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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
18 May 2018 08:33
| Hans-Georg Winkler wrote:
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Some Questions related to the audio over hdmi from my side.
- Is there a AHI Driver to play 16bit Audio?
- the new soundchip (called pamela?) is fully backward compatible to paula? so protracker, demos and games play nice with it?
- will be increase of sound quality when playing games and demos?
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AS far as it was mentioned before (might be changed by team - personal understanding) - AHI driver is under development. By time of public release should be supplied in its incarnation, but might continue development, similar to SAGA driver pack (whose part I suppose it should be) - Pamela and all other (S)AGA chips are fully backward compatibile while having some nice AAA advancements (more chip RAM, more channels and 16-bit sound, fast P96 DIGITAL-VIDEO outpout, faster blitter) - Sadly, no out of box. Not because of Pamela, but because samples and frequencies used - same as always before in Amiga history. But when using AHI based software and 16-bit samples, difference will be striking. However, I hope there will be path that Paula styled sound, but 8 ch h/w 16-bit will be supported by some tracker.
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Hans-Georg Winkler
Posts 29
18 May 2018 08:52
| Thank you! that answers all my questions :-)
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Peter Weuffen
Posts 42
19 May 2018 18:35
| can we still output audio via the on board rca as my speakers crap all over anything the monitor can squeek out
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Matthew Langtry
Posts 199
19 May 2018 21:07
| or modern home cinema amp with hdmi input and get digital audio
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
19 May 2018 21:20
| peter weuffen wrote:
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can we still output audio via the on board rca as my speakers crap all over anything the monitor can squeek out
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Good for you :-) It would be nice to see audio out switchable, if not "to all outpouts" :-) As old school sound system owner, I too grundge on the fact standalone will miss "Classic audio out". Modern times.
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
19 May 2018 21:36
| Hans-Georg Winkler wrote:
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Thank you! that answers all my questions :-)
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I might be wrong only about CD playback via Paula (if anyone used that) or HQ mp3 playback via Paula before vs e.g. some mature Pamela 16-bit AHI driver and doing the same. Sound quality diffeernce should be full quality as opossed to passed AHI downsampling or emulation of 16-bit sound using Paula and CPU. That should sound similar to e.g. having real AHI sound card :-) So "kind of" "Vampire users will get sound card too" :-) Finally, we reach Sound Blaster 16 quality sound out of box.
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Knight Stone
(Needs Verification)
Posts 136/ 1
20 May 2018 02:36
| peter weuffen wrote:
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can we still output audio via the on board rca as my speakers crap all over anything the monitor can squeek out
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This is a good question, will the analogue RAC audios out still work?
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Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6258
20 May 2018 06:57
| Knight Stone wrote:
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This is a good question, will the analogue RAC audios out still work?
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This is easy to answer.
AGA has features which outpass the capabilities of a normal A500 OCS chipset.
Lets make a simple compare
OCS AGA SAGA
Sample rate 28 khz 58 khz 58 khz (more is possible)
Sample width 8 bit 8 bit 8bit and 16bit
Audio channel 4 4 8
Memory bandwidth 7 MB 28 MB 700 MB
Planes 6 8 8 (but up to 32bit)
Sprite width 16bit 64bit 64bit
Chipmem 1 MB 2 MB 2-128 MB
You can easily see that SAGA features are above AGA.
You can also see that AGA features are above OCS.
Its obvious that the chips on the old Amiga 500 mainboard can NOT support AGA features.
Therefore is absolute logical that if you switch to AGA / AGA+ mode, your old Amiga500 mainboard will not support this.
If you think about this, then this will also answer your RCA question.
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Stefano Briccolani
Posts 586
20 May 2018 07:02
| If you really need RCA or optical audio output maybe you can use something like this:
EXTERNAL LINK
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
20 May 2018 07:25
| Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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OCS AGA SAGA
Sample rate 28 khz 58 khz 58 khz (more is possible)
Sample width 8 bit 8 bit 8bit and 16bit
Audio channel 4 4 8
Memory bandwidth 7 MB 28 MB 700 MB
Planes 6 8 8 (but up to 32bit)
Sprite width 16bit 64bit 64bit
Chipmem 1 MB 2 MB 2-128 MB
You can easily see that SAGA features are above AGA.
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Thanks very much for clear comparison table. Sample rate is with software mixing or in hardware? Otherwise it would be honest to say hardware wise paulas 28khz did not really change with AGA.
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Stefano Briccolani
Posts 586
20 May 2018 07:45
| Vojin: is in hardware. ECS (a600, a500+, a3000) have the same specification of AGA in terms of audio. A500/2000 (OCS) cannot play samples at more than 28khz as Gunnar said. With vampire audio even an a500/2000 can handle 58 khz
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
20 May 2018 07:51
| Thanks for an answer. No doubt any Vampirized Amiga will now have 44Khz+ (finally, real old school CD/HQ sound). My complain was about 58Khz mentioned in original AGA. It was possible using some hack and just in some software, but is not original hardware feature.
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Knight Stone
(Needs Verification)
Posts 136/ 1
20 May 2018 08:26
| Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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Knight Stone wrote:
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This is a good question, will the analogue RAC audios out still work?
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This is easy to answer.
AGA has features which outpass the capabilities of a normal A500 OCS chipset.
Lets make a simple compare
OCS AGA SAGA
Sample rate 28 khz 58 khz 58 khz (more is possible)
Sample width 8 bit 8 bit 8bit and 16bit
Audio channel 4 4 8
Memory bandwidth 7 MB 28 MB 700 MB
Planes 6 8 8 (but up to 32bit)
Sprite width 16bit 64bit 64bit
Chipmem 1 MB 2 MB 2-128 MB
You can easily see that SAGA features are above AGA.
You can also see that AGA features are above OCS.
Its obvious that the chips on the old Amiga 500 mainboard can NOT support AGA features.
Therefore is absolute logical that if you switch to AGA / AGA+ mode, your old Amiga500 mainboard will not support this.
If you think about this, then this will also answer your RCA question.
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thanks for that, although it doesn't answer it, at all. Yes or No, would have done :)
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Henryk Richter
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 128/ 1
20 May 2018 08:48
| Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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My complain was about 58Khz mentioned in original AGA. It was possible using some hack and just in some software, but is not original hardware feature.
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But it is. Actually, it is an ECS feature. All you need is an ECS Agnus (8372A or later) and ECS Denise (8373). The prerequisite for >28 kHz DMA Audio is that the Amiga chipset must run in double scan display mode as the DMA slots are tied to the line scan frequency. Anything like Productivity, DBLPAL, DBLNTSC... will qualify here. And besides: In Picasso96, it's only one ENV-Variable away.
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
20 May 2018 11:12
| Henryk Richter wrote:
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But it is. Actually, it is an ECS feature. All you need is an ECS Agnus (8372A or later) and ECS Denise (8373).
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Overall, yes, its possible "trick" as EHB/HAMs are. But as described, its limited to Double gfx modes (weird limitation). Highest quality one can squeeze out was 14-bit 56Khz but 4 ch (no software mixing to more).
Each channel can have its own frequency, a bit is to overall mix. So having real 56khz 8 ch 16 bit everywhere with SAGA is real advancement, and not a bit of trick (from table Pamela doesnt look so advanced).
Finally, we will have 16-bit 44KHz as real world standard. Too bad pro world meanwhile went even further.
Software wise, there were very few opportunities to really use it. Perfect Eagle Player 2.05 stands out, and I hope it can be updated to support Pamela:
- TRUE HIGH FIDELITY SOUND IN 14 Bit Paula MODE by means of a filter
(highboost) which compensates for the Amiga reconstruction lowpass,
enabling a near flat frequency response in a range of up to 18 kHz
(tuned for 28 kHz and 44 kHz mixing rates)Sounds great, thanks Henryk!
EXTERNAL LINK
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Knight Stone
(Needs Verification)
Posts 136/ 1
21 May 2018 09:28
| ok, so ... will sound still work through the RCA connectors?
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Przemyslaw Tkaczyk
Posts 155
21 May 2018 09:35
| Knight Stone wrote:
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ok, so ... will sound still work through the RCA connectors?
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Unlikely. With expanded features the onboard RCA out wouldn't be able to keep up at all. At the moment I use one of these EXTERNAL LINK to get high quality RCA sound extracted from DIGITAL-VIDEO signal. Really not that expensive piece of gear, considering an added bonus in form of S/PDIF optical out. 
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Andy Hearn
Posts 374
21 May 2018 11:07
| given any luck and a bit of going downhill with a following wind, maybe the TV will be able to run the audio back to the amp via the DIGITAL-VIDEO ARC channel... either way, looking forward to it a lot! great work as always! :D
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Knight Stone
(Needs Verification)
Posts 136/ 1
21 May 2018 14:06
| Przemyslaw Tkaczyk wrote:
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Knight Stone wrote:
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ok, so ... will sound still work through the RCA connectors?
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Unlikely. With expanded features the onboard RCA out wouldn't be able to keep up at all. At the moment I use one of these EXTERNAL LINK to get high quality RCA sound extracted from DIGITAL-VIDEO signal. Really not that expensive piece of gear, considering an added bonus in form of S/PDIF optical out.
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a straight answer that the untechnical can understand, "NO" :) thank you
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A1200 Coder
Posts 74
21 May 2018 16:13
| A question for the team: would it be possible, or make sense, to have also 128/256 bit wide memory accesses in SAGA for bitplanes/sprites/blitter? The memory bandwidth of AGA @ 28MB/sec seems impressive, but that's only for bitplane datafetches, as they can be 32/64-bit. The blitter still operates with 16 bit width under AGA, and CPU has 32 bit, so there is the whole range of 16/32/64 bit wide memory accesses under AGA. So SAGA could also have 64/128/256 bit wide memory accesses. Would at least help with the stress that very high resolution screenmodes place on memory bandwidth and also make blitter performance better.
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