ecnew.font,8 «» «ac»«c1» "Amiga Musicians, PC Formats"«» «» «c3»By KAM_ of IRIS«» «»«c2»«as» The majority of the creative demoscene people have left the Amiga a long time ago. This happened because of a few important things. First of all it's the relatively poor quality of Amiga software, the lack of so-called "killerapps", but also the general situation of this computer. People simply sold their machines and weren't interested in Miggy any more. But there are a handful of freaks still using AmigaOS applications to express themselves in a creative way. Those are Amiga fans or people devoted to certain AOS programs (UAE users maybe?). But is the demoscene world friendly to them?«» «» With graphicians the case is simple. Converting from one graphics format to another is as simple as masturbation or even simpler. They can create their pictures and save them onto any popular format. Unfortunately, with musicians the thing is quite more complicated. Psychos still using Protracker will have no problems with their music because the MOD format is very popular, supported by a shitload of players for probably all of the existing systems and it's also still acceptable by copy-party organizers for music compos. But what about users of DIGI Booster Pro, Octamed, AHX Sound System or even Symphony? Well, we can pass by the last one, because it wasn't a popular software on the Amiga scene. Let's discuss three music formats - DBM, MED and THX. Is it true, that there is a pathetically low quantity of parties that accept them? Is it true, that they have really few external replayers and that the majority of them are just poor (I'm not talking about AmigaOS now)? Yeah, it's all true.«» «» But think - on parties with an "Amiga compo" category - were Amiga's are available, up and working, there is no possibility for adding our three formats to the "Tracked music compo" or "Chip compo" list? I'm sure it can be done without any constant plugging and unplugging of cables. It can't be so difficult to play music from PC and in the next moment from the Amiga. It just requires a bit more effort from the organizers. They can also install WinUAE on a Windows- based compo machine (or E-UAE on Linux/Mac OS X based computer) and play some modules with emulated Amiga software. IMO it's a really comfortable solution. Not convinced yet? I got another one! :) Musicians can deliver two files - one in DBM/THX/MED format and one in MP3/OGG. The deadline for such a solution can be set a few days before the party just to give some more time to the organizers - they have to check whether those two files are the same. Even organizers can render delivered modules to AIFF/WAV format with applications recommended by musician. Believe me - this IS possible to do, but it needs a bit of good will.«» «» But it's also possible to use half-measures such as Win32 module players. Regarding the DBM format - this will be a problem. PC apps supporting DBPro are rather poor DBM replayers. I really dunno why, I'm not a coder. Maybe it wasn't possible to port to Windows the Amiga libraries responsible for DBMs playing, maybe that matter has low priority for developers, or maybe it's too difficult? No idea. I could even say "yes" to such a solution, but the musician must be able to decide which application should be used to play his song - ModPlug or DeliPlayer. Now about MED format - it's supported both by DeliPlayer and ModPlug (XMPlay doesn't give a shit about it) but only DP plays it correctly. And for the AHX/THX - theoretically it's supported by DeliPlayer and WinAMP (through WinAHX plug-in; AFAIR only version 2.91). What can I say? WinAHX is a shit! I got really bad memories with that crap - on Symphony 2k3 my module was played through WinAMP and... after one minute it just stopped - I used some strange filters and it was too much for WinAHX. But DeliPlayer (once again!) plays it really nice, it supports filters, sounds good, DP's GUI is a bit strange however. :) So, as you can see (for a second time), it's really possible to play modules made with Amiga software during the party without any big sacrifices.«» «» OK, we showed that giving Amiga musicians the possibility to publish their music on copy-parties is really simple. But in that case, why are we - the Amiga musicians - still, I dare to say, discriminated? Maybe it's about our quantity? Maybe there is no sense in making such things as described above for so small a number of people? And the wheel closes. The musician will write his tune in a format, which is widely accepted, in a format, that there will be no problems with. And, for God's sake, why bother with Amiga formats on the copy-party, when there are a lot of important things to do at the party-place? Indeed... We can export (with problems though) our DBMs to XMs, right? Right, but first of all - it's very unfair, because someone is not treated equally; secundo - the DBPro format is more advanced than an "extended module" and why, as an Amiga musician, should I not use all of DIGI Booster Pro's features? For example - Impulse Tracker users can use these features. It's really irritating.«» «» So, there are few proposals in this article. I think that at least some of them can be painlessly brought in to the real life (UAE solution in the first place). Not only to make the life of every Ami musician easier, but also to bring equal chances to all sceners. Maybe if those solutions would become common, people were more willing to use Amiga trackers? Think about it.«» «» «e»
Alek_NGI