The Atari ST was great for sequencing because built-in MIDI ports. The Amiga was and is still better at pretty much everything else.
2 Likes
I actually did a quick ’n dirty rave demo on the OT when I re-released these samples:
1 Like
Yeah. Glad to have gotten an STe back when they were still more or less free (traded a $6 betamax deck for an Apple IIe and traded the Apple IIe for a maxed out STe in the original box).
Last I checked a well maintained, complete Amiga 4000 cost more than a MKI Octatrack. Times have changed in the vintage computer world!
I did get a free Amiga color monitor and mouse a couple years ago so I’m part way there, not sure if I should sell it to get an Atari color monitor or sell the Atari for an Amiga 1200 (or just build an adapter to use it with the Atari like some kind of heretic)
1 Like
Yeah. After all the stuff I’d heard about the OT being hard to learn, when I finally got one it took about 15 minutes to realize that it is basically a hardware tracker. I got started using Impulse Tracker in DOS and the OT seems totally natural.
3 Likes
Oh, yes 
It was always accepted the Atari was for the Midi sequencing although a friend in highschool at the time was making some paper on the side, manufacturing midi in/out connector leads for the Amiga.
Dude, kinda acid house, loving it <3
I’m actually watching the Better Living Through Circuitry doco atm
Well, listening to your track currently, love it
1 Like
I’d go for an Amiga 1200 instead. Depending on where you’re located, you should be able to find a second-hand one in decent shape cheaply and easily.
Using an original CRT monitor is of course the most retro way of using one, but you can also buy a Indivision 1200 AGA MK2 to get flicker-free DVI output for use with a modern monitor.
I’d also recommend getting a newly built budget accelerator card such as the ACA 1221EC. These are great value and the most reliable way to get more memory and a nice speed bump.
1 Like
Yeah, the only reasons I ever look at 4000’s is my long time pipe dream of setting up a full blown Video Toaster system (would never be worth the time, space or expense obviously, but it’s fun to think about). I get some extra work every fall and spring so I might get a 1200 AND a monitor for the STe this winter, it’s about the last stuff left I really want to have and can’t build myself.
1 Like
my friend at the countryside highschool (mullumbimby, 30 mins drive into the hills from byron bay) went to the usa in the 90’s, started a company and manufactured an audiovisual mixing board, automated, controlled via the amiga
1 Like
the cool thing about this idea is that it could be a hardware lo-fi video effects studio.
even with a client or two each year, could repay the investment at least.
For nostalgia I start WinUAE (Amiga emulator) once in a while. My first computer was an Amiga 500 back in 1988 and I spent endless hours in Ultimate Soundtracker (and all it’s descendants) sampling, collecting st sample disks from Amiga BBSes.
Karsten Obarski should get some life time award for his Ultimate Soundtracker, what a milestone in computer music software.
2 Likes
It’s a funny kind of thing … i didn’t use the trackers … no wait, i did actually get my hands on one and didn’t know what to do with it.
preferred Deluxe Music which was the forerunner or co-runner with cubase and later to arrive on the scene, reason.
It’s funny - one reason I think I gel so well with the Elektron sequencer is because of the years I spent using trackers on the Amiga.
The common DAW paradigms have never felt comfortable at all to me, but the first time I touched a MnM it was bliss.
2 Likes
I suppose it goes without saying that i do feel a sense of inferiority for not having gelled with the Trackers.
and yet, it was more indicative of an oscillation between digital world and classical guitar world, and surfing world … by the time a Tracker was shared with me, i was surfing ten times more and playing in a punk rock band.
Much respect for the Trackers though.
2 Likes
Ill swap my Octamed XP with Your Punk rock band XP
2 Likes
I used to love old computers for making music, started out with a VIC20 and some old synth program whose name escapes me, it was quite basic but could make some interesting sounds, then later using the Atari ST and Cubase and Notator professionally. Then in the early-mid 90s Octamed Sound studio, turbosound digitizer and a really cool program called video tracker running on an Amiga A600. I also had a ZX Spectrum with Ram Music Machine cartridge which was a kind of cool sampling drum machine, funny enough I never heard of anyone else mention it until reading that Richard D James used it. Then later I had a C64 with the Messiah cart and some gameboys which I still use with various stuff mainly nanoloop and lsdj.
Modern DAWs have no interest for me, I hate waiting for boot up, their inefficiency, unreliability, endless updates etc, I’d love to see a modern efficient home/music computer paltform but I guess those days are gone now.
But yeah Amiga, what a great platform.
4 Likes
Explanations aside yes i do feel properly inferior regarding the Trackers but anyway lolzor …
the surf had taken a hold … the adrenalin and dopamine of surfing big barrels.
the punk rock band was fun on the side.
i did write a program called Mouse Music with the awesome Amiga Basic programming language. move mouse to change a repeating tone, xy coords of the mouse applied to the pitch (after massaging the data).
not only but also, Mouse Music allowed the use the fabulous option of clicking and holding the left mouse button to draw a circle of random colour on the screen, whilst moving about to change the pitch.
made that at the age of 15 but two years later fell deeply in love with a mountain elf, soooo … no more computer lol.
1 Like
Old Amiga2000HD user here. OctaMED > FT2 > (some randoms including AXS studio) > Renoise was my progression.
I just want to say, who else is with me? AlgoMusic FTW!
Edit: Oh, and its still kicking around at my brothers place. Including my first 8bit serial sampler =)
I think I remember that - was it some kind of psychedelic lightshow generator?
Same same same same same. I used OctaMED on Amiga way back in the day. Usually to do experimental crap, but it was so good at smoothly pitch shifting samples and I could do some really cool stereo stuff easily. After my Amiga died, it was nearly a decade until I felt the Mac was comparable (thanks to software like Supercollider 2). In more recent years, the only computer based sequencers I’ve really done anything of consequence on have either been weird Reaktor-based sequencers or the Renoise tracker (which I haven’t touched in a while now, but had so much fun with it a few years ago).
A few weeks ago I showed a Max patch I was tinkering with to a friend I had grown up with and we both shared a love of the C64 and Amigas growing up. He looked at the Max patch and said “oh, like AmigaVision!”
1 Like