Labels:text | screenshot OCR: AM/FM AMIGA VS IBM PC A COMPARISON IN SOUND & MUSIC AM/FM This weekend I was at a friend's place, having a look at the IBM PC's sound/music capabilities, and some of it's music software etc, and I thought some of you might be interested in hearing where the PC stands at the moment, compared to the Amiga. Like all of you, I'm an eager Amiga amigo, so before you start slagging me off for turning over to the enemy etc., the background for my PC-studies is that your favourite AM/FM Editor (me) is not only your favourite AM/FM editor (me)... when I'm I'm not editing AM/FM, I sometimes work as musician for various software companies, composing music for their games. So far I've only been concentrating on the Amiga, but I think it might be a good idea to offer the software houses the same music in both Amiga and PC can format, as they are almost always releasing their games for both computer types, and while they're at it, usually also for the Atari ST. I had heard that by loading the Amiga songs directly into the PC, it could be replayed through a so called "Soundblaster" card which is something the PC-owners buy when they are tired of the built-in piezo-speaker on the PC, and want to move one step up the sound quality ladder. The soundblaster is a card that you stuff inside the PC, and it makes the sound better. The card actually boasts 22 kHz sampling rate, the "Soundblaster Pro" an impressing 44 kHz, which is actually much better than the Amiga can do. Then why, İ asked myself after hearing it, why doesn't the Soundblaster as good as the Amiga? Why is it that when took Sound anywhere near__ Protracker module on which had excellent sound quality on the Amiga, loaded it into the PC and played it through the Soundblaster, why did it sound like was being played under water, while 12 pitbull terriers were tearing at eachother in a huge truckload of dry leaves? I asked an expert friend, and Cut he talked something about the Soundblaster really only having one sound SONG C in order to 4-channel song, all the 4 channels had to be it channel, mixed together into one before syndrome, seriously damaged sound quality, only here you get it twice as bad as with Oktalyzer. (Oktalyzer offers 8 channel sound by realtime mixing sounds together 2 by 2 while playing). The 22 kHz sampling rate has to be divided by 4 to get the real rate that is used while playing music. All this means that if you only play spot effects, a sampled sound here and there, then the Soundblaster good news. Very good. From what I heard of spot effects in the games I tried, the quality on the sounds from elevator doors, doors being shut, cars starting, golf balls splashing into the water, etc., were just as good as on the Amiga. It was only when it came to playing music that the Soundblaster fell hopelessly behind. It should be a lot better with the "Soundblaster Pro", though. But nevertheless, it worked - and only that had me very impressed. At the moment, a certain Henning Hellstrom of Norway is programming a Protracker clone on the PC to be titled SoundBlaster Studio (SBST), and it was a beta version of SBST I used to play my protracker modules. I just saved the modules from the Amiga and loaded them directly into the PC. All protracker commands and effects worked perfectly, I was truly amazed, and all in all it was just like playing it on the Amiga, only with about half the sound quality. SBST will be available for the PC in a few months or so, and in the meantime, the software that's most widely used is the so called "ScreamTracker", which didn't impress much. Looks and feels like a really old version of Sound Tracker. Also, it's _not_ completely compatible with the Amiga's Protracker format. Now, this "Soundblaster" card is only one of many different sound/music formats available for PC's. Just like they have a zillion standards for displays (EGA, VGA, Hercules, SVGA and God knows how many others), they have the same kind of thing for sound support. The poor musician who sets out to write music for a PC game has an enormous job ahead of him, if he wants to support all of the formats. One of the first sound cards to appear as an upgrade from the PC's built-in speaker, was the AdLib card. This is an FM synthesizer it does not play samples, it only plays synthesized sounds. However, the synthesized -sounds are much nicer than the synthetic stuff on the Amiga, as the AdLib -synthesizer is more complex, it can generate much warmer sounds with more variety than what you can do with, say, MED's built-in synthesizer part. The AdLib card actually sounds very nice, considering the limitations. would much rather listen to music from the AdLib than listen to a Protracker module played on the PC. The AdLib sounds were klingy, clean, warm and smooth, whereas the sampled music sounded awfully distorted. I t! SONY VA Now, just to confuse you all a little more, the thing is that every SoundBlaster card ALSO has an AdLib-card built in. In other words, if you have a SoundBlaster, you have both SoundBlaster and AdLib, and you can use them them simultaneously, given the right software. And to make the confusion complete, there is also a card called the "Thunderboard" which is 100% compatible with the Soundblaster, in other words it is not only compatible with Soundblaster, but with Soundblaster AND AdLib. And to top it all off, the new Soundblaster Pro is also compatible with Soundblaster AND AdLib, but it gives better sound on the Soundblaster (samples) part. If you're still sitting up, maybe you can understand some of the problems the PC owners have? If you do, start thinking that they have the same kind of problems with monitors, monitor cards, disk drives, hard disks, processors, co-processors, keyboards etc. etc. etc. Anyway, back to the sound.. The situation is, with the sound quality and everything, that most games on the PC use the AdLib to play the music, and for those who have the SoundBlaster instead of "just" the AdLib, they also get some sampled spot effects in addition. is the Roland cards/synths. (I'm not 100% sure here, so The "Rolls Royce" in PC sound & music equipment I believe there are two different modules correct me if I'm wrong), and they are called CM-32 and CM-32L. These are synthesizer modules and sample players with built-in samples, just like any been shaped etc., ganes and since these other synthesizer in rack-format (without keyboard) which have been to make it fit inside the PC's. You can send MIDI instructions to the synthesizers from within software like -synth-modules use a standard setup for sounds etc., a few games offer sound/music support for the Roland synth modules. This, of course, sounds brilliant. Although since there aren't that many different sounds to choose from, after a couple of years, the sounds will be worn out, and the equipment will be out of date. It doesn't offer the possibilities of variety that SoundBlaster sampling or AdLib synthesis does. There is also a sound card / sound format called Covox, but nobody seems to know much about this, and it's not very much used. Actually of all the games I looked at, only one of them supported this format. The prices for the equipment I've been talking about are quite reasonable, actually. I only know the prices in Norway - a Soundblaster (with built- in AdLib, remember) costs about 1700 NOK (Approx. ú150), and a SoundBlaster Pro about 2500 NOK (Approx. ú220). My final verdict must be that in the battle PC us Amiga in sound & music production, the Amiga is still a step ahead, with it's 4 separate channels enabling it to play more than 1 sound at a time and keeping the sound quality up. As I mentioned above, for playing sound effects, a Sound Blaster Pro for the PC will be at least as good as the Amiga, yes even better too. But when it comes to playing music, the Amiga still reigns supreme among all the home computers. A big disadvantage for the PC users is that the PC doesn't have anything built-in. Everything is extra cards, extra processors, extra cables, extra you-name-it, so it's very difficult to CAN establish standards. Before you can start a game on the PC, you will most Tike likely have to run a BANG separate setup-program which asks you about your monitor, processor speed, memory, sound and music format, etc. As soon as some hot card comes out, someone else will immediately try to make something better. And this keeps on until there's a whole bunch of different so called "standards", and the software developers are getting desperate because they have to support a zillion different formats and standards. However, for those who can afford a powerful PC like a 386, a lot of memory, a big harddisk, a great monitor, a screen-card to go with it, and a SoundBlaster Pro, you can get some really great software for it. looking and sounding AM/FM
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