My one pet hate about the Amiga's sound...

[Bloodwych]

...was the fact it only had four channels. 2 per speaker just wasn't enough.

I find it really annoying that you had these thumping tunes and sound effects competing with one another.

8 channels would have been ideal - even 6 would have done to avoid tunes getting spoilt by sound effects. I wouldn't have minded if the separation of the channels remained, as long as there were more of them.

Imagine what an improvement it would have been with a few more channels. The Amiga already had awesome sound for the time, but I'd love to know why technically they couldn't add just a few more channels.

I remember when I first read about the A1200, I was SOOOO disappointed it had the same sound as the older Amigas. Sound was one major selling point for the A500, I thought they could have beefed it up on the A1200.

[Dreedo]

Personally i would have liked there to be sound effects as well as music in the Lotus games. The SNES versions of similar games have both. :/ SNES did have 8 channels though.

[s2325]

For me some games are better with no music (Gods, Cadaver, Assassin, Alien Breed 1-3, Full Contact).

[Leffmann]

I feel the same. 8 channels and free stereo panning would've been a massive improvement.

[daxb]

Simply they hadn`t updated the audio chip (Paula), maybe because it was cheaper. A new or updated 16 bit audio chip with at least 8 channels (better 16) with free panning (stereo++) were the next step after A500. A synthesizer chip had ruled the world. "When dreams come true".

[PaulyQ]

Although it only had 4 channels it was easy enough to multitrack to a single channel so for instance....

4 sample sequences combined in a sound editor, made into 1 sample, load that as your sample and so on....

but again I agree it was limited by scope of pan and 4 chans of sound

[Paul_s]

I'm just thankful women don't have more than one channel.

[Shatterhand]

Some games managed to split channels... I am not sure how its done, but most of Chris Huelsbeck title-screen music have 6 channels, and most games featuring his music has 4 channel music *and* sound effects.

If I am not mistake, Stardust also uses 6 channels. It was something about splitting a 8 bits channel to be two 7 bits channels... not that this makes any sense to me

[Bloodwych]

Technical brilliance overcoming hardware limitations - the good old days!

Unfortunately many games didn't avoid the channel limitations, but I guess it's now all water under the bridge.

Talking about Amiga sound, I just realized that on todays machines I never load up games JUST to listen to the music, even though today it has no limitations whatsoever. Says something about those catchy four channel tunes (which would have been better with a few more channels!)

[Mad-Matt]

3 channels should have been enough to produce a good melody as game musicians were good at on the 8 bit machines leaving 1 channels for effects.

[daxb]

BabeAnoid2.5 use PT mods with 2 channels für music and 2 for effects. I did some mods for it and it worked better then I expected.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

I feel the same. 8 channels and free stereo panning would've been a massive improvement.

Spot on. That's exactly what should have been included when AGA came. Would have been enough and not much work for C=. Unless the guy who designed Paula didn't work there anymore and that's why. ;p

[trackah123]

I'm not sure but i have the impression because right now we don't have sound-limitations anymore, so its easier to create music and maybe less effort put into it.

In the past because of the limitation they really pushed the sound-capabilities, melodies etc to the limit. thats why some songs sounds so amazing.
Same goes for graphics in the old days. I still like nice amiga-pictures more then what we have nowadays.

Look at todays movies compared to movies of the past. in the past alot of movies were amazing. nowadays its being overrun by CGI to the point that it becomes ridiculously overdone etc.

I am convinced that limitations gets more true skills out of the "artist" then without limitations.

[Amiga1992]

4 channels was OK, we could squeeze it with channel economy.
WHat always pissed me off, to this day, is hard stereo panning. That is plainly retarded. They should have allowed you to have all 4 channels being panned however you wanted them, for true stereo.

Originally Posted by trackah123

I am convinced that limitations gets more true skills out of the "artist" then without limitations.

100 times in agreement with this!

[CritAnime]

Originally Posted by Akira

4 channels was OK, we could squeeze it with channel economy.
WHat always pissed me off, to this day, is hard stereo panning. That is plainly retarded. They should have allowed you to have all 4 channels being panned however you wanted them, for true stereo.

Yeah that is annoying. I have to agree with this completely. While not an issue when using the speakers in a TV it gets a little irritating when using headphones. Which, depending on the game, can be a little off putting and distracting.

[Amiga1992]

Imagine trying to MAKE music using headphones, which nowadays, can occur to me a lot. It's just painful!!!