Vol.1: Vol.1:
Uncompressed on 4 CD-ROMs, Mods Anthology 1 represents over two gigabytes of MOD songs. If you figure the average mod is 140k and lasts 4 minutes (completely arbitrary figures), this means you're buying 61,371 minutes of music. That's 2557 days. That's 7 years.
Now, granted, a whole lot of MODs are just awful. And a lot of others sound suspiciously similar. (Yes, I understand the concept of a remix, but that's not what I mean.) But the fact remains that there are so many MODs here that you've GOTTA find something you like.
Nicolas Franck, himself an Amiga composer and programmer, has been collecting MODs for years. And this is the motherlode. Organized on 4 CD-ROMs by author (alphabetically spread out over CDs) with the fourth CD dedicated to synth tunes, miscellaneous music, and "exotic formats", there's a ridiculous number of MODs here. Included is a version of DeliTracker, one of the most versatile MOD players out there. (Personally, I find the Genie system it uses to be a bit overwhelming at times, but they do allow the program to be very modular and powerful.)
There is an informative AmigaGuide readme file included and a search facility. Unfortunately, the search script does not seem to work completely on my system: it will locate strings in song titles on all four CDs, but will not interactively load them.
There are a great number of old favorites and modern classics on here, as well as just about every MOD author on record. Franck made every attempt to contact all of the authors and gain their permission, which basically just means that U4ia wouldn't allow for his MODs to be on the CD. No news here.
Each disc has a "click me first" icon, which brings up DeliTracker and a few dozen of the best mods on each disc. It's a good starting point, although your taste may vary wildly from his.
Call me nutty, but one of my favorite parts of the collection is the "PlaySID" collection on disc 4, which is a whole lot of C-64 SID tunes, playable through DeliTracker. You haven't lived until you've heard JCH's West End Girls. :)
Despite the problems with the search engine, Mods Anthology 1 is just that: an anthology, a tome, a massive collection of tunes. If your "music/mods" directory is boring you, pick up the Anthology. Enjoy!
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All the modules are sorted by Composers and some by Groups. Check out the CD Titles section for more info about how the modules are divided. Many of the composers have included a text file telling something about themselves and many have also provided a picture. All the modules are unpacked so you can really easily listen to them with virtually any computer with a CD-ROM drive attached. For the purpose the compilation includes players and/or trackers for various platforms including:
Ofcourse true module collectors already have their favourite players but for those who entered the realm of modules just recently the Tools directory provides a hefty amount of players to start with.
For anyone to be able to find anything from here there are lists provided in ASCII, AmigaGuide, Delitracker listfile and MAFind formats. MAFind is a really nice tool provided with he CD which allows you to search CDs by keyword and which then returns AmigaGuide document describing what was found. Very handy tool.
As with modules in general there are some 'not-so-good' modules but there are SO many unbelievably great modules there that they will knock your socks off. I am not going to start listing all the good modules, you'd still be reading it tomorrow but believe me, there are some totally awesome modules there. Ofcourse those of you who have been collecting modules for some time already know that. What I found somewhat odd was that there as a really small amount of MED modules included, maybe this was because of the multi-platform nature of this CD and not so many players outside Amiga world support MEDs (IMHO or should I say OAITS).
As a whole module loving people around the world owns A LOT to Nicolas Franck (or better know as Gryzor), the collector of this CD Set. Thank you Gryzor. Now all we have to do is just sit back and let the music flow (while waiting for the Mods Anthology Volume 2).
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Rating - 95% - A Massive collection of Brilliant Mods!
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