I (we all) spend countless hours on RUclips, navigating through endless, mindless and talentless content. It's a rare occasion, almost once in a blue moon, that I (we) stumble upon a genuine diamond in the rough-a creator who not only showcases true talent but also embraces originality, far removed from the echoes of trending bandwagons or the sole intent of merch peddling or selling us a Nord VPN account. With this channel, I've discovered exactly that kind of rare gem. Your work shines bright with authenticity and creativity, setting a high standard in a sea of repetition. Thank you for bringing something truly unique to the platform.
Cannon Fodder was absolutely one of my all time favorite Amiga games. And Fast tracker II was first touch on making music. Ahh so much memories. Great video! (EDIT: and Another World!)
Thanks Alex, I have the Amiga rigged to my Eurorack so I can add some external analogue filtering. Could be set up for duophony if I were inclined lol.
Bars and Pipes!!! That was my happy place 😊 Texture by Roger Powell made my brain hurt but I wish there was a version for windows. And Music Mouse by Laurie Spiegel was my moment of Zen.
This was a blast from the past! I tried so many of these programs back in the nineties, creating all sorts of weird and wonderful sounds, but with absolutely no musical knowledge, it never went anywhere. Thanks for finely crafting this video together; both the nostalgia trip AND seeing all that software/hardware being used by someone who knows what they're doing made it well worth a watch.
Super cool! Never knew the Paula could do AM and FM in hardware, and it's fascinating seeing how many complex softsynths were released relatively early into the Amiga's lifespan.
The Commodore Amiga 1000, plus Noisetracker, then OctaMed is where I began my musical production journey back in 1990. I don't use trackers any more, but I remember fondly where my roots are. The demoscene is where I spent much of my free time, wishing I could make tunes as good as Purple Motion from the Future Crew.
"in a pwm manner" *nick batt flashes* i really enjoyed the deluxe sound jam, and the whole moody/mysterious background music and the aesthetic! you're really talented!
Fascinating. I missed the whole Amiga experience, moving from Commodore 64 in the 80s directly to a 386 PC in the 90s and it was a long time before MIDI came back into my life.
I think that was a common pathway through computing at the time. It was entirely by accident that I found Amiga as a 13-year old. My life could have turned out quite differently! Anyhow, glad I was able to shed some light on why I love these machines 😊
There was an awkward period in the second half of the 80s and into the early-mid 90s where the x86 PCs were in some respects a bit of a step backwards compared to the Atari ST and Amiga. In other areas the PC still felt like progress, but some multimedia aspects, and fun stuff like the demoscene and games, took quite a while to catch back up in PC-land. My own journey was Spectrum->Atari STE->286 PC, with the Atari STE period being much shorter for me than the other two, which was a shame. If only the 16 bit home computers had become cheaper more quickly, the second half of the 1980s would have been more interesting in bedrooms up and down the land.
@@steveelbows3797 The Macs in Germany were out of reach and so the Ataris were the real professional tools with GUI. Windows was barely usable and my Atari TT030 with loads of RAM, graphic card and 21" Eizo was a professional tool not just for music but also Desktop Publishing (with Calamus being superior over Pagemaker and Quark). The Amiga was the tool for presentations and video editing. Some TV-Studios used it for a long time. A 386 couldn't really compete in these areas. It was also a time when Microsoft wasn't the only and for all not the best company for text editors and spreadsheet programs (there was WordPerfect, Lotus etc.).
Okay this is my new favorite channel. I never owned an Amiga (they honestly weren’t that popular in the U.S. in the mid-90s) but I got started making music with Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker on the PC around the same time you got into making music on the Amiga. Clearly I was working on the inferior machine because this is absolutely mind blowing. (Btw: yes please do a video on Turbosynth). Keep making awesome videos!
Thanks! When I originally owned my Amiga I only did sampling and tracker music, so when I got back into the machine in 2017, I was blown away by the amount of interesting music programs available.
Great Video about the beginning of making Computer Music. Again thanx for letting me Remember the good and Glory days i was Coding on the Commodore Amiga. These times are over and will never come back, but i can say that i´m was Part of this :-) Your Videos and your Songs are simply Great, so please don´t stop !
Excellent video! The Amiga was such a forward-looking machine and it's incredible just how much of the modern computing experience was already available on the platform all the way back then. I've wanted an Amiga ever since I was a little kid but only just managed to snag myself a (fully recapped!) A1200 just last year. I hadn't heard of a few of these synths but I'm definitely gonna have a play around now!
I laughed when you started up the Guitar Slinger mod. I clearly remember hearing that song at a local Amiga user group meeting around 1994. It was one of the more popular mods on the local BBS. God, I sound old :)
Excellent video! Back in the days I mainly used samples in protracker and Octamed and only later in life found out about some of the software featured in your video. Another fav of mine was the technosound turbo II sound editor in which you could real time effect the input or render the effects into the waveform. Amazing power from the amiga 500. I still have an Amiga 2000 pimped with a gotek drive and am going to investigate "Sonic Arranger" as that one looks interesting! Thanks :)
I learned about the Turbosynth the other day and have now fallen down a rabbit hole of early soft-synth history. Absolutely thrilled this video exists.
As a 16 year old in 1986, I remember my A500 being able to play dist guitar samples. Totally blew me away back then. Me and my mate Peter Wallis would swap disks from public domain 17 bit software. Mainly fancy text set to very urgent sounding music. Loved my Amiga.
Wow great to see such a expansive and detailed video about the Amiga sound capabilities :)- something not covered too much, I really enjoyed it, and learned so much, thank you. PS Love your 2500/030 :) - the 2000 is the best Amiga imo
I remember using a soft synth at high school back in '87 or possibly early '88. It was a non real time type affair. When we changed the filter knob value, the computer we were using (Apple II) was so slow, that it took hours to calculate the result. Talk about latency! I remember we changed the value, left it running overnight, then came back the next morning to hear the result. I can't remember if the software was provided by our school, or by a student, but the teacher let us do this little experiment, which was cool!
Well, tbh I can't remember if it was on an Apple II, but I think we only had Apple IIs. The Apple II was ten years old by that stage, and they bought 'em new around '87.
I know about Amiga trackers, but until this video had no clue about Amiga soft synths. Tbh I am blown away by what I'm seeing and hearing. The sound is of course quite lofi but it's much more powerful than I imagined
Yeah the sound reminds me of early Fairlight or Ensoniq mirage sounds, they work well with external filtering or effects! Although it must be said that with some tricks you can make Paula play 14-bit audio 😊
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Exactly how I felt. Does anyone have any idea how much a Fairlight had cost in 1985? And I've been telling about this ability of the Amiga since 1985! Glad someone finally made a video about it.
oh wow lots of blasts from the pasts here loved my Amiga in the 90s I was reluctant to get a PC and held out as long as possible, quite a while after all the Amiga mags all disappeared from the shops :)
Thanks for that in-depth exploration of Amiga-based synthesizers, most of which I had never heard of! I recently restored my childhood A500 and still have my MIDI Master interface, so I had hoped to use my A500 in my studio as a real-time playable synth, and now I have some options to explore. Great stuff!
cool showcase! soecial thanx for the demonstration at 7:17 ..i read about that funktionality of the Paula chip.. but never heard it in action! Would it be possible to sqitch it on and off on the fly through OctaMED ARexx scripting?
Hi Paulee, thanks for producing this fantastic video! I have managed to source some of these programs and others not mentioned, there is so much on the archives!!to experiment with, as I will enjoy using these sounds in some of my music (: Currently I have been using the Octamed and Techno Sound sampler as I used in the mid 90s but for some reason i had not thought about exploring the amigas Soft Synth capabilities! So really glad I came across this video! Some of the programs the links are down on Dreamland but i shall keep digging. Thanks
Sonic Arranger! When I heard about your plans for this video, I hoped you'd cover this one Amiga tracker I used to make many tracks with back in the day… Because I haven't been able to remember what it was called and it was driving me nuts! And you didn't disappoint! \:-D/ I made some of my most interesting tunes with it, because the synth sounds were just so exciting and different. Also, oh man, Sonix. I remember when my good friend got an Amiga 500 and we first heard the You Belong to the City demo track… Mind blown! :-D Thank you for the video, it was both very informative and very entertaining. (Yeah it took me a while to comment… I'm old :-)
Man, this is awesome! I miss my Amigas - was very much into trackers since the early 90s. OctaMED Sound Studio was incredible when it came out later! I'd gone through Soundtracker, Protracker, MED and then OctaMED - but damn I loved Sound Studio. I eventually got an A4000 (after having owned an A500, A600 and A2000), with a Toccata 16 bit Audio card - and Sound Studio could work directly with that. So much fun, and so ahead of its time! The Amiga was king of trackers. Sure, Atari ST had Cubase and built in MIDI, which gave it quite the reputation, but the Amiga's Paula chips were next level at the time. I remember a hack that if you put the display into "Productivity Mode" (I cannot remember the resolution, but remember it was limited to 4 colours), the audio bit rate could be increased to 12 bit... And Sound Studio could take advantage of that! Thanks for uploading, this video got me so nostalgic!
I agree, it is amazing! The Ensoniq EPS16+ runs on a 68000 I believe; I even own an Alesis synth powered by their later Coldfire CPU. PS love your channel 😊
Great work Paulee! I'd love to see you explore some more of the oddities you have in your synth collection since you're kind of known for loving difficult interfaces.
Thanks for the video. I was not aware of the wide range of innovative sound design tools for the Amiga and the Paula chip.I recently got an A500+, in a not so good condition, with the intention of composing using octaMED, both Paula and midi. A trip down the memory lane of my late 80s early teenage years and soundtracker.
The musician Danny Wolfers -- under the name Legowelt and many others -- was and is a very avid user of the Amiga for his music. If you're not familiar with Legowelt I urge you to check him oot. Even a couple dedicated Amiga albums: Amiga Railroad Adventures and Amiga 500 Tapes.
I now (only vaguely, in several cases) remember fiddling with a number of these softwares shown in this video way back in the day. Thanks for exercising my crusty old neurons to shake loose these memories! Unfortunately, none of my fumbling efforts led to anything, because I completely lack any and all musical talent. :P My one impression might be a couple Soundtracker sample discs I made sampling from a friend's brother's rather expensive and fancy MIDI synth module from back in the early '90s. I mailed copies of the instruments to some guy, but I don't know if they ever reached any wider distribution. Alas, my Amiga days ended back in '97, when my crusty old A500 was 10 years old and very behind the times, and I basically never looked back since. Not because I didn't want to - it all just hurt too much, after Commodore went bankrupt and all of that. :) (Yes, having been a huge fanboy of a dead system is painful...) I'm a PC guy now, but not because I like these soulless, awful machines. It is what it is...
7:55 concept and sound-wise, this is very similar to the simplexFM by SOMA! I wonder if the guy who designed it took inspiration from the Paula channel modulation
So, not bad for a "games machine"... my musical adventures started on the C-64 I could sample, had a simple speech synth (Big mouth), and even ended up getting the FM expander keyboard. Added a MIDI interface later so I continue to use it with my Amiga set up. While everyone and their dog bought the Atari ST, I went the Amiga, I do make it difficult for myself. Some Atari software was available for the Amiga, so I was thrown a lifeline. Ran Dr.T's Keyboard Controller Sequencer, along with X-Or, a multi synth editor / librarian package using MIDI sysex (it ran in hi res mode - gives mw a headache just thinking about it as I didn't have a multi sync monitor) Thank you for a in depth (and you dived very deep indeed) look at making sounds on the Amiga. Paul Preston
I'd moved on from the Amiga around 1992. Great to see it was still being used in the 1990s for music. I guess it was a really cheap and powerful option then, since it's main commercial life was over really
Yes, it entered its “specialist hobbyist” phase, where it’s stayed ever since 😊, I’m thankful that I found the Amiga in childhood because it’s allowed me to create music and videos that connect with a passionate fan base 😊
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Not disagreeing, but I think it had a mid-life too when children in the mid 90s bought them cheap 2nd hand like you said for £100 in the mid 90s
Thanks for the informative video. I also use the Amiga for making music but apart from Aegis Sonix and Octamed I never heard about most of the other programs shown here. Can you provide some download sources? I was not very successfull finding these online.
I remember seeing adverts for Aegis Sonix and for the plethora of sound samplers that were available for the Amiga. They were some of the main reasons I wanted an Amiga so badly... I was still using a C64 at the time. So I saved and saved and got my first Amiga 500 around 1988. Loved the wide range of incredible audio software that was available, but also got drawn in by Dpaint and ended up becoming a graphic artist instead of musician... still dabbled with music for many years on the Amiga moving up to an Amiga 1200 and an Amiga 4000. The after 20 years without access to my Amigas, I splurged and picked up an Amiga 1000 earlier this year. Also have a Raspberry Pi 400 for when I want to emulate more powerful Amiga's, but there's nothing like using the original hardware.
Thanks for telling us your story 😊, I only got into Amiga in ‘95 so missed most of the fun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well, it meant software was super cheap second hand! Anyhow, congrats on the 1000!
The graphic and animation software was the strongest side of Amiga! DPaint, TVPaint, Imagine, Aladdin, Caligari, Lightwave, Cinema4D, Adorage, Scala MM etc. etc. And i remember my first one, the vector based animation software Fantavision.
Found this through Sonic Talk, Glad you found Synthetica (26:45) I did that a long time ago. Limit the memory you give it and be prepared for some long waits!
Looks really cool! I found that even with a fast 060 emulation and lots of RAM it was stuck at 1% rendering, so I wonder if there are any tips for making it faster? 😊
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Use as little memory as possible, don't use too many oscillators, and use lower pitches. I wanted to keep the quality as high as possible but this resulted in incredibly slow oscillator rendering! If it's an emulator maybe try different CPU types, It's probably built for an 020, but I never used it on anything beyond an 030. I wrote it on an 030 with 4 or 6MB.
Amazing to see all these different synth-programs! I recently played a little bit with deluxe-sound, since it came bundled with my amiga sampler. I never got this little "Recordmaker" program to work.... Oh and one question, what song starts playing at around 28:10 ?
You highlighted many digital synths on the Amiga that I wasn't aware of, so that was cool to see, but I do know one that you missed out on the list that stood out for me. That was based on the Roland TB303, which had a cartoon, like interface. The Amiga was blessed with so much Amiga music software. Back in 1985 my brother had programmed a piece of music on an Atari 800 XL, and that for me was the very first time I had used any music software on a computer. I had a Mega ST in 1993 but it was Octamed Sound Studio where I created my first proper music track in 1996 on an Amiga 1200. Algorithm was another music program I liked, but it was purely text based, AI like music creation. I produce music with Presonus Studio One now and have been creating music for over 30 years.
The Amiga's audio ability to do real-time MIDI synthesis & sampling, to use it as a sound module the same way VST's are used to, is exactly why I choose the Amiga over the Atari ST back in 1985, and for twice the price. I was blown away by this ability, and no other computer could do anything like this in the 80s. I used my Amiga in my bands as my instrument. A big deal was made about the built-in MIDI interface of the Atari ST. I had to laugh. It was about $20 to to add a port changer to the Amiga to provide the sockets, because....MIDI was also built-into the Amiga, and OS tight. But.....that amazing sound chip was going to save me thousands of dollars on buying synthesizer keyboards. Especially a sampler. Not enough people talked about that, but I was well aware. The Amiga should have been a huge hit in the MIDI the music industry. What countless musicians take for granted today in their VST instruments, they can thank the Amiga's amazing sound chip for bringing this concept to life. It's just sad that Steinberg software could not recognize this and come out with the VST format on the Amiga. Instead, they choose to make Cubase on the Atari ST competitor, when they could have really had something amazing if they had chosen the Amiga instead.
The Archimedes has 8 channels of 8-bit audio in hardware with independent pan controls. It suffers from never being mainstream enough to accumulate as much software as the Amiga but there are a few trackers and audio editors.
❤ LOVED this. I'm a professional musician, with lots of tracking in my youth. Had never heard of any of these techniques performed in the Amiga. PLEASE do more! You mentioned effects? Realtime effects??
Yes, real-time effects! If you Google search for “Amiga Bill Paulee Bow” you can find a stream where I show a few of them off. I come on at 26:00 minutes.
@Magical Synth Adventure I just found your channel. I really liked your music, your editing style, speaking voice etc. I don't think I'm the only one who would enjoy a similar video as this one but on programs doing realtime in/out and processing. It feels like Christmas right now! Thank you for making this film! Do you also use genlock and the Amiga in your videos? Then that would be another video I'd like to see hahaha. Wonderful work!!
Nice video, about programs I'd never heard of befor. I'm an Amiga fan since the early nineties and own several of them since. I'm recently trying to make some house music. And as a teenager from the Nineties my Amiga has to be part in that. I connected it via a Midi interface to my MacMini with Cubase and found out I can reach my Amiga over Midi. Now I need to explore software. I wonder where i can find 4bc sound engine and e2 fm synthesiser?
I'm 50 and still go on about the Amiga, got my first one in 1990, an A500 with 1MB of Ram. Then sold that and got an A1200 in late 1992 which I kitted out with a Blizzard 030@50hmz and a 32MB Simm. I still have my A1200 to this day and use it. It's been recapped and sill runs great :)
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Nice! The Blizzard 030 was the king of the 030's back in the day, that card still sells for than what I paid for it back then. I paid $495 AU and could sell it for more than that now. But I never will. Btw - great channel, I've just subbed 😃
This is fantastic 😍 I've used the Amiga and its audio since 1988 and I've heard about the FM/AM mode in the Paula chip, but never heard it in action. I've got to try that ASM code while using Protracker or OctaMED in a future tune :)
I had an Amiga (A500 then A4000/030) during the golden age of the late 80s / 90s and the killer app for me was, of course, Soundtracker. I do remember using the waveform designer on Octamed extensively, together with sample editing software that came with the Datel sampler cartridge. After that I bought a midi interface and used it mostly with the Yamaha PSS795 keyboard I had at the time, so most of the software you demo here I never tried out. Very impressive video, thanks!
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 You must have had a great school. In ours we had a Poly61 and a D-5. In a later School there was a VCS3 but noone knew where the keyboard was so it had to be played by the joystick.
Wow. I had an Amiga 500 back in the day (late 80:s/early 90:s). I vaguely remember drawing some waveforms like in some of the softsynths here but at the time I was put off by it since it mostly rendered some bad sounding waves and the sampleplayback capabilities was way more interesting and I was much more drawn to trackers. Octamed was a game changer where the impossible task of getting 8 channels of samples to be played at once out of the 4 channel Amiga was just incredible. That further took the focus away from "pure Synthesis". Besides I (and probably many with me) didn't know anything about synthesis at the time so many concepts in the advanced programs here wasn't approachable for us at the time. It was way more fun to put together some tunes in 8 channels with "real samples" using Octamed! Then later on, of course, I got some real Synths and used midi together with an Atari ST...
I (we all) spend countless hours on RUclips, navigating through endless, mindless and talentless content. It's a rare occasion, almost once in a blue moon, that I (we) stumble upon a genuine diamond in the rough-a creator who not only showcases true talent but also embraces originality, far removed from the echoes of trending bandwagons or the sole intent of merch peddling or selling us a Nord VPN account. With this channel, I've discovered exactly that kind of rare gem. Your work shines bright with authenticity and creativity, setting a high standard in a sea of repetition. Thank you for bringing something truly unique to the platform.
Cannon Fodder was absolutely one of my all time favorite Amiga games. And Fast tracker II was first touch on making music. Ahh so much memories. Great video! (EDIT: and Another World!)
These sound pretty amazing, especially the early ones. How eye-opening.
Thanks Alex, I have the Amiga rigged to my Eurorack so I can add some external analogue filtering. Could be set up for duophony if I were inclined lol.
Bars and Pipes!!! That was my happy place 😊 Texture by Roger Powell made my brain hurt but I wish there was a version for windows. And Music Mouse by Laurie Spiegel was my moment of Zen.
really great, comprehensive overview of amiga audio. i can feel your passion for this, and really enjoyed it.
Thanks Richard, I feel lucky to have had access to such a powerful creative platform at such a young age.
This was a blast from the past! I tried so many of these programs back in the nineties, creating all sorts of weird and wonderful sounds, but with absolutely no musical knowledge, it never went anywhere. Thanks for finely crafting this video together; both the nostalgia trip AND seeing all that software/hardware being used by someone who knows what they're doing made it well worth a watch.
Cheers 😊
Super cool! Never knew the Paula could do AM and FM in hardware, and it's fascinating seeing how many complex softsynths were released relatively early into the Amiga's lifespan.
The Commodore Amiga 1000, plus Noisetracker, then OctaMed is where I began my musical production journey back in 1990.
I don't use trackers any more, but I remember fondly where my roots are.
The demoscene is where I spent much of my free time, wishing I could make tunes as good as Purple Motion from the Future Crew.
Purple Motion is legendary
"in a pwm manner" *nick batt flashes*
i really enjoyed the deluxe sound jam, and the whole moody/mysterious background music and the aesthetic! you're really talented!
Had to pop Nick in! 😊
Fascinating. I missed the whole Amiga experience, moving from Commodore 64 in the 80s directly to a 386 PC in the 90s and it was a long time before MIDI came back into my life.
I think that was a common pathway through computing at the time. It was entirely by accident that I found Amiga as a 13-year old. My life could have turned out quite differently! Anyhow, glad I was able to shed some light on why I love these machines 😊
There was an awkward period in the second half of the 80s and into the early-mid 90s where the x86 PCs were in some respects a bit of a step backwards compared to the Atari ST and Amiga. In other areas the PC still felt like progress, but some multimedia aspects, and fun stuff like the demoscene and games, took quite a while to catch back up in PC-land. My own journey was Spectrum->Atari STE->286 PC, with the Atari STE period being much shorter for me than the other two, which was a shame. If only the 16 bit home computers had become cheaper more quickly, the second half of the 1980s would have been more interesting in bedrooms up and down the land.
@@steveelbows3797 The Macs in Germany were out of reach and so the Ataris were the real professional tools with GUI. Windows was barely usable and my Atari TT030 with loads of RAM, graphic card and 21" Eizo was a professional tool not just for music but also Desktop Publishing (with Calamus being superior over Pagemaker and Quark). The Amiga was the tool for presentations and video editing. Some TV-Studios used it for a long time. A 386 couldn't really compete in these areas. It was also a time when Microsoft wasn't the only and for all not the best company for text editors and spreadsheet programs (there was WordPerfect, Lotus etc.).
I loved all these programs growing up. It was so amazing each program doing something so new.
Okay this is my new favorite channel. I never owned an Amiga (they honestly weren’t that popular in the U.S. in the mid-90s) but I got started making music with Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker on the PC around the same time you got into making music on the Amiga. Clearly I was working on the inferior machine because this is absolutely mind blowing. (Btw: yes please do a video on Turbosynth). Keep making awesome videos!
Thanks! When I originally owned my Amiga I only did sampling and tracker music, so when I got back into the machine in 2017, I was blown away by the amount of interesting music programs available.
Great Video about the beginning of making Computer Music. Again thanx for letting me Remember the good and Glory days i was Coding on the Commodore Amiga. These times are over and will never come back, but i can say that i´m was Part of this :-) Your Videos and your Songs are simply Great, so please don´t stop !
I couldn’t stop if I wanted to 😊
Excellent video! The Amiga was such a forward-looking machine and it's incredible just how much of the modern computing experience was already available on the platform all the way back then.
I've wanted an Amiga ever since I was a little kid but only just managed to snag myself a (fully recapped!) A1200 just last year. I hadn't heard of a few of these synths but I'm definitely gonna have a play around now!
Have fun!
I never knew soft-synths were around that long, I thought the only options back then were hardware ones... Fascinating stuff
We all knew that vintage synths sound the best. But soft synths? This is amazing stuff. Thanks for this very high quality content!
Thanks, no worries 😊
Love this. Great documentary. I'd forgotten how talented the Amiga was!
I laughed when you started up the Guitar Slinger mod. I clearly remember hearing that song at a local Amiga user group meeting around 1994. It was one of the more popular mods on the local BBS. God, I sound old :)
We *are* old! 😂
I enjoy your narrative pace as well as the general presentation of the project.
It definitely achieves a vintage nostalgic atmosphere. 🦉🍐🎃
Excellent video! Back in the days I mainly used samples in protracker and Octamed and only later in life found out about some of the software featured in your video. Another fav of mine was the technosound turbo II sound editor in which you could real time effect the input or render the effects into the waveform. Amazing power from the amiga 500. I still have an Amiga 2000 pimped with a gotek drive and am going to investigate "Sonic Arranger" as that one looks interesting! Thanks :)
I learned about the Turbosynth the other day and have now fallen down a rabbit hole of early soft-synth history. Absolutely thrilled this video exists.
Thanks! It’s an easy rabbit hole to fall down! 😁
Fabulous... a real trip down a rabbit hole, that's opened up many old memories...
I would have liked to have had more synthesis knowledge at the time, I could have done a lot with this software!
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 agreed ..I was dabbling with a dx27 and cz101 at this epoch
What a journey you've taken us on! Loved it.
High praise coming from you 🖤
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 too kind, but this was great.
As a 16 year old in 1986, I remember my A500 being able to play dist guitar samples. Totally blew me away back then. Me and my mate Peter Wallis would swap disks from public domain 17 bit software. Mainly fancy text set to very urgent sounding music. Loved my Amiga.
Wow great to see such a expansive and detailed video about the Amiga sound capabilities :)- something not covered too much, I really enjoyed it, and learned so much, thank you. PS Love your 2500/030 :) - the 2000 is the best Amiga imo
Thanks! I just got my 2000 and am gonna load it up with Tocatta, Toaster, maybe a Vampire 😊
Totally just re-lived my favorite childhood alone times. Awww!
Wow, a lot of info - and some great sounds ++ As others mentioned, seeing someone who knows how to use these makes all the difference.
Brilliant doco mate. I was just reminiscing about Aegis Sonix and here you are showing it’s amazing potential! 🙏
Thanks! Gonna start thinking about a part 2 of this video soon 👌🏻
I remember using a soft synth at high school back in '87 or possibly early '88. It was a non real time type affair. When we changed the filter knob value, the computer we were using (Apple II) was so slow, that it took hours to calculate the result. Talk about latency!
I remember we changed the value, left it running overnight, then came back the next morning to hear the result. I can't remember if the software was provided by our school, or by a student, but the teacher let us do this little experiment, which was cool!
Wow, that’s wild! I know of one Apple II hardware synthesis system (Alpha Syntauri), but not of any soft synths :)
Well, tbh I can't remember if it was on an Apple II, but I think we only had Apple IIs. The Apple II was ten years old by that stage, and they bought 'em new around '87.
I remember playing with Aegis SONIX on my A1000 in 1986/7. It was neat. Great video 😀 I've still got the A1000 and the Aegis SONIX disk!!!
I haven’t seen a real copy of it, would be cool to have!
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 I haven't seen a real copy of it either! 🙄
This video reveals some unkown secrets behind the Amiga sound chip. Really sophisticated!
Magnificent! Thank you for crafting and sharing this.
I cannot with how gorgeous these synths sound.
8-bit 28Khz magic 😊
I know about Amiga trackers, but until this video had no clue about Amiga soft synths. Tbh I am blown away by what I'm seeing and hearing. The sound is of course quite lofi but it's much more powerful than I imagined
Yeah the sound reminds me of early Fairlight or Ensoniq mirage sounds, they work well with external filtering or effects! Although it must be said that with some tricks you can make Paula play 14-bit audio 😊
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Exactly how I felt.
Does anyone have any idea how much a Fairlight had cost in 1985?
And I've been telling about this ability of the Amiga since 1985! Glad someone finally made a video about it.
Thousands probably in 1985 😂
Impressive work and great music, indeed. Cheers!
Amazing documentary. Super good
Amazing info and beautifully presented- thank you so much!
I liked it! : ) So many applications I haven't heard of before. * inspired *
oh wow lots of blasts from the pasts here loved my Amiga in the 90s I was reluctant to get a PC and held out as long as possible, quite a while after all the Amiga mags all disappeared from the shops :)
I hung on until early 2002-ish, when the call of VST’s and multi-track recording became too much!
Loving it already, only watchen 5 minutes so far, will watch the rest when I have time.
Great Video. There are a lot of Soundprogramms, that I didn‘t know. Best regards from Germany.
Superb video! Let's keep Amiga fire alive!
Thanks for that in-depth exploration of Amiga-based synthesizers, most of which I had never heard of! I recently restored my childhood A500 and still have my MIDI Master interface, so I had hoped to use my A500 in my studio as a real-time playable synth, and now I have some options to explore. Great stuff!
Grand! Not all of these respond to MIDI but some definitely do. I’d love to see an updated sonic arranger with MIDI support.
cool showcase! soecial thanx for the demonstration at 7:17 ..i read about that funktionality of the Paula chip.. but never heard it in action! Would it be possible to sqitch it on and off on the fly through OctaMED ARexx scripting?
I think it might, my current issue is that I get an error dialog box when I switch it on, albeit one that I can click to close.
Hi Paulee, thanks for producing this fantastic video! I have managed to source some of these programs and others not mentioned, there is so much on the archives!!to experiment with, as I will enjoy using these sounds in some of my music (: Currently I have been using the Octamed and Techno Sound sampler as I used in the mid 90s but for some reason i had not thought about exploring the amigas Soft Synth capabilities! So really glad I came across this video! Some of the programs the links are down on Dreamland but i shall keep digging. Thanks
Grandis.nu’s search is pretty good!
That sine wave from Aegis Sonix is gorgeous. You’ve got me thinking about picking up an Amiga now…
Remember there’s a VST version of Aegis Sonix 😊, but good luck if you decide to pick up an Amiga 👍🏻
Sonic Arranger! When I heard about your plans for this video, I hoped you'd cover this one Amiga tracker I used to make many tracks with back in the day… Because I haven't been able to remember what it was called and it was driving me nuts! And you didn't disappoint! \:-D/ I made some of my most interesting tunes with it, because the synth sounds were just so exciting and different.
Also, oh man, Sonix. I remember when my good friend got an Amiga 500 and we first heard the You Belong to the City demo track… Mind blown! :-D
Thank you for the video, it was both very informative and very entertaining. (Yeah it took me a while to comment… I'm old :-)
Thanks, I’m glad I managed to cover the right software 😊
Man, this is awesome! I miss my Amigas - was very much into trackers since the early 90s. OctaMED Sound Studio was incredible when it came out later! I'd gone through Soundtracker, Protracker, MED and then OctaMED - but damn I loved Sound Studio. I eventually got an A4000 (after having owned an A500, A600 and A2000), with a Toccata 16 bit Audio card - and Sound Studio could work directly with that. So much fun, and so ahead of its time!
The Amiga was king of trackers. Sure, Atari ST had Cubase and built in MIDI, which gave it quite the reputation, but the Amiga's Paula chips were next level at the time. I remember a hack that if you put the display into "Productivity Mode" (I cannot remember the resolution, but remember it was limited to 4 colours), the audio bit rate could be increased to 12 bit... And Sound Studio could take advantage of that!
Thanks for uploading, this video got me so nostalgic!
I LOVE THIS! Straight down the Paula rabbit hole
Awesome vid.. as a production nerd this is exactly what I wanted to watch today
I love Amigas and brainmelting audio i think the algorithm found me a good one this time :)
Whoooo 🥳🥳🥳
Amazing how many things musical Motorola was integral to!
I agree, it is amazing! The Ensoniq EPS16+ runs on a 68000 I believe; I even own an Alesis synth powered by their later Coldfire CPU. PS love your channel 😊
This is an excellent video! Thanks to that insufferable Mr. Ball for sending me here 😊
Thanks 😊
🤯 Thank you from the bottom of my synthetic heart! ❤ A500&2K
Nice one!!!
Thanks so much! This is the one I really wanted to make, as it wasn’t explored enough 😊
Thank you for this! I'm hooking up my Alesis Vortex 2 to my A600 and this video will make finding the software easy! Cheers🎉
@@fordprefect_amiga hey! I also have a vortex, nice board!
Great work Paulee! I'd love to see you explore some more of the oddities you have in your synth collection since you're kind of known for loving difficult interfaces.
Thanks, I’ll definitely be working my way through them. Next up is a deep dive into the world of the Roland V Synth 😊
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 that will be quite cool!
Vsynth video is out :)
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 I'll check it out soon. I heard you talking about it on the Sonic State podcast. :)
Thanks for the video. I was not aware of the wide range of innovative sound design tools for the Amiga and the Paula chip.I recently got an A500+, in a not so good condition, with the intention of composing using octaMED, both Paula and midi. A trip down the memory lane of my late 80s early teenage years and soundtracker.
Thanks! I wish I had the knowledge to use these at the time!
The musician Danny Wolfers -- under the name Legowelt and many others -- was and is a very avid user of the Amiga for his music. If you're not familiar with Legowelt I urge you to check him oot. Even a couple dedicated Amiga albums: Amiga Railroad Adventures and Amiga 500 Tapes.
I now (only vaguely, in several cases) remember fiddling with a number of these softwares shown in this video way back in the day. Thanks for exercising my crusty old neurons to shake loose these memories!
Unfortunately, none of my fumbling efforts led to anything, because I completely lack any and all musical talent. :P My one impression might be a couple Soundtracker sample discs I made sampling from a friend's brother's rather expensive and fancy MIDI synth module from back in the early '90s. I mailed copies of the instruments to some guy, but I don't know if they ever reached any wider distribution.
Alas, my Amiga days ended back in '97, when my crusty old A500 was 10 years old and very behind the times, and I basically never looked back since. Not because I didn't want to - it all just hurt too much, after Commodore went bankrupt and all of that. :) (Yes, having been a huge fanboy of a dead system is painful...) I'm a PC guy now, but not because I like these soulless, awful machines. It is what it is...
I held out until 2001! Talk about painfully obscure 😂
Oh yes. Lots of memories and lots of cool stuff i´ve never seen.
Subbed! Used to make OctaMED craziness on Amiga back in the day, and loved me some Sonix! And, SWINTH on Commodore 64! ... I kinda miss those days.
Awesome video to us mere mortals 💕
This has absolutely blown my mind. Not even sure what to say.
7:55 concept and sound-wise, this is very similar to the simplexFM by SOMA! I wonder if the guy who designed it took inspiration from the Paula channel modulation
@@ThePointingArrows you never know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Wild! i was a tracker kid and had no idea such synths existed on my olde amiga
Me too!
Can you put a list of the tested programs in the description? Interesting list of programs, and several i didn't know existed. More like that :-)
I just uploaded a new video with more interesting programs!
Awesome video - thank you for making this!
So, not bad for a "games machine"... my musical adventures started on the C-64
I could sample, had a simple speech synth (Big mouth), and even ended up getting the FM expander keyboard. Added a MIDI interface later so I continue to use it with my Amiga set up.
While everyone and their dog bought the Atari ST, I went the Amiga, I do make it difficult for myself.
Some Atari software was available for the Amiga, so I was thrown a lifeline. Ran Dr.T's Keyboard Controller Sequencer, along with X-Or, a multi synth editor / librarian package using MIDI sysex (it ran in hi res mode - gives mw a headache just thinking about it as I didn't have a multi sync monitor)
Thank you for a in depth (and you dived very deep indeed) look at making sounds on the Amiga.
Paul Preston
I'd moved on from the Amiga around 1992. Great to see it was still being used in the 1990s for music. I guess it was a really cheap and powerful option then, since it's main commercial life was over really
Yes, it entered its “specialist hobbyist” phase, where it’s stayed ever since 😊, I’m thankful that I found the Amiga in childhood because it’s allowed me to create music and videos that connect with a passionate fan base 😊
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Not disagreeing, but I think it had a mid-life too when children in the mid 90s bought them cheap 2nd hand like you said for £100 in the mid 90s
Your miles ahead of the pack full steam ahead
Fantastic video! Great coverage, editing. Great everything !! And I learned stuff! Thank you!
Thanks Kevin! It brought my laptop to it’s knees 😂
Very nice, thanks for that!
Cheers Marvin 😊
Thanks for the informative video. I also use the Amiga for making music but apart from Aegis Sonix and Octamed I never heard about most of the other programs shown here. Can you provide some download sources? I was not very successfull finding these online.
Hi, have you tried searching the Grandis Nu FTP? It’s a good place to start. ftp2.grandis.nu/turransearch/
I remember seeing adverts for Aegis Sonix and for the plethora of sound samplers that were available for the Amiga. They were some of the main reasons I wanted an Amiga so badly... I was still using a C64 at the time. So I saved and saved and got my first Amiga 500 around 1988. Loved the wide range of incredible audio software that was available, but also got drawn in by Dpaint and ended up becoming a graphic artist instead of musician... still dabbled with music for many years on the Amiga moving up to an Amiga 1200 and an Amiga 4000. The after 20 years without access to my Amigas, I splurged and picked up an Amiga 1000 earlier this year. Also have a Raspberry Pi 400 for when I want to emulate more powerful Amiga's, but there's nothing like using the original hardware.
Thanks for telling us your story 😊, I only got into Amiga in ‘95 so missed most of the fun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well, it meant software was super cheap second hand! Anyhow, congrats on the 1000!
The graphic and animation software was the strongest side of Amiga! DPaint, TVPaint, Imagine, Aladdin, Caligari, Lightwave, Cinema4D, Adorage, Scala MM etc. etc. And i remember my first one, the vector based animation software Fantavision.
Found this through Sonic Talk, Glad you found Synthetica (26:45) I did that a long time ago. Limit the memory you give it and be prepared for some long waits!
Looks really cool! I found that even with a fast 060 emulation and lots of RAM it was stuck at 1% rendering, so I wonder if there are any tips for making it faster? 😊
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Use as little memory as possible, don't use too many oscillators, and use lower pitches. I wanted to keep the quality as high as possible but this resulted in incredibly slow oscillator rendering! If it's an emulator maybe try different CPU types, It's probably built for an 020, but I never used it on anything beyond an 030. I wrote it on an 030 with 4 or 6MB.
Cool channel Paulee, keep up the good work!
Thanks! 😊
high quality video! thanx for making it :)
Thanks for watching it 😊
Amazing to see all these different synth-programs! I recently played a little bit with deluxe-sound, since it came bundled with my amiga sampler. I never got this little "Recordmaker" program to work....
Oh and one question, what song starts playing at around 28:10 ?
Hey, that's one of the songs from the arcade dreams soundtrack :) It's not out yet.
Great video!!! I still have my Amiga 1k2. So it's interesting for me! *Thank you!*
You're welcome! Thanks!
You highlighted many digital synths on the Amiga that I wasn't aware of, so that was cool to see, but I do know one that you missed out on the list that stood out for me. That was based on the Roland TB303, which had a cartoon, like interface. The Amiga was blessed with so much Amiga music software. Back in 1985 my brother had programmed a piece of music on an Atari 800 XL, and that for me was the very first time I had used any music software on a computer. I had a Mega ST in 1993 but it was Octamed Sound Studio where I created my first proper music track in 1996 on an Amiga 1200. Algorithm was another music program I liked, but it was purely text based, AI like music creation. I produce music with Presonus Studio One now and have been creating music for over 30 years.
I think a lot of us got out musical start with Amiga 😊
Do you know the name of the 303 clone?
The Amiga's audio ability to do real-time MIDI synthesis & sampling, to use it as a sound module the same way VST's are used to, is exactly why I choose the Amiga over the Atari ST back in 1985, and for twice the price. I was blown away by this ability, and no other computer could do anything like this in the 80s. I used my Amiga in my bands as my instrument.
A big deal was made about the built-in MIDI interface of the Atari ST. I had to laugh. It was about $20 to to add a port changer to the Amiga to provide the sockets, because....MIDI was also built-into the Amiga, and OS tight. But.....that amazing sound chip was going to save me thousands of dollars on buying synthesizer keyboards. Especially a sampler. Not enough people talked about that, but I was well aware.
The Amiga should have been a huge hit in the MIDI the music industry. What countless musicians take for granted today in their VST instruments, they can thank the Amiga's amazing sound chip for bringing this concept to life. It's just sad that Steinberg software could not recognize this and come out with the VST format on the Amiga. Instead, they choose to make Cubase on the Atari ST competitor, when they could have really had something amazing if they had chosen the Amiga instead.
The 303 program is called 303 emu.
Great... perfect ... I want to see more... my old Amiga is gone, but I think I'll get it back otherwise ...
I’m just editing a new vid on Amiga real-time effects 😊
The Archimedes has 8 channels of 8-bit audio in hardware with independent pan controls. It suffers from never being mainstream enough to accumulate as much software as the Amiga but there are a few trackers and audio editors.
❤ LOVED this. I'm a professional musician, with lots of tracking in my youth. Had never heard of any of these techniques performed in the Amiga. PLEASE do more! You mentioned effects? Realtime effects??
Sadly, it wasn't as widely known as it should have been. But the MIDI soft synth ability of the Amiga is mainly why I bought one in 1985.
Yes, real-time effects! If you Google search for “Amiga Bill Paulee Bow” you can find a stream where I show a few of them off. I come on at 26:00 minutes.
@Magical Synth Adventure I just found your channel. I really liked your music, your editing style, speaking voice etc. I don't think I'm the only one who would enjoy a similar video as this one but on programs doing realtime in/out and processing. It feels like Christmas right now! Thank you for making this film!
Do you also use genlock and the Amiga in your videos? Then that would be another video I'd like to see hahaha.
Wonderful work!!
@@siljamickeify no genlock yet, but I am getting one for the A2000 soon!
I think I’ll do real-time processing next :)
At around 5.00 you had me shouting “underpants” ........nice JF tribute Paulee
I changed a bunch of notes but kept the vibe! Lol.
That's the comment I was looking for before I put the same thing.
UNDERPANTS😂😂😂
This is so f*cking cool. Thanks for creating this.
i think my alltime fav amigatrack is the one from xenon 2 by bomb the bass. gritty, as you said, is the right word. amesome soundmachine this!
A great tune. The CDTV version has a different special remix too :)
Nice video, about programs I'd never heard of befor.
I'm an Amiga fan since the early nineties and own several of them since. I'm recently trying to make some house music. And as a teenager from the Nineties my Amiga has to be part in that.
I connected it via a Midi interface to my MacMini with Cubase and found out I can reach my Amiga over Midi.
Now I need to explore software. I wonder where i can find 4bc sound engine and e2 fm synthesiser?
4BC is here 😁 loonies.dk/demos/demos.asp?id=4bc
I'm 50 and still go on about the Amiga, got my first one in 1990, an A500 with 1MB of Ram. Then sold that and got an A1200 in late 1992 which I kitted out with a Blizzard 030@50hmz and a 32MB Simm.
I still have my A1200 to this day and use it. It's been recapped and sill runs great :)
I had a Blizzard with 32MB too! It was a nice machine for 1996 when I had it.
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 Nice! The Blizzard 030 was the king of the 030's back in the day, that card still sells for than what I paid for it back then. I paid $495 AU and could sell it for more than that now. But I never will.
Btw - great channel, I've just subbed 😃
9:22 Sonix v2.0 just blew my mind 🤯
I loved your video. ❤❤❤ Please keep them coming.
These are amazing resources for old noobs like me.
Take care, and kudos for the great work! 🥰🤩🤩🍻🍻
Thanks a bunch 😊
This is fantastic 😍
I've used the Amiga and its audio since 1988 and I've heard about the FM/AM mode in the Paula chip, but never heard it in action. I've got to try that ASM code while using Protracker or OctaMED in a future tune :)
Go for it! Just try running anything and then hitting that button!
Wonderful video, best showcase for Amiga audio I have seen.
Thanks Stephen! I made the video I thought RUclips was missing 😊
Still have well over 300 disc of demos and games, lying around in the kitchen somewhere
Could be some cool stuff on those disks! 😊
I had an Amiga (A500 then A4000/030) during the golden age of the late 80s / 90s and the killer app for me was, of course, Soundtracker. I do remember using the waveform designer on Octamed extensively, together with sample editing software that came with the Datel sampler cartridge. After that I bought a midi interface and used it mostly with the Yamaha PSS795 keyboard I had at the time, so most of the software you demo here I never tried out. Very impressive video, thanks!
I remember borrowing a PSS790 from school to do some MIDI sequencing experiments :)
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 You must have had a great school. In ours we had a Poly61 and a D-5. In a later School there was a VCS3 but noone knew where the keyboard was so it had to be played by the joystick.
Watching this again. Did I see a blipvert of Nick Batt when pwm was mentioned?
Lol yes.
@@magicalsynthadventure3216 😆😆
Really good content here, enjoyed the episode very much 👌 please bring us more fun ✌️😁✌️
Great vid! And I learned a new term: Drug Ware lol.
Wow. I had an Amiga 500 back in the day (late 80:s/early 90:s). I vaguely remember drawing some waveforms like in some of the softsynths here but at the time I was put off by it since it mostly rendered some bad sounding waves and the sampleplayback capabilities was way more interesting and I was much more drawn to trackers.
Octamed was a game changer where the impossible task of getting 8 channels of samples to be played at once out of the 4 channel Amiga was just incredible.
That further took the focus away from "pure Synthesis". Besides I (and probably many with me) didn't know anything about synthesis at the time so many concepts in the advanced programs here wasn't approachable for us at the time. It was way more fun to put together some tunes in 8 channels with "real samples" using Octamed!
Then later on, of course, I got some real Synths and used midi together with an Atari ST...
I didn’t really understand synthesis when I had my A600 in 1995 either!
Oktalizer was another 8 channel tracker like
Brilliant, thank you.