The Amiga MIDI Myth - Atari ST vs Amiga War

[jonljacobi]

Treasure it my friend... I wish I still had my Atari 1040ST and Amiga 500. I still would if I had had the room. BBS, dial-up, everything that come out was "Wow, you can do that with a computer??".

[legendCNCD]

and multitask at the same time (with Amiga)!

[humpo72]

had a 1040ST & later the Mega ST & the SM124 monitor. both running Cubase.

[Cochrane]

"The Amiga can't do MIDI"

https://dreamertalin.medium.com/music-x-b4abc68d6f78

(go to "Aftermath I" section and read of hardware design's flaws that made MIDI unreliable on Amigas...)

[legendCNCD]

Well, I for one did not have any problem using Amiga and MIDI though Maybe there was something, maybe there was not. It always worked reliably for me with Octamed Pro.

[jclosed]

Hmm... I always worked with multi track recording (yes hardware tape recorders), until I started using the Acorn Music 500 hardware on the BBC-B computer somewhere in 1984 (not that I stopped using tape by the way). It was not a tracker, but you could program pieces in a language called Ample. As far as I can remember there was a hardware addon that provided a MIDI out.

Anyway - More information here: https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/acorn-music-500/8055

So - I never caught up in that Amiga vs Atari war...

[syntonica]

"The Amiga can't do MIDI"

https://dreamertalin.medium.com/music-x-b4abc68d6f78

(go to "Aftermath I" section and read of hardware design's flaws that made MIDI unreliable on Amigas...)

Does this mean that I can be smug about my choice of Atari at the time because of the built-in midi?

(The built-in MIDI was a brilliant design choice by the Atari team at the time, although they did make a few other not-so-good choices.)

[Kypresso]

"The Amiga can't do MIDI"

https://dreamertalin.medium.com/music-x-b4abc68d6f78

(go to "Aftermath I" section and read of hardware design's flaws that made MIDI unreliable on Amigas...)

Does this mean that I can be smug about my choice of Atari at the time because of the built-in midi?

(The built-in MIDI was a brilliant design choice by the Atari team at the time, although they did make a few other not-so-good choices.)

The midi out port on the st was weird, it had both the midi out and the midi through on the same port, so you needed suitable cables for that.

I had Music-X with an a500 and a 4000 with an ibm-pc card in it, never noticed any problems with midi myself but i was just a happy amateur.

[iowastate89]

I feel like Bars and Pipes was the ancestor to Bitwig

[seafire]

Had an Amiga 600 and a 1200 with a HD, midi interface etc, running OctaMed and Audio....something, sample editor.

Fun at the time, but definitely wouldn't go back.

Used a friend's Atari with Pro24? Can't remember much about it tho.

[legendCNCD]

AudioMaster (versions 1 to 4)?

I could go back but I guess I would have to slave a PC with VST's with it instead of hardware synths (I sold them all).
Then again, automation was not so easily done, you had to input commands into patterns for those to happen... ok I wont go back

[NikkiA]

Back in the day, my opcode interface worked just fine with both my Amiga and my ST, so there was never really a need to choose.

[Examigan]

One really cool prg back then was Digidesign's SoftSynth. It was available for PC and Mac. We used it at the college I attended on the 1040ST.

EDIT:
I meant it was for Mac and Atari ST, not PC.

[seafire]

AudioMaster (versions 1 to 4)?

That was it, well remembered

[Synthman2000]

If I remember right it was just the Amiga did not have built in MIDI. It could do MIDI I guess with something attached to a port/slot of some kind.

I was remembering how amazing computers seemed back then. They still are but we have relaxed to them now, back then it was an excited joy to use them, like you were in the future.