KVR Audio

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:45 pm

Maybe not DAWs but trackers were really the only feasible way to make computer music with computer specs as they were.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:14 pm

arkmabat wrote:Maybe not DAWs but trackers were really the only feasible way to make computer music with computer specs as they were.

Wrong. Computers and DAWs were very good for computer music already in the 90s. Macs were messing with digital áudio already in the late 80s.

The problema with PCs was the horrible hardware architecture, with limited IRQs and memory addresses, many of them even didn't allowed sharing, which meant that, if you added a pice of gear that demand a specific IRQ and that one was already taken by another piece, you were in trouble.

I remember spending a whole night trying to install a Turtle Beach Multisound, with no success, only to get an answer the next day from Turtle Beach that I had to add an "exclude" line in the CONFIG.SYS (yes, we were used to mess with system files in those days) for a specific RAM address. Only then it worked.

Windows 95 was the first step to solve this, with the Plug'n Play (soon renamed to "Plug'n Pray"

). Windows 98 improved things in this aspect, but it wasn't until the arrival of new generatyion computers and Windows XP that things really started to shine on the PC world.

Macs didn't suffered of this problem, that's why they conquered a big share of the music computer market.

Resonant- Serpent · Post by **Resonant- Serpent** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 5:44 pm

As far as using computers for recording and manipulation, Peter Christopherson was using a Mac to record and mangle as far back as Throbbing Gristle.

fluffy_little_something · Tue Jan 27, 2015 5:57 pm

Windaw

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 6:18 pm

fmr wrote:
arkmabat wrote:Maybe not DAWs but trackers were really the only feasible way to make computer music with computer specs as they were.
Wrong. Computers and DAWs were very good for computer music already in the 90s. Macs were messing with digital áudio already in the late 80s.

I'd goi even further back, to Commodore (C64 and Amstrad) times - but here it was mainly MIDI control or controlling internal soundchips (SID anyone?). Or what about the Amiga, with the "tracker scene"?

Until the Mac 1 and Mac II (Lisa) came along with suitable gear to not only sync MIDI and tape machines, but also got the first steps of recording audio.

I also remember adding lines of code to the CONFIG.SYS on DOS and Windows boot. Even up until Win95's "plug and pray" days. Thankfully a lot improved over the course of the last 2 decades.

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 6:38 pm

arkmabat wrote:What was that old Mac DAW called that introduced audio channels and had "super awesome intro demo videos you totally have to watch"? Anyway, Trent Reznor swore by it until it stopped working and he had to switch to windows, much to his dismay. I don't get it when people despise what actually works?

Trent Reznor never switched to Windows. There were two reasons he and his friends had a PC in the studio:

1. Generator/Reaktor (which ported to Mac shortly after)
2. Doom (he said productivity came to a screeching halt for a while).

EDIT: corrected Mac to PC. Seriously, jace... the whole point of the post...

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 6:48 pm

Actually, my very first computer music experience was on a Tandy 1000TL/2 with Deskmate's "Music" program. The Tandy had a 3-voice beeper & DAC. That was high end for PC in 1987. "Music" was similar to trackers in tech, but the interface was staff notation (which I don't read). I bought the Activision-published "The Music Studio" (a port from Atari or Apple IIgs??) which was exactly the same but supported MIDI (surely Tandy licensed an early version as Deskmate's Music). Still staff notation and a horrible GUI (also in Deskmate). I got nowhere with that either.

Nowhere near a "DAW" and not even as capable as a 4-channel tracker

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 7:34 pm

fmr wrote:
arkmabat wrote:Maybe not DAWs but trackers were really the only feasible way to make computer music with computer specs as they were.
Wrong. Computers and DAWs were very good for computer music already in the 90s. Macs were messing with digital áudio already in the late 80s.

The problema with PCs was the horrible hardware architecture, with limited IRQs and memory addresses, many of them even didn't allowed sharing, which meant that, if you added a pice of gear that demand a specific IRQ and that one was already taken by another piece, you were in trouble.

I remember spending a whole night trying to install a Turtle Beach Multisound, with no success, only to get an answer the next day from Turtle Beach that I had to add an "exclude" line in the CONFIG.SYS (yes, we were used to mess with system files in those days) for a specific RAM address. Only then it worked.

Windows 95 was the first step to solve this, with the Plug'n Play (soon renamed to "Plug'n Pray" ). Windows 98 improved things in this aspect, but it wasn't until the arrival of new generatyion computers and Windows XP that things really started to shine on the PC world.

Macs didn't suffered of this problem, that's why they conquered a big share of the music computer market.

Agreed. My artistic growth in the computer realm was probably held back considerably by the fact that, when I demanded my parents buy a computer, they bought a PC. At least it was a Tandy 1000 (that's kinda representative of my whole life).

PC hardware was a joke for anything related to music and sound. Trackers originated elsewhere: the Amiga's audio chip. There were four separate hardware channels for digital audio in the Paula (?) chip. Karsten Obarski developed "The Ultimate Soundtracker" for game development, turning an Amiga into a cost-effective (inferior) equivalent to an Akai sampler. Trackers were born.

Eventually, other clever programmers, with access to more CPU power, figured out mixing routines to expand the four hardware channels to 8 and also port the concept to other platforms that had only a single channel DAC (or less!). On the PC was the SoundBlaster. This was an Adlib-compatible gaming card that happened to also have an 8-bit, single channel DAC that maxed at 22KHz... Far worse than the original Amiga hardware, but better than a PC without it. But PC had the CPU power and cheap availability of hardware, so trackers appeared, seemingly of out of the blue.

Once the Gravis Ultrasound came out with the ability to do hardware mixing (the precursor to SB AWE32), trackers suddenly flourished on PC (supported directly and driven by Scream Tracker 3 and Fast Tracker II with support for the hardware mixing in the GUS). It kicked the butt of the 4-op FM synthesis found on most Adlib-compatible sound cards. Without the GUS, the CPU cost was generally too high for developers to pick tracker format over the Adlib sound in games, and most people didn't buy the GUS because of poor game compatibility (as a sample player it had no FM synth, and its digital audio playback was not compatible with SoundBlaster-supported games). So games stuck mostly with Adlib-clone FM hardware and digital sample playback stayed mostly a demo scene feature (a few of the best games in that era did use tracker music though, like Another World and Star Control 2).

And that's the point of my dissertation on music on PCs: the thing that pushed it forward for we musicians was gaming. Just like today with how gaming pushes GPUs ahead, games were the driving force behind audio hardware developments on the PC. Sierra On-line pushed hardware for game music (Roland MT-32 being the gold standard!). The PC was otherwise considered a business machine by its developers and marketers (who refused to push graphics and sound like Commodore, Apple, and Atari had). The Tandy 1000 only came about because of being a clone of the IBM PC jr (IBM's self-sabotaged "graphics and sound" upgrade to the XT architecture).

Gaming is how music finally got to the PC and why the PC was so far behind everyone else... But most PC users today don't know this because PC is all they know. Once the CPU power was there to hack the graphics and sound in on top of the legacy architecture, and because the ISA bus allowed hardware addons outside the IBM spec, the business-entrenched "working machines" ended up beating the graphics and sound "gaming" machines. Atari ST lasted a while longer due to it being the only computer (aside from the BeBox much later) to come with a MIDI interface built in, and having quickly established a foothold in studios that had embraced MIDI.

When Windows XP finally started to give us an actually functional OS (robust enough architecture), the audio software market finally kicked into gear on PC without demanding vast third party hardware upgrades. Cheapness prevailed as always on PC.

A sad and convoluted tale I've barely scratched the surface of here.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 8:06 pm

Compyfox wrote: I'd goi even further back, to Commodore (C64 and Amstrad) times - but here it was mainly MIDI control or controlling internal soundchips (SID anyone?). Or what about the Amiga, with the "tracker scene"?

Yeah, the Amiga

. I always looked at the Amiga as the Betamax of the computers. It was the best one around, but it was always beaten by the Macintosh, the Atari and the PC. Never got one

xx JPRacer xx · Post by **xx JPRacer xx** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 8:10 pm

arkmabat wrote:Sounds like 1992 was a magical year for Windows.

Not just for Windows!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic01Vhiyrb4

She Changed Her Mind · Tue Jan 27, 2015 8:35 pm

fmr wrote:
She Changed Her Mind wrote:Yes, but in 1994 Cakewalk was the most popular DAW. Though we used Scream Tracker and later Fasttracker.
I don't think Cakewalk was already a DAW in 1994 (only MIDI still, although it could trigger single WAV files).

I guess you are right. However, it had a piano roll!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaxCHtMvQe8

mhog · Post by **mhog** » Wed Jan 28, 2015 4:30 am

the first digital audio workstation was Magix, as far as I know. Consequently, I guess it was the first DAW on Windows, too?

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Wed Jan 28, 2015 4:58 am

Jace-BeOS wrote:
arkmabat wrote:What was that old Mac DAW called that introduced audio channels and had "super awesome intro demo videos you totally have to watch"? Anyway, Trent Reznor swore by it until it stopped working and he had to switch to windows, much to his dismay. I don't get it when people despise what actually works?
Trent Reznor never switched to Windows. There were two reasons he and his friends had a Mac in the studio:

1. Generator/Reaktor (which ported to Mac shortly after)
2. Doom (he said productivity came to a screeching halt for a while).

For ProTools before it came to Mac for Fragile.

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Wed Jan 28, 2015 4:58 am

xx JPRacer xx wrote:
arkmabat wrote:Sounds like 1992 was a magical year for Windows.
Not just for Windows!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic01Vhiyrb4

Get Lucky? Mario beat Daft Punk to the chase it looks like.

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Wed Jan 28, 2015 5:00 am

Cool to know some history. Thanks for the comments, Jace-BeOS.

What was the first Daw on Windows?