Editing Atari ST (section)

=== Music / Sound ===
The ST's low cost, built-in MIDI ports, and fast, low-latency response times made it a favorite with musicians.

The ST was the first [[home computer]] with built-in MIDI ports, and there was plenty of MIDI-related software for use professionally in music studios, or by amateur enthusiasts. The popular Windows/Macintosh applications ''[[Cubase]]'' and ''[[Logic Pro]]'' originated on the Atari ST. Another popular and powerful ST music sequencer application, Dr. T's KCS, contained a "Multi-Program Environment" that allowed ST users to run other applications, such as the synthesizer patch editing software XoR (now known as Unisyn on the Macintosh), from within the sequencer application.[http://tamw.atari-users.net/omega.htm]  Even today some people (such as Fatboy Slim) are still using the Atari ST for composing music.

Music tracker software was popular on the ST, such as the ''TCB Tracker'', MusicMon 2.5 and MaxYMiser aiding the production of quality music from the Yamaha synthesizer ('chiptunes').

An innovative music composition program that combined the sample playing abilities of a tracker with conventional music notation (which was usually only found in MIDI software) was called ''Quartet'' (after its 4-note polyphonic tracker, which displayed one monophonic stave at a time on colour screens).

Due to the ST having comparatively large amounts of memory for the time, sound sampling packages became a realistic proposition. The Microdeal Replay Professional product featured a sound sampler that cleverly used the ST cartridge port to read in parallel from the cartridge port from the ADC. For output of digital sound, it used the on-board frequency output, set it to 128&nbsp;kHz (inaudible) and then modulated the amplitude of that.

In addition to the sound sampling functionalities, the availability of software packages with MIDI support for music composition and efficient sound analysis contributed to make the Atari ST a forerunner of later computer-based all-in-one studios.