c160-3ay@ucbzooey.BERKELEY.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar) (10/14/85)
( Put this in your pipe and smoke it, Line Eater. ) Warning: almost-flame--- I'm sorry my previous message turned out blank. Here it is again: Thanks to those of you who responded to my query about the ST sound chip! However, I was dismayed when I learned that it is an AY-3-8910. I have used this (or similar) chip for several years in peripherals for my Apple. It is better than what's built in to the Apple, but for Atari it's a step backwards. The Atari 800 Pokey chip was definitely much better. Pokey AY-3-8910 4 voices 3 voices or 2 voices with 65536 only 4096 frequencies possible frequencies programmable waveform icky square waves only (with some difficulty) After reading about the Amiga with FM synthesis, and playing with a Mac with completely programmable waveforms and 4 voices, I was depressed to see that the ST chip could produce only square waves. Since it produces only square waves, the 8910 can not make realistic or pleasant sounds. Since it has only 4096 possible "tone periods", high pitched notes are inherently out of tune. The white noise generator is not random enough- you can sometimes hear tones in it. The built-in envelope generator is handy when you are first learning to use the 8910, but its envelopes turn out not to be very useful in general- the shapes are not natural, and they can only be applied to all 3 voices together. Happily, it is possible to manually produce any envelope by changing the amplitude parameters "on the fly". With only 16 possible amplitudes, you can hear the steps in volume as a note decays slowly. In summary: the 8910 is easy to use but not at all suitable for music or realistic/natural sounds. I may have some tutorial articles that I wrote on programming the 8910 on a disk somewhere... I will post or mail them if anyone's interested. They are intended for the Apple Mockingboard, but the same concepts apply. I hope that someone comes out with a cheap MIDI device which is to the ST what the Mockinboard was to the Apple... becoming a defacto standard for better sound effects so programmers will have something nice to work with. If it's not cheap enough, nobody will buy it and programmers won't bother. On the other hand, it must be good enough to be worthwhile (at LEAST should have programmable waveforms) and good enough that it does not have any competition- competition would ruin the possibility of a standard for ST sound appearing quickly. ......Ranjit Bhatnagar (hoping to buy an ST or Amiga soon!)
kek@mgweed.UUCP (Kit Kimes) (10/14/85)
Remember, ATARI is trying to shed the 'game machine' image. I believe they deliberately avoided the sprites (not needed anyway) and super sound to show they are serious about producing a machine that will be considered for business and other serious applications. I think this will hurt a little bit when they bring out the 260STD because that machine will be bought primarily for people to use at home and they will want to play games and have great sound. Only time will tell. Kit Kimes AT&T Information Systems Montgomery Works Montgomery, Il. 60538-0305 ..!ihnp4!mgweed!kek