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[sherekhan]

The Amiga had only 4 hardware channels, so that's what most trackers used back then, but there were several attempts at programs using software mixing to achieve 8 channels. These include OctaMED, Oktalyzer and Startrekker. However it seems that this never really caught much on, and I haven't heard much good multi-channel material from the Amiga days. There's some of the TFMX stuff Chris Huelsbeck did for games, like the Turrican II title tune, and I also remember coming over some ambient stuff on Aminet by an aussie guy calling himself Orpheus. But apart from that I have not really found much worth listening to.

Can anyone recommend some _good_ multi-channel (5-8) tracker modules from the early Amiga days, preferrably for one of the mentioned trackers?

[Saga Musix]

I guess in early days you won't find much "good" stuff since people were overwhelmed with that amount of channels. There's some nice DigiBoster (not DigiBooster Pro) stuff from the mid-90s though, e.g. these tunes:
https://modarchive.org/module.php?177929
https://modarchive.org/module.php?177928
http://files.exotica.org.uk/modland/?file=pub/modules/Digibooster/Dan/religious.digi

[sherekhan]

Tnx, will check it out. Never tried DigiBooster, guess I had moved on from the Amiga by then. Found DB 1.7. Seems to crash on my A500 setup, but A1200 works fine.

Would still welcome tips for earlier 90s stuff though.

[sherekhan]

OK, so I found some stuff at Modland. Seems they have a bit of Oktalyzer stuff at least. Including a couple of hundred modules attributed to FBY (https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_profile&query=69605). I see he also has a website (fby.develer.com/fby2/mp3/index.html) with a load of music in various formats including Fasttracker II, Protracker, Oktalyzer and Sonix (old non-tracker Amiga music program).

Modland also had a folder for Startrekker FLT8 modules, which contained only 1 single module. Guess that format never really took off. There are some modules there with synthetic instruments, though. This is another thing that never really took off. Same thing with MED/OctaMED, apart from a couple of example songs by Teijo Kinnunnen and some nice songs by Dr Awesome, and the awesome Alien Breed title tune by Allister Brimble, I don't think I've heard many modules using these. But all in all, looks like synthetic instruments became a niche thing when we got samples.

There's also a lot of OctaMED stuff, some of it is probably multichannel, but it's not sorted from the 4-channel stuff, so going through it will probably take some time and effort.

Re your comment about being overwhelmed by more than 4 channels, I don't think this is the case, since there are plenty of examples of people going to great pains to use two Amiga simultaneously to get 8 hardware mixed channels. The mentioned FBY site has modules designed to be played together. I believe there is a special version of Protracker that supports syncing two instances running on separate Amigas using a serial cable. And I also believe Urban Shakedown (and probably others) back in the day used two Amigas with OctaMED in 4-channel mode that they manually synced up with a click-track to get 8 hardware channels.

I'm guessing the absence of 8-channel stuff on Amiga is more due to technical limitations and quality implications of doing software mixing of 8-bit samples on a 7 MHz CPU. Going through the Oktalyzer stuff I do notice that a lot of them only uses 4 or 6 channels. And I also remember when I experimented with OctaMED that 6-chan was a good compromise, giving 2 hardware channels and 4 software mixed channels. Also, the added CPU requirements of software mixing made such productions unsuitable for games and demos, at least until 68020 CPUs became mainstream with the Amiga 1200.

[Saga Musix]

There are actually quite a few MED files with synthesized instruments, but they are not particularly outstanding. Advanced features need advanced users.

[sherekhan]

There are actually quite a few MED files with synthesized instruments, but they are not particularly outstanding. Advanced features need advanced users.

Probably true. I attended a talk with Matt Gray and Rob Hubbard at a local retro game show a couple of years ago, and they talked about how things worked on the C64. Back then you basically needed to know 6502 assembly to make good music.

[sherekhan]

Found another 8 channel tracker I am not familiar with. Face The Music, aka FTM, from 1991. There's a demo version on Aminet, and a few modules on Modland. It is mostly in german, so I don't understand much of it, but it seems to have some fairly advance effect programming features.

[Saga Musix]

Modland also had a folder for Startrekker FLT8 modules, which contained only 1 single module. Guess that format never really took off.

The irony is that in that module, the 2nd set of channels is an exact duplicate of the first. I thought I must be doing something wrong when I implemented support for it in OpenMPT. But no, it's really just an 8 channel module for the sake of being 8 channels.

[sherekhan]

The irony is that in that module, the 2nd set of channels is an exact duplicate of the first. I thought I must be doing something wrong when I implemented support for it in OpenMPT. But no, it's really just an 8 channel module for the sake of being 8 channels.

Shit, you're right. That's.... weird. It even does the tempo setting (F command) on channels 1 and 5 simultaneously. I could somewhat understand it if they reversed the second set of channels as a workaround to make the output mono instead of stereo, or use the second set of channels to add a delay effect to the first set, or alternate channels to add more polyphony to what is a pure piano piece. But this, I don't even know what to say.

I only listened to it briefly in EaglePlayer without seeing the patterns the first time, but loaded it up in Startrekker to see it for myself when you pointed this out.

[mnx]

Try demo Rave Nation, it is full of 8 channel modules composed in Oktalyzer. Replayer routine is much better version than in editor itself (same used in Hippoplayer), so it sounds really, really good.
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=24105