What was better for 'serious' tasks, Amiga or ST?

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by cz101

The 'big deal' was Atari midi ports worked correctly in a professional studio environment for music production. Not saying it wasn't done but Midi implementation on the Amiga didnt work as well, or was as reliable. Simple as that.
It's well documented, but in summary (if a tad simplistic) a combination of interrupts, timer chips coupled with a small serial port buffer resulted in loss of serial data.
For the artist that translated to randomly dropped notes or loss of signal control during a recording session.
Don't think it was ever fixed, maybe it was
That and Cubase plus that monochrome display mode spoken of, you easily see why the ST was such a hit with professional producers

It is almost weird (if MIDI was so important) that no one build MIDI interface for Amiga with some uC (8048/8051) or even Z80 with small RAM like 6116 connected trough parallel port to overcome multitasking OS nature. For pro usage such MIDI will be around 50$ and probably way more flexible/capable than embedded MIDI in ST.

[Estrayk]

Originally Posted by pandy71

It is almost weird (if MIDI was so important) that no one build MIDI interface for Amiga with some uC (8048/8051) or even Z80 with small RAM like 6116 connected trough parallel port to overcome multitasking OS nature. For pro usage such MIDI will be around 50$ and probably way more flexible/capable than embedded MIDI in ST.

Yes, but there is an important factor to take in mind. the MIDI latency.
The Atari ST had very low latency because it incorporated in all its models a Motorola chip called MC6850P to link the MIDI to the GLUE-chip directly with a delay of less of 0.023ms x 16 channels, getting exactly 31250 baud without conversion. That made other sequencers on other platforms, Mac, PC or Amiga many times behind in latency (lag) when shooting 16 tracks with a lot of signals.

This factor was very important for composers using sequencers at the time. Perhaps it was also one of the reasons for the success of the Atari ST in the MIDI field. Its low latency at a lower price than the alternatives (MAc-Amiga-PC)

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by pandy71

It is almost weird (if MIDI was so important) that no one build MIDI interface for Amiga with some uC (8048/8051) or even Z80 with small RAM like 6116 connected trough parallel port to overcome multitasking OS nature. For pro usage such MIDI will be around 50$ and probably way more flexible/capable than embedded MIDI in ST.

It does exist !

The amiga 500 has a native bug on the serial that made MIDI not usable.

Instead, the external MIDI boxes are connected through the parallel port (much faster than the serial port).

The Amiga out of the A500 are perfectly capable to do MIDI and drive very expensive music hardware.

After all MIDI is not data, it is a simple protocole, nothing to run screaming about.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Yes, but there is an important factor to take in mind. the MIDI latency.
The Atari ST had very low latency because it incorporated in all its models a Motorola chip called MC6850P to link the MIDI to the GLUE-chip directly with a delay of less of 0.023ms x 16 channels, getting exactly 31250 baud without conversion. That made other sequencers on other platforms, Mac, PC or Amiga many times behind in latency (lag) when shooting 16 tracks with a lot of signals.

This factor was very important for composers using sequencers at the time. Perhaps it was also one of the reasons for the success of the Atari ST in the MIDI field. Its low latency at a lower price than the alternatives (MAc-Amiga-PC)

here is a comment i found about a guy using an Amiga for MIDI as a musician on the net, that's what he wrote about Amiga and MIDI :

"MIDI to me was for a totally different purpose. With an Amiga, I didn’t need to buy thousands of dollars worth of real synthesizers. I could run software synthesizers. The Atari ST could not to do this. My interest was in performing live music, not recording it. The Amiga was by far the best platform for this, and software synths thanks to the Amiga are more popular than ever and taken for granted in VST format, iOS and other formats. Thousands are made now to not only sound like expensive synthesizers, but even to emulate them for replacement. Even made by the big companies like Korg, Moog, Roland, etc.

I purchased a sampler for my Amiga 1000, had a better MIDI interface than what Atari offered and had lots of great Amiga MIDI software for doing things Atari ST’s could not do!

Even to this day, the software synthesizer (in modern PC formats) accounts for 85% of the keyboard sounds in my bands, though I own 10 professional MIDI keyboards, computers are generating most of my sounds anyway! Very convenient, portable, etc. Also, even the Amiga could emulate real synthesizers. I bought a large collection of sounds made for real synths to use on my Amiga instead! In the 80s, “Only Amiga makes it possible”.

I’ll be performing at America’s largest casino next month, and thanks the Amiga, I’m the musician I am!"

[Estrayk]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

here is a comment i found about a guy using an Amiga for MIDI as a musician on the net, that's what he wrote about Amiga and MIDI :

"MIDI to me was for a totally different purpose. With an Amiga, I didn’t need to buy thousands of dollars worth of real synthesizers. I could run software synthesizers. The Atari ST could not to do this. My interest was in performing live music, not recording it. The Amiga was by far the best platform for this, and software synths thanks to the Amiga are more popular than ever and taken for granted in VST format, iOS and other formats. Thousands are made now to not only sound like expensive synthesizers, but even to emulate them for replacement. Even made by the big companies like Korg, Moog, Roland, etc.

I purchased a sampler for my Amiga 1000, had a better MIDI interface than what Atari offered and had lots of great Amiga MIDI software for doing things Atari ST’s could not do!

Even to this day, the software synthesizer (in modern PC formats) accounts for 85% of the keyboard sounds in my bands, though I own 10 professional MIDI keyboards, computers are generating most of my sounds anyway! Very convenient, portable, etc. Also, even the Amiga could emulate real synthesizers. I bought a large collection of sounds made for real synths to use on my Amiga instead! In the 80s, “Only Amiga makes it possible”.

I’ll be performing at America’s largest casino next month, and thanks the Amiga, I’m the musician I am!"

There are some things that he says that are acceptable and others that are more debatable. For example, with the Amiga you could play audio in PCM which you couldn't do as well with an ST, but believe me I know what I'm talking about:

8bit at 27Khz PCM audio was totally unacceptable quality in the professional world. That's why everybody used AKAI S900 or similar profesional samplers at the time to play PCM audio via MIDI.

And let's not even talk about the capabilities of a professional synthetizer of that time, such as Korg M1, Roland D-50 / Jupiter 8 or the famous Yamaha DX7 to modulate the FM waves. Nothing to do with the options that were available on Amiga to generate synth audio, sorry.

[Karlos]

8bit at 27Khz PCM audio was totally unacceptable quality in the professional world

E-mu Systems Emulator II: Hold my beer.

[Estrayk]

Originally Posted by Karlos

E-mu Systems Emulator II: Hold my beer.

There are always exceptions.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The amiga 500 has a native bug on the serial that made MIDI not usable.

Not quite. The problem was that the serial port receive buffer full signal is on hardware interrupt level 5, but CIAB is on level 6. That means the timer interrupt in CIAB had priority and would be serviced first.

MIDI is 31250 baud with no flow control, so up to 3125 bytes per second may need to be received, which is 320 us per byte. In a multitasking environment it can take 100 us or more to service an interrupt, because all the CPU registers need to be saved and some other 'housekeeping' done before getting to the ISR code. From this you can see that a CIAB timer interrupt coming at the wrong time could be fatal, as there might not be enough time left to get the next MIDI byte from the serial port before the buffer overruns.

Something that wasn't fully appreciated by developers at the time is that a multitasking OS is not a real time OS. The 'simple' answer to this was to suspend the OS and bang the hardware directly, like games did. That was a bit drastic though, and developers of the day wanted to use the nifty multitasking OS features rather than having to 'roll their own'. They also wanted use the Amiga's nice multicolor hi-res screen modes, which used up a lot of bandwidth. MusicX for example ran in an 8 color 640x200 screen, which blocked CPU access 50% of the time in the active display area. Add some blitting and you can see where there might be a problem.

The ST won out here for the simple reason that its OS wasn't multitasking.

But the main reason the ST became the choice of musicians was that it had MIDI built-in and so was perceived as being more music oriented, attracting development of 'professional' music software before the Amiga did. Those two DIN sockets shouldn't have made that much difference, but they did. They were there, so you had to use them!

[grelbfarlk]

A better question is what was better for serious clowns to use. And the answer is clearly for red nose honkey armed clowns, they vastly preferred the Atari. It's not even close, they'd kick it around the room with their oversized shoes and make exaggerated faces and comically slap at the keyboard. Then they'd pretend that they were very serious and pick up the atari and shake hands then slam it down on a table like it was a briefcase and go "bleep, bleep, bloop" and mimic the sounds of a tractor fed printer and a loud tear noise and a gesticulation and stare at the printout for a long while and make an *aha!* face and eat the imaginary printout. At least that's my experience with ST users.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

here is a comment i found about a guy using an Amiga for MIDI as a musician on the net, that's what he wrote about Amiga and MIDI :

"MIDI to me was for a totally different purpose. With an Amiga, I didn’t need to buy thousands of dollars worth of real synthesizers. I could run software synthesizers. The Atari ST could not to do this. My interest was in performing live music, not recording it. The Amiga was by far the best platform for this, and software synths thanks to the Amiga are more popular than ever and taken for granted in VST format, iOS and other formats. Thousands are made now to not only sound like expensive synthesizers, but even to emulate them for replacement. Even made by the big companies like Korg, Moog, Roland, etc.

I purchased a sampler for my Amiga 1000, had a better MIDI interface than what Atari offered and had lots of great Amiga MIDI software for doing things Atari ST’s could not do!

Even to this day, the software synthesizer (in modern PC formats) accounts for 85% of the keyboard sounds in my bands, though I own 10 professional MIDI keyboards, computers are generating most of my sounds anyway! Very convenient, portable, etc. Also, even the Amiga could emulate real synthesizers. I bought a large collection of sounds made for real synths to use on my Amiga instead! In the 80s, “Only Amiga makes it possible”.

I’ll be performing at America’s largest casino next month, and thanks the Amiga, I’m the musician I am!"

I know it may sound annoying but do you have a link to this? Thanks

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Not quite. The problem was that the serial port receive buffer full signal is on hardware interrupt level 5, but CIAB is on level 6. That means the timer interrupt in CIAB had priority and would be serviced first.

MIDI is 31250 baud with no flow control, so up to 3125 bytes per second may need to be received, which is 320 us per byte. In a multitasking environment it can take 100 us or more to service an interrupt, because all the CPU registers need to be saved and some other 'housekeeping' done before getting to the ISR code. From this you can see that a CIAB timer interrupt coming at the wrong time could be fatal, as there might not be enough time left to get the next MIDI byte from the serial port before the buffer overruns.

Something that wasn't fully appreciated by developers at the time is that a multitasking OS is not a real time OS. The 'simple' answer to this was to suspend the OS and bang the hardware directly, like games did. That was a bit drastic though, and developers of the day wanted to use the nifty multitasking OS features rather than having to 'roll their own'. They also wanted use the Amiga's nice multicolor hi-res screen modes, which used up a lot of bandwidth. MusicX for example ran in an 8 color 640x200 screen, which blocked CPU access 50% of the time in the active display area. Add some blitting and you can see where there might be a problem.

The ST won out here for the simple reason that its OS wasn't multitasking.

But the main reason the ST became the choice of musicians was that it had MIDI built-in and so was perceived as being more music oriented, attracting development of 'professional' music software before the Amiga did. Those two DIN sockets shouldn't have made that much difference, but they did. They were there, so you had to use them!

So a lot of end users saw a disadvantage of multitasking (without knowing what was causing it), without necessarily making full use of the advantages of multitasking? Did the Amiga community make too much of multitasking as a benefit, or is it more that Commodore didn't make enough of it?

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

"I purchased a sampler for my Amiga 1000, had a better MIDI interface than what Atari offered and had lots of great Amiga MIDI software for doing things Atari ST’s could not do!"

Quote from the author of Music-X:

However, there was one rather serious bug that many people reported — that sometimes when recording Midi input data, Music-X would lose data — occasionally a note or control signal would be “dropped” and not appear in the final recording. I spent months trying to track down the cause, to no avail. It was only years later that I learned that the bug was indeed real, and was not the fault of my code, but due to a design flaw in the Amiga hardware itself.

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

believe me I know what I'm talking about:

8bit at 27Khz PCM audio was totally unacceptable quality in the professional world. That's why everybody used AKAI S900 or similar profesional samplers at the time to play PCM audio via MIDI.

There's an entire music scene that would disagree with that statement.

[Retro1234]

What I don't understand and I might be remembering wrong, Is when using Atari ST emulator for Amiga and selecting Hi-Res/Black and White there was no flicker?

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

What I don't understand and I might be remembering wrong, Is when using Atari ST emulator for Amiga and selecting Hi-Res/Black and White there was no flicker?

Interlace was only way for Amiga to double number of lines so flicker was unavoidable however it could be mitigated - don't recall which ST emulator (Medusa) offered something like 67Hz or even 70Hz software mode to display 400 lines in interlace, also with reduced contrast flicker appearance was significantly lowered.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Yes, but there is an important factor to take in mind. the MIDI latency.
The Atari ST had very low latency because it incorporated in all its models a Motorola chip called MC6850P to link the MIDI to the GLUE-chip directly with a delay of less of 0.023ms x 16 channels, getting exactly 31250 baud without conversion. That made other sequencers on other platforms, Mac, PC or Amiga many times behind in latency (lag) when shooting 16 tracks with a lot of signals.

Latency could be comparable for Amiga and for ST - problem was in nature of OS but IMHO this could be workarounded and using dedicated uC could remove all issues with not being realtime (but accordingly to NASA people Amiga was capable to deal with time critical tasks sufficiently well, perhaps better than other OS's from this period)

Originally Posted by Estrayk

This factor was very important for composers using sequencers at the time. Perhaps it was also one of the reasons for the success of the Atari ST in the MIDI field. Its low latency at a lower price than the alternatives (MAc-Amiga-PC)

I think "power without price" was main factor behind ST success especially in Europe. This was first truly affordable Personal Computer.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

8bit at 27Khz PCM audio was totally unacceptable quality in the professional world. That's why everybody used AKAI S900 or similar profesional samplers at the time to play PCM audio via MIDI.

Sorry but Fairlight CMI (I/II) machine costing more than 20000$ offered less than Amiga and it was widely accepted in musician world...
Remember - we are (Amiga development) long time before CD revolution.
8 bit PCM could be way better quality if dynamics processing used (like dbx processor) - such things was in use those time so HQ sampling was possible even at 8 bit PCM.

[Pyromania]

The Atari ST really excels as a foot stool when going to the bathroom. No other system does as well as an ST at this very important daily task. Thank you Atari!

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

The Atari ST really excels as a foot stool when going to the bathroom. No other system does as well as an ST at this very important daily task. Thank you Atari!

Your attitude immediately triggered memory of some modules called "Anti Atari Song I" & "Anti Atari Song II"- translating lyrics could be nice exercise for some "AI" like chatGPT.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Sorry but Fairlight CMI (I/II) machine costing more than 20000$ offered less than Amiga and it was widely accepted in musician world...
Remember - we are (Amiga development) long time before CD revolution.
8 bit PCM could be way better quality if dynamics processing used (like dbx processor) - such things was in use those time so HQ sampling was possible even at 8 bit PCM.

Let's not forget that the need for things to sound realistic is was a trend. People generally want electronic sounds to be novel. Paula's sound is thick, bassy, aliased and generally awesome.