[net.micro.amiga] Amiga Sound Capibilities

mark@apple.UUCP (Mark Lentczner) (09/05/85)

[]
>Sounds can be "recorded" digitally and reproduced, or you can
>generate new sounds.  There are four channels, two of which
>can be used for envelope control (attack, decay, etc.).
>You have complete control over waveform and envelope.  Sound
>generators are DMA driven, so they don't tie up the 68000.
>There is also builtin speech generation that can generate
>speech from unrestricted text.

This is all fairly ambigious as was the previous comments on
Amiga Sound ('blows me away').  None of the features listed
before ('sequencing, adding a keyboard, midi, etc.') were anything
new, they can all be done with ease on any micro these days.

Now, for some more sepecific questions (that might reveal what
the sound is REALLY LIKE):

    a) How many channels of A/D and D/A and how many bits each?
	Companding or not?  Sample Rates available?
    
    b) Is the synthesis tied to waveform synthesis (no FM or Karplus/Strong
	strings or other fun things) and if so what are the limitations
	on waveform size and width.  What about ability to change
	waveform tables on the fly?
    
    c) Are the envelopes really seperate envelope generators or are
	they using multiplying DACs and multiplying two waveforms?
    
    d) If sound is done with DMA what impact does that have on Disk?
	can I go to disk while sound is playing?  While sound is sampling?
    
    e) What do they really mean by stereo sound?  Does this mean that
	one waveform/envelope channel is in the right, while on is in 
	the left?  That's only one sound per side, not very good... or
	do they mean that you can pan the final mixed sound left or right?
	Or is it that each sound is placeable in left to right space?  Is
	the mixing equal power? (if not then moving sound effects will sound
	weird and not move through space correctly)
    
Hope this fosters some techincal answers...

"All opinions are either from me or from outer space..."

-- 
--Mark Lentczner
  Apple Computer

  UUCP:  {nsc, dual, voder, ios}!apple!mark
  CSNET: mark@Apple.CSNET