From: patrick@basil.u-net.com (Patrick James) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Concierto sound module for Picasso IV Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.audio Date: 21 Sep 1998 11:00:03 -0400 Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 385 Sender: barrett@belvedere.cs.umass.edu Message-ID: <6u5plj$46p@belvedere.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: patrick@basil.u-net.com (Patrick James) Keywords: hardware, audio, Picasso, Zorro II, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1998 Number 17 NNTP-Posting-Host: belvedere.cs.umass.edu X-NNTP-Posting-Host: belvedere.cs.umass.edu Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!not-for-mail PRODUCT NAME Concierto 1.1 BRIEF DESCRIPTION A 16-bit sound module capable of recording and play back of stereo samples at up to 44.1 khz (CD audio quality), with a MIDI interface, for the Picasso IV graphics board. The module is based on the Yamaha OPL3 synthesizer. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Village Tronic Marketing GmbH Address: Wellweg 95 31157 Sarstedt Germany Telephone: +49 (0)5066 / 7013-10 (Technical Support) FAX: +49 (0)5066 / 7013-49 E-mail: sales@village.de World Wide Web: http://www.villagetronic.com/amiga/ LIST PRICE £99.95 (Pounds Sterling) (Blittersoft - UK Village Tronic resellers) The review board was bought at the World Of Amiga show, at a reduced price of £75 pounds sterling. DEMO VERSION Demo versions of either the Concierto module or its software are not available. However, the Audio Hardware Interface (AHI) software is available on the Aminet or directly from its WWW site at: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~lcs/ahi.html AHI can even be used with the Amiga's internal audio hardware (Paula), with a 14 -bit driver. While this cannot be compared with the Concierto's audio output, it will enable you to decide whether AHI and the software available, which supports it, will suit your requirements. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Amiga computer with Zorro II/III 68020 or better processor. The manual recommends a 68040 at 40 Mhz when using an A3000[T]/A4000[T]. Picasso IV, with 4.1 firmware. SOFTWARE Workbench 2.04 or better. 3.x is required to use the included AIFF datatype. AHI, which is not included with the installation software (see above). COPY PROTECTION None MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 2000 rev 6.2 Full ECS chipset 1 MB Chip RAM, 48 MB Fast RAM MicroniK 1.76 MB HD Floppy drive, replacing DF0: Phase5 Blizzard 2040/40 MHz Village Tronic Picasso IV V1.2, 4 MB, 4.1 firmware (Picasso.resource 7.1) GVP 4008 SCSI GVP IO Extender Village Tronic Ariadne Ethernet 1.2 Gigabyte Quantum Fireball Iomega Zip 100 Sony CDU-55S CDROM AmigaDOS 3.1 (Kickstart 40.63, Workbench 40.42) SetPatch 40.16 Picasso96 1.33 AHI 4.16 NewIcons 4.1 MUI 3.8 Powersnap 2.2a INSTALLATION The Concierto's installation is in two parts; hardware and software. Before the card can be used, its driver software must be installed. The installation process is no harder than installing any other Zorro card. HARDWARE The installation of the Concierto module requires your Amiga to be reopened and the Picasso IV board to be removed. The module consists of two circuit boards. One of these, the main board, is attached to the Picasso IV itself and the other, the IO board is attached to a Zorro backplane. In order to fit the cable joining the two parts of the module, it may be easier to remove other Zorro cards depending on where you intend to install the IO board. For this reason it is generally easier to install the Concierto module before installing the Picasso IV for the first time. The cable which joins the two boards must be connected before proceeding, because there is a very little space between the connector for the cable and the Picasso IV's VGA output connector. Similarly, connecting the other end of the cable to the IO board, after the IO board has been screwed into position can be difficult due to the ISA slots. The cable features a locating notch, so can only be connected one way. The main board, which is the smaller, then connects to two connectors on the Picasso IV. The Picasso IV should be placed on a flat, non-metallic surface, as you apply pressure to plug the main board on to the Picasso IV. It is imperative that you check that the main board is connected correctly and that there are no overhanging pins. With that completed, the Picasso IV can be reinstalled in its Zorro slot. The connector ribbon cable can then be fed to the backplane where the IO board has been placed. Finally, having reconnected all necessary cables to your Amiga, connect your speakers to the lower of the two 3.5mm jacks and then your microphone or other audio input device to the upper jack. Unfortunately, while the manual tells you which jack is which, there are no such indications on the board itself. SOFTWARE The software installation uses the Commodore Installer program. Version 43.3 is present on the disk, so it is assumed that it is required. This process is straight forward until the installer checks the Picasso IV's firmware version. The Picasso IV used for this review had the required firmware so this was not a problem. With the installation completed, having rebooted an "acoustic signal" can be heard. If, however, you have an earlier firmware version and have not already obtained the update from Village Tronic's WWW site, the installer will update it for you. During this process the mouse pointer will not move. You must not reset your Amiga lest the firmware be damaged and your Picasso IV no longer recognised. If you do, booting with the Concierto floppy (my disk had no bootblock, preventing this), will allow you to reinstall the firmware. REVIEW The first feature of the new audio module you will notice is its "acoustic signal". This is useful to begin with, indicating that the installation has been successful. Presumably, if the firmware were to be damaged, the signal would not be present, telling the user that something had gone wrong. However, after a while this beep on startup can become annoying. HARDWARE If you want to use existing MIDI equipment, you will notice that the Concierto IO baord's has non-standard connectors. Thankfully, adapter cables have been included. Again there are no labels stating which port is which. Not having any MIDI equipment, these have not been tested. A "feature" of the audio chip used means that the Concierto's input will only receive a mono signal. The module fulfills the capabilities, which the manual ascribes to it. 16-bit stereo samples at 44.1 Khz (CD quality) could easily be obtained. A chapter in the manual points out that a standard A4000[T] is only capable of either 16-bit or stereo sound at 44.1 Khz, but not both. Apparently, the A3000[T] can support both, so presumably this is due to the A4000's "crippled motherboard memory access." The reviewer's A2000, which although having Zorro II, uses the recommended specification of a 40 MHz 68040 could easily handle both. Fast RAM is the only limitation of sampling. With 48 MB, some of which is used by various commodities and Picasso 96, around four minutes of sound could be sampled directly from the CDDA cable attached to the Picasso IV. One hardware problem is the question of where to locate the IO board. Using an Amiga 2000, with no ISA cards, one of the spare backplanes could be used. This is also no problem with the Amiga 3000 or 4000 towers. However if you are using a desktop 3000 or 4000, mounting the board there will preventing complete use of a Zorro III slot. Again, if you have a half length card (e.g. one without inputs or outputs on a blackplane), such as a Buddha, this is not a problem. It is not recommended to leave this board outside the case. The only major problem noticed is of an audio nature but is actually caused by a fault with the Picasso IV or the Amiga itself. With speakers attached to the Concierto, the Amiga's audio output cannot be heard. At first it was thought that the Amiga's volume was low either on the Concierto's Mixer tool or in the firmware settings, which are accessed by holding down either shift key, when rebooting. If fact, it turns out that this is a very complicated problem, which displays different symptoms on different Amigas. Village Tronic have a page on the WWW site explaining the problem, with the Picasso IV, and offering a few solutions, at: http://www.villagetronic.com/amiga/support/fpiv.html One cheap solution to this is to connect the Amiga's phono audio outputs to the Picasso IV's line-in. This means that another input is lost though. An e-mail to Village Tronic revealed that a board called "Mixer" is available for 50 DM from sales@village.de, which should fix this. SOFTWARE The supplied software is functional and capable of demonstrating the Concierto's features fully. Most of the software is involved in integrating the board with Workbench and your existing audio software. After installation a program called Concierto Mixer is located in Sys:WBStartup. This tool, which pops up on startup (add the tooltype; CX_POPUP=No; to disable), allows the user to control the volume of the various inputs and outputs available. These include a microphone connected to the Concierto; the Picasso IV's line-in; the AV module, when connected; the synthesizer itself and the Picasso IV's Switcher. The only other real piece of software is the ConciertoRecorder. This is a capable sampling tool, allowing recording from a microphone, the AV module, the mixer tool's output or any of the Switcher's inputs, including a CDROM drive, if one is connected. Stereo as well as 8 and 16-bit samples are supported. The sample rate can be varied between 3,107 and 44,194 Hz. Assuming that enough RAM, the upto twelve hours can be recorded and saved as 8SVX, WAVE or AIFF samples. The tool doubles as a player for the supported formats. The remainder of the software includes drivers for various packages including a driver which acts just like the serial.device for MIDI compatibility. A preferences editor, MidiPorts, controls the Concierto's MIDI driver. The most important, most useful piece of software is the AHI driver. AHI While AHI is not the product being reviewed here, most of the software tested was AHI based so somethings will have to be said about this system. AHI can be thought of as an audio equivalent of the CyberGFX or Picasso96 retargettable graphics (RTG) APIs. In practice this means that AHI sits between applications and the audio hardware, so tools only have to be developed for AHI, rather than many different sound card libraries. In comparison with RTG, AHI's preferences editor supports five units for play back and recording. While Picasso96, at least, can be used to drive more than one card at the same time, in AHI this is an extremely useful feature. While CyberGFX can be used with AGA, in the presence of a PPC card, AHI be used without any additional hardware. So with the Concierto, the user is more likely to want to use multiple units, for the Concierto, the Paula 14-bit driver and the filesave driver. AHI seems to be almost part of the Amiga's operating system because the integration is tight. The new AUDIO: device can be used for play back and recording, just like PRT: for printing. A command called AddAudioModes performs a similar function to AddDatatypes or Binddrives. Everything is handled in an intuitive, Amiga style. A growing amount of AHI software is appearing. Several freely available programs have been tested and worked very well with the Concierto. A patch for the sound.datatype is available, which helps with the Amiga audio problems mentioned. A protracker module datatype, using AHI is a useful system addition. Play16 is vastly superior to ConciertoRecorder. SongPlayer, a MPEG Audio Layer 3, player works very well, giving a nearly (indistinguishable) full play back rate on a 40MHz 68040. A commercial and untested package called SoundProbe also supports AHI, which should be sufficient to make up for functional nature of the included tools, giving sample editing capabilities. A freeware editing program, called SampleE, performed very well using AHI on the Concierto. DOCUMENTATION The package includes a detailed printed manual in both English and German. The manual contains a full index. The installation disk contains a readme file, with English and German versions, describing the latest information, which became available after the manual had been printed. Documents for the Recorder and Mixer tools are included on the disk as well. The printed manual and on disk documents provided more than enough information to install and use the hardware and software. Operation of the mixer and recorder tools is fairly straight forward. LIKES The Concierto simply plugs onto the Picasso IV, so does not use a Zorro slot. This makes the module cheaper than a similar, full 16-bit sound card, such as the Prelude. AHI support and the inclusion of development material on the installation disk mean that a range of software is/will be available freely, via the Aminet, as well as commercially. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS The small amount of software supplied is disappointing. This is only a minor problem though, as AHI is supported and the development kit is included with the package, so hopefully more creative software to drive the synthesizer will soon be available. The problems with the Amiga's output are also annoying, but fixable. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS Having never owned any other Amiga audio cards, comparisons cannot be made with individual cards' features. However, compared to the Prelude, for example, the major advantages of the Concierto are its lower price and that it does not use another Zorro slot. The Prelude seems to have more software which directly supports it. BUGS No bugs were found in either the included software or AHI. The problems with the Amiga's audio output have been described elsewhere. VENDOR SUPPORT The reviewer is not associated in anyway with Village Tronic or its resellers. Vendor support is available through Village Tronic's web site. The site includes updates to the Picasso IV firmware and the Concierto software. In addition to this, there is page containing hardware fixes for the Picasso IV (presumably their other boards will follow, if necessary), specifically including the problem mentioned above: While trying to solve the bug mentioned above, Village Tronic's e-mail based support was very swift in responding and very helpful. WARRANTY No warranty card was included because Blittersoft do not distribute them in the UK. The date of purchase starts a twelve month warranty. CONCLUSIONS The Concierto is a very good sound card, which, assuming you already have a Picasso IV, is cheaper alternative which does not require another Zorro slot to be used. While deserving a higher rating, it can only be given 3.5 out of 5 stars due to the presently limited software included and the problems with the Amiga's audio output. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1998 Patrick James, referred to as "the reviewer", but may be freely distributed, beyond the normal distribution of c.s.a.reviews. --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews Web site: http://math.uh.edu/~barrett/reviews.html