Spectrum +3 differences.

[robcfg]

I have some C64's at home with little use, so if there's a way for my CPC to torture that unholy chip, I'll be glad to test it 


Yamaha FM chips and/or pokey expansion cards would be nice too, hehehe    No, seriously, I'd like to see a port of Konami's Salamander as good as the new R-type and with amazing FM music.

[TFM]

Surely by now there must be a better sound chip than either the SID or the AY family, what chips do the cheap PC sound cards use?

I totally agree, the SID has a bunch of disadvantages:
- Not better than the AY IMHO (ok, few will agree, I don't care  )
- No stereo!
- Really HARD to get in these days
- Too expensive, if possible to get it
- Old, outdated chip, that has no real advantage over the AY IMHO
So, why not using a decent sound chip, that has a lot of functions which makes it easy and quick to play sound / samples / music. Further it would be good to have some kind of generic "Soundtrakker" for it. So software must not be developped from Scratch. I'm thinking about something like the Arkos Trakker :-)

MacDeath would now suggest to get the MP3 option and a port for an USB stick for music, including a function "CPC tells soundcard to play song #97" or so     And I would agree with him 

[McKlain]

Sorry, but the SID is superior to the AY, and that's a fact 

The SID can sound like an AY, the AY can't sound like a SID.

[Jase]

@Bryce. Despite this being an Amstrad forum, I am not ashamed to say I like the Commodore, but REALLY think the sound chip in there is awesome. I really do not want to start a flame war, a battle over which machine is better. The AY-8192 was ok. It was used in a lot of machines, and, especially towards the end of the Amstrad's life, people were getting to know it better. But, reading or watching presentations by some of the old musicians, like David Whittaker and Rob Hubbard, they preferred the Sid, and, well, it does show in the quality of the tune.


Just my opinion, but Glider-rider and Spellbound on the SID just wipe the floor with the AY. (note - no reference to specific computers there). I would love for someone to tell me any games that sounded better on the Sid than the AY. [Update: Just rummaging through high-voltage sid collection; Jack The Nipper sounds MUCH nicer on the AY ]


But I still love both of these chips, and I do prefer the Amstrad as a machine over the C64 and Speccy. What's wrong with being multi-cultured every now and again!


@TFM/FS: Surely all FM chips can now considered outdated, with wave table synthesis, multi channel mixing abilities of modern PCs? If fact, when Roland released the MT32, or when Gravis released the Ultrasound, surely then FM was "technically outdated"? Yes, there is the memory issue, but if you consider "chip" music, you can get a really good tune out of Paula in minimal bytes. It's not hard to get hold of an Sid - just check out how many C64s are available on ebay, all with a lovely MOS Sid inside. Right, here I am going to get shot down in flames ... Stereo on the Amstrad was a joke.   Yes, one or two games used it, but the rest - it made the music sound odd with half the tune out of one speaker, and the other half the other side!!! On my scart lead, I have shorted left & right to get a better sound.


@McKlain. True - and good you kept Machine specifics out of it.


Anyhoo. I only mentioned the SID really, as it was part of the 8 bit arena. Of the big 3, There was a beeper, the GI-AY and the MOS-SID. Who would want to build a hardware beeper to stick in the back of their Amstrad??? Hmmmm.... maybe even I can design that one!


p.s. I really do not think any sound chip is out-dated. I love computer music in all it's forms, especially the synth stuff. I just bought an Atari STe, basically to play the occasional game, but mainly to listen to the game music. If we all considered old hardware obsolete, we would not be lurking in this forum!

[Bryce]

Well first of all, I also think the SID was and is better than the AY. The fact that it was also used in synthesisers (the AY wasn't as far as I know) would suggest that many people considered it to be better. But it's not a matter of opinion, compare the data and you'll see that the SID is more advanced. The SID is still relatively easy to get (ebay is full of them).

But my SID card wasn't being made because the SID is better than the AY, rather I thought that it would be good if we could run SID music on a CPC. There is so much SID music out there, which I'd like to play without having a bulky C64 in front of me

The Pokey is another matter. I also have a few of them here, but I don't have much documentation, so I'm not sure how easy it would be to interface to it. Besides that, I don't think it's better than the AY and I was never seriously impressed by any music made for it.

Bryce.

[McKlain]

The SID was in fact designed by Bob Yannes to be a synthesizer on a chip. The first draft was going to have 32 channels of polyphony, but the time restrictions imposed by Jack Tramiel to get the C64 done made it impossible to achieve that, so they made an only oscilator and replicated it 3 times on the chip surface. Yannes idea was also to sell it to synthesizer companies (as it was a MOS product) but it never was sold to third parties. Nowadays you can find a few synthesizers that use the SID to run, like the elektron sidstation.

[TFM]

Sorry, but the SID is superior to the AY, and that's a fact 

The SID can sound like an AY, the AY can't sound like a SID.

Not that PSG war again , but the SID isn't even able to produce stereo. That's the worst!

And the bass-heavy sounds of the AY can't be copied by the SID, at least I never heart such songs (and I was looking a long time now in u tube).


The point is (IMHO): If we want to spend the CPC a superior sound output, then we should do exactly that. Which means connect a todays sound-output to it. (If you want to connect a hard-disc to the CPC the you will rather connect an IDE than an RLL. So it shall be the same with sound chips).

[McKlain]

Well, the AY on the other platforms is not stereo either. Nor is the Pokey. Having stereo sound on 1981 on a computer that you were going to use mainly on a tv set wasn't a priority, don't you think?

And I like the AY, I make music for it, but you simply can't compare. I can understand that some people may not like the sounds of the SID, but you can't say that it's inferior to the AY.

You can't do things like this on the AY, doing all kind of crazy tricks with the synthesis capabilities of the sid (cause the sid is a synth on a chip, not a PSG):

the third tune is really amazing, the sid can make wonderful flute sounds.

And why oh why didn't we get a version of this for Last Ninja 2 instead of that horrible racket that sounds like the speccy beeper???

[TFM]

Well, already in the 80ies I had a cheap (costfree to be preciese) 20 W Blaupunkt Amplifier (built with tubes) connected to the CPC. And all the neighbourhood was shocked when I played Thundercats really loud. In stereo for sure! That was a lot of fun    You just can't do it with a sid that way    because it has no stereo, and whatever the sid does else, without stereo it's just monotone.
BTW: The AY has right, center and left chanells. So you really can do somthing like surround sound, and at least some games were using it on the CPC.
Don't get me wrong the sid was surely a good soundchip for it's time. But if we create hardware today, then we shall use todays technique. The MegaFlash for example uses Flash and not a bunch of 16 KB Eproms 

[Gryzor]

Yup, lovely tune there, though it lacks a bit in the bass dept.

[SyX]

... And it would not be easier to circuit bent the AY, how all that Casiotones hack in youtube  ... or even better we can use this sound chip instead 

... where is the on-topic??? i'm lost xDDD

[McKlain]

I didn't knew that there was an amiga version of Thundercats.

The game looks terrible 

[SyX]

Only terrible??? 

The only good thing is that in the version that i got, the same floppy had  Army Moves, Nebulus, Bomb Jack, Vectorball and Robocop.. it looked a CPC floppy instead of Amiga 

[TFM]

Yup, lovely tune there, though it lacks a bit in the bass dept.

Hehehe, you DO need am amplifier and the neighbours will shake in their shoes :-)))

[TFM]

Only terrible??? 

Yeah, I really like the CPC soundtrack more. Ok, ingame they're both not that well. But I grew up with the CPC version. Got no idea a about a SID version though.

Found it:


Well, I still like the AY more, this one sounds more like a Vietnam ego shooter game sound. And in a way it sounds just not fully fledged.
Having said this, if I would have heart the c64 or Amiga version first, then I would maybe think exactly in the opposite direction. Taste is something you just can't grab  ;-)

[TFM]

Ok, if you really want a SID card, then please let's use two SID's for having stereo and beating up the c64 ;-) Nothing personal, but if it's new, then it must be better ;-)
Tell me how much ports you need and I'll find some unused for you.

[steve]

Is it possible to have two AY chips in the cpc similar to the way someone installed two CRTC's a while ago?
Maybe using the chip's 8 bit port to select which chip is being addressed.

[Bryce]

Yes, 2 AYs would be possible too, but do you know anyone with a spare AY? The reason there are so many SIDs about, is because Commodore put it in a socket. Unfortunately, Amstrad weren't so generous with their sockets.

I checked my "Bucket of ICs" last night. I have at least four SIDs to mess about with, all 6581s. I also have two complete C64s that I haven't opened to check, but they are all original Type A (No C64-C, Aldi C64 or whatever), so I assume they have 6581s aswell.
A quick check of ebay DE shows 19 SIDs for sale at the moment, so they are definitely NOT difficult to find.

Bryce.

[McKlain]

Yes, 2 AYs would be possible too, but do you know anyone with a spare AY? The reason there are so many SIDs about, is because Commodore put it in a socket. Unfortunately, Amstrad weren't so generous with their sockets.

I checked my "Bucket of ICs" last night. I have at least four SIDs to mess about with, all 6581s. I also have two complete C64s that I haven't opened to check, but they are all original Type A (No C64-C, Aldi C64 or whatever), so I assume they have 6581s aswell.
A quick check of ebay DE shows 19 SIDs for sale at the moment, so they are definitely NOT difficult to find.

Bryce.

The problem with ebay sids is not getting one of those defective ones that showed up years ago. I would have loved to buy a hardsid card at the time, but they were expensive and the posting made them even more expensive.

[TFM]

Yes, 2 AYs would be possible too...

Hehe, this could mean quadrophonica. Great! Then I can listen to Pink Floyd using a CPC with double AY-power 

[Gryzor]

Next project: multiple-AY board with outputs for a surround system. I'd dig that!

[McKlain]

Next project: multiple-AY board with outputs for a surround system. I'd dig that!

I would be happy with just stereo sids XD

[TFM]

I would be happy with just stereo sids XD

Well, if you write music for it... then I'll get one of them :-)

[McKlain]

I tried to make something with goattracker, but the interface it's so full of text and numbers that it's overwhelming XD

[Bryce]

If anyone can get their hands on a box full of AYs, I'll build them whatever they want out of them. Hell I'll even do 8x AY if the parts are available.......

Deafening silence......

I thought so, so it's SID we'll be concentrating on

Bryce.