Stone Oakvalley's Amiga Music Collection (SOAMC=)
The automated Commodore Amiga music to MP3 preservation project!
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INTRODUCTION: 
The SOAMC= project is a non-profit and a private project for my own amusement.The purpose is to preserve Amiga music in todays most common music format, namely the MP3. The original Amiga music files are today played by millions of people around the world on software players for PC, Mac and Linux. The playback quality/timing of this can vary compared to the authentic playback of a real Commodore Amiga, and from my point of view, why have something emulated when you can have the real deal instead? I want to listen to the authentic Commodore Amiga music as it sounds on the real machine. Commodore Amiga is a legend in computer history and in many ways influenced in todays culture. A special thanks to the wonderful "father" of Amiga: Jay Miner - You shall forever be remembered. Rest In Peace :-( To put in it words we all can understand: WE LOVE AMIGA - WE LOVE MUSIC! Watch a nice introduction movie about the project here: See it on YouTube in higher resolution, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brFLSz66ULM&fmt=18 Download it in High Resolution for the ultimate joy here! (80MB, WMW 720x576) The SOAMC= project is an automated recording technique invented by me (Stone Oakvalley) in order to mass record music from the legendary Commodore Amiga and its sound chip (Paula 8364). I have chosen A1200 for the purpose, because I had access to a CF IDE adapter and a CF card so easily without spending too much time finding a suitable HD and turbo/memory card solution for A500. There are a difference between the filtering on A500 and the A1200 audio chips, but I do not think that it will make this project less impressive when recorded on a A1200. I could never "back-in-the-days" remember any problems or irritations by listening to the same music on A1200 compared to A500. I have no intentions of re-recording the whole thing for A500 in future. The goal is to record a huge pack of music files found at Exotica, Modland and the Mods Anthology #1 collections that are VERY Amiga compatible. No S3M, XM, IT etc (PC formats) will be recorded, thus it can be played on Amiga, but the format is a PC format which later became also possible on the Amiga by using software mixing possibilites. It is also a much newer format that was not available on Amiga 500/1200. This is a very AMIGA based project. With EaglePlayer as the REAL Amiga player and a CF 2GB IDE acting as HD/fileserver, it all connects to a recording PC via a standard serial cable with own tailored software and database structure tools written in PureBasic. Yes, it works like a charm. Also, a strong point to consider in this project is that ALL music are recorded on real hardware. You could of course export music from DeliPlayer (PC) as WAV in better crisp quality and effects etc, but it was important to not fiddle with emulation when it can, with some extra work, be recorded from the real Amiga and its stereo-outs instead. Export tests done by the latest DeliPlayer on PC showed that "Imploder4.mso" by Paul van der Valk would not export correctly, thus making it totally useless for the purpose of this project! Forget WinAmp too, it only takes 1% of the formats the EaglePlayer on Amiga supports and that the SOAMC= project produces! It is called AUTHENTIC too because we will record the audio AS-IS from Amiga. We all rememeber the awful 4 channel left/right extreme stereo separation and listening to these in headphones is no fun. But, as a bonus the process will include a custom stereo mix to get rid of the extreme spatial stereo, meaning a chosen percent of each channel blends into the opposite one. This simply DOUBLES the amount of MP3 files available, and it is a massive amount indeed! Further, I've adjusted DC BIAS to 0 and executed Volume Maximizer with no clipping using NORMALIZE.EXE and SOX.EXE. Noise Reduction was not performed in any way. Thats it!  WHY?: I want to listen to Amiga Music totally independent of having the need of a dedicated player around. Listen to it on MP3-players, Car-stereo systems, living room systems etc etc. I also do this project because I do not trust the PC players and their correct playback of classic Amiga music and also by exporting it to wav might cause problems. I know we are only dealing with sample playback, but the timing is also a critical factor that I want to be correct. The timing is used when creating synthetic instruments for instance. Typically heard in a of cool Amiga music software like FutureComposer. Further, there are other sites out there that have a lot of authentic Amiga recordings as MP3 but most likely these are far from complete (typically bloated with commerical banners and google ad crap etc) and will never be finished because they are recorded manually or by a handful of recorders resulting in a year-after-year slow progress. Somebody has to take action... me that is! The Database: The entire music collection is a mix between all module files found at: MODLAND (ftp.modland.com) EXOTICA (www.exotica.org.uk) MODS ANTHOLOGY #1 www.fusecon.com/products/scenecds/modsan1.shtml cd's. The snapshot of these sites were taken during summer-winter 2007-2008, so any new files after that period WILL NOT BE SUBJECT of beeing included in future recordings. This project is a ONCE-TIME project and I do not intend to keep recording ANY new stuff for this collection after completion. Only severe bugs might be re-recorded! The MP3 TAGS will contain information derived from the title/filename/directoryname where found suitable. Since there is no database available online that cover the 150+ Amiga formats I'm recording its hard to create an full database of the releaser/group, copyright holder, produced year and the composers name. I wished there was a HVSC C64 SID similar database for the Amiga formats, since that is a very well put together database which follows strong rules for information. But, it's easy for that part, since SID is only one file format and has a documented structure of information stored inside. For the Amiga, its well.... the 150+ different formats which are all different in their buildups and many files don't have anything human readable text stored, so this information is only available online, but only found as HTML and text online making the SOAMC= database process difficult for automation! Today, EXOTICA and AMP does a incredible job collecting this information and I will leave their great work to still be processed without me creating it all over again. MODLAND only stores information about the music files in named directories and original filenames. MODLAND has just dir named information of the releaser but nothing else like what year it was produced. The SOAMC= database has been constructed with a special RAW TEXT ripper functionality which extracts as much textual information found in the 150+ different formats and use that as a base when searching for the exact tune you want. Some Amiga music files have additional text information stored in different locations and sometimes these are not even complete, making it an automated process to store the information about the module online difficult. The structure has been cleaned slightly and a number of errors found in these collection fixed to form my own ready-to-record music collection. These original Amiga files (in directory structure and .ZIP) including the final MP3 recordings will be available online for download. Since there is no particular downloadable database of Amiga Music like the HVSC (Commodore 64 High Voltage SID Collection) I had to develop a short routine to extract as much as possible human readable text from all these files to better create a maximum search hit when searching for a favourite tune. The process is probably not done before regarding any Amiga Music database, and the SOAMC= database is THE FIRST to probably invent such a feature and incredible RAW search function today. I've seen it for ProTracker/SoundTracker clones out there (namely MOD. files), but not the other non-xxxxTracker files. Further I do not wish to dig through a lot websites and old information to try and create a HVSC similar database myself. My focus is to record and preserve the sound of what I managed to find internet during 2007. Database Overview: - Based on 157 different Amiga formats. - Database will be organized as: [FORMAT/COMPOSER/FILENAME] or [FORMAT/GAME/FILENAME] - Filenames are mostly kept intact as-is from the collections derived from: MODLAND, EXOTICA, and MODS ANTHOLOGY. - Total tunes detected in collection: 115869 - Total playtime: 283634 minutes (including 04:00 force time where no time was detected) - Total playtime: 4727 hours - Total playtime: 196 days The end result is therefore 231738 MP3 files in 224Kbps, 44100Hz, CBR. Disk space needed is approx 1TB, recording/process time is about 1 year!. Tags included in the MP3 files will be Original Titlename, Composer, Music Format and for some the origin of the module i.e (From Game: Blues Brothers) Recording Process: The music will be played on EaglePlayer2.03b1 (previously announced DeliTracker2.32, but due to I couldnt find all suitable players and the fact the EaglePlayer players are newer and updated I had to switch player software) on Amiga 1200 with the filter turned off. A own recording software (PAULAREC) will be running on a 1GHz PC running WinXP with a M-Audio AudioPhile 2496 audio card and serial communication from PC<->Amiga. The software will control and keep track of the recording process and create automatic MP3's for a 24/7 recording loop during the entire project. On the Amiga side an additional server software programmed in Arexx will control EaglePlayer and be the portal towards my own PC software (PAULA REC). NOTE: All songlengths were extracted out of DeliPlayer 2.50b (Windows) playlists, and without their magnificent software and songlength detection routine, I would fear this project would NEVER be possible! Hope to see some day DeliPlayer back on track, it has been dead for so many years....Peter Kunath and Florian Vorberger: R I S E !!! Pictures of the setup: Mounted on a wooden plate onto the wall, just because I ran out of floor space!    Availability: The MP3 files will be made available on a totally non-bloated, real downloads and a website much similar to the database already used on the SOASC= project. The project started to record in Jan2008 and should be finished late 2008/early 2009. Pictures of our dedicated server hosting the MP3 files.   Amiga formats to be recorded: A.M.Composer 1.2, Actionamics, AHX v2, AmosMusicBank, AProSys, Art&Magic, ArtOfNoise, Beathoven Synthesizer, Benn Daglish, Benn Daglish SID, ChipTracker, Cinemaware, Compact ModFile, Core Design, CustomMade, Customplay, Darius Zendeh Player, Dave Lowe, Dave Lowe New, David Hanney, DeltaMusic 2.0, DeltaMusic_1.0, DeltaPacker 1.0, Desire, DigiBooster, Digital Mugician 1, Digital Mugician 2, Digital Sonix & Chrome, Digital Sound Creations, Digital Sound Studio, Dirk Bialluch, Dynamic Synthesizer, EarAche, Editeur Musical Sequentiel, Face The Music, Fashion Tracker, FollinPlayer II, Fred Gray, FredEditor, Future Composer 1.3, Future Composer 1.4, Future Player, FutureComposer, FWMP, GlueMon, Hippel, Hippel-COSO, Howie Davies, Images Music System, Janko Mrsic-Flogel, Jason C. Brooke, Jason Page New, Jeroen Tel, Jesper Olsen, Kris Hatlelid, Leggless Music Editor, M.O.N., Magnetic Fields Packer, Mark Cooksey, Mark II, MarkCookseyOld, Martin Walker, MaxTrax, MCMD, MED, MED Packer, MED SoundStudio, Medley, Mike Davies, Music-Assembler, MusicDiskTracker, MusicLine, MusicMaker, NoisePacker 1.0, NoisePacker 2.0, NoisePacker 3.0, NoiseTracker, NovoTrade Packer, OctaMED, OctaMED SoundStudio, Oktalyzer, Old SoundTracker, Paul Robotham, Paul Shields, Paul Summers, Peter Verswyvelen Packer, Pierre Adane Packer, PowerTracker, Pro-Packer 2.1, Pro-Packer 3.0, Promizer 1.0, ProRunner 1.0, ProRunner 2.0, ProTracker, PSA, PumaTracker, QuadraComposer, RichardJoseph, Riff Raff, Rob Hubbard, Rob Hubbard 2, Rob Hubbard ST, Ron Klaren, SCUMM, Sean Connolly, Sean Conran, Sidmon_1.0, Sidmon_2.0, Sierra AGI, Silmarils, SonicArranger, Sonix Music Driver, Sound Images, Sound Master, Sound Programming Language, Soundcontrol 3.0-5.0, Soundfactory, SoundFX_1.3, SoundFX_2.0, SoundMaster_II, SoundMon 1.0, SoundMon 2.0, SoundMon 2.2, SoundPlayer, SoundTracker 15, SoundTracker 2.6, SoundTracker 31, Special FX, Speedy System, StarTrekker 4, Steve Barrett, Steve Turner, SUNtronic, Synth Dream, Synth Pack, Synthesis, SynTracker, TakeTracker, TFMX, TFMX 1.x, TFMX 7V, TFMX Pro, The Musical Enlightenment, The Player 4.0b, The Player 4.1a, The Player 5.0a, The Player 6.0, The Player 6.0a, The Player 6.1a, TheHolyNoise, Thomas Hermann, Tomy Tracker, TrackerPacker 3, Ultimate SoundTracker, VSS, Wally Beben, Whittaker. IMPORTANT TIMELINES: From start of project to the actual recording loop began, I worked 25% of my available spare time on this project. Amount of money spent: 750 NOK,- ($136) It's considered to be a preliminary release still, so expect missing files, bugs etc. It's considered to be a preliminary release, before the final cleanup & release. queue and database updated. It is now even bigger than ever before!!! They will be replaced by a much greater collection found at MODLAND, thus expanding this project. either PC or Amiga managed to create a small recording hickup about 1-2 seconds out. The bug was fixed and the whole thing had to restart. Only 3900 tunes were recorded, so no problem. The automatic process will record for approx 8 months! checked out! Recording PC is standby ready for recording. the structure of the music directories, formats and in general the entire database buildup. |