There were several add-on samplers. The most well known was the reply 16
from Microdeal who also had a variety of add-ons and
sound programs for the
ST. It fit in the cartidge port.You might want a tone module
for better
production than that provided by the Yamaha chip. I've made numerous
tunes and played them back on my ST unfortunately I don't as yet have a
keyboard synth. Some of the earlier ST models could only play via the
monitor sound system, altho there were dongles available to split the audio
from video. The STFM and STE had audio out ports.
A friend of mine used his Korg with a 1040 and did some awesome things.
Many one-man bands used and still use STs to produce larger band effects.
The Stacey still commands a relatively high price because of it's portability.
In it's heyday the ST was the pre-eminent computer used for music in
Europe and closely 2nd to the Mac in the US. Part of it's popularity was
because of the built-in Midi ports, and secondly because of the multitude of
programs developed for it such as Steinbergs Cubase and Ensoniques(?)
Notator. In Europe Michel Jarre was one of the major exponents of the ST.
Also Gary Numan and many others. In the US were users varying from
Donny Osmond to Loggins and Messina. I believe Fleetwood Mac also used
STs. My favorite sound editor is Quartet, a remarkable little does-all program.
Lawrence
Christopher Smith wrote:
Here's an odd one. Hypothetically, if I have
a keyboard, with no
internal sampler (a hypothetical Ensoniq ZR-76, say... for which
I could probably never hope to find the sampler upgrade board ;),
and would like to use an Atari ST to do some sampling (and play
back of samples, too -- triggered by the keyboard), is there a
way to do it?
No, the ST has no builtin way of sampling or playback of digital sound
files. It just does not have a DSP (the Falcon has one), only one of those
Yamaha sound chips.
I'm not familiar with Atari ST software, but
I just happen to
have an ST520 setting around not doing much, and wonder whether
it could be used for this purpose. ISTR that STs had decent
MIDI capabilities for the time.
The decent MIDI capability about Atari ST's is that they have an integrated MIDI
interface. No magic here, either.
Otherwise, what sort of MIDI-ish stuff can be
done with this
machine?
It might make a good secondary sequencer, patch editor, etc,
anyway...
You say it. Most people do exactly this with an ST. You can get patch
editors for several synths (mostly the DX-7 I guess...). There are also
some free seqencers around.
Keep me informed of what you do, I have two Atari ST 1024 here that I plan
on integrating into my setup.
Thomas
--
Thomas S. Strathmann
http://pdp7.org
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
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