29 June 2024, 00:30 | #21 |
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The A1200 sound output is far louder than the A500
so you will get better audio quality |
29 June 2024, 05:59 | #22 | |||
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A very sensitive bat. Quote:
For decades now, there has been an ongoing debate amongst C64 aficionados as to which revision of SID sounds "best". What's very important to understand (aside from "best" being subjective) is that SID, unlike Paula, generated its tones internally, and due to the nature of chip manufacturing processes, literally no two SID wafers - even of the same revision - were likely to sound exactly alike, if one were to go deep enough into that rabbit hole. Paula does not generate her own tones - she literally takes data from Chip RAM, is able to process that data through many functions that are useful in terms of audio and musical reproduction, and feeds the processed data to a DAC setup which converts the signals to an analogue audio signal pumped out of the stereo phono sockets. The only part of that system that might affect the final output is the character of the DACs - and the whole point of a DAC is that they're supposed to be generic and predictable. Case in point - the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis used a YM2612 FM sound chip which in basic terms is a 6-channel version of the 8-channel YM2151 used on Sega's 1980s arcade games. However, the YM2612 was designed to be a low-cost component and - unlike the YM2151 which required an external DAC - had a basic DAC on the chip die itself, which is why FM music on a real Mega Drive tends to sound somewhat tinny compared to the arcade equivalent (a shortcoming that no longer exists as far as emulators are concerned). Back in 1991 I rescued my family's old Marantz hi-fi amp and speakers from the garage, set it up in my bedroom and hooked it up to my A500 (which made everything sound *epic* for that time... ). Two years later when I got my A1200 for Christmas, I naturally swapped it out and could perceive zero audible difference. Many years later when I started trying to get my head around audio engineering and music production, I went full-nerd and spent a day comparing the output from my "real" A1200 to that of the modern emulators, and observed that the analogue output from the A1200 had a very slight, but (just about) perceptible bias towards the low-end and mid-range - meaning that OG Paula + DAC has slightly more low-end "oomph" and mid "presence" compared to the raw dump from WinUAE. So what does that mean? In all honesty, not all that much. The likelihood of any noticeable variance in audio clarity between different iterations of Amiga hardware is beyond negligible. If your intent is to stick your Amiga's audio output through a hi-fi for a more immersive experience it doesn't matter in the slightest which model you use, and if your intent is to capture Amiga audio output to use in your own musical productions, chances are you're going to run it through EQ settings tailored to your own tastes anyway, so the same applies. Last edited by TuRRIcaNEd; 29 June 2024 at 06:05. |
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29 June 2024, 06:18 | #23 |
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29 June 2024, 06:34 | #24 |
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Back in the day (we're talking about 1997-ish), having reluctantly switched to Wintel for Uni, I had a feeling that the output of Fellow/WinUAE sounded a bit "flat" compared to the real thing - but I had no idea how to express it or understand why that might be. This is why I did a nerdy A/B test many years later.
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29 June 2024, 06:49 | #25 |
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Sound chip in the Vampire V4 is quite advanced and it blows Paula away.
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29 June 2024, 06:55 | #26 | |
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Anyways, as far as I can tell that wasn't the aim of the original question, which seemed to be whether any of the "classic" Amiga models had inherently superior audio fidelity despite every single one of them using Paula. |
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29 June 2024, 09:35 | #27 | ||
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Seem CD32 was designed around same Paula as A600 but overall audio signal path is simply better. So despite Paula didn't changed (we know that this is untrue as mentioned earlier) since 1984/85 there are differences sometimes more important, sometimes less so you can have Amiga that has higher audio quality. In half of 80's high quality audio from DAC's was just at the beginning of popularity, 5 years later at the beginning of 90's this was quite common knowledge and this know how is visible in Amiga circuitry evolution. |
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29 June 2024, 09:50 | #28 |
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Paula rulez !
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29 June 2024, 09:53 | #29 |
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30 June 2024, 14:00 | #30 | |
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And important remark - this knowledge evolved in decades - i bet if in 1984 such knowledge exist with same level of "popularity" as today then overall audio circuitry will be better since first design - CD32 is last Amiga, also it was designed with at least cooperation with application engineers dedicated to CD audio DAC implementation so such knowledge propagate down to Paula circuitry. Some topic is currently going on this how much A600 can be improved: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=86880 also this thread can be interesting: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=109051 It can be nice to see if someone offer those retro PCB's for various projects with changes addressing all those small things - this not ruin legacy heritage of Paula... |
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30 June 2024, 17:24 | #31 | |
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Every other Amiga has a fixed low-pass whose cutoff is around 4-5kHz (depending on model). It really does remove the high fidelity from the sound. |
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30 June 2024, 18:00 | #32 | |
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But the issue that's responsible for most variations between SID chips is filter variation; AFAIR they use a FET on the chip as a voltage-controlled resistor (voltage provided by a DAC, ofc), and that method is very sensitive to manufacturing tolerances and even operating temperature. If one disables the filter, SIDs sound more similar across different revisions. They also fixed that behavior with the 8580... |
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01 July 2024, 03:06 | #33 | |
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To be fair, after adjusting the volume control on a TV/monitor you're not going to hear much difference really, or even a budget midi-hifi etc, stuff you would only notice on a decent amp and decent large hi-fi speakers I suspect. My friend had an A500 with a slightly better Kenwood hifi with proper Dolby Pro Logic and better speakers etc than mine and I couldn't really tell the difference from my machine using a slightly less sophisticated Pioneer at home 10 minutes drive away. Probably have to test them side by side Would be interesting to compare 1000/2000/3000/4000 as these were expensive machines. The 1000 motherboard has a lot going on with the most components and that riser to the daughterboard. |
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03 July 2024, 02:43 | #34 | |||||
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On a bit of a tangent (though sort-of relevant), about 16 years ago I borrowed a DAT deck from a friend of mine so I could export my old indie band's recordings from DAT to my PC. Being an older DAT deck, the SPDIF output used was of the RCA plug type as opposed to TOSLink - and the cable he gave me had all mod cons - gold plated on both ends with the cable itself being almost as thick as a baby's arm... But SPDIF is a digital protocol; the signal is either on or off - which means that technically the signal transmission quality should be the same regardless of whether one's using an expensive or cheap cable. Quote:
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Again, if you'll forgive me another tangent, as an amateur musician and semi-pro recording and live audio engineer I'm very particular when it comes to knowing and understanding my equipment (I've been fortunate to have been taught by several people who are professionals as good as it's possible to find). One truism that comes up time and time again is that there are an awful lot of BS and snake-oil merchants operating in the "audiophile" market. One particularly egregious example was a vendor selling audio cables with gold/platinum-plated connectors claiming that the specific weave and metallurgy in their product resulted in "optimal electron alignment" (or words to that effect) making their cables better than any competitor. I think they were charging something like £75/ft. For a cable. And it's utter *gash*. Plating the connector with a better conducting metal may theoretically improve conductivity, but in practice it doesn't make a blind bit of difference because the electronics of the hi-fi components and circuitry within the speakers are designed to operate in exactly the same manner regardless of any extra conductivity. Furthermore, while thicker cables with better insulation are theoretically capable of handling a greater load, the actual load they're carrying will be the same regardless of which cable one uses. Case in point, shortly after I moved last year I bought a second-hand B&O hi-fi setup* from eBay for my living room. Despite being manufactured in 1982, it had recently been checked and reconditioned and it still sounds absolutely immense. It's an all-in-one unit, so all the circuitry between phono/tape/radio/aux is internal. However the socket and plugs to the speakers are of exactly the same type as those used on the Amstrad (a brand you rightly used as an example of dubious quality) stereo I had as a kid. Yes, you're reading that right - a B&O unit was using the same kind of socket and speaker connections as an Amstrad of a similar vintage. In other words, audio quality/fidelity comes pretty much entirely from the signal coming out of the amp. The socket and cable types don't make a blind bit of difference. Quote:
As someone who dreamed of writing music since I was tiny - and subsequently being useless trying to learn 'cello and piano in the "normal" way, but ended up finding my feet learning to write music on trackers in my early teens - I hope you can understand that I go back a very long way when it comes to Amiga music and audio stuff. The point is that based on my understanding, in a purely technical sense there's absolutely no reason any Amiga (regardless of model) should sound perceptibly different from any other. If ever there was a limit on Amiga audio fidelity (over and above Paula's being 8-bit and inherent frequency constraints), it was arguably a matter of RAM usage. In order to demonstrate that claim, check out DJ MeTune's conversion of Axel F (which takes up 432k) : [ Show youtube player ] [* - I blame my Dad for getting me started on the B&O rabbit hole... Apropos of nothing, the Marantz setup I butchered and hooked up to my Amigas was originally his purchase in the early '80s. He'd long since buggered off, so I felt no guilt nicking it for my own purposes. ] |
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03 July 2024, 07:27 | #35 |
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It should be noted that while Paula is more or less unchanged between revisions, and the systems varied in the analog circuitry that affected the sound after it came out of Paula, the core limitation in overall audio quality came from Paula's DMA access window, which was tied to horizontal scan rate. Thus, Paula coupled with OCS Denise had an inbuilt limitation to its sampling rate (about 28Khz), achieving higher sample rates required that Paula be paired with a Super Denise or Lisa which could operate at horizontal scan rates higher than 15Khz.
Of course on older machines you'd have to bypass the baked-in low-pass filter (the hardwired one, not the one tied to the power LED) to even hear the higher frequencies, and early A1000s didn't even have the LED-tied low pass filter disable. |
03 July 2024, 19:53 | #36 | |
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@TuRRIcanEd
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03 July 2024, 20:11 | #37 |
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03 July 2024, 20:13 | #38 | |
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On-topic: My hearing has has always been bad, and has degraded, but even I can hear the difference between A500/A1200 with LED filter off. Whether one is better than the other I will leave for others |
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03 July 2024, 21:02 | #39 | |
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This might interest you.
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04 July 2024, 08:33 | #40 |
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