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About MED Amiga
The Good Old Days - Amiga’s, Atari ST’s and MED... MED Soundstudio is a sample sequencing program which originated from the days of Amiga/Atari ST’s out of need to write music for computer games and demos. Until then, you either had to make do with chip music (difficult to make sound nice) or use an enormous sample which took up loads of diskspace. The first Amiga version, ( called simply MED - short for Music Editor ), started off as a 4 channel sequencer, outputting channels 1 and 4 on the Left speaker and channels 2 and 3 to the Right. The samples used were 8-11Khz, and each sample could be played at a different pitch to compose tunes. By clever positioning of the samples and using the built-in effects available, some classic tracks were written. There were various ‘Trackers’ available on the Amiga, of which MED (
originally programmed by Teijo Kinnunen) was one of the first 8-channel
trackers to appear, ( hence the term 'Octa' was added to the title ). It
was also the most widely used version throughout the lifetime of the
Amiga, becoming the tracker of choice for many Games-Houses and Demo
Crews. From this grew many replicas of the original, also developed on
the Atari ST and Mac, although none, ( in the opinion of many ), were
able to match the simplicity or features of OctaMED. Unfortunately after
the complete fiasco of the CBM bankruptcy, the Amiga has become used far
less these days with many of the owners parting with their favorite
machines to upgrade to the now more powerful PC’s that have become
available in recent years, first running Windows 95/98 and now the much
improved/stable ME and Win2000 Windows versions. During the early
development of the first windows version Teijo decided that other things
in his life had to take precedence over his continuing programming and
asked Ray, (the copyright owner & publisher ), to find another
programmer and in September of 98 Ray signed up Andy Philpotts as the
new programmer. Although Andy lives/works in the US, he hails from
England, just like Ray. Andy worked very hard to complete the severely
unfinished work on the new V1 first started by Teijo and it eventually
went on sale in July 99. Due to health problems Andy was forced to give
up further work on a windows V2 and two new programmers stepped in,
George and James, whilst James is fixing/adding features to the present
v1, George is now busily working on the new Win V2 and as it has a 'lot'
of new additions, although it will function on Windows 98, it is primarilty
being aimed at users with the more stable Windows XP on their systems.
The PC V2 is planned for release late 06 early 07.
Details of the new MED Soundstudio v2 have yet to be released, until that time you can read about the windows version, 'if' you are at all interested. The Windows version of MED Soundstudio is now a Stereo 64-channel sequencer, with a range of real-time effects and sound sample editing facilities. It is now on sale and gives PC owners the chance to produce tracks of their own. It does not require any additional hardware, although it can be used to control a MIDI keyboard if required. Many of the software apps currently available on the PC are limited as to the flexibility given to the user, with most limiting the speed of the tracks and samples. MED Soundstudio gives the user full control over what is produced, allowing them to develop and become their own studio engineer. It allows the user full control over the MED ‘Module’ via a simple windows interface. The quick editing facilities of Teijo`s old Amiga versions remain in MED Soundstudio for the PC, along with all the other features that MED users have come to expect. The user can save a composition out in many formats beside the normal MED MMD ( Mod ) file, you can save your completed music out as a .WAV file so it can be encoded into the now widely used MP3 format, or use the MP3 plugin to record directly to to a CD. You can also save your work out as a single playable self-executing file which means other PC users you know can be sent the file and do not require a music player to listen to your compositions. It also offers a GUI interface from which you can select to run the program using English, German or French languages. Okay, so it sounds like a good thing to have....but... Well, any home PC user with even just an 'interest' in music can fiddle around with it, just to make their own music. Anyone currently using different types of sequencers should definitely have a look at the demo to see how easy it is to create the same results as many of the rival high powered, ( not to mention higher cost ), applications offer. Games/ programmers can, ( and do ), use the music in their games, office types can use the music for MultiMedia presentations or whatever... It can also be used, ( and is ), by amateur/professional studio’s to control racks of MIDI equipment in addition to using the built-in sample editing and arranging power of MED Soundstudio. DJ types can ( and do ), make up their own tracks and write it to CD, playing it to hundreds of people the next night! With a free demo of what’s available, why would you not want to use it!? Where can I get the new Amiga version 2? Hmmm, it's coming soon, select NEWS Download Freeware
Amiga V1.03 (739K) |
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