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SoftAutomaton:
Hey everyone - I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm a Canadian electronic musician. I've been on here for several years but couldn't contribute due to registration issues.  That seems to have worked itself out so I was finally able to join!

Part of my interest in music making is building and using outdated equipment to create my songs and releases, so naturally oldschooldaw is the perfect place for me to get some of my info. I'm really grateful that this site exists! Thank you @chrisNova777. What you've collected here is incredible. It's a huge contribution to preserving information that really is disappearing with time. I hope to help fill in any gaps I can.

I thought I'd make my first post about about a recent hardware build I completed. This was a 386 based midi sequencer running the MidiLand MPU-401 clone and legit copies of Cubase 1.0, 1.0 Score, and Cakewalk 2. The main thrust of this project was recovering the first generative album ever made, Brian Eno's 'Generative Muisic 1', which was released on floppy in 1996. It runs off a Sound Blaster AWE32 / SB32 set up, which is installed in this system. I managed to stream a few generative sessions for people to hear and enjoy. It's a really unusual unicorn album that needed to be preserved. It got lost with time and no one really did anything to save it.

SoftAutomaton:
i need to check out brainwave generator!

if you are referring to the generative stream, read the description there. it makes it very clear what's going on and describes some of your comments. yes, it's analog from the SB32 (noisy) going into a Neve 88M (not noisy).  the album is super dynamic so there is a compromise between noise floor and digital distortion. a subsequent stream will be with SPDIF so we'll see if the noise floor can be overcome. those are planned on a pentium 1 build i'm starting.

As for speed of playback, I'm not sure what you mean but the album is generating the music as intended. The song lengths correspond to what that album indicates. i agree that there is a bit of a psychedelic angle to it!

SoftAutomaton:
re lively vs lifeless sounds:

I would make the case that you are referring to different DACs/ADCs and opamp choices vs the code in drivers. The driver is only a bridge which instructs the DSP and DAC to do its job. It may not have any material impact on sonic characteristics.  As such, those hardware amd component decisions made by the manaufacturerer result in different harmonics (or lack thereof), which changes our perception of this warm / cold argument.

An excellent example of how you can actually see this at work would be to watch a movie on laserdisc vs DVD (hard to do these days, I know. check rips for a close proximity of what I'm describing). You will see that the DACs on laserdisc were lower bitrate and cruder which may result in a better theatre-like - let's call it warmer - visual experience. As these DACs refined, so did the visual definition of the film.

This is partly why I have enjoyed, even preferred using some older gear (whether it's a synth, effect, or audio interface). The components of their time couldn't reduce noise or harmonics in the same way. Conversely, I really like the SSL superanalogue audio channel strips that tie to their interfaces. These are incredibly transparent and low noise. They sound amazing and have none of the noisy characteristics that I love from the older sound cards and equipment.

SoftAutomaton:
All fair points. I'm about to start building a Pentium 1 with the EMU APS sound card. We'll see how that sounds soon. The computer I'm starting with is in rough shape so it will take a while but I hope to post some audio examples with the APS as soon as I can. That's some reasonably old DSP at work too.

SoftAutomaton:
The AWE32/SB32 and AWE64 product lines are perfectly good cards but they have a higher noise floor. I don't know the db number but it's audible. Yes- you could record with it and that's sort of how they were marketed but I wouldn't call them "Pro". I'm about to receive an SPDIF addon for the card in the 386. That will eliminate the whole conversion, at least with regards to the source material. I'm looking forward to hearing the difference.

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