Amiga music software
Encyclopedia
This article deals with music software created for the Amiga line of computers and covers the AmigaOS
operating system and its derivates AROS
and MorphOS
and is a split of main article Amiga software
.
See also related articles Amiga productivity software
, Amiga programming languages
, Amiga Internet and communications software
and Amiga support and maintenance software
for other information regarding software that run on Amiga.
, DMCS
(DeLuxe Music) 1 and 2, Music-X, TigerCub, Dr. T's KCS, Dr. T's Midi Recording Studio, Bars and Pipes (from Blue Ribbon Soundworks
, a firm which was bought from Microsoft
and it is now part of its group. Bars and Pipes internal structure then inspired to create audio streaming data passing of DirectX
libraries), AEGIS Audio Master, Pro Sound Designer, AEGIS Sonix, Audio Sculpture, Audition 4 from SunRize Industries, SuperJAM!, HD-Rec, Audio Evolution, RockBEAT drum machine
.
port of Amiga 600
and Amiga 1200
models, and the Concierto
16-bit sound card optional module to be added to the Picasso IV graphic card, etcetera.
, SoundFX (a.k.a. SFX), WaveTracer.
, trackers became a new type of music programs which spawned the mod (module
) audio file standard. The Mod audio standard is considered the audio format that started it all in the world of computer music. After Soundtracker many clones (which often were reverse engineered and improved) appeared, including Noisetracker
, Startrekker, Protracker
. Also many deratives appeared, amongst which OctaMED
and Oktalyzer.
In the period from 1987 to 1995 when Amiga audio (which was standard in Amiga computers) was of greater quality than a standard home computer, PC compatible systems began to be equipped with 8-bit audio cards inserted into 16 bit ISA bus slots. Soundtracker Module files were used on PC computers and were considered the only serious 8bit audio standard for creating music. The worldwide usage of these programs led to the creation of the so-called MOD-scene which was considered part of the demoscene
. Eventually the PC world evolved to 16-bit audio cards, and Mod files were slowly abandoned. Various Amiga and PC games (such as Worms) supported Mod as their internal standard for generating music and audio effects.
Some trackers can use both sampled sounds and can synthesize sounds. AHX and Hively Tracker are special trackers in that they can't use samples, but can synthesize the sound created by Commodore 64 computers.
Some modern Amiga trackers are DigiBooster Pro and Hively Tracker.
Development of popular Amiga tracker OctaMED SoundStudio was handed over to a third party several times but the first two parties failed to produce useful results. A third attempt at creating an update will be undertaken by the current developer of Bars 'n Pipes.
Modern trackers can handle 128+ channel, 16-bit audio quality and can often handle up to 256 instruments. Some even support software synthesizer plugins as instruments.
software, developed by Softvoice, Inc. (see: Text2Speech System). This could be broken into three main components: narrator.device, which could enunciate phoneme
s expressed as Arpabet
, translator.library which could translate English text to American English phonemes, and the SPEAK: handler, which any application including the command-line could redirect output to, to have it spoken. Reading SPEAK: as it is producing speech will return two numbers which are the size ratio of the width and height of a mouth producing the phoneme being spoken.
In the original 1.x releases, a Say program demo was included with AmigaBASIC
programming examples. From the 2.05 release on, narrator.device and translator.library were no longer present in the operating system but could still be used if copied over from older disks.
The speak handler was not just a curiosity, or a gorgeous demonstration of capabilities of Amiga. In fact, the word processor ProWrite since its version 3.2 was able to read an entire document using the speech synthesizer for the benefit of blind users.
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
operating system and its derivates AROS
Aros
Aros may refer to:*Aros , a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium*AROS Research Operating System, a free software implementation of AmigaOS* Aros, the original Viking name of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark...
and MorphOS
MorphOS
MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...
and is a split of main article Amiga software
Amiga software
Amiga software covers a wide range of software for the Amiga computer, both productivity and games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist. The Amiga software market was particularly active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but has since the period 1996/1999 dwindled into almost only a hobbyist...
.
See also related articles Amiga productivity software
Amiga productivity software
With the term "productivity software" is usually intended a category of tools and programs aimed at producing results dedicated to a specific purpose or job and literally it is the kind of tools and applications that are used to produce documents, presentations, databases, charts and graphs,...
, Amiga programming languages
Amiga programming languages
This article deals with programming languages used in the Amiga line of computers, running the AmigaOS operating system and its derivatives AROS and MorphOS...
, Amiga Internet and communications software
Amiga Internet and communications software
This article is a split of main article Amiga software and refers to any communication and internet software that run on Amiga line of computers.See also related articles Amiga productivity software, Amiga music software, Amiga programming languages, Amiga support and maintenance software for other...
and Amiga support and maintenance software
Amiga support and maintenance software
Support and maintenance software are those programs that perform service utilities on a computer. These services could be various ones, such as format media to be used with a specific filesystem, diagnose any failure that could occur on that media, recover the data after the failure of the media,...
for other information regarding software that run on Amiga.
Noteworthy Amiga music software
Instant MusicInstant Music (software)
Instant Music is an interactive music software program released by Electronic Arts in 1986. It was developed first for the Amiga, but then ported to other platforms, such as Apple IIGS, and Commodore 64....
, DMCS
Deluxe Music Construction Set
Deluxe Music Construction Set is a 1986 music composition, notation and playback program for the Amiga and Apple Macintosh home computers.-Summary:...
(DeLuxe Music) 1 and 2, Music-X, TigerCub, Dr. T's KCS, Dr. T's Midi Recording Studio, Bars and Pipes (from Blue Ribbon Soundworks
Blue Ribbon Soundworks
The 'Blue Ribbon SoundWorks is a digital audio editor company in the United States. It was acquired by Microsoft on October 16, 1995, and merged its technology with DirectSound. The company was also known for Bars&Pipes, a series of music sequencer software packages written for the Amiga...
, a firm which was bought from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and it is now part of its group. Bars and Pipes internal structure then inspired to create audio streaming data passing of DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
libraries), AEGIS Audio Master, Pro Sound Designer, AEGIS Sonix, Audio Sculpture, Audition 4 from SunRize Industries, SuperJAM!, HD-Rec, Audio Evolution, RockBEAT drum machine
Drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
.
Audio Digitizers Software
Together with the well known Dr. T's Midi Recording Studio, Pro Sound Designer, Sonix, SoundFX, Audition 4, HD-Rec, and Audio Evolution, there were also lots of Amiga software to pilot digitzers such as GVP DSS8 Plus 8bit audio sampler/digitizer for Amiga, Sunrize AD512 and AD516 professional 12 and 16-bit DSP sound cards for the Amiga that included Studio-16 as standard software, Soundstage professional 20-bit DSP expansion sound card for the Amiga, Aura 12-bit sound sampler which is connected to the PCMCIAPC Card
In computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association which itself was created by a number of computer industry companies in the United States...
port of Amiga 600
Amiga 600
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600 , is a home computer that was introduced at the CeBIT show in March 1992. The A600 was Commodore International's final model based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and the ECS chipset. It is essentially a redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, with the option of an internal...
and Amiga 1200
Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 , was Commodore International's third-generation Amiga computer, aimed at the home market...
models, and the Concierto
Concierto
Concierto is an album by Jim Hall sextet featuring Paul Desmond, Chet Baker, Ron Carter, Steve Gadd and Roland Hanna, produced by Creed Taylor and recorded at Van Gelder Studios April 16 and 23, 1975...
16-bit sound card optional module to be added to the Picasso IV graphic card, etcetera.
Sound design / SoftSynth
Synthia, FMSynth by Christian Stiens (inspired by Yamaha's FM-operating DX Series), AssamplerAssampler
The Amiga Assampler is a software synthesizer and sample editor.Its features are:* interactive graphical assembling of sound processes* sounds with different sample rate or volume are automatically adjusted...
, SoundFX (a.k.a. SFX), WaveTracer.
Mod music file format
Starting from 1987 with the release of SoundtrackerUltimate Soundtracker
Ultimate Soundtracker, or Soundtracker for short, is a music tracker program for the Commodore Amiga. It is the creation of Karsten Obarski, a German software developer and composer at a game development company; sources differ as to the name of the company, recorded it as reLINE, whereas ...
, trackers became a new type of music programs which spawned the mod (module
Module file
Module files are a family of music file formats originating from the MOD file format on Amiga systems used in late 1980s...
) audio file standard. The Mod audio standard is considered the audio format that started it all in the world of computer music. After Soundtracker many clones (which often were reverse engineered and improved) appeared, including Noisetracker
NoiseTracker
NoiseTracker was a freeware tracker created 1989 for the Amiga platform. It was based on the Ultimate Soundtracker and developed by Pex "Mahoney" Tufvesson and Anders “Kaktus” Berkeman. It was used by Amiga game musicians to create music with four channels of sampled stereo sound, e.g. for Shadow...
, Startrekker, Protracker
Protracker
ProTracker is a popular freeware tracker created by Lars Hamre, Anders Hamre, Sven Vahsen and Rune Johnsrud for the Amiga platform. It is amongst the programs that first allowed for widespread creation of music without studio equipment...
. Also many deratives appeared, amongst which OctaMED
OctaMED
OctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvement...
and Oktalyzer.
In the period from 1987 to 1995 when Amiga audio (which was standard in Amiga computers) was of greater quality than a standard home computer, PC compatible systems began to be equipped with 8-bit audio cards inserted into 16 bit ISA bus slots. Soundtracker Module files were used on PC computers and were considered the only serious 8bit audio standard for creating music. The worldwide usage of these programs led to the creation of the so-called MOD-scene which was considered part of the demoscene
Demoscene
The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
. Eventually the PC world evolved to 16-bit audio cards, and Mod files were slowly abandoned. Various Amiga and PC games (such as Worms) supported Mod as their internal standard for generating music and audio effects.
Some trackers can use both sampled sounds and can synthesize sounds. AHX and Hively Tracker are special trackers in that they can't use samples, but can synthesize the sound created by Commodore 64 computers.
Some modern Amiga trackers are DigiBooster Pro and Hively Tracker.
Development of popular Amiga tracker OctaMED SoundStudio was handed over to a third party several times but the first two parties failed to produce useful results. A third attempt at creating an update will be undertaken by the current developer of Bars 'n Pipes.
MOD filetype evolution
Initially trackers (and the mod format) were limited to 4 channel, 8-bit audio (due to restrictions of the built-in soundchip) and 15 (and later 31) sampled instruments. By using software mixing some trackers achieved 6, 7 or 8 channel sound at the cost of CPU time and audio quality.Modern trackers can handle 128+ channel, 16-bit audio quality and can often handle up to 256 instruments. Some even support software synthesizer plugins as instruments.
Speech synthesis
The original Amiga was launched with speech synthesisSpeech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
software, developed by Softvoice, Inc. (see: Text2Speech System). This could be broken into three main components: narrator.device, which could enunciate phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s expressed as Arpabet
Arpabet
Arpabet is a phonetic transcription code developed by Advanced Research Projects Agency as a part of their Speech Understanding Project . It represents each phoneme of General American English with a distinct sequence of ASCII characters. Arpabet has been used in several speech synthesizers, like...
, translator.library which could translate English text to American English phonemes, and the SPEAK: handler, which any application including the command-line could redirect output to, to have it spoken. Reading SPEAK: as it is producing speech will return two numbers which are the size ratio of the width and height of a mouth producing the phoneme being spoken.
In the original 1.x releases, a Say program demo was included with AmigaBASIC
AmigaBASIC
AmigaBASIC was an interpreted BASIC programming language implementation for the Amiga, designed and written by Microsoft. AmigaBASIC shipped with AmigaOS versions 1.1 to 1.3...
programming examples. From the 2.05 release on, narrator.device and translator.library were no longer present in the operating system but could still be used if copied over from older disks.
The speak handler was not just a curiosity, or a gorgeous demonstration of capabilities of Amiga. In fact, the word processor ProWrite since its version 3.2 was able to read an entire document using the speech synthesizer for the benefit of blind users.
External links
- AmiWorld list of Amiga software Italian site reporting a list of all known productivity programs for Amiga.
- The classicamiga Software Directory An Amiga directory project aiming to catalogue all known Amiga software.
- The Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual: Devices (3rd ed.), published by Addison Wesley (1991) ISBN 0-201-56775-X