Re: Commodore 64 kills APPLE II

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

realbacon@hotmail.com (Niklas Ramsberg) wrote:

>IIRC, the IIgs sound chip is the same as in the Ensoniq Mirage, i.e.
>it has 16 voices that plays 8-bit sampled and/or wavetable sounds
>(they're not the same thing, even though that's what Creative has been
>trying to make us believe) with the amplitude controlled by a separate
>ADSR envelope for each voice. The C64's SID chip can play one 4-bit
>sampled sound at a time (through some clever programming), so in the
>area of reproducing acoustic instruments and voice the IIgs wins with
>a K.O. in the first round.
>
>The SID on the other hand excels at analog synth sounds; it is in fact
>a quite good analog synthesizer, capable of generating sawtooth,
>triangle or varaible-width pulse wave, or a combination of these on
>each of the three voices. In addition, one voice can be hard-synched
>to another and one voice can ring-modulate another. There's also a
>separate ADSR envelope for each voice. Lastly, the voices are routed
>to an analog filter that can be set to either lowpass, highpass or a
>combination of the two and be controlled by an ADSR envelope. It also
>includes resonance for those sweet filter sweeps. So when it comes to
>classic analog synthesis, the C64 is the clear winner.

As I remember it, the IIGS can do BOTH.  Run synthLAB and it will
produce music similar to how the C64 does it.  The tradeoff is that
the IIGS must use 4 oscillators do pull this off, turning 16-voices
into 8.  But in synthLAB you start with a source wavebank and
you can use the synth tools to create an instrument bank.  That,
if I remember correctly, is created based on synth parameters like
you describe.

Of course you can also run sampled sounds straight and play
them as instruments.  Programs like NoiseTracker did that.

Now it is funny because an Amiga user and I once discussed
the fact that in terms of sound, the IIGS was far superior to
the Amiga.  The Amiga can do what the IIGS does with
sampled sounds but with fewer voices.  Basically, it does
this with MOD playback.  But on the synth side, what the
Amiga has is far weaker than the IIGS.  I wonder if the C64
was stronger than it in this area.

The "S" in the IIGS was no lie even if it had its share of
weaknesses in other areas.  In its time, that Ensoniq chip
was what really set it apart.

I was such a fan of the chip that I stuck with Ensoniq and
got a couple of Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI cards when
Creative bought Ensoniq out.  Unfortunately, they also
bought E-mu and let the two divisions battle it out.  Now
Creative cards are exclusively E-mu.

Thus ends the saga of Ensoniq.