Your old Atari ST and a new Falcon could make a perfect team. Martin Russ explains how.

Paul Wiffen, Fellow SOS contributor (and a Falcon user) collared me the other day. "I want to talk to you about something you wrote in SOS..." he said, and grinned, Cheshire-cat style. Fearing the worst, I wondered what I had got wrong recently. But he then put me out of my misery: "You said something I've been wanting to say for ages," he said... Rather than keep the information to myself, what follows is the gist of what he passed on to me.

It all starts with the June '93 Atari Notes — you know, where I said that you should keep your ST and run it alongside a Falcon. Paul gave me an example of a real-world application of this technique — which all comes about because of a problem.

THE PROBLEM

Apparently, if you try to run Steinberg's Cubase and D2D's 4T/FX on a Falcon, the Cubase time-line and the SMPTE clock display freeze every time the Falcon accesses the hard drive. With hard disk access quite a regular occurrence with a hard disk recording program like 4T/FX, this makes the screen display rather disconcerting to users. Now the combination of IDE drive interfacing and 'slower disks are cheaper' seems to result in less than wonderful performance. So you might be forgiven for thinking that the problem could be solved by using an external hard disk, because the Falcon accesses faster over the SCSI port. But what seems to happen in practice is that the line and display merely freeze for less time. Well, so far we have a partial solution, but it gets better...

Using the principle of 'appropriate technology', Paul decided to try running Cubase on an ST, and 4TFX on a Falcon. After all, the ST is automatically Cubase compatible, and 4TFX is specifically designed for the Falcon. (Falcon-only, in fact!). In a world full of 'new and improved' technological toys, it is often all too easy to lose track of the important items — like making music. There is no need to try and run both programs on the same machine — unless you like challenges. I prefer the 'if it ain't broken, then don't fix it'-approach. Use the Falcon where Digital Signal Processing, True Colour or SCSI ports are needed, and use the ST where compatibility and familiarity are required.

The setup has Cubase running on an ST with 2MB (or more) of RAM, with a hi-res monochrome display. The timing from the sequencer passes through a MIDI cable from the MIDI Out of the ST, into the MIDI In of the Falcon. MIDI Time Code is used to synchronise the two programs together — giving MIDI sequencing from the ST, with audio and effects from the Falcon. For the audio tracks, 4T/FX runs on a standard Falcon030 4/65, with 4MB of RAM and a 65Meg internal hard disk. You can use an external SCSI hard disk if you need more than the five minutes of recording time that 65Meg approximates to. Perhaps this is also a good time to think about backups — how do you store several tens of Megabytes away safely? Syquest 44 or 88MB removables are widely available, but the recently released (and smaller) 105MB version looks like an interesting option as well. DAT tapes in their data storage (DDS) disguise may also look attractive (2 Gigabytes on one tape!), but think about how quickly you can get at the data... The Falcon display can use the 16 colour mode, which gives a good compromise between looking impressive and speed of operation.

The combination is a sort of currently fashionable 'sequencer with audio tracks' lookalike, but with some differences. You get two screens and two mice, so you can go straight to the area that you want to edit, without any need to switch context on one screen. You also know that the ST deals with sequencing functions, and the Falcon with audio, which simplifies using the system quite considerably. It is also a real-world use for MTC, and only a single cable is required to connect the two computers together. Also, you could use almost any sequencer which provides a suitable source of synchronisation for 4T/FX...

EXPANSION

Talking to Paul Wiffen also told me that he has been spending quite a lot of time testing out the Falcon with a wide range of software. For example, take the E-magic LOG3 — the hardware add-on that plugs into the cartridge port and provides three extra MIDI Outs. The Falcon's cartridge port is mapped to a different address, and so most standard ST add-ons aren't immediately compatible, but the LOG3 has a cartridge port which emulates a standard ST one. This means that you can plug any of the ST add-ons like Combiner or Unitor II — or even the Human Touch and Steady Eye audio/video syncing devices. The Combiner lets you use the keys of C-Lab programs like the Polyframe generic editor. In fact, you can apparently even plug Steinberg keys into the Combiner and then run programs like the Synthworks editors...

The LOG3 comes as part of Notator Logic. The Unitor II SMPTE sync box is available from E-magic, but supplies of C-Lab Combiners, Steady Eyes and Human Touches have become another problem. Apparently, the Digital Village (Music Village's new digital audio division) have been buying up second-hand Combiners, Steady Eyes and Human Touches. Try them on (Contact Details). Using Notator Logic as the sequencer in the previous section, you could then have another, very different 'sequencer with audio tracks' combination!

It certainly looks like the Falcon will be just as large a sink for your hard-earned cash as the ST has been. Atari have gone from the ST to the Falcon in five years — any ideas as to what will be around in another five years?