These hardware capabilites in turn allowed the development of the Amiga music software scene, in particular music trackers [2]
The Amiga was the first mass produced computer where you could make music without plugging in expensive synths or samplers (like was common on the Atari ST for example - I remember my uncle connecting his ST to an Akai sampler and a Roland synth, as a kid I could never have afforded a setup like that). But, if you wanted to sample on the Amiga, you actually needed one external piece of hardware: an audio sampling interface, however these were generally very cheap [3]
Just a few hours ago an article about making music on the Atari ST made it to the HN home page (I also commented there), might be an interesting read for those interested [4]
[1] http://theamigamuseum.com/the-hardware/the-ocs-chipset/paula...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker
> But, if you wanted to sample on the Amiga, you actually needed one external piece of hardware: an audio sampling interface, however these were generally very cheap
I don't know if I still have mine. In french we'd call it a "digitaliseur" (literally "digitalizer"). I do know though that I still have something much rarer: a 5"1/4 external Amiga floppy drive (when sailing the high seas, for the price of 30"1/2 floppies it was cheaper to buy a 5"1/4 drive + 30 5"1/4 floppies). We'd then add a switch on the Amiga to be able to boot from the 5"1/4 as if it was a 3"1/2 and no program would know anything about it (it was working perfectly).
High resolution on Amiga was interlaced and required a scan doubler to be tolerable. Reading MSDOS formatted floppies required special software. DTP and other productivity software tended to find their way to the ST first. Atari made a rock bottom price cheap laser printer. The total package price for a 1Mb ST + high res monitor was lower than anything Commodore ever offered, and far lower than anything Apple offered, but still got you an 8mhz 68000, a GUI, MIDI ports, etc.
I always try to say: the competition for the ST was the Mac and a PC, not the Amiga. Different market segment. Yes, on a low-res colour monitor many people purchased the ST as a games machine, but it wasn't great for that, really. It was a cheap productivity machine, "power without the price". More memory and more Mhz per dollar than anything else out at the time. And that's the segment Tramiel was targeting, he was going after the Mac ("computers for the masses, not for the classes."). The "Jackintosh"
For MIDI sequencing, there's no comparison. The breadth of software on the ST was far beyond anything on the Amiga and some giants of the current DAW software market like Cubase and Logic got their start there.
And honestly, while onboard sampled sound generation on the Amiga was better than its competition, that's kind of a dubious distinction when we're talking about grainy low-bitrate 28khz 8 bit audio. Not exactly CD quality. Within a few years it was outdated relative to what you could get on a commodity PC ISA sound card.
Interestingly, an amiga and cheap sampler is how Kanye got his start.
I just love these websites which mimic the Amiga UI or at least show the mouse pointer, instant nostalgia kick. For example also the amigalove forum.
Depending on the time or place they may have been a bit more expensive so it makes sense that in your case you had to spend $100... but let's not forget that a stand-alone sampler was at least 10 times more expensive, so the Amiga was still a way cheaper option than e.g. an Atari ST + MIDI-connected stand-alone sampler.
Also we have to consider that there were sample libraries distributed on floppy - so with an Amiga you could still have "cool sounds" even without a sampler interface - the main point being that audio playback on Amiga was higher quality than most competitors.
[1] https://youtu.be/i9MXYZh1jcs?t=184
[2] https://fxtop.com/en/historical-exchange-rates.php?YA=1&C1=G...
There's a few demo-mods along the left side, several mod archives listed in the File menu, and you can load your own as well.
That and I figured out you can actually use it to compose your own tracks if you like, just like the old days!
However I can't agree with the last paragraph: "Thirty-five years after the debut of the Amiga 500, a new generation of retro-curious musicians will have the chance to experiment with the machines, as the A500 Mini has recently launched. Perhaps it could be as loved as the original..." - since the A500 Mini is just an emulator running on an embedded board, and it doesn't even have a functional keyboard, you're probably better off running an Amiga emulator on your Linux/Windows PC or Mac...
It's basically 2 systems in one, the primary system is the nice carousel that lets you select and instantly boot and play the provided games.
The secondary system is an old version of the Amibian UAE based Amiga emulator, which is auto booted when you select an LHA archive containing a games' fileset via the USB drive. It's slow, clunky, and out of the box hardly supports any games or even Workbench. To get it working you have to muck about with XML config files and put games/apps into the archive files correctly. If I wanted to do that, I'd have stuck with a Raspberry Pi and a proper Amiga emulator. I have several real Amigas, so I know what's involved, and in my opinion the A500 mini is just a toy.
I've been really impressed with THEC64. It really delivers a retrocomputing experience that's close to the original in spirit.
The affordability, community, and platform itself created a creative environment that wasn't separate from the music itself.
This ambitious platform combination of creativity, hardware, software, and community made the Amiga a superior music production environment for every home audio producer.
The sound is definitely getting a kick lately. I was playing tech house at a party and some random came up and was like why aren't you playing jungle? Like damn I haven't heard that in over a decade, good question
It's fun
I dunno how much DJ/VJ/music stuff you do but when you have cute 20 year old total babes literally sitting in your lap asking what that is then it starts to click. Plus with the Amiga thing, again with jungle that 8 bit bass really pumps for such a cheap machine.
I think some get a kick out of working under limitations in order to boost creativity too. Personally I would start with renoise though I can totally see myself having a blast with octamed on some computer that doesn't even really have internet.
Here's one I remember venetian snares had in his youtube likes like a decade ago
This brings back memories of dank school basements with "software flea markets" where everything, anything (ok maybe save for hot new releases) cost 5zł per floppy. There was a whole sub-genre of programs dedicated to copying disks, with various counter-techniques to work around each copy protection advancement.
The software definitely wasn't free, but piracy was king, and us teens just rolled with the waves. It was the only way to get warez, there was no internet nor BBSs there/then. Quaint to look back on now.
I was totally blown away watching waveforms and simple audio editing, speeding up, etc.. Remember, this was back when PCs were 4 colors, and sucking at best, for anything audio or video related.
It looked like magic from my, kid's eyes, perspective.
I ended up with a "Perfect Sound" parallel port sampler and messing around with MED, later OctaMED on my A1200 with ECE Midi interface and good ol PSS synth. Good memories.
In some parts of the world, electronic music was a thing, where I was however, you looked like a complete weirdo if you were into that stuff. Seriously.
"Its not real music" up until the PC could catch up and do the same eh ;)
I ended up with an ST instead for better or worse.
What I really yearned for was an Akai S1000 and they seemed much more out of reach.
I was originally going to suggest the Amiga's video genlock that enabled products like the Toaster, but it looks like WinUAE can simulate genlock via an external AVI file.
disclaimer: was not an Amiga user or analog video professional; some of that might not be totally accurate or use the correct terms. And iiuc, the 1000/500 series for example didn't have the expansion capabilities of the 2000.
