't really understand how that made a big difference.

It makes a huge difference in a studio where all your synthesizers have MIDI.
They weren't using the Atari ST's shitty internal sound chip.

[Daedalus]

There are optional chunks for the 8svx format that implement stereo (though still at 8-bit). How widespread support is for such samples I don't know, I just remember that it was a thing.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by meynaf

8SVX appears to be mono only...
But you can play two of them together if you want, one each side.

For sure it is stereo and there are players (SoX, ffplay for sure) capable to play 8SVX as stereo (raised bug on this for foobar 2000 https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/top...msg838527.html where stereo 8SVX is played as twice long sequence of two channels)

http://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/8SVX_IF...#8SVX.CHAN.PAN

Originally Posted by redblade

I read that early musicians used the Atari because of the MIDI, I just didn't really understand how that made a big difference.

MIDI is simple serial interface where bitrate is 31250bps and there is no problem to have MIDI on Amiga trough simple interface - Atari ST advantage was MIDI ready to use just out of the box (of course you need software) and additionally Atari ST was 640x400 no lace screen providing sufficiently high number of information on single screen on cheap display.
Of course A500 since ECS can provide similar video mode (and OCS can significantly reduce interlace impact by software tweak on vertical refresh) but... on Atari ST with SC124 it was ready to be used almost instantly where A500 need some effort and musicians are lazy.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by pandy71

For sure it is stereo and there are players (SoX, ffplay for sure) capable to play 8SVX as stereo (raised bug on this for foobar 2000 https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/top...msg838527.html where stereo 8SVX is played as twice long sequence of two channels)

http://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/8SVX_IF...#8SVX.CHAN.PAN

Ok so the format is supposed to support it but in practice all files i've ever found were mono.
Playing a very large stereo file will also cause problems due you get full length left before full length right and thus you can't stream it the normal way...

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Ok so the format is supposed to support it but in practice all files i've ever found were mono.
Playing a very large stereo file will also cause problems due you get full length left before full length right and thus you can't stream it the normal way...

You may have multiple chunks of data to reduce this limitation or use smart resources utilization (small 2 or more buffers and read data from storage - looks like nowadays mass storage is no longer big issue for Amiga).

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by pandy71

You may have multiple chunks of data to reduce this limitation or use smart resources utilization (small 2 or more buffers and read data from storage - looks like nowadays mass storage is no longer big issue for Amiga).

If it's about to just support them in my player - and i won't do anything else with them - then there is nothing that can be done about chunks. They are here and i must live with this. And no amount of buffering will change the fact you must either preload a big part or seek constantly to reach the other side.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by meynaf

If it's about to just support them in my player - and i won't do anything else with them - then there is nothing that can be done about chunks. They are here and i must live with this. And no amount of buffering will change the fact you must either preload a big part or seek constantly to reach the other side.

You just triggered my curiosity - it sounds like filesystem doesn't allow seek over file...? Is that true?

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by meynaf

If it's about to just support them in my player - and i won't do anything else with them - then there is nothing that can be done about chunks. They are here and i must live with this. And no amount of buffering will change the fact you must either preload a big part or seek constantly to reach the other side.

Can you open two different filehandles on the same file, then seek the second one to the start of the second channel's data?

Originally Posted by pandy71

You just triggered my curiosity - it sounds like filesystem doesn't allow seek over file...? Is that true?

The filesystem allows it, but with large files it may introduce performance problems for streaming.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by pandy71

You just triggered my curiosity - it sounds like filesystem doesn't allow seek over file...? Is that true?

The file system does, but pipes don't. Other special stream types may be not seekable too.
Besides, my current buffering system (which is codec independent) preloads as much data as it can, which would be defeated by having to seek.

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

Can you open two different filehandles on the same file, then seek the second one to the start of the second channel's data?

Yeah, and destroy all the file buffering code just to support a very rare variant of a single format...