Why SID > MOD

Bog · Post by **Bog** » 20/05/2006 - 21:34

C64 SID choonz are much better than Amiga MOD choonz 'cause the Sickyfour gave you latitude to fill in the the choon-noise with proper orchestral or whatever, whereas MODs with their scratchy samples were so close to home, they didn't give you an excuse to make up for their sins.

Discuss.

Steve B · Post by **Steve B** » 21/05/2006 - 1:29

galway=god.mod

yes, SID is raw sexyness
god hubbard is .. well, erm GOD
martin Gee is a demi god

but.

the God=Martin Galway.mod is getter than any SID.
better than any .wav
better than any .mp3
better than any f'kin anything f u l l s t o p.

sid is why we are here.
we all were hooked by the sid chip. it rocks

but the one mod that counts puts everything else to rest.

listen to it.

(what was in that can?)

Tonka · Post by **Tonka** » 21/05/2006 - 20:59

Amiga music was a big let down for me. After the initial WOW! of the (now appauling sounding) 'Insanity Fight' and 'Starglider' music (which were basically just gert big samples) it all just sounded truncated, lo-fi and generally bland ('Shadow of the Beast' music being possibly the only exception).

In fact, even Amiga games were shit, now I really come to think of it (thinking specifically 'Outrun' here - what a JOKE)...

THAT SAID, the Amiga opened the door for me with regards to music creation, firstly with the lovely Soundtracker and then with Octamed with midi. Amiga MOD's just haven't stood the test of time like our precious SIDS

Sorry Paula

BTW - I can't find a 'Galway=God.mod' Can you upload it for us Steve? + any other Sid>Mods - can't say I've ever heard any, other than 'Human Race Level 4' on the Soundtracker disk, which was pretty poor

Tonka

FFRenzy · Post by **FFRenzy** » 21/05/2006 - 21:20

Tonka wrote:BTW - I can't find a 'Galway=God.mod' Can you upload it for us Steve? + any other Sid>Mods - can't say I've ever heard any, other than 'Human Race Level 4' on the Soundtracker disk, which was pretty poor

Tonka

Maybe that's because it isn't a normal mod, it's an XM, and you can get it here : http://www.modarchive.com/artists/jogeir/

[edit]BTW, it being an XM makes it a PC-mod, not an Amiga mod, AFAIK

xo · Post by xo » 21/05/2006 - 21:50

I've had thousand of hours of joy listening to thousands and thousands of mods. The key to SIDs may be that they lend themselves better to imaginative remixes, regardless I would have a very hard time choosing SIDs over mods. And I'm here both because of SIDs and mods. To me mod is a broad spectrum of file formats including exotic softsynth based ones like ML and AON, I believe. The corpus of mods alone, as in .mod, is enormous and to value one format over another to me is quite meaningless. Rather, I value each expression within each format on its own merrits.

Kenz · Post by **Kenz** » 22/05/2006 - 8:01

I quite enjoy dipping back into the Amiga mod scene now and again as there were some amazing tunes churned out back when the Amiga was King. From a technical point of view I *hate* the Amiga stereo sound split and it's very easy to destroy a lot of Amiga tunes simply by putting a pair of headphones on!

I've actually been recording a lot of stuff from the Amiga recently for my next podcast show so you will soon be able to enjoy some classic Amiga tracks (all recorded from the Amiga - including some mods which Winamp just can't handle).

And yes, the show will be headphone-friendly! (It's amazing how much better the tracks sound when you mix 30-40% of the left channel into the right and vice versa).

xo · Post by xo » 22/05/2006 - 11:32

Yes I remember the stereo mixing issue with mods, since for years I only listented to music through headphones. Nowadays its only speakers, partly because I lack a decent headset, partly because the speakers are cool.

Regarding players, I'm not so sure you should be using winamp anyway, although the oldschool mod plugin may be decent, can't remember, however it does play a few exotic formats. Rather XMPlay or Deliplayer. XMPlay even supports sinc interpolation so some mods might end up sounding better than on the Amiga. I'm playing around with a hobby player project using FMOD Ex myself, but it seems to not play some mods as well as XMPlay does.

By the way the title of this thread is a bit of a non-starter for open discussion since it appears to only invite people who agree with the premise of the question and that the premise itself is not questionable. Great for provocation though.

FFRenzy · Post by **FFRenzy** » 22/05/2006 - 11:58

exoskeleton wrote:Regarding players, I'm not so sure you should be using winamp anyway, although the oldschool mod plugin may be decent, can't remember, however it does play a few exotic formats. Rather XMPlay or Deliplayer. XMPlay even supports sinc interpolation so some mods might end up sounding better than on the Amiga. I'm playing around with a hobby player project using FMOD Ex myself, but it seems to not play some mods as well as XMPlay does.

a good test for a mod-player is Liljedahl "Galway=God" XM that has been mentioned earlier in this topic.....Winamp and deliplayer tend to screw it up, XMplay plays it perfectly ( afaik, i don't exactly know how liljedahl intended it to sound of course )

Makke · Post by **Makke** » 22/05/2006 - 12:12

exoskeleton wrote:Rather XMPlay or Deliplayer.

I'd recommend XMPlay for every format it supports.

Deliplayer supports more formats (thanks to a great player-plugin system), but the GUI is just awful! It's utter utter crap, and I can't understand why more time wasn't spent on doing a propper UI to go with this otherwise excellent application.

FFRenzy · Post by **FFRenzy** » 22/05/2006 - 13:02

Makke wrote:
exoskeleton wrote:Rather XMPlay or Deliplayer.
I'd recommend XMPlay for every format it supports.

Deliplayer supports more formats (thanks to a great player-plugin system), but the GUI is just awful! It's utter utter crap, and I can't understand why more time wasn't spent on doing a propper UI to go with this otherwise excellent application.

XM-play has a lot of plugins for input too, BTW http://support.xmplay.com/

xo · Post by xo » 22/05/2006 - 13:04

Makke wrote:
exoskeleton wrote:Rather XMPlay or Deliplayer.
I'd recommend XMPlay for every format it supports.

Deliplayer supports more formats (thanks to a great player-plugin system), but the GUI is just awful! It's utter utter crap, and I can't understand why more time wasn't spent on doing a propper UI to go with this otherwise excellent application.

You are absolutely 100% right Makke. Unfortunately I don't quite like the UI or skins of XMPlay either. I'm more partial to foobar2000 which I use most of the time.

By the way, check this out!!!

http://support.xmplay.com/file.php?star ... =date_desc

Edit. Ooops, Frenzy posted the same link.

Romeo Knight · Post by **Romeo Knight** » 22/05/2006 - 13:35

I'd recommend ModPlug as the only player that plays "Cream of the Earth" correctly

(I didn't test XMPlay though)
Side information: That "stereo"-thing annoyed me a lot back in the days.
I used to compose EVERYTHING using the internal mono speaker of my old C-128 display monitor - no stereo, not even hifi!

And when the BÃƒÂ¶sendorfer.mod was played on the World of Commodere 1992 I begged the presenter to switch the PA system to mono (since it's unlistenable in stereo due to heavy channel changing of the melody line...)

xo · Post by xo » 22/05/2006 - 14:28

Romeo, please try XMPlay.

Actually I don't know Modplug but I've read some less flattering comments on its playback accurracy.

Post by **LMan** » 22/05/2006 - 16:00

Romeo Knight wrote:That "stereo"-thing annoyed me a lot back in the days.

Since I didn't have a mixer or any other way of achieving mono, and no cash to afford anything like that, I used to dismantle the cable and short circuit the left and right channel wires. It did what it should, but I was always uneasy about possible side effects this could have.

Romeo Knight · Post by **Romeo Knight** » 22/05/2006 - 16:39

There are none. This is called Y-cable. Though I think also connecting both earths is even better....