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Fahed Al Daye
Canada
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Posts 282
22 Apr 2010 07:10
| Joe M wrote:
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@ Thomas H.
Great work! Without Paula there will be no Natami. :-)
There seems to be a difference between the filtering on the A500 and the A1200 audio chips - which make them sound different. I don't know about the other Amiga models.
What about the Natami? Will it have the sound of either the A500 or the A1200 - or will it get a completely different sound signature?
I guess it is the DAC that decides the signature of the sound, or are you able to tune it as well?
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Between the A500 and A1200 which filtering system is better?
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Anton Antsnark
Russia
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Posts 143
22 Apr 2010 09:55
| is it possible to make a recording of NatAmi's "voice" ? To hear all Paula's sound
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Thomas Richter
Germany
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Posts 1425
22 Apr 2010 13:09
| Thomas Hirsch wrote:
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Thomas,
you are asking the right questions (of course!) - as I must answer the modulation is in but not tested (for now).
The PAULA state machine is fully implemented. It took me quite long to get it this far since you are (of course) right, the state chart is only on the first sight plain and easy. I think some actions and state transition causes may be missing. In the meantime I assume that the charts in the HRM were redrawn from handdrawn sketches for printing. And I believe by doing that there may have been some misunderstandings.
But nevertheless there is one audio state machine implementation per channel which corresponds to the HRM drawing. At the moment I believe that I mapped it fully correct. Which will hold to the next bug report.
So at some point the audio state machine will work correctly. And I intend to keep the original functionality and just expand the resolution of data and volume per channel. And add a panning somehow, but need to think of a smart way.
Whether it makes sense to add more channels depends also (among others) whether we going to offer hardware mixing from the beginning (or not).
Hope you survived the volcano effect without damage!
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Thus, good news indeed - and congratulations for getting the state machine right, this is highly non-trivial. Please test modulation, though.An item on my wish-list for the future would be of course more channels, higher resolution and possibly the option to place channels dynamically between left-right (i.e. change the downmix). Anyhow, good work! Thanks, I arrived fine back in Stuttgart, except for a - haatchooo - cold. But driving with five people in a car for 1800 km is *not* fun. No planes, all trains booked... I seem to attract catastrophes on my travels, had all kinds of fuel leaks, hurricanes, floodings, killed presidents, military cues.
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
22 Apr 2010 15:20
| Fahed Al Daye wrote:
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Between the A500 and A1200 which filtering system is better?
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Personally I prefer the sound of the A1200, which seems to have less filtering.
The A500-sound is a bit more "muddy".
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Claudio Wieland
Germany
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 703
22 Apr 2010 20:13
| Hello Thomas (Hirsch), in case you want to implement HW-panning, please mind correct soundwave energy distribution: 1.0 = Left²+Right² . Simple linear values won't work. Cheers
Claudio
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Thomas Hirsch
Germany
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 647
23 Apr 2010 13:53
| Marcel,
for now all Paula documentation I have (used) is the HRM and the Amiga schematics. So if there is more documentation out there, I would really welcome to have a look at it. :-)I do not know whether your docu is/could be relevant... do you have it in electronic form?
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Thomas Hirsch
Germany
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 647
23 Apr 2010 13:56
| Claudio,
a HW panning will come. Not now immediately but later. So I will come back to you when the time comes. If not - in case I forget it - please remind me then.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3976
23 Apr 2010 22:57
| Thomas Hirsch wrote:
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Marcel,
for now all Paula documentation I have (used) is the HRM and the Amiga schematics. So if there is more documentation out there, I would really welcome to have a look at it. :-)
I do not know whether your docu is/could be relevant... do you have it in electronic form?
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gunnar has a copy so far as i am informed. ;)
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Ralph Ewers
Germany
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Posts 42
27 Apr 2010 12:50
| Joe M wrote:
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Fahed Al Daye wrote:
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Between the A500 and A1200 which filtering system is better?
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Personally I prefer the sound of the A1200, which seems to have less filtering.
The A500-sound is a bit more "muddy".
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The A500 had the option to switch off an audio filter, which was needed for modem operation or something like this iirc, thus resulting in a much crisper and brighter sound. This could be done in hardware (switch) and later in software. The software solution would switch off/dim the Power LED on the A500. This filtering is not present on the A1200 in the first place, so that may be the reason why you prefer it over the A500, where this filter was enabled by default.
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Andreas G. Szabo
Germany
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Posts 134
27 Apr 2010 12:56
| Switching the filter was used in game music to add more effect.
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
27 Apr 2010 17:59
| Ralph Ewers wrote:
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The A500 had the option to switch off an audio filter, which was needed for modem operation or something like this iirc, thus resulting in a much crisper and brighter sound.This could be done in hardware (switch) and later in software. The software solution would switch off/dim the Power LED on the A500. This filtering is not present on the A1200 in the first place, so that may be the reason why you prefer it over the A500, where this filter was enabled by default.
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Hi Ralph,What you say is true, but there are also sonic differences between the A500 and the A1200 (and perhaps between the various revisions as well) even when the audio filter is turned off on both!
(Sorry for not pointing this out in my previous post). One day when I have some free spare time, I would like to connect my A500 and A1200 to my M-Audio sound card and do some serious Paula sound-testing (sampling). I don't know when I will be able to do this, but I will come back to it here on the forum when it's done. I could then also upload some sound samples of the sound-output of both computers. Meanwhile, you could download MilkyTracker which has built-in resampling modes that try to simulate the Amiga-sound, and give it a try. Load your favourite Sound/Noise/ProTracker module, and make up your mind what come closest to the Amiga-sound you prefer/are used to. There are four modes available: Amiga 500 (filter turned off), Amiga 500 LED (filter turned on), A1200 (filter turned off) and A1200 LED (filter turned on). Here you can download a screenshot of MilkyTracker with the "Select Resampler"-window: EXTERNAL LINK
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Team Chaos Leader
USA
| | (Moderator)
Posts 2094
27 Apr 2010 21:07
| My A3000 and A1200 always had brighter sound than my A500s did, even with the filters off. IIRC A1200 audio was the best. I can't remember anything specifically about my other Amiga's (A2000/A4000) audio qualities.
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
27 Apr 2010 21:27
| Team Chaos Leader wrote:
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IIRC A1200 audio was the best.
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Is it a special revision of the Paula chip you're refering to here, or the mainboard maybe? I find this quite interesting. :-) I don't think anyone out there has done a serious sound comparsion between the various Amiga models and their revisions.
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Jason
Canada
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Posts 19
27 Apr 2010 21:35
| Will audio on the natami basically be cd-quality? Outside of the fact that audio samples for most amiga apps are 8-bit, will high quality be available through AHI or something similar?
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Samuel D Crow
USA
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 1295
27 Apr 2010 22:58
| It's planned to have CD quality and about 8 voices IIRC. There will be ways to implement it via hardware banging that will be reflected in the new AHI drivers.
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
28 Apr 2010 00:02
| Might be a stupid question, but what does IIRC mean in this context?
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Alexander Zeid
United Kingdom
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Posts 5
28 Apr 2010 00:11
| "If I recall" comes to mind.
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Channel Z
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Posts 227
28 Apr 2010 00:11
| Joe:
It is an acronym for "if I recall/remember correctly". :)
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Joe M
Norway
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Posts 500
28 Apr 2010 00:17
| Thanks :-)
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Ralph Ewers
Germany
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Posts 42
28 Apr 2010 13:17
| Joe M wrote:
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Team Chaos Leader wrote:
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IIRC A1200 audio was the best.
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Is it a special revision of the Paula chip you're refering to here, or the mainboard maybe? I find this quite interesting. :-) I don't think anyone out there has done a serious sound comparsion between the various Amiga models and their revisions.
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Interesting question. AFAIK the only known change done to Paula during its whole lifetime was the changing in housing, from DIL in the old models to PLCC in the A600, A1200 & A4000, during the move towards SMD motherboards. In that case the A600 & A4000 may have a good chance to offer better sound as well. Maybe some high frequency expert around here could evaluate whether SMD generates more or less "noise" on a PCB... (as i don't believe that the simple change in housing to PLCC instead of DIL would account for the better sound alone). Not sure if everyone heard of it: Rumors have it that the sources to the PAULA chips went lost pretty early while Commodore was still alive and kicking (some even claim that happened in the late 80's already). And the same rumors say that this was the reason why PAULA was the only Amiga chip Commodore never changed (for the housing change they could simply re-use existing binaries/matrices, but for changes like adding more channels and/or going 16bit all over they would have had to completely reinvent PAULA, using big amounts of resources and risking compatibility in the process).
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