Amiga/C64 Retro Radio Station

Hot Trout writes "24/7 Streaming Retro Radio bringing to you all those classic game and demo tunes from the 80's and 90's. Mainly C64 and Amiga but also games. This allows DSL users to enjoy their old school fav's in 128 kbps, 44Khz, STEREO. Very very cool ... Check it out at The old Computer @ Retro Radio." I've been reading High Score lately, so retro gaming is great to run through again.

C64 audio

[wfmcwalter]

For anyone who's still interesting in those classic C64 tunes, Chris Abbott (and some other folks, I think) has remade a bunch of C64 tunes with modern equipment - I can strongly recommend his site [c64audio.com]

Anyone remember Rick Dangerous?

[Komrade S.]

The faux Indiana Jones themesong from the Amiga 500 classic still haunts me late at night...

128kbps 44KHz stereo

[Zakabog]

Why? With a 128kbps stream, 3 seconds of audio is larger than most of the games on the C64 and amiga. There's no vocals, complicated guitar riffs, anything else that would need high bitrates, alot of beeps and different pitches, why would you need 128kbps 44KHz stereo?

Amiga! ST! (really OctaMED and Bars'n'Pipes)

[Anonymous Coward]

ST!

Amiga!

ST!

etc.

Seriously though, the Amiga was _much_ better for music than the ST - musicians often fell for the false economy of the ST with it's built in (crappy) midi port, but a midi card for the amiga always provided better much midi anyway, and Amiga Tracker packages, particularly OctaMED SoundStudio [octamed.co.uk] (now available for Windows*), really completely outclassed ST tracker packages. And Amiga Bars'n'Pipes [amigau.com] is still unmatched.

What happened to Bars'n'Pipes? Microsoft bought it, and promptly stopped all development! However, they weren't totally evil: You can still get a (binary-only, no source) copy today from the previous link.

Bars'n'Pipes had a fascinating and extremely powerful UI, where one composed by plumbing components together. Some newer audio packages attempt a similar metaphor, but bar'n'pipes did it better (and in 198x too!). Please, if you're a GUI sound application author, take the time to get Bars'n'pipes up and running on an Amiga Emulator.

* And I know they have an unstable Linux build of OctaMED they're not releasing yet... (mainly because the OSS-lite sound system that's the default in Linux 2.4.x totally sucks, and they don't think the market's big enough if they require ALSA)

Re:128kbps 44KHz stereo

[hrm]

If you're not emulating the C64 SID chip, you'll need a fairly high-bit (just as high as for "normal" music) mp3 stream to properly reproduce the audio.

The SID chip didn't just beep at different pitches, it was a digital/analog synthesizer on a single chip.

When BYTE magazine compiled a list of the 20 most memorable microchips ever, the SID chip was in there. At the time, it was way ahead of every other sound producing silicon found in home computers. Some considered the Commodore Amiga's fully digital synthesizer chips a step back.

Nectarine

[Jugalator]

I'm personally a big fan of the Nectarine [scenemusic.net]. Broadcasting music from the demo scene of the 80's and 90's. Timeless Amiga and C64 music such as Second Reality, Nine Fingers, Deadlock, Desert Dreams, and much more. You need this site if ever having owned an Amiga/C64, especially if you had lots of MODs that were lost when switching to PC or was into demos. Check out the Top 50 requested music [scenemusic.net] yourself and let Winamp enjoy playing some excellent retro MOD/S3M music!

I hope that site never dies, and likely it won't since the material they play is either copyright free or played with the author's permission. So it's a free station playing free music.

C64 music played live

[RasmusW]

Well there actually is a danish band playing C64 music on real instruments:

www.pressplayontape.com [pressplayontape.com]

I just love their version of Warhawk =)

-Raz