SPECTACULAR Soft Synths of the Commodore Amiga 

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.

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.).

Have fun!

Purple Motion is legendary

Thanks Richard, I feel lucky to have had access to such a powerful creative platform at such a young age.

Thanks! I wish I had the knowledge to use these at the time!

We *are* old! 😂

I just uploaded a new video with more interesting programs!

Cheers 😊

I couldn’t stop if I wanted to 😊

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.

Had to pop Nick in! 😊

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 😂

Hey, that's one of the songs from the arcade dreams soundtrack :) It's not out yet.

Thanks so much! This is the one I really wanted to make, as it wasn’t explored enough 😊

I hung on until early 2002-ish, when the call of VST’s and multi-track recording became too much!

Hi, have you tried searching the Grandis Nu FTP? It’s a good place to start. ftp2.grandis.nu/turransearch/

Whoooo 🥳🥳🥳

Amazing! Is the battery out of it? 😊

@@magicalsynthadventure3216 sure! Well, replaced. All hard drives died after the first boot... Luckily I had backups on seaQuest platters.

I did a video about it and the sampler I build back in the days. TT48l8cpCll-Q9ln It is in German...

Cheers Marvin 😊

Thanks, no worries 😊

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

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! 🙄

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😂😂😂

Thanks Stephen! I made the video I thought RU-vid was missing 😊

Thanks, I’d like to visit myself at some point 😊

Grand! Not all of these respond to MIDI but some definitely do. I’d love to see an updated sonic arranger with MIDI support.

Thanks! I just got my 2000 and am gonna load it up with Tocatta, Toaster, maybe a Vampire 😊

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.

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 :)

Do you see colours in response to music?

@@magicalsynthadventure3216 I usually see WB in gray, now it's all coloured! xD

Ah yes, my chillwavebench colour theme 😂, it’s cool that Commodore let you pick whatever colours you want for the OS.

Go for it! Just try running anything and then hitting that button!

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.

4BC is here 😁 loonies.dk/demos/demos.asp?id=4bc

I held out until 2001! Talk about painfully obscure 😂

You're welcome! Thanks!

Thanks 😊

Some of the graphics were done on the Amiga, but the editing was done with modern tools. I hope to get a Toaster soon, maybe a VLab Motion card too.

Search on grandis.nu

Thanks, I’m glad I managed to cover the right software 😊

I’m just editing a new vid on Amiga real-time effects 😊

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 😊

Had to be done!

Amiga audio can handle both types of data. The early Amiga headerless “SND” format was signed, but really it’s up to the software engineer. Fun fact: when capturing audio, even from an emulator, I noticed that the Amiga sometimes, when finishing playing a sample, doesn’t go back to 0 and has a DC offset of a few db. It’s silent to the ear, but if I split the same there without a fade, it’d click.

Found the SID fan 🤭😊

@@magicalsynthadventure3216 As a child of the 70s with older siblings I was a fan of the sound of analogue synth long before I had ever used/seen a C64 to be fair :) If you check out something like the Oxygene cover on SID by Prosonix you can see all the complex features used well. SIDplay on Amiga 500 class machines is a work of audio programming art. You have true analogue, FM based and DAC based audio, they all excel at certain types of music but Amiga is the Jack of all trades for sure, you can approximate the other 2 technologies with DACs like Paula has. Would be tough to do the MegaDrive FM based Gauntlet 4 soundtrack on Amiga but not impossible.

It’s something I wrote using the Korg Wavestation 😊

That bit of music sounds amazing! any plans to release the full track somewhere? :D@@magicalsynthadventure3216

It’ll be on the arcade dreams soundtrack :)

Could be some cool stuff on those disks! 😊

I like how shrouded in mystery their production style was 😊

It’s a great question. With a sufficiently powerful CPU, the Covox can output sound superior to Paula. Hits the CPU hard though.

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 😃

Thanks! Gonna start thinking about a part 2 of this video soon 👌🏻

I’ve had a few people say that 😂, just make sure you join an Amiga group so you can ask a million questions, as setting one up is very different to vintage PC/Mac/Atari’s of the same era.

I've switched to the awesome free WinUAE Amiga software emulator. It's like having every model Amiga for free with a ton of expensive accessories that very few people even had, such as a 68060 processor upgrade. I previously owned four Amiga's and bought one when they first came out. I was also elected President in 1986 to an Amiga users group due to my knowledge and enthusiasm. I was 17 at the time, and demoed the Amiga's MIDI software synthesis to my users group where people traveled more than 50 miles to attend. Most of the users were many times my age, doctors, lawyers, etc. Exciting times back then. I even have a home video of me demoing the Amiga to our group.

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.

Remember there’s a VST version of Aegis Sonix 😊, but good luck if you decide to pick up an Amiga 👍🏻

Me too!

Very cool! One I missed out on was AHX, which has some cool Ringmod stuff. But the video was getting over 30 minutes long 😂

Lol yes.

@@magicalsynthadventure3216 😆😆

No problem 😊

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

Thanks Kevin! It brought my laptop to it’s knees 😂

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.

I’m intrigued about the mangelore part! 😊

@@magicalsynthadventure3216 The wavform mangling and redrawing you were doing and sample mangling. Now, I know, I know.. We have plenty of that action in LINUX and WINDOWS PCs and devices now and yes, even hardware synths because well, most of them now use some kind of LINUX computer inside them like the AKAI MPC series and the KORG PA and SYNTH series, but still.. wow. I wished I could have afforded or even known about that rom based gui based preemptive multitasking OS with protected memory mode back in the late 90s when I got into computers and fancied making music with them only to run into constant crashes and failures with Windows.. But, I am still alive now and still loving making music on computers, so I guess NOT too late for an Amiga OS based music making, synth wave mangling experience? :D My question all the while watching this video was "what midi keyboard and interface ya usin?! And.. Is latency an issue on these systems with live midi key play?

Yes, it’s commonplace now, it’s pretty cool that the Amiga got there first :)

@@pianokeyjoePS I’m using an Amiga “Pro MIDI interface”, the latency and jitter are pretty negligible :)