Amiga and music production

[Mr Softy]

Way back in the mid 90's I was very fond of tracker music, using DSS8 then DSS 3.0 to sample my old hardcore-techno CD's (don't laugh! :theparano ) and make up my own crappy, crappy tunes.

Right now I switched to more powerful software on my Apple mac, still doing crappy tunes but I am wondering what I can expect in term of music making abbilities, with either new Amiga machines or software.
What is the present of amiga music?

[Syko]

AFAIK with the Mediator and it's drivers you can run the SB1024 series so anything you can do with a crappy SoundBlaster is the short answer.

Seriously, with OctaMED SS and the drivers for the card (or AHI), anything you can do with a tracker on a PC - all in CD quality.

Hopfully OS4 will have native drivers for decent sound cards and an update from OctaMED.

[Korodny]

@Mr.Softy:

I am wondering what I can expect in term of music making abbilities, with either new Amiga machines or software.

New amiga machines will feature the same hardware as your Mac. Software wise, there's quite a bunch of applications available, all of them limited to 16bit (I'm no audio guy, but I'm told PC stuff is handling 24 bit now).

For recording, mixing and mastering digital audio, there are Audio Evolution and ProStationAudio (new version is OS4 only).

For sample manipulation, we've got lots of small usefull tools like SoundFX or SampleManager. Not to forget the fantastic Soundprobe and good old Samplitude Opus, which is now freeware.

Bars & Pipes Pro (now "BarnsPipes") is still developed, and still is a very good sequencer with the most ugly GUI you've ever seen. Additionally, there's a new sequencer in development called Aseq.

The best tracker would be Digibooster Professional, which was recently sold to a new publisher and is actively maintained again. Additionally, Octamed Sound Studio should work on the AmigaOne (but playback will be limited to 8 bit, until somebody writes a toccata.library -> AHI wrapper). Protracker will be back. Somebody aquired the rights to the code and the trademark recently. But don't ask me about further details.

@Syko:

Hopfully OS4 will have native drivers for decent sound cards and an update from OctaMED

OS4 drivers: yes, but not from the start. Octamed: Not decided yet. They recently announced that work on a new Amiga version has been canceled. Now a lot of people are trying to convince them otherwise