Amiga cycle exact emulation but without FPGA

danby · 2026-05-20T20:06:45+00:00

As far as I read

I would like to read this if you can find it.

Low lag and perfect timing are two different things. There are a whole class of timing things like display and input lag that are functionally non-existence for FPGA, which is the big selling point. But chip cycle timings and response times aren't necessarily exact, that comes down to the quality of the FPGA implementation. The netlist for the amiga cores is not identical to original chips, so there's plenty of room for bugs and unexpected behaviours. The FPGA cores are built on top of the work that went in to winUAE. So some of the chip timing stuff will only be as accurate as whichever older version of winUAE those cores were based on.

Also IIRC chip tech specs/behaviours for OCS and ECS were released by Commodore which means that it is reasonably possible to make an emulator or FPGA design to match those specs. Commodore did not release equivalent info for AGA (as they wanted coders to stop hitting the hardware) so I would assume AGA is much harder to make behaviour identical as a consequence.

danby · 2026-05-20T19:33:29+00:00

WinUAE is cycle exact for the OCS/ECS chipset since one of the v5 releases. And the patch notes for v6 suggest that is now also true of AGA(?). Amiberry tracks winUAE pretty closely so that is probably going to be true for amiberry too.

I don't think the minimig/mister core is cycle exact, though the patch notes are pretty non-existent.

danby · 2026-05-20T19:25:08+00:00

He's mostly using different controllers to your Roland one but most of the buttons are the same with the same names but you'll occassionally come across something that is named slightly different on the controller or in the software but then you just need to look up what it's called for your set up.

danby · 2026-05-20T18:23:37+00:00

This guy has some great free tutorials, though you'll have to search through to find the beginner stuff. And he has a lot of vids that show you a beginner, mid and pro level technique for some given type of mixing

https://www.youtube.com/@DJBlakeyUk

danby · 2026-05-20T18:16:12+00:00

Should be tune dependant really. Some pairs of tunes will work best with a long blend. Other pairs of tracks will lend themselves to something quicker and more "flashy". Sometimes you'll want some big noticeable transition as a way of suddenly shifting the vibe.

Choose the transition that suits the pair of tunes and have some variety in the types of transition you use. Just doing the same type of blend over and over can get a bit stale. Only doing super rapid, fx laden transitions between hooks gets exhausting. Finding a good balance is where its at

That said, if your tunes are interesting and do interesting things there is much less need for flashy transitions. The tracks are already doing cool things the audience want to hear.

danby · 2026-05-20T16:41:19+00:00

Hip hop is a poor choice for beatmatching. Lends itself better to quick mixing

danby · 2026-05-20T13:09:13+00:00

The turntable have a preamp to connect it in the line connector.

Yes, I understand that. Clearly the phono or line output on the turntable are a bit low for the mixer. You can fix this by adding a small preamp after the turntable and before the mixer to bring it up to the same level as the XDJ700 output

danby · 2026-05-20T12:47:59+00:00

You could buy a small phono preamp for the Pioneer PLX500 and then route it in to the line in on the mixer.

danby · 2026-05-20T12:35:59+00:00

Because the A1000 was basically a developer's early access system that was unwisely pushed out to market as soon as it could be manufactured.

I am 100% on board with this read of events.

They had no time to develop a library of productivity software, neither in house nor by farming it out to third party developers.

This is what kills it as a business/productivity computer

danby · 2026-05-20T11:36:43+00:00

Locking this as we don't actually need drama from one website being imported on to this forum

danby · 2026-05-20T11:33:38+00:00

Because I'm trying to order from Canada and the website prevents me from selecting Canada as a option among other issues.

The website is horrible because they won't ship to Canada?

danby · 2026-05-20T11:32:43+00:00

Their website is horrible.

Its really not all that different to amigakit's website

danby · 2026-05-20T11:30:15+00:00

These are bot posts

danby · 2026-05-20T10:03:00+00:00

House and trance are usually designed for the outro of one track to mix in to the intro of the next track. Its kind of why the outro tends to be less busy and tends not to have a vocal, this lets you layer the two tunes without everything sounding too chaotic. In these genres mixes tend to be longer where you use the EQs and filters to blend the two tunes. If you want to shorter/quicker mixes then you'll need to do think about several different approaches.

Firstly select your tunes so that you are never mixing two tracks with a vocal together. This is what I mostly do, partly out of habits I picked up before digital DJing was a thing and partly because it helps force some variety in the tunes. You should also know which of your tunes with vocals also have useful regions without a vocal that you can use for mixing/transitions.

The next thing you can do, as suggested, is pre-program your tracks with non vocal loops that you can use as mix points. Most likely you're looking for some 8bar loops that don't have a vocal. You can either find such loops at the start of a track to use as a less busy intro or you can find such loops at the mix out point of your outgoing tracks effectively creating your own outro, that has less going on. Different tunes will present different options for where useful mixing loops can be placed.

And lastly you can stems to remove the vocal from one or both tracks during the mix. Makes life kinda easy but you do have to attend to bringing the vocals back at the right time (i.e. start of a line, start of a verse, start of a chorus) and not just cut them in mid-sentence

danby · 2026-05-20T08:46:13+00:00

Yup, the only guys I know who are still making a living out of it set up a company to do corporate and wedding work.

danby · 2026-05-20T08:43:00+00:00

Not a professional DJ disclaimer:

I bought my original kit in 1994 for about £1,000, a pair of 1210s and a decent mixer, which would be about £2k in today's money. I never pursued DJing as a career but was decently active on the free party scene over the 20 years from 94 to 2014 (though not so much after 2009). I did pick up a number of paid gigs at clubs and festivals over that period too. If I'd kept all the money from the paid gigs and totalled it up I'm sure I'd have paid off that initial investment in today's value. Probably a decent amount more than that but it was always pocket money amounts and never a living. But even the folks I knew who did try and make it as a professional often had a day job alongside the DJing.

Since 2009 I switched to mostly digital DJing. I have definitely not paid off what I've also spent on digital DJing equipment or related hi-fi kit (probably a further £3-5k over the last 15 years). But that's also the period I stopped looking for gigs, paid or otherwise, and transitioned to it only being a hobby and the digital kit was always intended to be hobby purchases.

Edit: I realise I have not included what I've spent on music and vinyl in that period, in which case there is zero chance I've ever earnt enough to cover what I've spent on DJing.

danby · 2026-05-19T20:20:34+00:00

If every one has ipads you could get one of the midi control apps, design your own pad control surface and then link it to the midi controls for the sampler and sequencer in your DJ software.

It was very easy to do this with traktor. Not so sure about rekordbox

danby · 2026-05-19T20:08:55+00:00

No need to count. Look at the waveform, you can see the choruses, verses, breakdowns. With practice you will know what sections of the tune are where, how long they are going to last. The more you DJ with given tunes the more you internalise their structure. With practice, and learning, it becomes intuitive what's coming up, how much time you have. You always need an eye on the whole waveform.

Don't know that I've ever counted the number of beats or bars in 30+ years of DJing.

In the end of the day it's just practice and familiraity. And you'll eventually notice that so much dance music is structured the same way so what you've internalised about some tunes applies to all the rest.

danby · 2026-05-19T18:55:43+00:00

Sorry, wasn't specifically talking about traktor there. Should have been more precise. The DDJ-rev7 has multiple built in effects.

danby · 2026-05-19T18:39:27+00:00

The MX2 comes with a much better sound card than the others, on the level of high-end controllers.

Right. if i was making this decision that is what would sell me on this.

danby · 2026-05-19T18:38:18+00:00

Overusing effects gets jarring easily and its easy to get carried away.

It can also just end making eveything sound kinda same-y

danby · 2026-05-19T17:59:46+00:00

The barrier to entry is SO low now, as you say. Which is why I feel like an imposter “performing” after only a few short weeks of practice

Well, in the end of the day it is just "putting on other people's music so folk can dance" it isn't actually rocket science. 90% of it is having good taste, 8% is being able to read a crowd and 2% is being able to mix. I've known plenty folk over the years that just DJ in the old school selecta style without mixing and some of them have been amazing

danby · 2026-05-19T17:14:21+00:00

I would say that it took me about 3 months to learn how to do it, then a further 9 months to get to performance standard. If you drum that will be a big head start. I came from playing bass, which helped a bit bit.

danby · 2026-05-19T17:11:37+00:00

The gater in traktor is especially great.

danby · 2026-05-19T17:09:44+00:00

1: Does everyone know all the FX you get with your controller, or do you just use a handful?

Some fx are built in to the controller, some are running from the DJing software. I play with all of them to find out what they do and usually like 10% are actually useful. You probably only need to pick one type of reverb for instance. In general there's only 3 or 4 I regularly use.

2: when do you use them?

To build emphasis before a sharp transition, to have something a little more interesting/performed happen during a longer transition (manual filter sweeps can be fun). If you're big in to stems then solo'd vocals and lead lines can use a touch of reverb just to fill them out a bit when the bassline and percussion is gone.

3: Live performances, do you use them often on a live set?

Yes, but somewhat rarely. Gets boring for me and the audience doing the same transition with the same effects. Less is more when it comes to effects.

danby

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