Editing Music tracker (section)

=== 1990s: MS-DOS versions ===
{{original research|section|date=April 2022}}
During the 1990s, tracker musicians gravitated to the PC as software production in general switched from the Amiga platform to the PC. Although the IBM and compatibles initially lacked the hardware sound processing capabilities of the Amiga, with the advent of the [[Sound Blaster]] line from [[Creative Technology Limited|Creative]], PC audio slowly began to approach [[Compact disc|CD]] Quality ([[44,100 Hz|44.1&nbsp;kHz/16&nbsp;bit/Stereo]]) with the release of the [[SoundBlaster 16]].

Another sound card popular on the PC tracker scene was the [[Gravis Ultrasound]], which continued the hardware mixing tradition, with 32 internal channels and onboard memory for sample storage. For a time, it offered unparalleled sound quality and became the choice of discerning tracker musicians. Understanding that the support of tracker music would benefit sales, Gravis gave away some 6000 GUS cards to participants. Coupled with excellent developer documentation, this gesture quickly prompted the GUS to become an integral component of many tracking programs and software. Inevitably, the balance was largely redressed with the introduction of the [[Sound Blaster AWE32]] and its successors, which also featured on-board RAM and [[Table-lookup synthesis|wavetable]] (or [[Sample-based synthesis|sample]] table) mixing.

The responsibility for [[Audio mixing (recorded music)|audio mixing]] passed from hardware to software (the main [[CPU]]) which gradually enabled the use of more channels. From the typical 4 MOD channels of the Amiga, the limit had moved to 7 with TFMX players and 8, first with Oktalyzer and later with the vastly more popular [[OctaMED]] (Amiga, 1989), then 32 with [[ScreamTracker|ScreamTracker 3]] (PC, 1994) and 16 with [[FastTracker 2]] (PC, 1994) and on to 64 with [[Impulse Tracker]] (PC, 1995) and [[OctaMED|MED SoundStudio]] (updated version of OctaMED). An Amiga tracker called Symphonie Pro even supported 256 channels.

As such, hardware mixing did not last. As processors got faster and acquired special multimedia processing abilities (e.g. [[MMX (instruction set)|MMX]]) and companies began to push [[Hardware Abstraction Layer]]s, like [[DirectX]], the AWE and GUS range became obsolete. DirectX, [[Windows Driver Model|WDM]] and, now more commonly, [[Audio Stream Input/Output|ASIO]], deliver high-quality sampled audio irrespective of hardware brand.

There was also a split off from the sample based trackers taking advantage of the [[Yamaha YM3812|OPL2]] and [[Yamaha YMF262|OPL3]] chips of the Sound Blaster series. All Sound Tracker was able to combine both the FM synthesis of the OPL chips and the sample based synthesis of the EMU-8000 chips in the Sound Blaster AWE series of cards as well as MIDI output to any additional hardware of choice.

[[Jeskola Buzz]] is a modular music studio developed from 1997 to 2000 for Microsoft Windows using a tracker as its sequencer where the sounds were produced by virtual machines (Buzzmachines) such as signal generators, synthesizer emulators, drum computers, samplers, effects and control machines, that where connected in a modular setup. Each machine would have its own tracker, drum machines would use a tracker-like drum pattern editor and effect and control machines could be automated tracker-like via tables of parameters.