But you will still get to play lemmings with the best sound chip of the era.
I don't know about that. The Commodore Amiga had a damn good sound processor.
The Amiga was capable of 4 hardware voices with 8-bit wavetable playback using it's dedicated Paula chip. (The Amiga, depending on configuration, has up to 2MB of "CHIP RAM" which is memory shared between video and audio systems (aside from main memory, or "FAST RAM")). This was easily the best sound in a commercial computer up to that point.
The IIgs has a superior sound chip, the Ensoniq DOC which is also used in the Mirage synthesizer, capable of, in the most common configuration, playing 15 comparable channels in hardware - but the thing is, Apple tied only 64K (yes, kilobytes) to this chip limiting it dramatically. There were hacks that tried to copy new samples into RAM in real time to allow more than 64K of samples to be used at once, but it was not a solid solution. Also worth nothing that the DOC supported stereo audio, but Apple did not break it out to the headphone jack, so a very minimal card was needed to break out the sound to stereo. Go Apple...
Overall, having been an avid follower of the demo scene on the Amiga and IIgs (small though it was), I have heard more impressive sound from the Amiga. The Amiga has enough CPU horsepower to perform some degree of software mixing, so getting 8 quality channels playing (with CPU loaded) was possible.
They both kicked the ass of the Atari ST and the various Ad Lib-style FM soundcards and early Soundblasters of the PC world.
The experience of hearing sound like the Amiga could generate when it first came out in 1985 was mindblowing - it was unlike any other computer audio experience anyone had ever heard. It was the audio equivalent of the experience of seeing the seemingly impossibly realistic graphics in Defender of the Crown for the first time, back in its day. Jawdropping good times.
I've owned (or own) all of the computers I've mentioned in this article, so not operating on a bias - the days of Amiga vs. ST and Mac vs. PC are rather behind me.
(Tho I still hate the PC.)
blakespot