11 April 2021, 19:32 | #181 | ||||||||||||
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2. No-one wants to listen to big audio clips that take up lots of disk space. 3. If the emulated sound accuracy isn't there, that's the programmers' fault. Quote:
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Remember, this is all my opinion, since it's my post. Oh, and my thread, too. |
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11 April 2021, 19:37 | #182 | |
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Yes, observations change, and the initial impression might actually be based on faulty information, limitations that have nothing to do with the chip or the chip's power or capabilities themselves, and so on. AdLib's sound had two-fold effect in me initially; first I wasn't too impressed with it, as I had heard the Amiga's glorious sound and SID's wonderful basslines and melodies already. 'Lemmings' on AdLib just sounded like a very poor man's version of anything. Ecch. Second, a bit later, when game developers were more familiar with the chip and started creating inspirational and even orchestral musics with it, I started fantasizing about what it would be like to compose music using that splendidly MULTI-CHANNEL chip. Sure, it doesn't seem that multi-channel if you consider Amiga's one channel can have a multi-channel chord in it going on, and still have three channels free for other stuff.. .. but still, 9 channels of pure, live, synthesized sound instead of the lifeless, static samples that always sound different on different pitches due to the length changing (I think there were a couple of trackers and such that tried to remove this effect, like TFMX and some Protracker version maybe, but this is basically how pitches were creted with samples - making the sample play slower or faster, which created annoying problems that synth sound simply never had) was a dreamy think to think about. I started to really like Adlib's sound during early 1990s, when the games started to mature their soundworld, and playing some exciting games on my friend's PC and completing Sierra adventures together, and such things kind of installed an admiration and love for this sound into me, that I always missed, when that era was over. It was a unique sound, a personality I never heard on the Amiga. Lucasfilm/LucasArts Games games and Wing Commander just sounded so much better on the OPL2. The thing is, little did I know how much the OPL2 (let alone OPL3) was capable of! Almost no games ever really explored OPL3's capabilities although almost all Sound Blasters had that chip for years, because OPL2 would be more compatible, and in any case, they never 'banged the hardware' but instead just used a 'generic system' where they could just compose the song once, and then the different drivers would play it for different soundcards. This leads to Rob Hubbard's songs sounding very non-specific and generic - if you listen to 'Budoukan' (I know it's spelled Budokan in the west, but that's just wrong), and pay attention to the instruments, you can realize how generic and simple they are - nothing like the quirky stuff Mr. Maestro did on the SID back in the day. He had become complacent and lazy, and started composing 'one song' that was then just 'converted' to different drivers, so individual instruments were never even touched by Hubbard's hand on the OPL2, let alone an OPL3 instrument being created.. So as much as we heard back in the day, we NEVER heard the full capabilities of OPL2, and almost any capabilities of OPL3. There were a few games, but I never bumped into those back in the day, and often they were made too late anyway, when 'real soundcards' had started to conquer the markets. Audiences don't ever demand 'live synth', they just demand 'what's the newest and coolest' without understanding the details. So OPL3 was never utilized almost at all, and whatever was utilized was very generic. Almost no one these days knows fully what that chip is (or would be) capable of (in hands of geniuses), not even me, and I own two of them. It's sad we never got 'Hubbard-effect on OPL3', where a genius like that would've taken OPL3 and composed something as quirky and wonderous as Hubbard composed on the SID (among some other composers as well). Think if Budoukan's (I refuse to spell it 'Budokan') instruments were as painstakingly crafted to sound as authentic, as japanese, as good, as quirky and interesting, as personalized, as Hubbard's SID instruments were... they would sound so different. I made my own experiments with creating OPL3 instruments, and it CAN be made sound much closer to japanese instruments (even by me, let alone someone like Hubbard) than you can hear in that pathetic Budoukan song of Hubbard. It's sad that there were so many different soundcards and drivers, that no musician could ever compose for every chip separately and manipulate each instrument to a perfection - they were on deadline, they were lazy, it would've been unfairly too much work anyway, and generic midi-style composing was the perfect solution, especially if the paycheck is more interesting than instrumental/musical/sound expression you -could- tweak out of the OPL2 and OPL3 - but won't. Well, I might be the only individual in the Universe to want and try to rectify this situation, I intend to explore OPL3 to its fullest and do as much and as good-sounding stuff with it as I possibly can, and experiment in all ways I can. And even STILL I couldn't even come near to being able to re-create the sharp, cool bass-sounds you hear in those Atari ST songs... |
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11 April 2021, 20:51 | #183 | |
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So while Amiga/Paula is sample based it is not limited to samples if those short samples are treated as sound generators, oscillators. AHX by Abyss proves that by reserving reasonably small system resouces you can have pretty nice modulations with those. [ Show youtube player ] There are more synthesis based trackers on Amiga https://github.com/bryc/code/wiki/Amiga-synth-trackers Many of them are not to much composers friendly, but it shows that not only Protracker defines the sound of Amiga/Paula. As you mention, Protracker was also capable to modulate sound with a little bit of effort, but what doesn't? To program interesting sounds with synth-chips you also need to put some work. Btw. Paula doesn't relies on fixed frequency. It even doesn't play exact 22,5kHz. Also 8-bit samples is not what you get from Paula because there is a sample volume register which let's you playback quiet sounds without introducing a noise. And I'm not even talking about all this 14-bit stuff. So if one is looking for widest possible palette of sounds the answer is clear. This doesn't prevent anyone from enjoying any synth chip or even prefer it over Amiga/Paula. Like for example... one can prefer listening to a solo guitar over the whole orchestra. |
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12 April 2021, 02:59 | #184 | |||||
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Not really. The YM22149 generates square waves with up to 32 levels. Paula can easily reproduce that with enough fidelity that you would not be able to tell that it wasn't a YM, and play several channels of PCM sound at the same time. So it is objectively better than the YM, but uses a lot a lot more resources to do it.
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IMHO the AY songs in my collection are better than any that have been mentioned here so far. Part of that is no doubt my tastes in music, but another factor is that the ST only had mono output. Also many 'chip' tunes do not take advantage of the low frequencies it can produce, perhaps because typical amplifiers and speakers of the day could not reproduce them well. You have to listen to the YM2149 on a good stereo system to really appreciate it. Quote:
Most Amigas have a low pass filter that starts to have effect above ~7kHz, except for the A1200 which is nearly flat to 20kHz. When playing 'chip' music aliasing isn't an issue like it is with sampled sounds, so the filter just has to deal with the volume control PWM frequency (which is well above the audio band). What this means in practice is that Paula itself is quite capable of producing just as 'sharp' sounds as the YM when playing 'chip' music, though the A1200 might be the only Amiga that can do it (depending on which AY/YM system you are comparing it to). Quote:
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12 April 2021, 10:07 | #185 | |
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First, the volume levels of Paula are (more or less) linear, whereas YM has logarithmic scale. This means not enough volume levels on Paula to impersonate as an YM, at least with small values. But this is probably your smallest problem. Second, the YM has 3 outputs that get mixed on the ST in a strange way. They kinda fight against each other in the electronics outside the chip, leading to nonlinear mixing. This means, even though you can (at least in theory) output single channel with great accurary, output of 2 or more is NOT the simple addition of them. The output isn't an exact square wave either. Third, hell will happen if the music on the ST uses envelope with small period, and you can expect many Hippel musics to do just that. At the end, you can play many musics with simple emulation, but it will not sound like real ST and it's easy to tell the difference. And some musics will fail miserably. More complex emulation, like what's done in emulators require output table of 4096 entries sampled from real ST, and takes half the power of 68030/50. I know this, because i wrote both. |
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12 April 2021, 10:12 | #186 |
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In the end, it's down to personal preferences as to what constitutes a "good" sound chip.
In my case, it's the following: Paula - Pure awesomeness SID - OK POKEY - A bit tone deaf, but great bass notes ST - Just, ugh |
12 April 2021, 10:24 | #187 | |
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What CPU power will Atari ST need to be able to play simple .mod tracks, or Turrican I and II music with the use of it's YM chip? Will it be able at all? |
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12 April 2021, 11:08 | #188 |
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12 April 2021, 11:13 | #189 | |
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Well... the chips were designed with different target applications in mind. SID is a musical instrument requiring minimal additional hardware resources. POKEY is a sound effects generator which can also play a bit of music, Paula is requiring more resources to generate sample-generated sound (which later became the norm anyhow), but it's coming from another chip generation anyhow. The YM - well, I do not really know. It is a chip from the POKEY/SID generation requiring minimal resources and using a very simplistic design, but there is really nothing specific to the thing. No effects, no waveform synthesis, no sample DMA. It is just a very "generic" programmable square-wave generator without any specific extras that would make it stand out. Probably "the cheapest thing Atari could get in order to deliver the system in time". |
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12 April 2021, 11:38 | #190 | ||
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Still, the chip side can do things at very high frequencies and this is equally hard to emulate. |
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12 April 2021, 13:59 | #191 | |
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My take is that it was due to the whole industry at the time still striving to reach the compact disc soundtrack quality that was going to be the silver bullet. Even if poor in today's standards, Amiga's punchy drums, and sampled instruments were certainly closer to that than what the FM based systems had to offer at the time, with the soundscape you'd never expect to hear on a commercial CD. As the CD quality became commonplace and even banal in the early 90s, it was then easier to once again for us to appreciate the characteristic and recognisable soundscape of various sound chips of the past. |
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12 April 2021, 14:06 | #192 |
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For me computer music DOESN'T must reflect real music
I listen to it especially because it is DIFFERENT from the real music I like it because it's synthetic and without words actually And i absolutely don't care if the various sound chips are able or not to replicate CD quality ........ who cares, really ? |
12 April 2021, 14:57 | #193 |
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I think you missed the point. I never said that computer music needs to reflect real music. What I meant is that Hi-Fi, CD quality sampled sounds and the soundscape is what people were really seeking after in the late 80s, so it was valued above anything home computers with FM-based synthesis had.
Take Jarre or Kraftwerk, or Tangerine Dreams for example. Both hobby and professional composers were trying to imitate the same richness and effects on the home computers of the era and it was the sampling approach that Paula brought that took the biggest step towards that direction and this is why Amiga's sound resonated so much better at the time for most people. Amiga could quite faithfully reproduce any sound fed to it from a compact disc or a high end Korg synthesizer. I for one remember the very moment when I knew I just had to get an Amiga of my own. I don't remember anyone rating Atari's sound over the Amiga's in the late 80s; it was simply not even a competition at the time. But as CD sound became an everyday thing and quality and the polyphony surpassed the 8-bit fidelity Amiga had brought to the table a few years earlier, people learned to appreciate the characteristic and very recognisable lo-fi YM and SID sounds again. Last edited by jizmo; 12 April 2021 at 22:30. |
14 April 2021, 10:46 | #194 | ||||||
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Making the ST's sound the 'gold standard' (that makes other platforms no better because they can't easily emulate it exactly) is silly because in the ST the YM2149 is crippled by its mixer circuit. It's not even as good as a YM could be, let alone as good as an Amiga. |
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14 April 2021, 11:14 | #195 | |||||
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Something like "you would not be able to tell that it wasn't a YM".
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I haven't said the YM is in any way better than an Amiga, so far not. It has its distinctive sound, some like it, some don't, no more no less. Nevertheless, emulating it is my problem, and if possible with small enough cpu footprint. Hopefully currently all my ST game ports are satisfied with simple emulation... |
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26 September 2022, 14:58 | #196 | |
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Regarding formula, it is available, just check Hatari or Steem SSE source code. |
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26 September 2022, 15:57 | #197 |
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I know. I have the 4096-entries table.
They use the output level table. At least Hatari has the option to use "math model" instead, but the table is what gives the results closest to real ST. |
28 September 2022, 12:52 | #198 |
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28 September 2022, 16:37 | #199 |
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29 September 2022, 01:34 | #200 |
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The possibilities were limitless with Portia for 1985, the problem was lazy idiots who sampled naff waveforms from horrible FM synths to make totally jarring game soundtracks that have bugger all to do with the atmosphere of a game like Risky Woods. When used in the right hands like Jeroen Tel in Agony (the frequency range on my Spectrum Analyser is quite high on the piano sample) or David Whittaker's Shadow of the Beast 1 tunes (512k game!) the Amiga has awesome sound. Few people did tunes that good. C64 games had much more talent in the sound department, and the two best Amiga games tunes are from SID composers. I suppose Ghouls n Ghosts will be mentioned but that game is PD quality at best so who is going to buy a £25-30 just for the music?
End of the day Atari had to hit a price point, they had to pay other companies to do work that in the past MOS Technology did for Jack for basic salaried wage and Atari had to make a profit. 512k of RAM was very expensive in early 1985 too, sharp drop in price by 1987 when A500 turned up (it accounts for more than 50% of the price drop). It's the second best computer after the Amiga 1000 in 1985. The Amstrad's 1 channel to the left, 1 to left and right, 1 channel to the right is an idiotic idea and to be quite honest 99.9999999% of people buying an Amstrad CPC had no choice but to listen to it via a crap 2cm tiny little speaker even if they used it on a TV via the modulator (if you could find one). At least the ST sound comes out of a decent speaker if you have a decent TV (we had a TV with very decent stereo speakers in 1982 so no reason to hear the AY/YM sounds in 2cm speaker quality lol) It is what it is, the 520STM + external disk drive bundle in Spring 1985 cost less than a Commodore 128 + 1571 disk drive by a significant margin. I just kept my 1983 C64 and bought some games for my C64 and some for my 520STM in 1986/87 until I found a used Amiga 1000 for half the price of an Amiga 500 I never had any issues with getting audio out from the monitor port on my 520STM, didn't sound any more hissy than doing the same via the monitor port on my C64. Would never buy an amplifier to listen to ST music. Maybe the later 520STFMs for £299 RRP had duff sound, can't say. I think the ST soundchip is there for all sorts of stuff (disk controller?) so it just fit their budget restricted design. It's not as good as the sound on a $4000 512k Mac of 1985 sure but then the Mac has shit graphics so there's that too. |
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