djh@neuromancer.metaphor.com (Dallas J. Hodgson) (06/12/91)
With regards to SunRize's $2,000 16-bit stereo sound board, I think they're missing the point. If I was going to spend that kind of bucks, I'd expect the software to be pretty bang-up - run on a Mac and integrate with all the high-end audio tools with which the Amiga is lacking. I was in Egghead today, guess what I saw. A PC external box that plugs into the parallel port. It claimed 16-bit stereo sampling/playback ability, with "reproduction up to 20KHz." I assume this means a max sampling rate of 40Khz. It came with waveedit software and some various libraries and such to integrate with a few other PC tasks. The box was called M-Stereo, and its total cost was <get this> $199. Now, without actually opening the box and trying the unit out, I imagine the box at little (if any) memory of its own so the CPU would have to be tied up to playback or sample any sounds. Now, imagine this: Get a stereo sample. Break up the left channel values into 2 8-bit samples, to be played on audio channels 1 and 3. Break up the right values similarly, and play channels 2 and 4. Provided the DMA timing is tight enough, (and I don't have my Hardware Manual handy) you could playback the 16-bit samples on a stock Amiga! <grin> Anyway: for $2000 you can get a DAT, two 16-bit stereo signal processors a couple of decent Bose bookshelf speakers and a mixer. With regards to SunRize's 12-bit mono sampler, it sounds like a big yawn at any price - let alone over $500.00. Come on guys, you can do better than that. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Dallas J. Hodgson | "These days, you have to be pretty | | Metaphor Computer Systems | technical before you can even | | Mountain View, Ca. | aspire to crudeness." | | USENET : djh@metaphor.com | - William Gibson | +============================================================================+ | "The views I express are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer" | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (06/13/91)
In article <744@cronos.metaphor.com> djh@neuromancer.metaphor.com (Dallas J. Hodgson) writes: >I saw.... A PC external box that plugs into the parallel port. It claimed >16-bit stereo sampling/playback ability, with "reproduction up to 20KHz." I >assume this means a max sampling rate of 40Khz. >...total cost was <get this> $199. Some samplers claim "16-bit" when they really mean 16-bit INTERNAL STORAGE of the data, AFTER it has been sampled at some lower resolution. Also, I'd be wary of a phrase worded "reproduction up to 20KHz". If it really samples at 40KHz, don't you think they'd put that in writing? (After all, 40 is more than 20, and advertisers like big numbers. :-)) In the electronic/computer music world, there are only a few 16-bit digital sampling devices under $2000. They are all over $1000, and prices go well over $5000 too. I'd be *very* surprised if this $199 wonder-box was anything remotely comparable. Disclaimer: I haven't seen the product to which you are referring. Dan //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ | Dan Barrett, Department of Computer Science Johns Hopkins University | | INTERNET: barrett@cs.jhu.edu | | | COMPUSERVE: >internet:barrett@cs.jhu.edu | UUCP: barrett@jhunix.UUCP | \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
U28037@uicvm.uic.edu (Jason Kratz) (06/14/91)
In article <744@cronos.metaphor.com>, djh@neuromancer.metaphor.com (Dallas J. Hodgson) says: > >With regards to SunRize's $2,000 16-bit stereo sound board, I think they're >missing the point. If I was going to spend that kind of bucks, I'd expect the >software to be pretty bang-up - run on a Mac and integrate with all the >high-end audio tools with which the Amiga is lacking. > Did you ever look at the price of the same type of system on the Mac? It's just as expensive if mot more so. I do know however that when you buy the stuff that's out for the Mac you're getting some great equipment and software. Check out some of the products from Digidesign for 16-bit audio on the Mac. I can guarantee that you won't find anything close to it on the Amiga. No, I'm not bashing the Amiga because I happen to own one but as far as I'm concerned if you want to do things like digital recording or anything else related to audio or music go out and get a Mac. The Amiga has got A LOT of catching up to do in the way of music software and sampling software. As far as that $199 dollar 16-bit thing for the IBM is concerned forget it. I paid $135 for the AMAS 8-bit sampler. 16-bit audio will be that cheap when they come out with something better like 24 or 32-bit digital audio. I'd like to know where you can get a DAT, two 16-bit stereo siganl processors, a mixer and the speakers for $2000. If you're talking about one of those cheap little radio shack mixers well then maybe but not if you're talking a professional mixer. There is also one other problem with DAT. Unlike direct-to-disc digital recording you can't edit a DAT recording. If you're using it for mixdown fine but I wouldn't go out and buy a DAT deck expecting to do all kinds of fancy editing on it. That's what direct-to-disk was made for. Jason Kratz - U28037@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU
DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu (06/16/91)
In article <8674@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>, barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) says: >>I saw.... A PC external box that plugs into the parallel port. It claimed >>16-bit stereo sampling/playback ability, with "reproduction up to 20KHz." I >>assume this means a max sampling rate of 40Khz. >>...total cost was <get this> $199. > In the electronic/computer music world, there are only a few 16-bit >digital sampling devices under $2000. They are all over $1000, and prices Those have to be "professional" everything-but-the-kitchen-sink type devices. I mean, the converter chip costs $20, so there's no reason why a "minimal" device can't be cheap. Mybe it's time for the $50 PD hack 16-bit audio board. :-) -- Dan Babcock
U28037@uicvm.uic.edu (Jason Kratz) (06/17/91)
In article <91166.165734DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu>, DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu says: > >In article <8674@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>, barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) >says: > >>>I saw.... A PC external box that plugs into the parallel port. It claimed >>>16-bit stereo sampling/playback ability, with "reproduction up to 20KHz." I >>>assume this means a max sampling rate of 40Khz. >>>...total cost was <get this> $199. > > >> In the electronic/computer music world, there are only a few 16-bit >>digital sampling devices under $2000. They are all over $1000, and prices > >Those have to be "professional" everything-but-the-kitchen-sink type >devices. I mean, the converter chip costs $20, so there's no reason why >a "minimal" device can't be cheap. >Mybe it's time for the $50 PD hack 16-bit audio board. :-) > >-- Dan Babcock That is what I'm talking about (pro everything-but-the-kitchen-sink). Why have a cheap piece of hardware that isn't going to sound good? I don't know about anyone else but I want my music to sound really good (sonic quality wise) so I won't waste my money on something cheap. That's why I bought a reel-to-reel deck instead of one of those cassette four tracks. The Sunrize board is supposed to be professional "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" (at least I think so). That's why they included digital I/O and SMPTE time code ability. It wasn't ment for just playing back 16-bit samples. Jason Kratz - U28037@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU
moonhawk@bluemoon.uucp (David Culberson) (06/17/91)
DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu writes: > Mybe it's time for the $50 PD hack 16-bit audio board. :-) You know, I AM working on one! Right now, I'm just putting it on paper, getting ready to order the parts! Actually, the 8-bit parts. I'm going to start with the $40 PD hack 8-channel, 8-bit audio board, then work my way up to maybe a 4-channel 16 bit board. Does anyone know if the sorry, I mean, does anyone know how much the Amiga's parallel port is capable of handling? As in, how many Kilo/Mega bytes per second? I migh have to restrict it to 4 channel 8 bit and 2 channel 16 bit if I go through the parallel port, and I want to; I donn't know ANYHTING about the Zorro II bus specs! SO, Could the Parallel port handle, say, 8 8-bit DAC's going at approk. 44kHz?? Or, the same number would be 4, 16 bit DAC's going at 44kHz? I don't think so, but I HOPE I am wrong; it would be very impressive. Bye! David P.s. This will be my very fist official "hack"! Hope it works!!! Now the world has gone to bed, MoonHawk@Bluemoon.uucp ////|all Darkness won't engulf my head, moonhawk%bluemoon@nstar.rn.com //// |hail I can see by infrared, \\\\///__|the How I hate the night. Yeah, this IS an annoying SIG. \\\\/ |miga
<LEEK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> (06/17/91)
In article <1991Jun17.150054.27117@cunews.carleton.ca>, ags@scs.carleton.ca (Alexander G. M. Smith) says: > >The parallel port can go very fast, assuming that it is like the old CIA >chips in the C64, at least a megahertz (one million read a byte >operations per second). The 8250 is running as a synchronous 68xx peripherial chip off the 7MHz 68000. Since the synchronous bus cycles has to sync up to E clock which is about 7.14MHz/10 = 714KHz , the actual bus cycles varies. The best you can hope to do is limited to ~ 700K/sec. That is without any other overheads - no handshakes, no store overheads etc. > The bottleneck seems to be more with the >software reading from it (unless you are using an A3000). Figure that >you have to toggle a control line to pick which half of 16 bits is read >/ latched: 2 instructions per word read. Then there's the reading, >another two instructions. The IO ports are not as fast as main memory. You are looking at about 20 states or 10 clock cycles at least per port access. (Since I don't have the 68000 data sheet with me, I can only quote from my memory.) > Storage takes another three, two for mixing >the bytes into a word and one for saving and incrementing the storage >pointer. Another two are needed for testing if you have filled your >recording buffer. So, that's 9 instructions per word. Each instruction >takes, what, 4 clock cycles (one or two to read the op code, another >couple to read or write the data). So, that's ballpark 40 clock cycles. >On an 8MHz machine, that's 200,000 word size samples per second. > >Of course, if your hardware handshaking gets complicated, it will slow >things down. Especially when the port access cost a lot of CPU cycles. If you opt for something like a FIFO chip ($20 U.S. for a 4K FIFO0 and trigger A/D conversion with a hardware clock, then the software overhead can be made much lower. Each time when the FIFO gets half filled, you just go out and read data off with a blind transfer with no handshake overhead... With these extra hardware, 2 channel 16-bit 44KHz samples are feasible. > >- Alex K. C. Lee
ags@scs.carleton.ca (Alexander G. M. Smith) (06/17/91)
In article <39yN41w164w@bluemoon.uucp> moonhawk@bluemoon.uucp (David Culberson) writes: >DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu writes: > >> Mybe it's time for the $50 PD hack 16-bit audio board. :-) > > You know, I AM working on one! ... >... does anyone know how much the Amiga's parallel port is >capable of handling? As in, how many Kilo/Mega bytes per second? I migh >have to restrict it to 4 channel 8 bit and 2 channel 16 bit if I go >through the parallel port, and I want to; I donn't know ANYHTING about the >Zorro II bus specs! SO, Could the Parallel port handle, say, 8 8-bit >DAC's going at approk. 44kHz?? Or, the same number would be 4, 16 bit >DAC's going at 44kHz? I don't think so, but I HOPE I am wrong; it would be >very impressive. Bye! The parallel port can go very fast, assuming that it is like the old CIA chips in the C64, at least a megahertz (one million read a byte operations per second). The bottleneck seems to be more with the software reading from it (unless you are using an A3000). Figure that you have to toggle a control line to pick which half of 16 bits is read / latched: 2 instructions per word read. Then there's the reading, another two instructions. Storage takes another three, two for mixing the bytes into a word and one for saving and incrementing the storage pointer. Another two are needed for testing if you have filled your recording buffer. So, that's 9 instructions per word. Each instruction takes, what, 4 clock cycles (one or two to read the op code, another couple to read or write the data). So, that's ballpark 40 clock cycles. On an 8MHz machine, that's 200,000 word size samples per second. Of course, if your hardware handshaking gets complicated, it will slow things down. - Alex
rnm@well.sf.ca.us (Robert Marsanyi) (06/20/91)
The Sunrize board incorporates DSP, which adds significantly to the cost of the stuff. The lowest price on a 56000 I know of (I'm not too up on it, last time I bought one was last year) was ~$70 in an odd package called a SLAMPack. Static RAM also required. Decent A/D/A over $100 (for example, the new chips from Crystal). For those interested, there _is_ a hackers DSP project happening. The GMP/56K board is a bare board + parts, available from Digital Intermedia for near cost. It's a bare-bones 56K + RAM sockets + port interfaces. The "company" is a bunch of guys I know; there are about 20 people currently bringing boards up. In the works is A/D/A using the above-mentioned chip from Crystal. Several of us are interfacing to the Amiga, at present using a simple device for addressing through the parallel port. Cost, when I bought my board, was about $200 + the time to put it together. There's a BBS carrying info on the project. ( 415 ) 928 8246, excluding 9am-5pm weekdays. Needed: a decent 56000 software development environment on the Amiga. Any- thing out there? --rbt (robert@f24.n125.z1.fidonet.org)
hamilton@intersil.uucp (06/24/91)
I've been giving some thought to designing a "cheap" 16 bit audio digitizer for the Amiga, but the more one thinks about it, the more expensive it gets. Here's how it seems to go: Why do you want 16 bits? Better, "CD-like" sound quality. OK, that means 40K+ samples/sec/channel (we want stereo, right?). Well, at a transfer rate of 16bits*2channels*40000=160,000 bytes/sec, the parallel, serial, and yes even mouse port is out. So now we're talking an internal autoconfig card. Now let's look at the size of the data we're going to be dealing with: a 10 second, stereo, CD-quality sound bite takes 1.5 megabytes. A 4 minute song is 36 megabytes. That's a lot of data, moving at a fairly fast rate. For this system to be practical to use, we need a DSP chip to compress the data size and slow down the data rate. The DSP chip is also useful because people will probably want to DO SOMETHING with the sound once they've sampled it, and a dedicated DSP processor is the only way to do any sort-of significant number crunching on digital audio. Additionally, people would probably like to hear the sample. So now we need a pair of A/D converters. Finally, you need to put all this hardware together along with some-sort of practical DMA scheme so the Amiga remains multitasking, and also write a *lot* of software to make all this work and be easy enough to use so that people will buy it. The hardware's not trivial either-you need decent anti-aliasing filters for the A/Ds and D/As, and the inside of an Amiga is a reasonably noisy place to try to get 16 bits of accuracy (an LSB is ~30uV). So there's a lot more to it than a pair of 16 bit A/Ds. I'd like to see it too, but there's a lot to it...... -- Fred Hamilton "Unlike most of you, Harris Semiconductor I am not a nut..." Santa Clara, CA -Homer Simpson
Jason Kratz <U28037@uicvm.uic.edu> (06/25/91)
In article <282.2865f3ac@intersil.uucp>, hamilton@intersil.uucp says: > >I've been giving some thought to designing a "cheap" 16 bit audio digitizer >for the Amiga, but the more one thinks about it, the more expensive it gets. >Here's how it seems to go: > >Why do you want 16 bits? Better, "CD-like" sound quality. OK, that means >40K+ samples/sec/channel (we want stereo, right?). Well, at a transfer >rate of 16bits*2channels*40000=160,000 bytes/sec, the parallel, serial, and >yes even mouse port is out. So now we're talking an internal autoconfig >card. Now let's look at the size of the data we're going to be dealing with: >a 10 second, stereo, CD-quality sound bite takes 1.5 megabytes. A 4 minute >song is 36 megabytes. That's a lot of data, moving at a fairly fast rate. >For this system to be practical to use, we need a DSP chip to compress the >data size and slow down the data rate. The DSP chip is also useful because >people will probably want to DO SOMETHING with the sound once they've sampled >it, and a dedicated DSP processor is the only way to do any sort-of >significant >number crunching on digital audio. > >Additionally, people would probably like to hear the sample. So now we need >a pair of A/D converters. Finally, you need to put all this hardware >together along with some-sort of practical DMA scheme so the Amiga remains >multitasking, and also write a *lot* of software to make all this work >and be easy enough to use so that people will buy it. The hardware's not >trivial either-you need decent anti-aliasing filters for the A/Ds and D/As, >and the inside of an Amiga is a reasonably noisy place to try to get 16 bits >of accuracy (an LSB is ~30uV). > >So there's a lot more to it than a pair of 16 bit A/Ds. I'd like to see it , >too >but there's a lot to it...... >-- >Fred Hamilton "Unlike most of you, >Harris Semiconductor I am not a nut..." >Santa Clara, CA -Homer Simpson At least someone agrees with me that a decent 16 bit board wouldn't be so cheap . You're correct on every point Fred. Jason Kratz - U28037@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU
ags@scs.carleton.ca (Alexander G. M. Smith) (06/25/91)
In article <91175.214540U28037@uicvm.uic.edu> Jason Kratz <U28037@uicvm.uic.edu> writes: >In article <282.2865f3ac@intersil.uucp>, hamilton@intersil.uucp says: >>I've been giving some thought to designing a "cheap" 16 bit audio digitizer >>for the Amiga, but the more one thinks about it, the more expensive it gets. >>... >>So there's a lot more to it than a pair of 16 bit A/Ds. I'd like to see it , >>too >>... >At least someone agrees with me that a decent 16 bit board wouldn't be so cheap >. You're correct on every point Fred. So, making a 16 bit digitizer is only half the story, you need a 16 bit playback system too. However, how expensive would it be for Commodore to build such a system into some future Amiga? - Alex
rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu (Rick Francis Golembiewski) (06/26/91)
hamilton@intersil.uucp writes: >Why do you want 16 bits? Better, "CD-like" sound quality. OK, that means >40K+ samples/sec/channel (we want stereo, right?). Well, at a transfer >rate of 16bits*2channels*40000=160,000 bytes/sec, the parallel, serial, and >yes even mouse port is out. So now we're talking an internal autoconfig >card. I'm mainly a software guy, but wouldn't it be possable to use a SCSI interface? After all 160,000 bytes/sec is pretty slow compared to most amiga HD controllers. Also, with the data size that we're dealing with it requires a HD, so the potential market already should have the necessary controller. Of course this would make using a DSP difficult, but this was supposed to be low cost wasn't it? I would think that adding a DSP would up the cost significantly. >Additionally, people would probably like to hear the sample. So now we need >a pair of A/D converters. Finally, you need to put all this hardware >together along with some-sort of practical DMA scheme so the Amiga remains >multitasking, and also write a *lot* of software to make all this work Some very good points, it would be nice to be able to hear the sounds after they are digitized... >and be easy enough to use so that people will buy it. The hardware's not >trivial either-you need decent anti-aliasing filters for the A/Ds and D/As, >and the inside of an Amiga is a reasonably noisy place to try to get 16 bits >of accuracy (an LSB is ~30uV). Why insist that the AD & DA be inside the amiga? your going to want to have a bunch of plugs for audio in and out, so why not have a small shielded box that contains the plugs along with the noise sensative components? Granted that there is then the problem of getting all the bits to the card, but I don't think that it would be impossable (my lack of hardware knowledge is starting to show here :-) >So there's a lot more to it than a pair of 16 bit A/Ds. I'de definately say so... the software alone is a substantial project in itself, not to mention the design and building of the hardware. // Rick Golembiewski rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu \\ \\ #include stddisclaimer.h // \\ "I never respected a man who could spell" // \\ -M. Twain //
Jason Kratz <U28037@uicvm.uic.edu> (06/26/91)
In article <1991Jun25.141723.17972@cunews.carleton.ca>, ags@scs.carleton.ca (Alexander G. M. Smith) says: > >In article <91175.214540U28037@uicvm.uic.edu> Jason Kratz > ><U28037@uicvm.uic.edu >writes: >>In article <282.2865f3ac@intersil.uucp>, hamilton@intersil.uucp says: >>>I've been giving some thought to designing a "cheap" 16 bit audio digitizer >>>for the Amiga, but the more one thinks about it, the more expensive it gets. >>>... >>>So there's a lot more to it than a pair of 16 bit A/Ds. I'd like to see it >, >>>too >>>... >>At least someone agrees with me that a decent 16 bit board wouldn't be so p >chea >>. You're correct on every point Fred. > >So, making a 16 bit digitizer is only half the story, you need a 16 bit >playback system too. However, how expensive would it be for Commodore >to build such a system into some future Amiga? > >- Alex He did talk about playback but he said A/D instead of D/A converters. It would not probably be really expensive just to have 16-bit D/A coverters but to have a system like the Sunrize board would probably add to the cost considerably. Jason Kratz - U28037@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU
steve@wildcat.UUCP (Steve Holland) (06/26/91)
Two ideas here: It might be possible to get stereo 16 bit output with the Amiga's hardware by using all four channels and setting the volume level for two of them so that they are 1 256th as loud as the other two. In addition it might be possible to use the floppy-DMA to sample at the speeds required -- and possibly allowing extended samples to hard disk. Quick calculations indicate that it may be technically feasable to use this method to sample 32 bits at 15000hz, 16 bits at 30000hz, or 8 bits at 60000hz. If this proves possible, then the processor would remain available to write the incoming data to the hard drive. Alternatively, it might be possible to build a SCSI sampler, using the hard-drive controller to put the data into memory. ----------->Steve Holland<----------- Internet: wildcat!steve@alphalpha.com| "I never let my schooling get in the USENET: ...!alphalpha!wildcat!steve | way of my education" -Mark Twain