What are the best amiga music tracker?

[Potato7542]

Inspired by this tread https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=105398

What are the best amiga music tracker?
(In your opinion)

[Samurai_Crow]

What limitations? Stock Paula? Sound card? NG via OS4, AROS or MorphOS?

For NextGen systems the best is Protrekkr with its realtime filters, soft-synths and 303s.

For cross-development targeting stock Paula from Windows, Pretracker generates some of the best precalculated soft-synths for really tightly constrained demos and games.

For a sound card based classic, MilkyTracker is a pretty solid performer. You don't even have to trick it into using AHI driver support like you do with OctaMED SoundStudio. If you want chip-tunes, however, HivelyTracker works pretty well.

For stock configuration you're pretty much stuck with ordinary Protracker, though AHX is great for chip tunes.

[saimon69]

Am usung milkytracker on windows since i got back to music making and despite some incongruences with downsampling that i did learn to go around i love the multithreading that allows me to work on more project at once

[KONEY]

OctaMED SoundStudio!

[Jope]

ProTracker 2.3 for the win.

[daxb]

DigiboosterPro for the next.

[Photon]

Agree with first speaker, completely depends on platform.

OCS+: AFAIK Protracker 2.3F has superseded 2.3D? For 4-channel, low-CPU-load music, such as for games and demos. Greatly supported and 'the most standard'. I haven't kept up with support for 3.15, 3.62, 4.0+ lately, be happy to know if there has been movement here. There are competent more-than-4-channel composing programs for OCS games (e.g. TFMX), but IDK if any have been released yet.

Fast 680x0 CPU: (Normally means AGA Amiga with 68040+) Musicline allows more channels and clean synth instruments.

PPC/RTG: Don't know.

PCs: Protracker port is for Amiga MODs with the same restrictions. I've heard good things about MilkyTracker, and it's available for many platforms and has an Amiga Protracker mode for export. .XM MODs allow more, like FastTracker II, and is well supported on those platforms. There an Amiga port in the works(?) Not yet, though.

[Toni Galvez]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Am usung milkytracker on windows since i got back to music making and despite some incongruences with downsampling that i did learn to go around i love the multithreading that allows me to work on more project at once

With all my respect.

As I told you before, you can get more quality if you use other methods for creating music for Amiga, your current music is not as good as the one you did in the 90s. No offense.

[saimon69]

Delicate as a ton of bricks -_-

However am not done yet in continuing to delight your ears - me and Helge are the avantgarde of outtatune songs :P

[deimos]

So, what's the best tracker for composing on original hardware (A1000 with KS 1.3, no extra memory or expansions), with the intent of using the results as music within a game?

[coldacid]

Probably ProTracker 2.3.

[hitchhikr]

So, what's the best tracker for composing on original hardware (A1000 with KS 1.3, no extra memory or expansions), with the intent of using the results as music within a game?

Either Protracker v2.x or others like Noisetracker v2.0 or Startrekker v1.3 which tracking interface takes far less memory.

If you're not afraid of clunky/peculiar interfaces you also have Future Composer v1.4 or TFMX (the tool that was made/used by Chris Hülsbeck).

But since Frank Wille made a handy Protracker replay for games purposes which handles sfx, i'll go for that one (note that Noisetracker modules offer less effects but are compatible).

[MigaTech]

Most of the above mentioned software are the best. Although scream tracker modules on sound studio, pro tracker, sound great on a standard Amiga 1200.

[redblade]

If you want OS Friendly, MED, if you have a faster cpu, then OctaMED. I would also recommend ProTracker as it was worked on 92+ so they would have used a lot more OS friendly techniques to make it work on KS2+.

In 1989, would be NoiseTracker, I like the German versions (1.3d, 1.3f) seem to run better under WinUAE, but Toni explained the reason with the problems of NoiseTracker in another thread

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

For cross-development targeting stock Paula from Windows, Pretracker generates some of the best precalculated soft-synths for really tightly constrained demos and games.

Whaaaat? IDK how I'd not heard of this, very interesting! I've been using OpenMPT for its modern-ish interface but I'll definitely try tinkering in Pre, too!

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Whaaaat? IDK how I'd not heard of this, very interesting! I've been using OpenMPT for its modern-ish interface but I'll definitely try tinkering in Pre, too!

Tiny Bubble, Wrong Way Driver, Tiny Galaga and others show how not using prerendered samples save on file size. Pink^Abyss and Bartman^Abyss have really outdone themselves of late. Of course they have a newer version than 1.0 but I haven't seen it yet. It runs ok under Wine on Linux too.

[saimon69]

Did not try pretracker but the AmigaKlang interface - similar tool that interact with Protracker putting markers for samples to be pre-rendered - is not exactly a wonder of usability for non experts -_-

[pink^abyss]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Whaaaat? IDK how I'd not heard of this, very interesting! I've been using OpenMPT for its modern-ish interface but I'll definitely try tinkering in Pre, too!

Both tools are great to reduce disk memory. Each has its own niche where it can excel:

AmigaKlang

• Reasonable precalc time on A500.
• Great for demos/intros or even games that have enough chipmem to spare but want to keep disk size small.
• Can use super optimized Protracker replayers.
• Great variety possible in the created samples.

PreTracker

• Targets A500 and tries to minimize chipmem usage (and precalc time).
• Uses wavetables for sound modulation and so can have a very distinct sound you can't emulate with ProTracker.
• Can replay sounds in much higher quality then Protracker (has 5 Octaves instead of usual 3)
• Can emulate most things you hear in 80ties soundchips. Especially those programmed soundFx from classic arcade games.
• Typical you need around 20-30kb to make audio for a complete game, and only a fraction of that for chipmem.
• A drawback is the slower replayer (compared to an optimized ProTracker replayer). Its more compareable to other synth replayers on amiga.
• Editor Runs on windows.

Here an audio example from 'Tinyus' which use PreTracker. All audio takes only 4690 bytes in chipmem and 24kb other mem (for 14 songs, 16 sfx).

[ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

Still waiting for (not so)tinyMander

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by pink^abyss

[*] Can replay sounds in much higher quality then Protracker (has 5 Octaves instead of usual 3)

Not sure that's the right term to use here. Protracker allows you to hit notes which are in the dodgy upper frequency range where the dma starts dropping. So it's hitting the maximum the amiga
can do already. That is unless you've got some trick to push more dma out?