This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. (February 2010)

Ultimate SoundTracker, or SoundTracker for short, is a music tracker program for the Commodore Amiga. It is the creation of Karsten Obarski, a German software developer and composed at a game development company; sources differ as to the name of the company, Collins (2008) recorded it as reLINE, whereas Wright (1998) reported it as EAS.

SoundTracker started a tool for game sound development for the Amiga. It was loosely based on the techniques developed by Rob Hubbard for the Commodore 64.^[1] The program allowed for four-channel hardware mixing on all Amiga computers, but unlike its followers, limited the number of samples/instruments in a song to 16. It allocated the four channels in strict fashion: melody (lead), accompaniment, bass, and percussion.^[2][3] It could export the tracks as a sequence of assembler instructions.^[1]

SoundTracker was released as a commercial product in mid 1987. It did not enjoy success a general music development software, with reviews calling it "illogical", "difficult" and "temperamental"; it was eclipsed in that marked by programs such as Aegis' Sonix and Electronic Arts' Deluxe Music Construction Set.^[3] It became however a standard for games sound on the Amiga.^[1] The source code was released to the public domain, where it was hacked, debugged, and spread across the burgeoning Amiga underground, part of which became the demoscene. A disk of instrument samples (ST-01) was distributed together with the program.^[3] In 1989, some of the limitations of the program were improved upon by two Swedish programmers, Pex “Mahoney” Tufvesson and Anders “Kaktus” Berkeman, which released a version known as NoiseTracker, which allowed for thirty-two instruments and was more open in terms of channel usage. Later^[specify] versions of the program used the MOD file format, which stored both instrument samples and the tracks in the same file.^[1] These versions turned out to incompatible with the Amiga OS 2.0, causing crashes. ProTracker was another successor, released in 1991, which solved the stability problems and made several changes to the user interface.^[3]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Collins, Karen (2008), Game sound: an introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design, MIT Press, p. 58, ISBN 026203378X, http://books.google.com/books?id=gnw0Zb4St-wC&pg=PA58&dq=%22Ultimate+soundtracker%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22Ultimate%20soundtracker%22&f=false 
• Collins, Karen (June 2007), MIDI and MOD format, gamessound.com, http://www.gamessound.com/MIDIMOD.pdf 
• Wright, Mark (March 1998), Retrospective - Karsten Obarski, textfiles.com, http://www.textfiles.com/artscene/music/information/karstenobarski.html 

[edit] Further reading

• Anders Carlsson (2008), Chip Music: Low Tech Data Music Sharing in Karen Collins (ed.), From Pac-Man to pop music: interactive audio in games and new media, Ashgate, ISBN 0754662004
• Interview with Obarski at the Amiga Music Preservation website

[edit] External links

• YouTube demo