Controlling a module player on the Amiga from a PC

[cv643d]

Hi,

I am brainstorming about connecting an Amiga to a PC, starting an app on PC that looks like Winamp or something.. . select module. Poof module goes into Amiga and plays but you can still controll forward/reverse/stop/pause on the PC side. Sort of a Paula variant of the hardsid, just that the "hardsid" in this case actually contains the whole computer.

Ok, so you can connect Amiga/PC with serial/ethernet etc... nemas problemas,

but would you be able to control Hippo/Deli/Eagle-player through some kind of interface on the PC or do you need to start out fresh?

[thomas]

Winamp can already play mod and med files and all the other tracker formats. So why bother with amiga + pc combination ?

[onkelarie]

you can also search for deliplayer for windows, which supports more exotic modformats. if you create some sort of shared diskspace, i'd go for that...

[cv643d]

Winamp mod plugins are not so good, are you seriously recommending them or joking?

Also, Deliplayer is nice, but again, it does not sound the same as on a real Amiga, and Deliplayer does not play exotic module formats that good IMHO (such as FC-modules).

I guess you guys love your emulators (be it computers or sound hardware)?

There is the Paula65xx project, but I prefer the sound from a sound enhancer.

[thomas]

Real Amiga sounds muffled with filter enabled and clanking with filter disabled. So everything which sounds "not the same as on" a real Amiga sounds better than a real Amiga.

I like playing Amiga mods in WinUAE and I seriously don't hear much difference when playing the same mods in WinAMP.

[cv643d]

The sound enhancer removes that muffled filter, the sound you get from the Amiga then is really good. Not that I complain about sound quality from Amiga otherwise, ok it is a bit muffled, but not so bad at least you hear the music exactly as it is meant to be played, and that is not bad.

With emulated music hardware you will never know what you hear is what you should hear, and there is a (huge) quality level between the music output from proper hardware and emulated hardware that I learnt that back in 1998 when I got my HardSID when I thought the newly released ReSID engine "whas the shit" (turned out it was shit after all when I played with the HardSID ).

[Toni Wilen]

Problem with most PC module players is incorrect or incompatible command handling (volume changes, pitch changes, speed changes etc..), there are (too) many different module player variants that are not compatible.

Paula's audio section is quite simple 4 channel digital state machine + DA converter + 4 channels to 2 channels analog mixer. No "real" emulation required to produce matching audio output, at least before DA conversion (which most likely isn't 100% accurate in real world Paula DA implementations)

Nothing in common with SID.

[alexh]

You have UADE as another alternative player

[cv643d]

Everytime I mention the SID example people are eager to chip in that Paula is not SID, yeah I know it, should have put a disclaimer in my previous post

the same that I know that there is Deliplayer on the PC, or that there is mod plugins for Winamp, hey I been with the Amiga for 20 years, stuff like this eventually sticks in your head, but sometimes you want to break the mold and attack an angle from a different perspective, we Amiga users used to be experts in this, please help me become an expert again (long for: read first post)

[cv643d]

Originally Posted by alexh

You have UADE as another alternative player

Yeah, if there was an Amiga port you could control it by telneting to your Amiga, or build a webapplication that runs on apache on the Amiga.

Originally Posted by alexh

Tweak the settings for the output plugin / filter to Amiga setting and perhaps the player plugin and you'll get comparable results.

But it wont be exact results or am I wrong?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by cv643d

Everytime I mention the SID example people are eager to chip in that Paula is not SID, yeah I know it, should have put a disclaimer in my previous post

Yes because it is very bad comparison. SID is full of semi-unknown analog components that have huge effect on sound.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by cv643d

Also, Deliplayer is nice, but again, it does not sound the same as on a real Amiga, and Deliplayer does not play exotic module formats that good IMHO (such as FC-modules).

A setup issue with your Deliplayer?

Tweak the settings for the output plugin / filter to Amiga setting and perhaps the player plugin and you should get comparable results. If FC support is native then remove that plugin and try the 68k emulated plugin instead.

[cv643d]

I dont want comparable results, I want exact results and I want to tweak the exact results to what I like (here is where the sound enhancer comes in), so thats why I wanted to produce the sound from the real hardware because then I would have exact results from the source.

Maybe thats crazy, I dont know.

[Toni Wilen]

I understand. I think this is similar to wanting tv-like blurry display (in some analog "format", depending on connections and TV model) and some want 100% clear pixel perfect (digital before DA converters) display. Both are technically "correct".

[alexh]

Originally Posted by cv643d

I dont want comparable results, I want exact results and I want to tweak the exact results to what I like

Try tweaking deliplayer settings first it has full filter controls for sound-enhancer style settings. Also try UADE for cygwin.

What Amiga do you have?? You can use a VNC server for Amiga and any VNC client on the PC. But you need a reasonably fast Amiga.

[cv643d]

On my 1GHz Peg2 running AmigaOS4.1 VNC was very slow so I am afraid of testing it on my A1260, but maybe I should if I tweak it down to 2 colors.

I also thought of buying a TV-card for USB on the PC side, but it would be neat to only have to use one mouse.

[alexh]

You can use a VNC server without video to control the Amiga (obviously only in Workbench) and connect to it using Win2VNC on the PC. AFAIR this works fine on a vanilla Amiga 1200.

Also the VNC server you use makes all the difference when sending video. There are at least 3 ports of the VNC server to the Amiga. Try each one.

[Amiga1992]

The Amiga's output has a certain warmth or compression? not emulated by any means right now. Having used it in a different range of PAs I can tell I know where cv643d is coming from.

I dont see why you would need the PC as a controlling machine though.

[onkelarie]

@cv643d

Í'm not an expert in that field, but isn't there a way that you setup some sort of connection between PC and the Amiga and use Arexx, interpreting incoming commands, on the Amiga to control things on that end?

*hides for serious beating from those in the know*

[cv643d]

Yeah I will definitely try out the VNC route again, actually been thinking of Arexx too but I guess you will need some kind of custom solution such as stonewalley and his Paula solution, http://www.paula8364.com/index.php although before someone must mention it, yes I know that his project and mine are NOT the same

And before someone says just download tunes off paula8364, yes thought about it, but I like to control tune myself (repeat) + I already found broken tune there, although its a kickass project! check it out if you missed it.