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Comment by thorianus | Hacker News Reader

Well, I'd argue about the music. The chiptune music from SID and YM has aged very well, while Amiga sounds horrbile without FM synth and 8-bit 11kHz samples.

Also memory was much better organized than Amiga - without the speed penalty.

And the simplicity of Shifter (the "GPU") allowed for really awsome 'beyond the dream' hacks, which were unavaliable on Amiga due to much more capable - but limited in 'hacking' video chip.

And then the first upgrade - Atari STE - amazes today with full control 8-channel 50kHz MODs... While mc68k CPU stayed at 8MHz!

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At it again, thorianus! Spreading anti-amiga propaganda, lies, all pure, devilish, unvarnished lies!

I will follow you down the ages, through age extension tech, uploading of consciousness, to the eventual universe spanning one mind!

Always I will appear, always I will prevent your foolish, unjust and untrue claims from spreading unchecked.

Amiga is better ; she is the best. Your Atari smells of milk!! Amigas rule!

(what part of early computing culture did not have inane fan wars?)

Atari STE had 2 channels 8 bit DAC à 25kHz on DMA.

It was the Falcon who had incredible sound capacity with its matrix channel mixer and DSP.

I'd love to own a Falcon, but the prices on eBay make my eyes water.

Well, that's the HW. As with video, the 16-bits went on further than just mere hardware limits.

When we talk software mixing, STE maxed out CPU at 8 channels 50kHz, here's an example: http://yerzmyey.i-demo.pl/YERZMYEY-Octopush_ATARI_STe.mp3

Even plain 520 ST can do a lot on this YM chip.

Amiga 500 on the other had could a bit of this but only with 12kHz samples, and no volume control per channel, also those pesky filters.

Amiga 1200/4000 could do same - as per much faster CPU, but... they still left the old audio 8-bit chip in it :/

There's a package EPSS for the STE which allows using its 8 channel DMA as a software synth, at the same time as running other midi channels in Cubase. Makes for a very tidy DAW:

https://youtu.be/OlspnqVcJho

Other packages (DBE tracker?) allow the STE to play 32channel mods albeit not at 50Khz

All Amigas had a 6-bit volume control for each individual sound channel.

All Amigas except the A1000 could turn the high-pass filter off, and pretty much everything tended to do this.

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