What is the best 80's computer for cheap audio production?

[TytaTite]

Hi.

 

I'm debating on which 80's computer I should get for cheap sound and music design.

 

Basically, I want to turn it into a ghetto music workstation.

 

I'm looking for something around the 16/32 bit era of 80's computers (like somewhere around 1985 to 1993, more or less)

 

Two computers of interest are the Amiga and the Atari ST; however if someone could inform me of something better, I'd be happy to consider it.

 

I've turned to here because I literally cannot find any information on this from anywhere on the internet, so if people here could help me out on this, that would be awesome.

 

Thanks.

[Metal Jesus]

There was a while there when Amiga computers were used professionally for audio/video production in TV News Rooms during the 90s... so that seems like the obvious answer. I didn't use them myself, but I remember getting a tour of KiroTV or King5 TV back in the day and seeing one in use. It was pretty cool!

[Osgeld]

ST has midi hookups direct out of the box...

 

Macintosh II's had 8 bit stereo sound/recording (double check on exact models, most of the later models including the performa's did as well)

Edited September 27, 2014 by Osgeld

[+save2600]

Ghetto you say? Anything from the 80's or 90's is going to fit that description today.

 

But how about a C64 with dual SID stereo output? Don't knock it too hard! Some potential for serious creativity with such a setup!

 

Amiga can do MIDI just fine - with a parallel port MIDI box that's pretty easy to find. Great software abounds for it and RAM options seem more abundant than what I've seen for the ST. Especially important if you're going to be doing any digitizing. Big box Amiga's w/ special sound cards can record in 16-bits too, otherwise you're limited to 8-bit sound out of the ST and Amiga. I do remember recording in true 16-bit fidelity on super early Mac's. Can't remember what program it was, but seem to remember it took over the entire system and used the 68k CPU to achieve that.

 

And if I'm not mistaken, easier to increase the RAM and use modern hard drive, SD/CF card and monitor solutions with Amiga than the ST today.

 

Guess it all depends on what you're going to be doing, what kind of money and time you want to spend fiddling and what you've got the easiest access to!

[atarian1]

It really depends on what you are going to do. "Cheap music and sound design" and "Ghetto music workstation" is not specific enough.

 

Are you going to be composing music? Any acoustic instruments or all keyboard/digital instruments? Vocals/audio and/or MIDI? Sampling? Multi-track recording? Type of music? There are different systems better for different purposes. The Atari ST and Mac were THE music/audio computers back in the late 80s/early 90s. They owned 2/3rds of the market with the MS-DOS taking the last quarter and other (including the Amiga, C64, Atari 8-bits, Apple II, CoCo. etc) taking the last tiny chunk. Thus, they also had a lot of software and hardware to support them. Picking a system will depend on what you are going to do with them.

 

Don't bother with the Amiga. Yeah, the fanboys will say there is pro audio and music software, but there is a much bigger variety of music software on the Atari ST and Mac.

[JamesD]

If you want to use midi, the ST has built in ports and you need an adapter on the Amiga. The Adapter isn't difficult to build.

The Amiga has built in stereo DACs for audio, the ST only has an AY sound chip so the choice is obvious if playing sound samples is important. Sampled sounds require something like Perfect Sound to capture them. It's just an A/D converter that plugs into the back of the machine and some basic sampling software.
Programs like Dr. T's were on both machines.

If you are thinking of going with an ST, I'd get an old PowerPC based Mac instead. Development continued for it long after the Amiga and ST were dead and they are faster machines.
Frankly, with the current tools that are available, you are also better off with an old PC but I'd go with at least some sort of Pentium.
It depends on whether you mean cheap or just want to go really old school.

[+5-11under]

There's also the Yamaha CX5M.

[Nebulon]

I used to do audio on a 16MB Amiga 2000 (later a 4000/030) with a Digital Sound Studio 8+ sampler/software combination.

 

It worked well for sampling, looping, and editing, so that would be my recommendation from experience.

 

The Amiga MIDI side was handled by Music-X and a cheap parallel to MIDI interface.

 

Of course, there's also the ST with its built-in MIDI and the fact that Cubase is available on that platform. For sampling that's closer to the Amiga, maybe find an STe with a hard drive.

 

 

As others have mentioned, it depends on what you want to do. If you're planning to audio multi-track within the computer itself, you're looking at a Pentium Pro or Pentium II machine with a SoundBlaster Live card, Windows 98, and something like Sonic Foundry's Acid Music 1 or 2 (about 5 years beyond the year-range you mentioned). If you just want to mess with audio though, the older 16-bit machines are fine.

 

As a side-note, I started out sampling on a 512K CoCo 3. However, 512K will restrict you to very short samples.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Nebulon

[PFL]

The Amiga is powerful, has plenty of RAM, is affordable (including a MIDI box), has lots of software and has stereo output. The Amiga 600 is also fairly portable compared to an ST.

[atarian63]

Don't waste time on an Amiga the ST was the big standard back in the day and by far.

[82-T/A]

I knew a couple of guys in high school (during the early to mid 90s) who were into writing their own music. One of the kids ended up becoming the high school's music teacher, another ended up writing music for NASA for their space videos / presentations, and another opened a music school.

 

They all used IBM PCs with software such as CakeWalk and Encore. Those are the two software packages that I can remember off the top of my head (thinking back 15+ years ago). They all used keyboards from Roland and Korg. Two of the guys bought Korg 01/W Pros (which at the time, they told me was one of the best keyboards you could buy). They also interfaced with the computer using a General Midi card, or something like a Roland SCC-1 sound card.

 

Now, I'm just repeating what I remember from back in the day. I never wrote music, don't have a career in music, etc. (I do play Violin and Bass guitar though...)

 

 

But, all that I've ever heard of "the time" with respect to music writing is that most people used Ataris and Amigas... Atari usually for audio, and Amigas usually for video.

 

There are also some die-hard people who did a lot of music development on the Commodore 64 with the "SID" chip... I even believe some people installed two SID chips in their C64 so they could get stereo or something.

 

 

Anyway, that was my knowledge dump...

 

For what it's worth, I ended up buying a Roland SCC-1 sound cards from one of my buddies. I currently use it in my Pentium II / Windows 98 SE "vintage" gaming machine. For the games that support General Midi... it's totally awesome.

[Nebulon]

Don't waste time on an Amiga the ST was the big standard back in the day and by far.

For MIDI, yes.

 

For sampling and sample playback -- not so much.

 

It really depends on the type of audio work. The Amiga can play four samples simultaneously to the STe's two (unless there's a hack out there that I don't know about).

[amiman99]

For Music production and playback, I'll use Amiga. ST is fine if you use MIDI.

 

Check this out, sw for live MOD DJ performance:

 

and this:

 

PS. If you need MIDI you can use cheap Serial-to-MIDI converter and Music-X sw.

Edited October 21, 2014 by amiman99

[cimerians]

Elektron's C64 Sidstation 'Ninja' (an oldie)

 

http://www.elektron.se/products/sidstation

 

check out the samples on the page

 

I love that thing.

 

[atarian1]

The Amiga is powerful, has plenty of RAM, is affordable (including a MIDI box), has lots of software and has stereo output. The Amiga 600 is also fairly portable compared to an ST.

 

The Atari ST had MORE music software than the Amiga. Stereo output is fine for games, but for music production, not so good unless you can live the scratchy built-in sound.

[atarian1]

For MIDI, yes.

 

For sampling and sample playback -- not so much.

 

It really depends on the type of audio work. The Amiga can play four samples simultaneously to the STe's two (unless there's a hack out there that I don't know about).

 

Unless you like the not-so-professional sound quality of the internal sound chip, I would not use the Amiga or the ST. The STe can play four tracks in MOD files just fine.

[atarian1]

For Music production and playback, I'll use Amiga. ST is fine if you use MIDI.

 

Check this out, sw for live MOD DJ performance:

 

and this:

 

PS. If you need MIDI you can use cheap Serial-to-MIDI converter and Music-X sw.

 

I would NEVER recommend this setup for someone setting up an 80s music studio. "Trackers"/MODs are one of the stupidest music tools I have ever seen. It's like they are trying to reinvent the wheel. Most people don't know what "45E0", "1234", "54A8", etc. stands for in music terms. Show a friggin' music staff that's been used for thousands of years for christs sake! Everyone with an elementary knowledge of music knows what the standard music staff looks like. Trying to use machine/assembly language to write music is like learning how to read a book again. Sure, there will be some masochists, but most people do not want to relearn how to read again.

 

If you submitted a low quality recording like that shown here to an A&R man at a major record label, it would go into the trash bin immediately. Not investing in a decent quality demo tape is a kiss of death in the music world.

 

For samples, I would strongly recommend purchasing a dedicated sampler. Even an old 8-bit Akai sampler (the best selling sampler maker back in the 80s) has better quality sounds than any ST/Amiga/Mac/Soundblaster out there. These used to cost thousands, but can be found pretty cheaply now used. You can edit samples on a computer like the ST or just used the built in display. The ST and Mac had a good variety of sampler editing software to choose from.

[Cobra Commander]

Going retro is likely not going to be cheap. Audacity or similar software on a modern machine would be cheap.

[amiman99]

The OP asked: "What 80's computer I should get for cheap sound and music design?" not what 80s retro equipment I should get. Of course there are better alternatives and no one disputs that, maybe the OP can chime in and explain what he wants to do with the retro PC when he get's it. So far he did not, so it's all speculation.