Atari v Commodore

[Fröhn]

I think you missed my point. What's is the overall goal of those multiple DACs on the Amiga and Atari? Music.

No you missed the point. While the Amiga easily can play 4 different samples at different DAC feeding frequencies at the same time, the A8 can't because it doesn't have the processing power to do so. The A8 could aswell have one single 6 bit DAC, the output quality of MOD players would be the same.

[malducci]

I think you missed my point. What's is the overall goal of those multiple DACs on the Amiga and Atari? Music.

No you missed the point. While the Amiga easily can play 4 different samples at different DAC feeding frequencies at the same time, the A8 can't because it doesn't have the processing power to do so. The A8 could aswell have one single 6 bit DAC, the output quality of MOD players would be the same.

 

Uhm... what you talking? I think you missed the point I made of atariksi missing the port.

 

The SB only having a single DAC isn't a hindrance because it has 9 (or 18 for OPL3) FM channels. The whole point of the DAC(s) in the first place, especially relative to this discussion, is to output music as the end goal. And Atariksi implying the SB's single DAC, without mentioning the benefits of the additional FM channels that each create complex waveforms and modeling instruments, as a weakness relative to the other two systems.

[Fröhn]

The SB only having a single DAC isn't a hindrance because it has 9 (or 18 for OPL3) FM channels. The whole point of the DAC(s) in the first place, especially relative to this discussion, is to output music as the end goal. And Atariksi implying the SB's single DAC, without mentioning the benefits of the additional FM channels that each create complex waveforms and modeling instruments, as a weakness relative to the other two systems.

There is no weakness because output via 4 DACs at same frequency is the same as output via 1 DAC with 2 more bits and software mixing (4x ADC and 1x STA instead of 4x STA).

 

Anyway I was opposing that "A8 audio is just like Amiga audio" talk. No OPL involved.

[frenchman]

I think you missed my point. What's is the overall goal of those multiple DACs on the Amiga and Atari? Music.

No you missed the point. While the Amiga easily can play 4 different samples at different DAC feeding frequencies at the same time, the A8 can't because it doesn't have the processing power to do so. The A8 could aswell have one single 6 bit DAC, the output quality of MOD players would be the same.

 

 

He's funny this Fröhn guy.....You missed the point....then he MUST say: no YOU missed the point. He's like I'm ALWAYS right, and you are not. Very funny reading indeed, I enjoy his anecdotes immensely.

[Rybags]

OK, I don't think we've explored the ergonomics and general annoyances angles yet. Although both have their greivances here.

 

Atari: I hate the attract mode. Annoying to be working on 2 machines, and have these annoying colour changes distracting me.

 

Plus/4: OK, it's not part of this discussion, but... what where they thinking. TV-out on the left hand side. Reset button hidden away right next to the power switch. Stupid cursor keys with pissweak feedback. 2 Control keys - WTF, you barely ever use the first one! These things detract from an otherwise great looking/feeling machine.

Oh, and the joystick ports. Way to make people pay for your crud joysticks, C= Functionally identical, but otherwise incompatible with the legacy sticks.

 

C-64: Rear loading cart, although the format is much less used than Atari, and Atari made the same mistake on the XEs for the sake of having reduced complexity for the ECI.

Power jack at the side an annoyance. But Commodore has a big win in having a SIO port that at least you can replicate with off-the-shelf bits, and uses cables that are nice and flexy unlike the stiff rubbish that Atari used in most cases.

[Fröhn]

He's funny this Fröhn guy.....You missed the point....then he MUST say: no YOU missed the point. He's like I'm ALWAYS right, and you are not. Very funny reading indeed, I enjoy his anecdotes immensely.

That's because most people here don't know shit.

[emkay]

He's funny this Fröhn guy.....You missed the point....then he MUST say: no YOU missed the point. He's like I'm ALWAYS right, and you are not. Very funny reading indeed, I enjoy his anecdotes immensely.

That's because most people here don't know shit.

 

 

How many CPU cycles does it take to mix 4 voices into one voice that the C64 can play via GOAT Tracker (f.e.) ?

 

Be sure that the A8 can play those 5 channels, I have mentioned, in a better quality than the C64 can play 3 channels.

DMA may stop the CPU sometimes on the A8. But the CPU cycles are clearly 1.8 times faster and there is no need to mix voices by software. When playing several channels, they were a fraction of cpu time, but the waveforms, played through all channels will be almost accurate and adding them analogus together, while on the C64 4 channels already lose by the software mixing.

There is also a way of enhancing/interpolating the wave forms. Don't forget that the A8 has independent filters. Making it possible to create sawtooth waves backward and forward in all frequency ranges...

 

Well, SID has an analogue filter. But POKEY is able to produce analogue waves... with it's generators and when using digitizing.

Edited March 22, 2009 by emkay

[Fröhn]

Yes but you can't feed the DACs with 4 different frequencies. Imagine a typical sample rate like the 6 kHz feeding of the Halle Project 93 MOD player. It feeds all 4 DACs at the same constant rate and only reads the samples at different rates. That player is pretty much at the limit already. It ends up being the same as software mixing: 4 channels joined via addition to one output channel played at one rate. It's simply not comparable to the 4 Amiga channels which really can do 4 different samples played at 4 different DAC feeding rates.

[Rybags]

You could... to a degree.

 

Have a fractional component of the address pointer.

or creative programming with interleaved channel playback.

 

But... bottom line of the whole thing is that Digital playback kinda sucks hard on both machines. Software tricks do little to bring it even fractionally near the Amiga.

[emkay]

Yes but you can't feed the DACs with 4 different frequencies. Imagine a typical sample rate like the 6 kHz feeding of the Halle Project 93 MOD player. It feeds all 4 DACs at the same constant rate and only reads the samples at different rates. That player is pretty much at the limit already. It ends up being the same as software mixing: 4 channels joined via addition to one output channel played at one rate. It's simply not comparable to the 4 Amiga channels which really can do 4 different samples played at 4 different DAC feeding rates.

 

It's relative...

The DMA on the AMIGA also has to read one channel after the other. It's just (much) faster, but not at the same time working.

And, no, software mixing is an additional reducing of the sample quality. The main difference why some sample sound more straight on the C64 is the high tone cutting circuitry behind the SID, while there is none behind the POKEY chip.

[potatohead]

The Amiga isn't an 8 bit computer either.

 

If this is Atari -vs- C64, Amiga is kind of out for me. Whole different discussion. Besides, it's kind of gen 3 for the Miner chipset philosophy. Kind of breaks the whole design element of the discussion. Company name changed, but the core bits that make it go were related. Complexity was higher though. Better to stay in 8 bit land.

 

 

Back on A8 -vs C64...

 

I really liked the original A400 A800. Compared to the C64 and Vic, they seemed more substantial machines. Comfortable. Joystick ports on the front was nice too. Always seemed to be plugging things in, and the ports were right there. Side ports bug the heck outta me. Same for the back. Liked the colored console keys, and they were differentiated from the keyboard well enough to not be a bother.

 

The XL machines were great to type on, but the ports were annoying. Lots of stuff going on in the back, right where I can't get to it without moving stuff, or bending over the thing. Side was better for a working layout. Metal console keys got ugly quick. Bad call there. I sure didn't like the flimsy cart doors on 600 and 800XL. Ugh...

 

Always thought the whole machine would be improved by building an expansion tray, that contained the computer also. That never happened, but I think having the expansion on the back was probably a good idea. Side ports for that stuff get kind of gangly.

 

Attract mode seemed to be just an Atari thing. At least I knew it was still working! Not a plus though, generally speaking.

 

I think I agree about more sane cables on the C64. The SIO stuff is bulky. Agreed on that one.

Edited March 22, 2009 by potatohead

[emkay]

You could... to a degree.

 

Have a fractional component of the address pointer.

or creative programming with interleaved channel playback.

 

But... bottom line of the whole thing is that Digital playback kinda sucks hard on both machines. Software tricks do little to bring it even fractionally near the Amiga.

 

The difference is mainly in the highest usable note when using digitizing. The higher the updates, the higher the playable notes.

I bet, you can do 2 "hardsynth" voices and 3 digi channels (softsynth) together, with a stock Atari, since hardsynth mainly needs the correct timing and rather low CPU cycles, while "softsynth" needs only the double quantisation speed that the played note has to clearly recognize a drum or a bass-tone.

[Rybags]

Front ports suck too... great for ease of plugging in, but not good for typists.

 

But no machine compares to the ST - the joystick port placement could only have been worse if they'd built the machine with one of those stupid M$ ergonimic keyboards, then put the ports in between the G and H keys

 

 

For the purpose of discussing sound... you can almost call the Amiga an 8-bit machine... although of course it does the DMA in double-byte chunks.

[Fröhn]

You could... to a degree.

 

Have a fractional component of the address pointer.

That's what mod players do. That's basically how software mixing works too.

 

or creative programming with interleaved channel playback.

That's what mod players do. 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 <- that sort of interleaving.

 

But... bottom line of the whole thing is that Digital playback kinda sucks hard on both machines. Software tricks do little to bring it even fractionally near the Amiga.

It can play mods. More than I would have expected knowing the small processing power of the 6502.

[potatohead]

But no machine compares to the ST - the joystick port placement could only have been worse if they'd built the machine with one of those stupid M$ ergonimic keyboards, then put the ports in between the G and H keys icon_razz.gif

 

ROTFL!!

 

Yeah, I think you are right about that front port and typing. Of course, I mostly didn't type with the joysticks plugged in! Go figure.

[atariksi]

Sound cards are more of a nonstandard than video cards. That's why you see many DOS games either expecting sound blaster compatibility or giving you a list of sound cards to choose from. But even Sound Blaster directly accessed lacks the multifrequency DACs running simultaneously like you can do on Amiga and Atari.

 

Well, they had more than just a stereo DAC. There was opl2 (sound blaster) and opl3 (sound blaster 16) FM chips on the sound cards. Some recent music examples of just OPL2 here.

 

For digital audio playback, Amiga has 4 tracks and 4 8-bit DACs with their own frequency and volume settings. Atari has 4 4-bit DACs each can be played at their own frequency using IRQ or cycle exact coding. Sound Blasters have 1 DAC with stereo you have 2 DACs but they have to run at the same sampling rate. Adlib stuff is just for music notes not for generic digital audio playback.

 

 

I think you missed my point. What's is the overall goal of those multiple DACs on the Amiga and Atari? Music.

 

You didn't need multiple DACs because you had 9 FM channels in OPL2 or 18 FM channels with OPL3, not to mention the use of software mixing for the direct DAC if needed.

 

Plus, if you wanted - you could could freeze the FM channel's carrier and use the volume for sample playback on each FM channel.

 

Musical notes used be the main use in computers since memory was limited but nowadays digitized sample playback is the norm so allowing for 4 DACs to be played at their own rate is better than one DAC (or two at a fixed frequency). Adlib board prior to Sound Blaster did not allow you to adjust volume on each FM channel independently. All the Sound Blasters that I have does not allow you to do it either. So even if you can find some boards that have volume adjustment per channel, once again the point about non-standard useage comes into play. You can't really take advantage of it like you can on Amiga/Atari since you would be making your software specific to a few audio boards.

[atariksi]

I think they did similar stuff with Amiga in making a 160*200 chunky mode for stuff that required lower resolution.

Amiga 160x200 modes are just 320x200 with each pixel written twice to the bitplanes. There is no trick involved.

 

Sorry, but if it was just software emulation, I wouldn't be stating it. The Amiga hardware is involved in making some weird modes possible-- it involves hardware scrolling odd planes by a pixel and having both planes 0,1 point to same memory location and planes 2,3 point to same location.

The "odd planes scrolling" was no trick. The Amiga simply offered two scroll registers - one for odd planes, one for even planes. And 160x200 was still done via 320x200 and double pixel writes. Ofcourse for 16 colors it would work. All 160x200 stuff I have seen was 256 colors, and as for 16 colors every sane coder would prefer the lesser bitplane load due to extremeley slow chipram.

 

I know the Amiga registers, but there are tricks that show up when you manipulate certain registers in combination. For example, if you set BPLCON0 to 7 bitplanes, you end up with 4 bit planes but the bitplane data register for planes 5 and 6 is still active on Denise so you get free masking registers as a backdrop (just like you get free sprites on Atari 8-bit using GRAFn registers).

 

And don't accuse others of not knowing their stuff-- you have made 3 false statements within a span of 51.1 hours:

 

(1) No Win/Linux OS cannot do smooth animation, (2) Atari can't play 4 samples at different frequencies (you never replied to post #2890), (3) Amiga needs to do 160*200 all in software.

[atariksi]

The SB only having a single DAC isn't a hindrance because it has 9 (or 18 for OPL3) FM channels. The whole point of the DAC(s) in the first place, especially relative to this discussion, is to output music as the end goal. And Atariksi implying the SB's single DAC, without mentioning the benefits of the additional FM channels that each create complex waveforms and modeling instruments, as a weakness relative to the other two systems.

There is no weakness because output via 4 DACs at same frequency is the same as output via 1 DAC with 2 more bits and software mixing (4x ADC and 1x STA instead of 4x STA).

 

Anyway I was opposing that "A8 audio is just like Amiga audio" talk. No OPL involved.

 

Malducci is correct- YOU are missing the point. I was comparing Atari/Amiga with Sound Blaster DACs not comparing A8 audio with Amiga audio. And if Malducci thinks I am missing the point, then he's missing a different point than the one that you are missing.

 

You want me to write up an application that plays back 4 different 4-bit DAC channels at different frequencies to prove you wrong. And if you think, it's a memory limitation, look at my link in the signature-- SPS.HTM.

[Fröhn]

Malducci is correct- YOU are missing the point. I was comparing Atari/Amiga with Sound Blaster DACs not comparing A8 audio with Amiga audio.

Yes and that is exactly what's wrong: "A8/Amiga audio"

[atariksi]

Malducci is correct- YOU are missing the point. I was comparing Atari/Amiga with Sound Blaster DACs not comparing A8 audio with Amiga audio.

Yes and that is exactly what's wrong: "A8/Amiga audio"

 

Nothing wrong with A8/Amiga audio-- they work fine on the machines that I have.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

I think by now we should call this topic "Atariksi vs. Fröhn" instead of Atari vs Commodore... and err, the moderators should have mercy with us and finally close this thread... -Andreas Koch.

[atariksi]

Front ports suck too... great for ease of plugging in, but not good for typists.

 

But no machine compares to the ST - the joystick port placement could only have been worse if they'd built the machine with one of those stupid M$ ergonimic keyboards, then put the ports in between the G and H keys

 

 

For the purpose of discussing sound... you can almost call the Amiga an 8-bit machine... although of course it does the DMA in double-byte chunks.

 

I have more problems with the transfer rate of the joystick ports on Atari ST -- 7812.5 bps max. That's slower than Atari 8-bit. Amiga joystick is slower than Atari 8-bit as well since you need to XOR bits to get the 4-bit data. And Of course, C64 joystick is also slower than Atari 8-bit. The joysticks were placed okay on Atari 520ST model.

 

At least you can save time by writing 16-bits at a time on Amiga although it goes out through the DACs 8-bits at a time.

[frenchman]

He's funny this Fröhn guy.....You missed the point....then he MUST say: no YOU missed the point. He's like I'm ALWAYS right, and you are not. Very funny reading indeed, I enjoy his anecdotes immensely.

That's because most people here don't know shit.

 

 

Basically you are accusing people here of having no knowledge, and you are the king of knowledge, Mr. Know-it-all. You see the problem I am having with this sentence?

[frogstar_robot]

The joysticks were placed okay on Atari 520ST model.

 

No, they were placed 10 different kinds of awful. Many is the time I either tilted the machine up on it's back or hung the front of it off the desk then eyeballed from underneath to get them plugged in. At one point, I had 6ft extensions permanently plugged in just so I wouldn't have to finagle around getting joysticks plugged it. The 520/1040 ST joystick ports easily win the worst-port-placement contest of any machine that I have owned or used.

[atariksi]

Well,

I think by now we should call this topic "Atariksi vs. Fröhn" instead of Atari vs Commodore... and err, the moderators should have mercy with us and finally close this thread... -Andreas Koch.

 

This thread did end for some time but someone decided to revive it rather than start another one.