Atari is good for MIDI purposes or for synthetic music making (chiptunes). Yes. But who said that only PC is good for making digital compositions???
I will put into this sub-forum several threads about editors of digital music for some 16/32-bit Atari machines.
This time - pure ST.
Of course at least 1Mb of RAM would be nice. Really.
Then You can make good music with it. Although 4Mb will not kill ya.
Originally Atari ST (also STf, STfm, ST+, in 520 and 1040 versions) have only a Yamaha soundchip built-in (YM). It's a 4-bit quality chip with 3 hardware channels theoretically designed only for synthetic music.
Luckily for us - Atari ST has pretty fast CPU (8Mhz) so finally we get full 4 channels (with independent volumes) and higher quality of digital sound.
There are plenty of digital editors for pure ST, however I found two of them really useful.
ProTracker ST
http://files.dhs.nu/files_msx/protk21r.zip
(The archive includes also a version for Atari STe but about it - later, in another subject).
It works with FDD but also it works instantly with HDD and CF/SD cards which is cool.
It can play 4-channels digital music with two alternative qualities:
- 12 228 Hz (this quality is not great but if You have only 1Mb of RAM and wanna make any bigger song - You will have to use the quality to play the song at all).
- 16 384 Hz (that's really nice quality for making digital music on our ST, especially if You keep filled up all the tracks, because then it sounds much better - noises coming from sound-quality are LESS audible).
You have to remember that ProTracker ST doesn't read 'tremolo' command, so if You wanna use the effect, You simply have to set up twice faster tempo to achieve the tremolo if required.
The editor contains SAMPLER corner and You can prepare Your own samples using any sampler-interface for ST. Supposedly like this one:
http://yerzmyey.republika.pl/atari_st_sampler.jpg
The second prog is DigiComposer.
http://files.dhs.nu/files_msx/digicomp.zip
Also 4-channels of digital sound. Sadly works rather only with FDD. It gets crash while work with HDD somehow.
There's some confusing PREFERENCES corner but when set up properly - it sounds better than ProTracker ST.
In my opinion it is generally better than PT ST but seems like DigiComposer doesn't read "jump to pattern" command.
Both use MOD format.
If You're interested how does sound the pure ST 1Mb + YM then listen to this:
(Taken from Atari STfm 520 1Mb and DigiComposer).
As for me the sound quality is really OK for Yamaha and for the additional channel from software-mixing.
Hence - it is worth to make also digital music on Atari ST.
