All about ATARI & Music

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Atari Sequencers           <<<<<< In Nederlands

A lot of music freaks still work with the Atari for sequencing. The Atari is cheap, reliable, simple, with little saving data and exact midi clock timing. The Atari might be too slow for sampling, but it has solid hard- and software. Atari is in my opinion still the best Midi-Sequencer there is, without all the difficult features and possibilities that a PC offers. Those often only distract from what it's all about : making music. An Atari is very simple: put a floppy with a program (i.e. Cubase or Score Perfect) in the drive, turn the computer on, start the program, load arrangement and you're ready to go!

A lot of sequencer programs were made for the Atari, although nowadays they're not so interesting any more. The only sequencers which are a little up-to-date are: Cubase 2.0 / 3.01 (Steinberg), C-Lab Notator 1.0 & Score Perfect 4.0. These sequencers might all be very different, they are all built on a professional standard. Cubase & C-Lab are often used for making modern (dance)music, and Score Perfect is often used for the more conventional music styles, because of its score possibilities. Cubase is commonly used and this Atari Sequencer is in my opinion the best. Even the nowadays PC versions are directly related to the Atari version, and it's still a model for nowadays sequencers. With this Cubase Atari version, you can use all the possibilities that come with Midi, you even can create Synth editors (with midi-exclusive) in the Midi-Manager, although that isn't quite easy. It requires a lot of study to explore the boundaries of this Cubase Program. But because of this program being an example for a lot of other pc programs, you can use this knowledge on almost all other sequencers available today.
Talking about study, at the CEM (Centre Electronic Music in Holland) I have been working for years with the program TRANS_V5. This is a pure mathematical program, generating music based on vectors and mathematic calculations. The functions are ultimately compiled with CTRANS to a midi file which can be played in the program PTRAN. It also supports multiple midi channels and controllers.
Try it out ! Download TRANS_V5.zip (0.1MB) >>> * Mediafire Download * * Google Drive Download *

Atari Cubase version 2.0 / 3.01 works without problems on every Atari with 1 MB of memory, except for the Falcon, because the Falcon hardware is different and not Atari Standard. It might work, but not without bugs. For the Falcon, Steinberg made a special Cubase version, Cubase Audio, the pre-version of the VST series. Cubase-Audio is an 8 channel audio recorder with 1 or 2 effect tracks. By the way, the audio in & outputs are not very professional because they're mini-jacks. So if you want more quality i/o's, you need to buy some extra hardware. Mostly this is a box with a number of digital i/o's and possibly an ADAT connector (made by Soundpool), connected with the Falcon. With this ADAT connector it's possible to connect a module with an 8 channel i/o. (delivered by a.o. Motu, with standard ADAT)

For the Atari ST there are also several hardware features available. Steinberg and C-LAB developed different kind of hardware expansion boxes, mostly with multiple midi connectors (MIDI A-B-C-D), tape sync & SMPTE (professional tape sync for multitrack recorders). Like Midex (Steinberg) these boxes are mostly connected with the Rom connector, but sometimes it's connected with the modem connector, in the form of a box with a cable. C-LAB made the Midi Expansion Interface for 3 x 16 midi channels.

Atari Editors

Atari is well-known as a music computer and that might be the reason that it's music-software still compete with other programs for computers not solely designed for music-making. The editors for samples, synths & modules are of a professional quality and sadly there are little PC editors that I know of that can defeat them.

Sample Editors
There is a program called AVALON, made by Steinberg, which possibilities almost never have been defeated. AVALON 2.0 possesses the most extensive & difficult methods to edit samples. For example: it's possible to generate a sample on top of another one, or in combination with waveforms or a synthesis. With this method it's possible to regenerate (not transpose or convert) an 8 bit (voice)sample to a professional quality 16 bits sample. Besides this it has a lot more extensive possibilities, and was way ahead of it's time.

The modern variant WAVELAB 4.0 was clearly made for a more common audience and though it's still a good sample-editing program, it's missing some of these extra's.

Synth & Module Editors
Most of the Atari Synth & Module Editors are of a professional quality. Sadly enough these are mostly for the older synths / modules and only a few editors are available for recent synths / modules. These are most of the editors that I have collected throughout the years. If you are looking hard for an Atari editor, feel free to mail me ...

Use for Un-Zip files these programs :

DOWNLOAD Lzhpack.zip >>> * Mediafire Download * * Google Drive Download *
& Zippack.zip >>> * Mediafire Download * * Google Drive Download *
Selfextracting TOS Atari Unpacker .LZH (0.1MB) & .ZIP (0.1MB)(first unzip on PC)