Page "Amiga" Paragraph 24

The sound chip, named Paula, supports four sound channels ( two for the left speaker and two for the right ) with 8-bit resolution for each channel and a 6-bit volume control per channel.

The analog output is connected to a low-pass filter, which filters out high-frequency aliases when the Amiga is using a lower sampling rate ( see Nyquist limit ).

The brightness of the Amiga's power LED is used to indicate the status of the Amiga's low-pass filter.

The filter is active when the LED is at normal brightness, and deactivated when dimmed ( or off on older A500 Amigas ).

On Amiga 1000 ( and first Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 model ), the power LED had no relation to the filter's status, a wire needed to be manually soldered between pins on the sound chip to disable the filter.

Paula can read directly from the system's RAM, using direct memory access ( DMA ), making sound playback without CPU intervention possible.