video upload by Jeremy Parker
"A few years ago I restored my childhood Amiga 500, and only recently found a way to use a soft synth, Aegis Sonix V2, with external MIDI control. I saw @magicalsynthadventure3216 video on the topic a while back, and on a whim decided to revisit the idea of using my Amiga as a synth. Thanks to an Amibay.com forum thread, I learned that it's pretty easy to get Aegis Sonix V2 to respond to incoming MIDI, and so I was off to the races. Enjoy!
Magical Synth Adventures video: • Commodore Amiga Music Production: Modern S... [below]
Amibay thread: https://www.amibay.com/threads/aegis-...
Stone OakValley Studios info on Aegis Sonix: https://www.stone-oakvalley-studios.c...
OctaMED info: https://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/10...
00:00 Intro
02:28 The Solution
03:33 Sonix Demo
05:31 Sonix & Reaper
07:33 Amiga Groove
Commodore Amiga Music Production: Modern Sound Design on Retro Hardware
video upload by Magical Synth Adventure
"A delve into obscure software instruments on the Commodore Amiga. Here I look into both realtime & non-realtime varieties, covering a staggering array of synthesis types!
Additional attributions:
I forgot to give a shout out to uncle Brian! Sorry uncle Brian!
Endless Tunnel Animation: KRITRIMVAULT
Syndicate Intro: BullFrog Productions
Links:
SOFTWARE
http://old.exotica.org.uk/websites/dr...
http://ftp2.grandis.nu/turransearch/"
Update: An interesting side note is that Sonix was released in 1987 with a beta in 1986. That's 10 years earlier than Dave Smith's Seer Systems Reality, which was released in 1997. Seer Systems Reality is often credited as the world's first soft synth. Curious if the distinction was between an editor/interface for the existing Amiga sound chip vs. a self contained software synthesizer.
I asked Google AI just to see what it would say. Here it is:
Yes, Aegis Sonix (released in 1986/1987) was a genuine software synthesizer (soft synth). It used the Commodore Amiga's CPU and custom Paula sound chip to generate polyphonic sounds in real time through software-driven synthesis, rather than relying on an external hardware synth.
Seer Systems Reality is considered the first software synthesizer because it was the first professional-grade, fully real-time commercial soft synth designed to run entirely on a general-purpose PC without needing any specialized audio hardware.
While Aegis Sonix on the Amiga was an incredible, visionary piece of software, it operated under severe hardware limitations that separate it from what the music industry defines as a modern "virtual instrument."
The distinction relies on several key historical and technological milestones.
1. Independence from Custom Audio Hardware
Aegis Sonix relied heavily on the Amiga’s custom Paula chip to handle the actual digital-to-analog conversion, volume, and channel mixing.
Seer Systems Reality (released in 1997) did all of its heavy mathematical audio rendering, filtering, and mixing purely inside the main computer CPU (Intel Pentium). It sent a finished digital audio stream to standard, basic PC soundcards.
2. Professional Spec and Polyphony
Sonix was limited by the Amiga's native hardware to 4 channels of 8-bit audio. It was a brilliant consumer or semi-pro tool, but it could not compete with hardware studio gear.
Reality arrived with 64-note polyphony and 16-part multi-timbral tracking at professional studio bitrates. It was stable enough, clean enough, and powerful enough to replace an expensive, physical rackmount MIDI module in a professional recording studio.
3. Advanced Synthesis vs. Simple Waveforms
Sonix allowed you to draw basic single-cycle waveforms and add simple LFO modifications.
Reality brought complex, multi-modal synthesis to the computer. In real time, it could simultaneously process physical modeling (via Stanford's Sondius WaveGuide), FM synthesis, subtractive synthesis, analog emulation, and sample-based PCM playback.
4. Industry Pedigree and Timing
Seer Systems was founded by industry legends, including president Dave Smith (the co-inventor of MIDI and founder of Sequential Circuits).When Reality launched in 1997, it caught the music industry's attention, winning the Electronic Musician Editors' Choice Award. It arrived precisely when CPUs became fast enough to handle complex audio math, paving the way for Steinberg to introduce VST instruments shortly after.
Ultimately, Sonix was the prophetic pioneer that proved the concept on home computers, but Reality was the industry disrupter that convinced professionals they could finally ditch their hardware synthesizers for a PC.
Amiga has had external MIDI adapters since 1985. I had a 1000 since day one with Microdeal's AMAS Advanced MIDI Amiga Sampler. The rest of the world was still struggling with DOS and single-tasking Macintosh. Amigans were programming fractal landscapes in 3D rendering and composing electronic albums. Todd Rundgren created the first complletely homemade music video with an Amiga on his kitchen table and it went to number one on MTV, for 1/10 the price of a studio video. The only reason the world isn't using Amiga today is the same reason a sane person is not president. People are too easily snookered by shiiny lies.
ReplyDeleteThere were two supreme personal computers in history: the Amiga, and the Apple ][gs, which has the same sound chip as the Ensoniq Mirage sampler. It is good to have both of them. Forget Macintosh. Mac is a joke. Steve Jobs was a fool. He never listened to Woz.
ReplyDeleteI waited through the whole video, but no mention of MicroIlllusion's Music-X DAW. Pity.
ReplyDelete