Some bad and good news.

[Vangar]

Hey everyone, not sure if you remember me as Nerdpower50 but anyway,

My cousin recently passed away, and he loved the Amiga. He created audio music using Sound Tracker and won a Quake event and has a signed poster, which is awesome. We used to talk about Amiga's all the time, and i always looked up to him as this amazing guy that could do anything on a computer.

Because of this, his parents gave me literally hundreds of Amiga Disks, his A500, monitor, Competition Pro joysticks, and most importantly his MOD music that he created on disk.

I would like to be able to transfer these files on to the computer and give them to his parents to listen to as an Audio CD, but I'm not sure how to do it. I know he did it at one stage, but i did not want to look through his hard drives, he has several servers in his house and there is just too much information there.

Any help is greatly appreciated. If it helps, i have a parallel cable and one that converts into a COM from parallel. He must have used it to transfer them a while back, as he made these cables. So far no luck with Amiga Explorer.

[Harrison]

That is sad to hear your cousin passed away. I would like to send my and Classicamiga's condolences and best wishes. Was he quite young?

It would be nice to make some of his audio available online for others to enjoy and allow his hard work to live on. What do you think?

As for converting the files. How are they stored? If they are mod files on standard Amiga floppy disks then it will not be too hard to get the mod files transferred to PC and then convert them into audio wav/mp3 files for burning to audio CD.

You say you haven't had any luck with Amiga Explorer. Have you tried converting the disks with the mod music on into ADF files using Amiga Explorer?

Once this is done I would do the following. Create a directory on the PC and mount it in WinUAE as a HD. Then boot Workbench up in WinUAE and once booted load each of the ADFs with the Mod files on into Workbench and copy their contents to the PC directory you mounted as a HD. Once this is done you could then quit WinUAE and you would have a directory on your PC of the mod music files.

For converting them so you can make audio CDs from them I recommend you have a look at a program called CD Master 32 as this has direct Mod to AudioCD burning support as well as the ability to convert Mods to MP3, Wav and Ogg formats.

Go to the following link to download CD Master32:

http://www.zittware.com/Products/CDMaster32/cdmaster32.html

And this link for a guide to Mod to Audio CD converting:

http://www.zittware.com/Products/CDMaster32/Tutorials/mod_conversion.html

[Vangar]

Thank you so much for your help Harrison, i have got the Files into a PC folder and I'm using the program you linked me to. His music is very good and i think it would be a great idea to share it, I just don't know where i could upload it for people that want to listen.

[Demon Cleaner]

It's very sad to hear about the loss of your cousin. I have a cousin too, who is like my brother and one of my best friends out there. We also played a lot on the amiga at the time, but he's not into amiga gaming anymore. It would be an enormous loss for me if he would pass away, so I quite understand your feelings. All my condolences Vangar.

It would be great to use your cousin's audio files, they should of course be preserved, and which better way exists, than having them on an amiga site.

For uploading: you can upload the files to the server, send them via mail or attach them here in the forum.

[Vangar]

Thank you for being so lovely Classic Amiga Staff, Stewart would be very happy that his music will be listened to.

He was 31. I can't seem to find the attachments on the forum but i will do it tomorrow when i have had some sleep.

Thanks again,

Evan.

[Harrison]

I've not tried the CDMaster32 program myself for converting mod files so I hope it works ok.

If not, an alternative for the music conversion could be to use Deliplayer on the PC. It has a converter built in called Stream Recorder which can converted the mod audio as it is playing into a file that you can then use to burn a CD. Normally this outputs it as Wav files. You would need to buy the Deliplayer shareware licence to do this though as the unregistered version only outputs mono via the stream recorder.

As for uploading audio file to the site, I can give you ftp account details for uploading audio files. I will be adding an Amiga music section to the site very soon and having your cousins original and unique music on the site would be very nice and a good way to allow others to enjoy it.

Also I had another thought. I will be creating a classicamiga animated intro for putting on the front of videos we produce. I would need some music to go with this intro and if we like some of his music and you are ok with me doing it I could use the music on the intro.

[LowercaseE]

My condolonces on the loss of you cousin Vangar, may he rest in peace.

[Teho]

I would like to offer my condolences also. That's sad news indeed, hope you're doing ok.

I was also going to suggest the Deliplayer too for converting the mods. This is what I use to convert Amiga musics to MP3. It normally outputs WAVs as Harrison said, but can also output directly to MP3. You just need to add an MP3 encoding library to the Deliplayer folder, like lameenc.dll. Also it's true that you'll need to register Deliplayer to get the full functionality out of the streamrecorder. When you register, you get sent a keyfile that you put in the Deliplayer folder, which Deliplayer checks for when it launches. If that CDMaster32 program turns out to be no good, I can't see any harm in providing the keyfile for Deliplayer in order to do this. The Deliplayer project hasn't had any development for ages anyway.

[Demon Cleaner]

For converting the amiga files from the Unexotica library, I record them in Deliplayer to wav, then use Nero Wave Editor, and convert them to mp3. No need to register Deliplayer.

[Teho]

But in Nero, don't you need to purchase the MP3Pro plugin separately in order to save MP3s? Definitely used to before, anyway.

Personally, I use CDex to convert WAV to MP3. Is as good at that as it is at ripping CDs. ;)

And yeah, you don't have to register Deliplayer to use the streamrecorder in it. But you do if you want to record in stereo, like Harrison said. Not sure if other functions in the streamrecorder are locked as well.

[TiredOfLife]

Sorry to hear of your loss mate, hope you are doing ok in the circumstances.
Great idea to do something with his work.
I take it his work was available on Aminet?
If not, that's another way to have him remembered.

[Demon Cleaner]

But in Nero, don't you need to purchase the MP3Pro plugin separately in order to save MP3s?Seriously, do I purchase Nero anyway?? Wave Editor comes with the whole Nero package. I use Nero 7 at work.

[Teho]

No no, I didn't accuse you of actually buying any software. God forbid. ;) My point is, that MP3Pro plugin didn't use to be part of the package, you had to get it separately to enable Wave Editor to save MP3s.

Seriously, I have purchased Nero 7. But haven't tried saving an MP3 with the Wave Editor since back when I had a pirated Nero 5. And that's when it said I had to buy that plugin in order to do it. I didn't have to buy it though, back then WinMX was still around. :)

Hence the question, don't you need to also get hold of that plugin to save MP3s with Nero? Or is it included in the package now?

[J T]

It sucks to lose someone you are close to, I feel for you buddy.


Hence the question, don't you need to also get hold of that plugin to save MP3s with Nero? Or is it included in the package now?

A lot of software now needs an extra, paid for download to handle MP3 files. It's something to do with licencing I believe. MP3 support was sadly recently disabled from my music converter of choice, DBPowerAmp (unless you buy or otherwise acquire the powerpack :ninja: )

[Demon Cleaner]

don't you need to also get hold of that plugin to save MP3s with Nero? Or is it included in the package now?I did not install anything along the normal Nero install, so I think it's implemented.

[Harrison]

I also think it now comes as part of the package, although I am using Nero 7 Ultra edition so lower versions may be different.

[Vangar]

I have no idea if he uploaded any of his music at any time, but i do know the original filenames he used. One of them came up with a result: zoobfire ? on a mod database but it seems the author is not shown. Maybe he didn't make that one.

I'm stuck at school now, but i will do something about this when i get home. Again, thank you all for your support.

[Demon Cleaner]

Here is the zoobfire file.

[AlexJ]

Audacity with LAME will also do WAV > MP3's

[Vangar]

Yes, im sure he made that song. I have found other ones in his archive that sound like it, maybe when he was developing it? I'm uploading them right now to my website with a little DIR script i found, so there can be a listing of his music. WinAMP seems to play them fine.

Here is the link:

http://www.flashopedia.net/dir.php?dir=StoosMusic%2F

There was also another folder of MODs he must of collected but not created. There seems to be the original WORKHOLC.MOD and OHYEAH.MOD .

I would Absolutely LOVE to hear Mods playing on the Amiga and possibly record the output to MP3 that way, so they are authentic. But i have no idea how to play them on the system.. heh.

[Harrison]

How to play mods on an Amiga? Easy. My favourite player was called Hippoplayer. Another couple of good ones include Eagleplayer and Delitracker (the original Amiga version of what is now the PC player Deliplayer).

[Vangar]

What do people think of his music?

[Demon Cleaner]

I listened to the first 4 called Another (?), and they're quite good. Zoobfire is great, I will let you know, when I listened to others too :thumbs:

EDIT: The DUMB sapmles are cool, nice guitar sound. @LowercaseE Listen to DUMB0002.S3M, could be an Exodus riff ;)

[Vangar]

I don't think he would of minded if you use them in something so long as you use his name, "Stuart Pike" in the credits, that would be great :).

[Harrison]

Great. I am going to try and create the first classicamiga video intro this week so will have a listen and see if anything he made would work well.

[LowercaseE]

I clicked on the link but it just times out. :(

[Demon Cleaner]

Just tried, the link works fine for me, posting it again here:

http://www.flashopedia.net/dir.php?dir=StoosMusic%2F

[LowercaseE]

It's working now, thanks. I'll check these out when I get home.

[Vangar]

Did you get home? lol

[LowercaseE]

Finally got to check some of these out via Winamp and they're pretty cool! I like the DUMB0002 as well, there's definitely a metalness to it. Will be checking them all out over the evening.

[Demon Cleaner]

I have a question Vangar?

I eventually want to use the music, but this are all PC mod formats. Do you also have the amiga mods? If the PC mods have more than 4 channels, you can't use them on the amiga.

[Vangar]

Well that would explain why i couldn't get them working on the real thing. Sorry for not replying for so long.

I have no idea on MOD formats though mate, sorry. Those are the only remaining copies.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, I have to check then if they have 4 or more channels, if they use only 4, they can be used.

[Harrison]

Is there any way to edit a mod and reduce the channels used? I know that removing channels will cut out tracks from the score, but often you can do this and still end up with a recognisable track.

[Demon Cleaner]

I will just ask Zyriax when I see him next week at work. He said if the mod does not use more than 4 channels, you can take it for use on an Amiga. He had no appropriate player to check that out though.

[Demon Cleaner]

I just checked for Zoobfire, and unfortunately it uses 8 channels and 16bit samples, which is also too much, should be 8bit only. I will check out the others tomorrow, but it seems that the tunes and samples were not done on a real amiga.

[Harrison]

That's annoying :(

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, I found something. I converted the NEW4U.S3M file from Stoo into a mod using DigiboosterPro. The tune uses exactly 4 channels and 8bit samples, and runs 2:06 minutes before restarting, which is enough for an intro.

Listen to music. (http://dc.classicamiga.com/root/amiga/music/intro.mod)

[Vangar]

Thats good work mate, thanks a lot. And i plan to come to this form more often now.