Foebane

Well, by photography I didn't mean professional studio quality.

And Paula is photography.

I played around with sound a lot on the A8 back in the day, in Atari BASIC, and I still remember that of the four parameters in the SOUND command, the third one was known as "distortion" and was an even number and determined if the type of sound was "tone (10)", "white noise (8)", or "distortion (12)". I remember noticing that the range of the tones were 0-255, with 0 being nearly inaudibly high but as you went down, the changes in pitch were uncomfortably discrete and large, and I remember the lack of really low notes. The octave range (and pitch control) in this regard were woefully lacking. However, I played with distortion 12 and didn't think it was much use, and then I heard the first A8 game soundtracks to use the perfect musical scale found in 12 (in amongst the "off" sounds, if you know what I mean) and I was amazed at the distinct bass and quality they gave A8 sound, and I've loved Distortion 12 ever since then. Hence my example above, which I would swear uses two channels for that.

When I think of POKEY music, I think of this, one of the best soundtracks going! Just listen to that thumping bass! http://a8.fandal.cz/download.php?files_id=492 I don't think SID can approach anywhere near this capability, it makes me wonder why people want POKEY to sound like SID.

You're damn straight about that!

The thing about POKEY, ST's AY chip, the BBC Micro sound chip and so forth is that these all sound like general-purpose sound chips for a multitude of uses in both music and sound FX. Bob Yannes' SID sounds like he made it to resemble the type of (godawful) synth music HE likes, and we all have to work around his limitations imposed on us. I think this is why I don't like SID.

I'm sorry I even started this thread. I think when I did, I was struck with a "burn my bridges" mentality. Yes, I was being a jerk on purpose and I regret it now.

Um, I OWNED an ST, Christos, then went on to the Amiga. Are you saying I should've stuck with the ST?

I can't just ignore what I started, especially if any Amiga-bashing happens, which I'll have to answer to.

Yeah, and we discussed it to death. I asked the moderators here to close the thread, but they still haven't. Badger them about it. I don't intend to make any more.

I know Amiga was launched in '85. Off-topic? This is an Atari board, right? And the Amiga was very nearly Atari, right? So how is it off-topic? No, next year will not be better.

Perhaps his memory of when this purchase happened has warped with time? Maybe he's thinking of 1987? It would make more sense.

But you don't have to worry about the other keys on your keyboard because hyperspace is so broken and useless in that otherwise perfect conversion.

Sounds like it to me.

I didn't spot your post with the answers until after I did the quiz. I just wanted to test my own memory of my experience with an Atari 600XL and 800XL. I was glad I remembered about that plotter I had, it was an interesting little device, but it broke quite fast.

These are my answers to the whole quiz: 1.D 2.C 3.C 4.C 5.C 6.D 7.C 8.C 9.D 10.B 11.A 12.D 13.C 14.A 15.? 16.? 17.? 18.A 19.B 20.A 21.D 22.C 23.A 24.B 25.A How many did I get right?

Sorry, didn't see the video link before.

Pouet.net link? Video?

I thought this thread was done until it was bumped up again the other day. I wish an admin would lock it so it will sink without trace.

Wow, ST zealots. And I consider myself an Amiga zealot.

1. I can't bloody STAND synths, like SID or the massively overrated Vienna by Ultravox (I never saw the appeal of that song). 2. What you heard, I'm assuming, is many old Amiga games (no doubt ST ports) from the late 1980s. I would suggest that you look at the highest-rated examples from the Amiga Demoscene from the 2010s to see how good Paula can be.

The muffling is caused by the separate low-pass filter in the A500, added by Commodore later because low memory limits resulted in poor samples which sounded harsh until they were muffled by the filter. However, with more and more memory, Paula can sound amazingly clear.

Yet people here berate Paula for "being mainly a collection of DACs", when essentially your modern-day PC also mainly has DACs in its audio hardware.

Bleepity-blip-bleep-bloopy-blop vs real-life instrument sounds. Yeah, right. Who's the troll here?

Calimero, I looked at your comprehensive thread about Atari vs Commodore over Amiga, and I do believe you're right about what you said before, and you say that From Bedrooms to Billions Amiga Years tells the truth, and that Viva Amiga were spreading falsehoods and even false newspaper articles (I never liked Viva Amiga anyway, I thought there was something off with it). From my personal recollection of articles written decades ago, Amiga were having difficulty finding an interested party for their tech, and that Tramiel wanted the chips but NOT the design team, so that is at least the truth as I know it. RJ Mical and Dave Needle were probably extremely pissed at Tramiel at the time, so maybe it was just a bit of mud-slinging, but they relented later on? Didn't Mical tell the truth in FBTB? I'll have to check out the part of that doc you mentioned at some point.