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From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Atari STE Sound chips
Message-ID: <11231@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 90 18:21:07 GMT
References: <1990Feb24.222700.22004@newcastle.ac.uk> <729@duteca.UUCP> <1990Feb28.195455.17049@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> <2062@atari.UUCP>
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In article <2062@atari.UUCP> apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) writes:
>The NeXT box has a DSP (digital signal processor), which doesn't just
>play back sound, it GENERATES it from formulas or other data. That's a
>different beast altogether.  Amiga's the same way.  I guess those chips
>can simply play a sampled sound, and I don't know how to compare them
>against the STe's sound capability.  The STe is certainly better than
>the Mac's digital-sound-output mode: the (highest) sampling rate is
>higher and we use better filters to smooth out the "jaggies."

Well, the DSP in a NeXT can do some pretty amazing things, but it's a
silly use for that hardware. I like setting up sound routines in the
background and then going my merry way hacking/etc. on the ST. On the
NeXT, you don't get any sound of any kind when the DSP is used for any
computational purposes. That is, unlike a disk drive, there's no way to
share access to the DSP between multiple tasks. Also, for most of the
stuff I've played with, the sound is cut-off whenever other tasks are
driving up CPU and disk use. This makes no sense to me, since the DSP
should be executing its program independently of the 68030. But the
end result is that sound on the NeXT gets chopped up horribly if you
try to do anything else along with it. (Like open a new window.)

Cute, isn't it? Steve Jobs turned a wonderful processor (68000) into a
toaster (Thin Mac). Now he's turned Unix on a 68030 into a single-user
single-tasking non-operating system. Will wonders never cease. I wish
they would...
--
  -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan