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From: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,rec.music.synth
Subject: Re: Amiga midi problems?
Message-ID: <1601@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Date: Thu, 6-Aug-87 14:48:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulowell.1601
Posted: Thu Aug  6 14:48:00 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Aug-87 14:34:45 EDT
References: <1408@ico.UUCP>
Reply-To: page@swan.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 51
Summary: Nope
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:7189 rec.music.synth:1217

scottw@ico.UUCP (Scott Wiesner) wrote:
>According to the "Computers and Music" writer in Keyboard magazine, the
>Amiga has an unreliable timer chip that causes problems in sequencers 
>written on the amiga.

Ah... no.  That writer probably used Deluxe Music Constriction Set,
which is NOT NOT NOT a MIDI sequencer (even Electronic Arts says so).
DMCS is known to crash the machine and cause all sorts of
unpleasantries when using MIDI, since the MIDI support in DMCS appears
to be a not-very-well-thought-out addition.

Many of the other packages for the Amiga, such as Aegis' SONIX -- the
sleeping giant of Amiga music software -- and Mimetics' Soundscape
MIDI Pro are much better suited to the task, depending on what it is
you're trying to do.

On the other hand, the Amiga is a multitasking system, and the serial
port is not a DMA device.  It is possible that right in the middle of
a SYS/EX dump, the blitter can decide it needs to decode a track of
disk data, interrupting the serial port.  It's also possible that you
have a number of other processes/tasks running .. in that case, you
might see the timing mess up but (at least with SONIX and Soundscape)
you won't lose any data.

In real life, most people don't/won't run into these problems because
of the nature of making music.  When's the last time you had the urge
to recompile your spreadsheet in the middle of editing a song?

I would ignore what the author of the C&M article said.

> I've considered an Atari ST

A nice MIDI machine, and the Dr. T's stuff is real nice too.  The
two main problems with it are that you can't put more memory on it
(I know, the vapor'ed MEGA will solve that) and (in your own words):

>while the ST seems to be the machine of choice for synth stuff,
>the Amiga seems better overall.

However, don't count on the rumors of
>A500's showing up in mass retailers for Christmas

The A500's are already selling like hotcakes, the A2000 ships next
week, the "$1200 of software for $200" deal is tough for any user to
pass up, and developers are (finally?) walking around with dollar
signs in their eyes, so the market looks pretty good for the immediate
future.

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.   page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}