MD vs. SNES: FM vs. PCM

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by smkd on 2010-08-23 (#66530)

Regarding MD vs. SNES:

My personal preference is that in the hands of an AAA musician, SNES sound > MD sound but I think both sound fantastic when properly applied.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUwg-n1GgOo
I wouldn't mind hearing that out of an MD port. I like the SNES one a little better (trumpets+'capcom guitar' are cool =)) but the MD take on it is really decent.

I have an easier time dealing with shitty SNES audio than I do with shitty MD audio though. The latter is so much nastier IMHO.

by TmEE on 2010-08-23 (#66534)

if it was up to me, RPGs would not exist...

I personally don't see SNES sound being something too nice... I have been slowly going through a SPC set I downloaded but I've yet to find something I really like on all aspects.

http://8bc.org/music/TmEE/Guile+Theme/
I need to finish this one off someday...

by Banshaku on 2010-08-23 (#66538)

For soundtrack on the megadrive, you should try:

- Street of rage series
- Castlevania: Bloodline (@Bregalad: if you never played, you should)
- Midnight resistance
- Contra hard corp
- Shinobi
- Phantasy star 4 (What was played was a good RPG)

Some others that slip my mind.

by TmEE on 2010-08-23 (#66541)

Ristar is something that has extremely well done soundtrack (plus not so good dual channel PCM playback)

by mic_ on 2010-08-23 (#66542)

Here are a few more examples:

Alien Soldier
Red Zone
Gods, more Gods

by tepples on 2010-08-23 (#66543)

Bregalad wrote:
And I'm sorry, but the sound on the MD is HORRIBLE. Those videos just reminded it to me the hard way. Any noise out of it just make my hears bleed. Perhaps it's those unfiltered very high frequencies that hurts my heardrums.

NES through a composite filter also produces unfiltered high frequencies. I connected to a sound card, ran a recording through a spectrogram, and saw overtones all the way up to 20 kHz.

Quote:
Or it's just it remind me how MIDIs sounded on my very old pc - that is that they sounded like crap.

Yes, both the AdLib card (used for MIDI on old PC prior to software wavetable mixing) and the MD use a Yamaha FM synthesizer. But then I guess you hate 80s pop music, as a lot of it was made with a DX7 keyboard, which uses the same synth chip used in the MD.

Quote:
It's just that I'm into RPGs

Then I guess you're a fan of PlayStation as opposed to Nintendo 64.

Quote:
Maybe a better example would be GBA vs PSP. When the PSP came out is was maybe 800 times supperior to the GBA in terms of graphics and sound.

Yet one notable launch title on the PSP wasted most of this power. So I cloned it for GBA to prove this point.

Quote:
Nevertheless I always prefered the GBA console and games by a LONG way, but I won't try to find stupid arguments to prove the GBA's nonexistent technical superiority.

The proper comparison in this case would be Dreamcast vs. PS2, or two DS systems vs. one PSP that you and your buddy have to take turns on.

by Bregalad on 2010-08-23 (#66546)

Quote:
But then I guess you hate 80s music

Not at all ! FM sound can be okay mixed with something else. Yes I know the MD also had Square Wave channels, but few games used it - those who did sounds a bit better though. My point is that it is in all cases much more limited than wave-table sound which is basically limited only to the amount of memory you dispose for samples. Which implies the technical superiority of the SNES.
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Then I guess you're a fan of PlayStation as opposed to Nintendo 64.

You bet it !
Quote:
Red Zone
Gods, more Gods

Sounds horrible IMO.
Quote:
Alien Soldier

This one sounds good. Was it really done with a MD ? I'm really doubtful. If that's the case then 99% of MD games did a horrible use of the hardware.
Quote:

http://8bc.org/music/TmEE/Guile+Theme/

Sounds perfectly ok, but definitely it sounds very synthetic compared to what the SNES can do.

by tepples on 2010-08-23 (#66547)

Bregalad wrote:
My point is that it is in all cases much more limited than wave-table sound which is basically limited only to the amount of memory you dispose for samples.

Having to spend memory for samples takes away from making your RPG longer, and copying samples into SPC memory results in those two-second freezes (MARIO START!) common to Super NES games. Nintendo also charged more for memory than Sega did; the Super NES version of Shaq-Fu (not that it was a good game, but bear with me) had a limited character roster for just this reason.

by Banshaku on 2010-08-23 (#66548)

Street of rage 2: Go straight (stage 1-1)
Street of rage 2: Expender (stage 7-2) One of my favorite. During that stage, it really put you in the mood.
Street of rage 2: Never return alive (boss theme)
Midnight resitance: Flood of power
The super shinobi First level
Castlevania bloodlines Simon's theme
Castlevania bloodlines Stage 1
Castlevania bloodlines stage 2

You could put easily the complete street of rage 1&2 and the other ones the same author did. There is some nice music if you take the time to search for it.

by mic_ on 2010-08-23 (#66549)

Quote:
Quote:
Alien Soldier

This one sounds good. Was it really done with a MD ? I'm really doubtful.

The Megadrive was the only console it was released on.

by TmEE on 2010-08-23 (#66550)

Ristar - Ring Rink - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j770GDNZ1b4
Ristar - Final Boss - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GmSH_UDrRA

Radical Rat (:P) - One Last Step - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M2szG4maJo

by tomaitheous on 2010-08-23 (#66552)

Hey! What's with the Megadrive/Genesis bashing???

I'm all for getting the facts straight, but the Genesis was a damn fine system (more memorable to me than the SNES, despite having some fun with SNES RPGs). I can understand that some dislike that FM sound, and that mentality was heavier back in the day when FM was sounding tired and old, and the SNES was something new/different/exciting. But this day and age? I love all those classic sounds/musics. From nes to md to even snes. And there are some really incredible sound tracks of Genesis games that break away from that normal/traditional FM sound. I was grinding through Phantasy Star 2 on the 360 the other day, loving that old familiar/traditional FM sound track. Love that RPG, even if it is a grind fest (worst than DQ 1).

by tokumaru on 2010-08-23 (#66553)

Bregalad wrote:
I'm sure someone will point me to MD RPGs, pehaps some good ones, but to be honest I'll likely not be playing them more than a few minutes.

And this is part of the problem. With the SNES you have the nostalgia factor, you are not only listening to the music, you recognize the tunes and have fond memories of them, while you have never played a Genesis game for more than a few minutes in your life and are only analyzing them in a rushed, purely technical way.

If you don't like how the MD sounds, there is nothing I can do to change your mind, but what I simply don't understand is how you can say that the SNES sounds perfect, when a lot of the games sound like you have your head stuck into a bucket. So the only conclusion I can get to is that you end up ignoring the flaws of the SNES because of your love for the games. And if you are never really gonna experiment (i.e. play for more than a few minutes) some good games on the MD (which exist for sure, or the system wouldn't have lived for so long), that's something you are never gonna have with it.

To be perfectly honest, I think all of these old consoles sound bad from a technical point of view (the NES can be ear-bleeding bad in a lot of games, much more so than the MD), but I'm willing to look (or hear) past that if the melodies are good. To me the melodies are much more important than the instruments that are playing them.

by Bregalad on 2010-08-23 (#66554)

Banshaku wrote:
Street of rage 2: Go straight (stage 1-1)

Now THAT man is a great song ! I remember someone already presented it to me to show off the MD's sound capabilities, and I have to agree its a real good song. FM instruments just happen to work very well with this style of music. However, for many styles of music, it won't work well. With the SNES you're free to play wathever instrument you like.
Quote:
Street of rage 2: Expender (stage 7-2) One of my favorite. During that stage, it really put you in the mood.

This is the prime example of what I said above sounds terrible. The very loud trebbles in the 10k-20k ranges makes my headrums bleed and I can't physically stand to listen this without turning the volume down. (This has nothing to do with me prefering Nintendo over Sega or anything)

Quote:
The super shinobi First level

Again, a pretty good song ! Not nearly as good as the first one, but shows something decent done with FM.
Quote:
Castlevania bloodlines Simon's theme

MAN HOW DO YOU DARE !! If you want to advocate the MD you just made an magnificent auto-goal. This is perhaps one of the best song ever made on the SNES, and this version sounds like total shit. I'm sorry but it really does.
Quote:
Castlevania bloodlines Stage 1
Castlevania bloodlines stage 2

To be honest CV Bloodline's music, while not horrible or anything, is really so-so. I know the game is very good as I played it under emulation - but the music isn't a prime example of what the MD can do (especially compared to what other people posted here).
The Stage 2 sound better remixed in Circle of the Moon BTW.

And, folks, I'm sorry for "Bashing" your beloved MD or anyhting. It's just that this is a Nintendo forum - and a lot of guys keeps denying the obvious that the MD is technically much more limited than the SNES. That doesn't mean all MD games are bad - nor that all SNES are great or anything like that. It's just the people should admit the obvious - FM sound can do great things, people posted links to proof that and they were very interesting to listen, but most games used it poorly or even horriby. If I want to compose a MD song, I know it will be a total headache to make it sound good you have to know some math formulas etc... - while on the SNES all it takes is to pick up my favourite insturments and convert them to BRR (as long as it don't exceed some RAM limit).

(And BTW FM soud theoretically should brig me nostalgia of my old PC. However it doesn't really I'm glad not to have to suffer this any longer. The GM instruments sounded especially bad on it.)

by TmEE on 2010-08-23 (#66555)

Bregalad wrote:
This is the prime example of what I said above sounds terrible. The very loud trebbles in the 10k-20k ranges makes my headrums bleed and I can't physically stand to listen this without turning the volume down. (This has nothing to do with me prefering Nintendo over Sega or anything)

You won't like listening music in my place then

I boost freqs above 8KHz at least 12db, to get really crisp and bright sound, and the point of my sound mods are to lift up the lowpass filter points above hearing rane so that the high freq content comes through... I really hate how SNEs just is unable to represent things above 12ish KHz well (the sample rate allows for 16KHz, but the interpolation and DSP filter kills a big chunk of it)... SNES sounds so damn bad because of it, like a shitty AM radio, while MD is studio grade equipment / high end HiFi on that regard.

My EQ settings : http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... ttings.jpg

by blargg on 2010-08-23 (#66557)

I used to always run my stereos like that, with bass and treble turned up to the max, same with EQs. Normal flag stereos sounded bad. At some point I realized that I had simply conditioned my hearing to this, so I stopped turning things up instead left them flat. After a while I adjusted to flat sound and could hear just as much high frequency information. I'm guessing that this may be happening for you, and since you aren't able to overemphasize the SNES high end, it sounds muffled relative to music which can be overemphasized.

by TmEE on 2010-08-23 (#66558)

Spectrograms of SNES don't look too good... you can amp all you want, but if it isn't there then you don't get anything...

by byuu on 2010-08-23 (#66563)

One bad thing about SNES sound is that developers were way too careful to avoid clamping higher frequencies, so much so that you can easily double audio without ever clamping anything in most games.

Of course that's just a "turn the volume up on the TV" thing, more annoying with emulators when all your other audio apps play five times louder.

by TmEE on 2010-08-23 (#66564)

I am noticing such effect on X360 a lot... some games are quiet, others are just LOUD. SPC's I got are same, most are quiet but every now and then there's a really loud file so I got to decrease preamp in order to avoid clipping...

by tepples on 2010-08-23 (#66569)

Bregalad wrote:
Banshaku wrote:
Street of rage 2: Go straight (stage 1-1)

Now THAT man is a great song ! I remember someone already presented it to me to show off the MD's sound capabilities, and I have to agree its a real good song. FM instruments just happen to work very well with this style of music. However, for many styles of music, it won't work well. With the SNES you're free to play wathever instrument you like.

Except an acid line. In an acid line, the synth parameters (filter cutoff envelope or FM envelope) are changed over time from note to note.

Quote:
If I want to compose a MD song, I know it will be a total headache to make it sound good you have to know some math formulas etc... - while on the SNES all it takes is to pick up my favourite insturments and convert them to BRR

Unless your favorite instrument is a Yamaha DX7. I guess that in the same way the MD leveraged people's 68000 and Z80 experience, it also leveraged composers' experience with Yamaha synths. With samples, you have to record someone playing the instrument, or you have to license a sample pack (aka "sound font") for use in your game. That's why a lot of early Super NES games sounded the same: they all used Nintendo's sample pack.

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(as long as it don't exceed some RAM limit).

And there's the kicker. The muffled sounds are largely due to cutting sample rates, in turn due to the RAM limit. Yes, the Gaussian interpolation, but that's nothing an EQ pass at the convert-to-BRR stage can't solve.

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And BTW FM soud theoretically should brig me nostalgia of my old PC.

Technically, the MD should sound better than an AdLib because MD's FM chip has four operators per voice, while AdLib has only two. But sometimes in tfmmaker, I make "perfect fifth", "perfect fourth", and "major third" patches using the algorithm with two parallel chains of two operators (#4 I think); the sounds are less rich but the polyphony sometimes makes up for it.

Not like I'm bashing SNES or anything. Zoop sounds like Zoop on my SNES, but it sounded like poop when I rented it on MD.

TmEE wrote:
SPC's I got are same, most are quiet but every now and then there's a really loud file so I got to decrease preamp in order to avoid clipping

Yeah, Zoop for SNES is loud. That's why there are various Replay Gain formats to store the proper preamp setting for each song or album.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-23 (#66570)

A lowpass filter is something you'd expect Sony would do. It reminds me how the PS2 had an intentionally muted video signal. I remember playing the same games on different systems at my friend's houses, and remembering the PS2 version always was the faded and blurry looking one.

by RT-55J on 2010-08-23 (#66573)

mic_ wrote:
Quote:
Quote:
Alien Soldier

This one sounds good. Was it really done with a MD ? I'm really doubtful.

The Megadrive was the only console it was released on.

That's the "Arrange Version", which was a bonus included on the OST. This is the actual in-game version.

And as long as we're throwing out Mega Drive songs:
Shinobi 3 - Japonesque
Devilish - Praire
Alien Soldier - Epsilons-Ally (low quality recording)
Mega Turrican - Stage 3-1 (sounds better than the SNES version imo)

by MottZilla on 2010-08-23 (#66574)

tokumaru wrote:
I bet you like to bash the MD because you probably played a lot of SNES as a kid, and thought it was the most awesome thing ever back then, and only got to look at the MD recently (maybe even using emulators only), and of course under that perspective it will not look like much. I had a MD as a kid, but I played a lot of SNES at friends' houses and I always thought both consoles were very good.

I played alot of SNES as a kid too. However several of my friends had Sega Genesis. I always thought Sonic The Hedgehog, along with several other games, were really cool. So I never had any odd sort of fanboy hatred for either system. I never owned a Genesis till well after it was dead but I still find it fun.

About the MD's sound, I wonder like with the color sub-palette issue, if Sega had been able to go with a more advanced YM chip if people would have had a better impression of the MD's sound. The MD can do well in the sound department, but I think alot of people played some games that really use it poorly.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-23 (#66576)

I don't understand why nobody made a soundchip like the YM2612 only with squares, saws and triangles. That would've been the perfect sound chip for 1990 standards.

by blargg on 2010-08-23 (#66578)

psycopathicteen wrote:
A lowpass filter is something you'd expect Sony would do. It reminds me how the PS2 had an intentionally muted video signal. I remember playing the same games on different systems at my friend's houses, and remembering the PS2 version always was the faded and blurry looking one.

Yeah, they just added those things to annoy people. No technical reasons, none at all, well, none that we imagine, thus there can't be any.

by Bregalad on 2010-08-23 (#66579)

Quote:
Shinobi 3 - Japonesque

This song is pretty good ! I like it, and it sure doesn't sound much like the MD before 0.37, at which points it starts to suddently sound worse IMO.
Quote:
Devilish - Praire

Again another very good song, which doesn't sound much like FM which is good.
Quote:

Mega Turrican - Stage 3-1 (sounds better than the SNES version imo)

Both sounds pretty similar. However the SF2 songs and that Simon's Theme sounds 100 times better on SNES than MD. I'm wouldn't be surprised there is at least some games which are the other way around (making terrible use of the SPC700).

The MD is just limited for this 80's pop/techno style. Anyone can post good classical or ambient music out of the MD ? Ambient music is particularly well suited for some games where it adds to the mod and make them a little scary BTW.

by ReaperSMS on 2010-08-23 (#66581)

psycopathicteen wrote:
A lowpass filter is something you'd expect Sony would do. It reminds me how the PS2 had an intentionally muted video signal. I remember playing the same games on different systems at my friend's houses, and remembering the PS2 version always was the faded and blurry looking one.

This is more likely framebuffer size differences. The PS2 video signal, compared to say, the gamecube, might have had a little less saturation, but ran a good bit hotter. Full white on the PS2 tends to be noticably brighter than full white on the GC

by tepples on 2010-08-23 (#66583)

psycopathicteen wrote:
I don't understand why nobody made a soundchip like the YM2612 only with squares, saws and triangles. That would've been the perfect sound chip for 1990 standards.

How about six or eight Game Boy channel 3s? That's Namco ~~106~~ 163 or the TG16 APU.

Pinocchio: snes | md

Pac-Attack: snes | md
Guess which version Namco chose for the gba port?

by KungFuFurby on 2010-08-23 (#66585)

I find SNES music much easier to rip than MD music... not to mention that I can't even start with MD music ripping without accuracy issues anyways since I'm on the wrong platform!

by tokumaru on 2010-08-23 (#66586)

I think we're all bothered by different characteristics of the songs.

tepples wrote:
Pac-Attack: snes | md

See, I listen to this and I can't say which one is better. Both have flaws. The MD version may sound more "bleepy", but it's also very clean and clear. The instruments on the SNES might sound more realistic, but the resolution of the samples is really poor, which brings the overall quality of the song way down in my opinion. So I simply don't understand how someone can say "the SNES kicks the MD's ass" and completely ignore the fact that the SNES has some serious issues too.

I'll listen to both while playing (not this particular game though - neither the gameplay nor the sound interested me at all) without giving a shit about these issues and will think both sound fine, but if I force myself to criticize them I'll say that, technically, both have their problems, and no console sounds always superior to the other.

by HJRodrigo on 2010-08-23 (#66598)

RT-55J wrote:
Mega Turrican - Stage 3-1 (sounds better than the SNES version imo)

It maybe true for that song, but not for my favorite Turrican song .
SNES
MD

I like both systems, but the SNES is my favorite most of the time in terms of music and color. Funny because I never actually ever owned a SNES, but I do own every Sega system ever made . Maybe it is a grass is greener on the other side thing.

by Banshaku on 2010-08-23 (#66600)

The super shinobi is a first generation game. This is to be expected that the music will not be on part with Street of rage 2 (same artist) which was released more far in the life cycle of the console.

As for Expender, I don't see what you mean by "it makes my ear bleed". I could understand that you may not like the song since it a specific style that not everyone may like. But I don't hear any of what you said. The recording on youtube is not that great thought. It's better on the real thing.

As for Castlevania song, I don't remember saying anything as being better than the snes version. That was not the point. I didn't say anything except for link. If your listen to the song from the point of view that it was remade with a FM chip, the artist did it quite well.

One thing that I liked about the genesis is the stereo earphone port at the front. I tried it recently with better earphones compared at the time it came out and I was quite surprise that the sound came out clean and very good actually.

I would like to mention that I never had a genesis has a kid. I bought a super nes. I like both consoles for their merit.

I guess this thread goes nowhere. It just put fuel over fire.

by tokumaru on 2010-08-23 (#66602)

Banshaku wrote:
I guess this thread goes nowhere. It just put fuel over fire.

Well, I learned a few things about both consoles with this thread. Too bad that in the end we had a little war going on.

I like to compare systems, not to decide which one wins, but to understand how they differ. As a programmer, I really like to think of how I would make the best out of each system, no matter how bad/good it is. If I had the time, I'd like to develop for nearly every 8 and 16 bit system out there, I like all of them in one way or another.

by MottZilla on 2010-08-23 (#66606)

Banshaku wrote:
I guess this thread goes nowhere. It just put fuel over fire.

Well I think most of us like to discuss both systems and it's interesting to think about and examine what each system is capable of. Honestly I think no one can argue that both systems have high quality games that make use of their hardware very well. I think alot of the time that people (not those in this thread) bash either SNES or MD is based on games which the developer did a poor job or for whatever reason couldn't realize the full potential of the system.

I think most of us here understand that the quality of the game matters more than the hardware and the technical feats seeing how we are drawn here by the NES which is inferior to both platforms discussed here.

by Super-Hampster on 2010-08-23 (#66615)

not that it was the greatest of games, but Revolution X blew the Genesis away in the sound department.

SNES|MD

Lots of sampled music VS badly synthesized music that sounds like a kid trying to play it on an electric keyboard while farting in a tuba.

by TmEE on 2010-08-23 (#66616)

another game using teh allmighty GEMS setup on MD.... there's about 200 games using GEMS and nearly all of them sound bad and majority of them are USA developed games...

HJRodrigo wrote:
It maybe true for that song, but not for my favorite Turrican song .
SNES
MD

I like both systems, but the SNES is my favorite most of the time in terms of music and color. Funny because I never actually ever owned a SNES, but I do own every Sega system ever made . Maybe it is a grass is greener on the other side thing.

SNES one sound so weak... very very soft sounds, crappy snare, even worse cymbals. Amiga game sounds worse than both of those though.

by tokumaru on 2010-08-24 (#66618)

Super-Hampster wrote:
Revolution X

I think both consoles sucked hard in this case... but I think the MD sounds much worse.

by Bregalad on 2010-08-24 (#66623)

I second that. Both of those sounds really bad.

Quote:
Both have flaws. The MD version may sound more "bleepy", but it's also very clean and clear. The instruments on the SNES might sound more realistic, but the resolution of the samples is really poor, which brings the overall quality of the song way down in my opinion. So I simply don't understand how someone can say "the SNES kicks the MD's ass" and completely ignore the fact that the SNES has some serious issues too.

I don't have this impression. On the other hand, I feel like you guys try to artificially create flaws in SNES sounds and attempt to make me belive it's not as good as it is. Not that SNES sound is perfect - it's true the sound is a bit lowpass filtered because of the guassian interpolation - but you guys make it sound like an issue when it really isn't, the lowpass filtering due to youtube's coded is more likely to affect the song anyways. This also allowed programmers to oversample up to 4x with almost no aliasing. And once again, you can use emulators to restore the high frequencies which are lost. You CAN'T make instrument sounds better with a MD emulator as far as I know (if you can then by all means tell me how !)

A game with FM sound that I find sound real lame is Lagrange Point. It's not a MD game, but it sounds like a really bad sounding MD game to me. Any thoughts ?

PS : Since people posted their favorite MD music, I might as well link to some of my favourite SNES music while we're at it :
Chrono Trigger - Undersea Palace
Chrono Trigger - Corridors of Time
Chrono Trigger - Remains of the Factory
Chrono Trigger - Robo's Theme *
Live a Live - Boss Battle
Live a Live - Akira Battle *
Live a Live - Forgotten Wings
Dragon Quest VI - Town Theme
Dragon Quest III - Flight
Dragon Quest III - Village Theme
Dragon Quest III - Sailing
Secret of Mana - Distant Tunder
Secret of Mana - Forest
Secret of Mana - Ceremony
Secret of Mana - Ghost and the Rose
Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu - Chapter 2
Super Castlvania IV - Simon's Theme Castlevania Dracula X - Richter's Theme *
Tactics Ogre - Royal Palace Dance
Tactics Ogre - Fear is only the beining
Tactics Ogre - Limitation

Ok this is quite a few songs, a small portion of my favourites. Before anyone says they sound bad, I'll tell you that the sound quality was lowered due to them being compressed on youtube. Some of the songs here suffer from regular abrupt volume change, probably due to the guy uploading them using poorly a tool to maximize the volume - it's not my or the SNES' fault.

A few of them (maked with a *) could possibly be ported decently with the MD because they are close enough to this 80's pop stlye, but the vast majority couldn't because they just use instruments that are way too evolved to be reproduced with FM - and they would have to be fully remixed in 80's pop to sound good on a MD.
So as a programmer, it's a kind of limitation to be "forced" to pick a style of music over another.

by tepples on 2010-08-24 (#66631)

Bregalad wrote:
Chrono Trigger - Robo's Theme *

This sounds like what you get when the hamster from Kirby's Dream Land 3 meets Mega Man's female counterpart.

Quote:
Before anyone says they sound bad, I'll tell you that the sound quality was lowered due to them being compressed on youtube. Some of the songs here suffer from regular abrupt volume change, probably due to the guy uploading them using poorly a tool to maximize the volume

YouTube used to do that to all uploads in mid-2008 to minimize the effect of "screamer" videos abusing dynamics to scare viewers.

As for being forced to choose one style: If MD sounds like 1980s pop using a DX7, and SNES sounds like a Mellotron (an early analog sampler), what does NES sound like?

by Bregalad on 2010-08-24 (#66635)

tepples wrote:

YouTube used to do that to all uploads in mid-2008 to minimize the effect of "screamer" videos abusing dynamics to scare viewers.

This explain a lot of things. Because of this, so many Techno / Trance music uploaded on Youtube is completely ruined - because the beats are strongly marked, the volume goes downwards suddently on each beat, and go upwards suddently between the beats, effectively ruining the music. If they used a longer attack/decay time it would have worked fine probably though.
Quote:
As for being forced to choose one style: If MD sounds like 1980s pop using a DX7, and SNES sounds like a Mellotron (an early analog sampler), what does NES sound like?

Good question. Are PSG much used in some genre of non-videogame music ? I guess some trance songs sometimes use something that comes close enough.

While there is some genres that don't work with PSG, such as ambient music, it can still do a variety of things. I think both "Classical" and "Rock" type music sounds good with PSG (for people used to it that is). Few NES games go for techno-style songs unfortunately.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-24 (#66642)

You've italicsized Richter's theme from Dracula X.

I would say that it would sound better on the NES than on the Genesis. The NES was better suited for trance style music than the Genesis, when the Genesis was better for "funky" music.

If only Yamaha used more than just sine waveforms this wouldn't be a problem.

by tomaitheous on 2010-08-24 (#66647)

blargg wrote:
I used to always run my stereos like that, with bass and treble turned up to the max, same with EQs. Normal flag stereos sounded bad. At some point I realized that I had simply conditioned my hearing to this, so I stopped turning things up instead left them flat. After a while I adjusted to flat sound and could hear just as much high frequency information. I'm guessing that this may be happening for you, and since you aren't able to overemphasize the SNES high end, it sounds muffled relative to music which can be overemphasized.

There's definite truth to this. Conditioning, not just for audio but for video too. Too many people were used to having the sharpness turned up on the SDTV sets BITD, that when they looked at a TRUE calibration TV set by a certified calibration technician, they thought it looked too soft. Same for red push and a lot of other things. Hell, even when HD progressive TV sets where coming out; someone did a study that showed a solid color on two screens - one interlaced and one progressive. People were asked to choose which set looked 'sharper'. There was no detail, just a blank screen. And yet... people often reported that the interlaced set with the blank screen looked sharper. Hahahahaha.

Even TVs nowadays have these funny filters that distort the picture (some sort of smart smoothing filter). I can't stand them. I can hear the muffleness people talk about on the SNES. And to be quite honest, it's really not as big an issue as most people make it out to be. I also hear artifacts in the YM2612 chip. Digital artifacts. And yet, no one seems to bring this up.

But like someone else mentioned in this thread, all these system had audio flaws. If the music is good, I look past those flaws and just enjoy the music.

by tepples on 2010-08-24 (#66648)

Bregalad wrote:
Are PSG much used in some genre of non-videogame music ?

There's SID metal (e.g. Machinae Supremacy), and there's anything by Ke$ha.

Quote:
While there is some genres that don't work with PSG, such as ambient music

This pseudo-chiptune is designed for a PSG of approximately 2A03+MMC5 class. But then I'm not sure what "ambient" means, having encountered it only as part of "PIANO AMBIENT", the genre description of the song "5.1.1." from Beatmania IIDX and DDR Extreme.

by TmEE on 2010-08-24 (#66649)

I edited the below with what I believe could be done on MD, at least when I use my own sound setup... I have a good 3 years of experience with MD so I have a pretty good idea what I can do :

Bregalad wrote:
Chrono Trigger - Undersea Palace
Could be done on MD rather well, some instruments like the low quality piano would not sound as good but all of the percussion can be higher quality than what the SNES tune uses, if I would recreate the tune on MD with my own sound engine. Some of the echoness would be lost

Chrono Trigger - Corridors of Time
some of the instruments will be extremely hard to recreate like the strings in the beginning... you need to use lot of channels to get fat strings like that and then there won't be room for all else. The sitar would sound as if not better in synthesied way, the bell instrument would have different tonal qualities and the chior would get completely butchered. Same deal with percussion as in last tune, that is one place where I can completely obliterate SNES on MD with my sound setup as long as the SNES won't be doing too many percussion channels.

Chrono Trigger - Remains of the Factory
The pads on the background aren't too easy to recreate, there would be quite a bit of tonal differences. The xylophone instrument would have tonal differences too, all else could be easily done.

Chrono Trigger - Robo's Theme *
That one has one stumbleblock which is the string lead, but luckily there's little stuff going on in the tune so it would not be too hard really. Percussion could also be improved

Live a Live - Boss Battle
The trumpets would be a bit different sounding but other than that it can be done very well. The organ is piece of cake to do. Bass sucks in the SNES, and percussion is very weak. If there was some chords/strings/pads on the BG then those would get pushed on the PSG (it is surprising how nice fat 3 note PSG chords sound ).

Live a Live - Akira Battle *
This would likely not sound too good... distortion guitars can be done nicely on FM, but its likely to require many channels, and with little left for all else the lead would have to sound shitty and tinny like bad FM music does. If not so good sounding distortion guitars are acceptable then this could be done very nicely, with improved percussion and bass (those 2 I feel being sucky in the original).

Live a Live - Forgotten Wings
This would not be easy to recreate, while the lead and backing flute are easy, the strings aren't going to sound too good... and I would put them on the PSG aswell, since FM would be used up anyway. Percussion could be superior on MD though.

Dragon Quest VI - Town Theme
This would be quite easy apart from the strings, and the echoiness would be reduced since there won't be enough channels, unless I experiment with PSG backing for the lead (should blend nicely). you already know what am I gonna say about the percussion

Dragon Quest III - Flight
That one I would not attempt to do, there's no way to get it sound too close to original... lots of fat strings, those won't be doable without using many channels, and by many I mean 4+.... one FM channel can do one string, or mayhaps 2... a tpyical string sample has sounds of 4 or more string instruments.
Boring tune though, but that's a subjective thing

Dragon Quest III - Village Theme
if it wasn't for the strings, I could be done nicely... lots of the echoiness would be lost though...
Boring tune, more subjectiveness

Dragon Quest III - Sailing
strings strings strings... lol

Secret of Mana - Distant Tunder
This one seems to be very easy to recreate, there's no instruments that would sound bad or hard to do in FM. Percussion could be enhanced aswell on MD.

Secret of Mana - Forest
Some of the echoness needs to be sacrificed, and some stuff needs to be pushed on the PSG. Would still sound good afterwards though, not exactly like original though.

Secret of Mana - Ceremony
This one has plenty of PITA sounds, like the lead bell sound... one other thing that there's no way to get sound too good on FM.

Secret of Mana - Ghost and the Rose
The strings would get buthcered, but other than those, it would convert to FM quite well.

Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu - Chapter 2
The pads on the background and the stringy trumpets will be difficult but all else is completely FMable, and percussion would be superior on MD.

Super Castlvania IV - Simon's Theme
This is completely FMable, there's no instruments that are hard to do on FM, and the tune itself is very tinny like poorly done FM tunes are, so it helps on that regard, looooool.
Percussion can be made superior as usual

Castlevania Dracula X - Richter's Theme *
The lead in the beginning is not that easy to do. A friend of mine did a MD version long ago with a very early version of my MD sound system, I think 2 years ago, does not sound too good compared to this, which I heard for the first time... This tune is not too suitable on MD, the lead instrument is not easy to get sounding too great.

Tactics Ogre - Royal Palace Dance
Tactics Ogre - Fear is only the beining
Tactics Ogre - Limitation
Percusussion can be vastly enhanced, but lot of the string stuff will be difficult to do. There echoiness will get reduced too.

I used SPC's not the YT links.

I don't want to go through music i'm not fond of again

by KungFuFurby on 2010-08-24 (#66651)

I'm active on SNESMusic.org, which contains real SPC files of SNES music, if you want to compare them to MD music. It also comes with a list of SPC players for Mac, Windows and Linux.

I also know of a collection of MD music in VGM Format... Project 2612.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-24 (#66653)

tomaitheous wrote:

Even TVs nowadays have these funny filters that distort the picture (some sort of smart smoothing filter). I can't stand them. I can hear the muffleness people talk about on the SNES. And to be quite honest, it's really not as big an issue as most people make it out to be. I also hear artifacts in the YM2612 chip. Digital artifacts. And yet, no one seems to bring this up.

I always hear digital artifacts on the YM2612. PCM and PSG chips don't have the digital artifacts FM chips do.

by mic_ on 2010-08-24 (#66655)

psycopathicteen wrote:
You've italicsized Richter's theme from Dracula X.

I would say that it would sound better on the NES than on the Genesis. The NES was better suited for trance style music than the Genesis, when the Genesis was better for "funky" music.

If only Yamaha used more than just sine waveforms this wouldn't be a problem.

You'd like their YMF292 chip then (used in the SEGA Saturn). You can pass arbitrary waveforms to the FM operators. And it also lets you configure the operators in pretty much any way you want (so it's not limitied to just 2 or 4 operators per channel, or 16 different ways of connecting the operators).
Plus each of the 32 operators can be used as a plain PCM channel.

The main problem (as with much of the rest of the Saturn) is that with all this flexibility it gets pretty complicated. The sound processor manual alone is about 100 pages, and still leaves out a lot of detail in some places (especially regarding the DSP).

by Bregalad on 2010-08-24 (#66667)

Quote:
You'd like their YMF292 chip then (used in the SEGA Saturn).

Looks like a great chip. Being able of both PCM and FM, nobody can ever complain.
And it's got 32-channels while the concurrent Playstation had "only" 24 channels.

Quote:
I edited the below with what I believe could be done on MD, at least when I use my own sound setup... I have a good 3 years of experience with MD so I have a pretty good idea what I can do :

Man I didn't expect so much feed back ! Thank you for investing time in it.

So basically, you say the strings, pad and bell like instrument would be ass to port, but that bass and percussion could be improved.

I wonder, HOW could the bass and percussion be possibly improved ? When you say the bass sucks on the SNES do you mean the specific bass guitar sample used for this specific game, or do you mean low frequencies in general ? Because just before you said the trebble sucks on the SNES so you're basically saying that everything sucks, which is wrong.

Anyway it's true some MD songs have good "synth bass" instruments, but they are very different from what an bass guitar would sound (not that one is best over another). Hironically, even the "Synth Bass 1" and "Synth Bass 2" GM instrument sounded like crap on my old PC, even though the COULD have sounded good.

About percussion, I fail to see how you could improve them. They already sound pretty realistic, especially in Chrono Trigger, and I don't see how they could be improved in any way (exept adding reverb to them maybe). Can you provide any example of great sounding percussion on the MD ?

And you talked about instruments that would take multiple channels. This mean it's possible to use multiple FM channel simultaneously to produce more accurate instruments ?

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-24 (#66668)

I think TmEE meant the percussion could be better becuase percussion is supposed to be loud and crispy.

by HJRodrigo on 2010-08-24 (#66671)

TmEE wrote:
HJRodrigo wrote:
SNES
MD

SNES one sound so weak... very very soft sounds, crappy snare, even worse cymbals. Amiga game sounds worse than both of those though.

I agree the drums sound alot better on the MD for that song, but over all the snes song sounds better to me. I can imagine the actual instruments being played for the SNES song. The MD sounds too much like "bleeps" and just reminds me that it is all synthesized. I ordered Pier Solar awhile ago and I can't wait to hear the sound for that game, as I believe that game will do justice to the MD's audio.

by tokumaru on 2010-08-24 (#66678)

HJRodrigo wrote:
I agree the drums sound alot better on the MD for that song, but over all the snes one sounds better to me. I can imagine the instruments being played for the SNES one. The MD sounds too much like "bleeps" and just reminds me that it is all synthesized.

This song in particular (Super/Mega Turrican 1-1), I happened to like the MD version more. The melody sounds better there IMO, regardless of the instruments.

I agree that MD songs sound more "bleepy" and SNES songs more realistic, but is that always a good thing? Let's think about graphics for example: most of the games we play have stylized graphics rather than realistic photographs, and we like them like that. So I don't think that the sounds produced by the MD are out of place at all, the fake sound fits perfectly with the fake graphics, and I find the final result very pleasing.

by HJRodrigo on 2010-08-24 (#66689)

All this talk about sound reminds me about blarrg's demo, also posted somewhere on this forum. Which as byuu pointed out "essentially proves once and for all that the SNES can produce better sound than the Genesis, as the Genesis has only an 8-bit DAC". So I think the issue boils down to, which system had more good dedicated game programmers and composers. Personally I think the SMS had better graphics and sound than the NES (Just compare Ghostbusters), yet the NES seemed to get more "enjoyable" games (due to more programmers working on this system). I bet the ratio of good to bad games is higher for the sms than the nes, but the nes wins in terms of sheer volume. So if we are to compare systems I think it should not be based on specs of the systems, but which system you could get the most out of... 32x and CD attachment might give a slight advantage to the MD, although honestly most CD games were crappy. I guess both systems are truthfully equals in the end... It is like comparing apples to oranges .

P.S. Keep in mind I am biased towards sega consoles, but I did feel the SNES had better sound and graphics (Just as I felt the SMS did when compared to the NES). I just think the MD had/has more to offer... Even now games are still being released/sold for it (Beggar Prince, Pier Solar, Legend of Wukong, and Frog Feast)

by smkd on 2010-08-24 (#66697)

tokumaru wrote:
I agree that MD songs sound more "bleepy" and SNES songs more realistic, but is that always a good thing?

I don't mind either sort, aslong as one doesn't try to imitate the other. The MD library had far too much of this poor imitation using FM and is probably the #1 reason I don't care for most of what the library sounds like.

by TmEE on 2010-08-25 (#66699)

As for that demo, yea, you cannot do 16bit stereo on MD. I have tried to do stereo on mono DAC for quite a few times and while I get great results on emulator, on real HW things sound CRAP (and it is an understatemet !!!). I once experimented with PCM playback over FM channels but it did not turn out well... in theory I could have got perhaps 10bit or 11bit stereo but timings played a big part and things just sounded shit in the end.
But at least I can do 110KHz PCM playback, though on real HW its 26KHz max, going over is not effective and YM stops working after 70KHz (you need hard reset to bring it back to life )

I was writing a good reply here and power just cut off D:
I'll do my best to write it again...

Bregalad wrote:
Man I didn't expect so much feed back ! Thank you for investing time in it.

So basically, you say the strings, pad and bell like instrument would be ass to port, but that bass and percussion could be improved.

pads are easy for the most part but there's some stringy sounding ones which are PITA... anything having string characteristics will be PITA to achieve.

Bregalad wrote:
I wonder, HOW could the bass and percussion be possibly improved ? When you say the bass sucks on the SNES do you mean the specific bass guitar sample used for this specific game, or do you mean low frequencies in general ? Because just before you said the trebble sucks on the SNES so you're basically saying that everything sucks, which is wrong.

By bass sucking I meant that it sounds like its coming through a wall, the tune where I said it had it like that, though one could say it is intentional.
By improving percussion I meant having higher quality samples used..
more about it below

Bregalad wrote:
Anyway it's true some MD songs have good "synth bass" instruments, but they are very different from what an bass guitar would sound (not that one is best over another). Hironically, even the "Synth Bass 1" and "Synth Bass 2" GM instrument sounded like crap on my old PC, even though the COULD have sounded good.

One thing where FM shines is bass, there is no better bass than FM bass, and it is very easy to simulate real instruments 1:1 on FM. The fingered bass and picked bass instruments I use in my MD stuff have 1:1 waveforms to my bass guitar, I spent a good while tuning the instruments to sound REAL, the sound is indistingushable from the real instrument (bear in mind that there's million guitars out there, and they all have different sound). FM generally sounds very very good at low freq stuff, on high freqs you may get sample rate related artifacts and things tend to sound tinny... but on low freqs you get clean, full, rich sound.

Bregalad wrote:
About percussion, I fail to see how you could improve them. They already sound pretty realistic, especially in Chrono Trigger, and I don't see how they could be improved in any way (exept adding reverb to them maybe). Can you provide any example of great sounding percussion on the MD ?

The percussion just sounds bad, as in there's no high freq content that nearly all (well, bass drums don't really) percussive instruments produce (just look at the spectrograms of any instrument).
SNES has limited sample memory, plus you got to store SFX and music data plus playback program there, so I guess in typical scenarios you got some 40KB of space left for music samples. I use 500KB of samples in my MD stuff, 23KHz samples. When I "SNES" them, they'll take 250KB, then I'll remove the reduntant samples(my setup does not do freq scaling) I'll get some 170KB and when I use only the samples that one song would use it goes to 100KB... now only way to fit them anywhere is by selectively lowering the sample rates, and perhaps using loopping effects on things like cymbals to get things fit better (Capcom did it a lot and it sounds like crap for my ears)... I could also remove the reverberation from my samples and use the SPC echo instead, at the cost of some RAM and having worse sound due to "ventilation shaft effect". And then I am able to put those samples into the RAM... but I need space for musical instruments too, but luckily with those you can easily use looping effects and other things... but tiny samples result in "artificial" sound if you can hear the loop points and its the case with a lot of tunes I listened there.
I like Amiga a lot when it comes to sampled music, it may be technically inferior but its got storage to hold quite high quality samples.

As for examples on MD, there's only few games that have good sample playback, one that immediately pops to mind is Atomic Runner, its single channel but very nice and crisp percussion.
I can provide examples of what I have done though :

Sunset, Beach and Scrolling text : http://8bc.org/music/TmEE/Sunset%2C+bea ... ling+text/
One Last Step : http://8bc.org/music/TmEE/One+Last+Step/
Evil Forces Are Sneaking Around : http://8bc.org/music/TmEE/Evil+Forces+Are+Sneaking+Around+(MD)/
Sonic Advance 2 Multiplayer Rings remake : http://8bc.org/music/TmEE/Sonic+Advance ... ga+Drive-/
Some Menu Tune (nothing special though, but sounds good) : http://8bc.org/music/TmEE/Some+menu+tune.../

http://8bc.org/members/TmEE/

Its all done on the Z80, everything... 68K is not required at all so the game code can run with no performance hit on MD.

I could upload my music test ROM, but it will only sound almost acceptable on Kega Fusion... believe it or not but most emulators fail at DAC emulation... the music ROM would sound awful on Gens and majority of other emulators, on Fusion is acceptable, but nowhere near real hardware. The highest useful sample rate for PCM on MD is half the YM rate, so ~26KHz, going over it results in missed writes and bad sound. My 26KHz PCM demos sound exceptionally poor on any emulator but very lovely on real hardware.

Bregalad wrote:
And you talked about instruments that would take multiple channels. This mean it's possible to use multiple FM channel simultaneously to produce more accurate instruments ?

I use at least 2 channels to do one instruments, to get full rich sound, sometimes even more. Panning, detuning etc. on the channels gives lot of extra aswell.

by Bregalad on 2010-08-25 (#66703)

Quote:
I use at least 2 channels to do one instruments, to get full rich sound, sometimes even more. Panning, detuning etc. on the channels gives lot of extra aswell.

I guess it makes quite a lot of difference. On SNES, only 1 channel is needed per instrument, but you have only 8 channels.
Quote:
I could upload my music test ROM, but it will only sound almost acceptable on Kega Fusion... believe it or not but most emulators fail at DAC emulation... the music ROM would sound awful on Gens and majority of other emulators, on Fusion is acceptable, but nowhere near real hardware. The highest useful sample rate for PCM on MD is half the YM rate, so ~26KHz, going over it results in missed writes and bad sound. My 26KHz PCM demos sound exceptionally poor on any emulator but very lovely on real hardware.

That's too bad. I guess I should take your word and say those emulator sucks. So I guess 99% of MD games did just not use their hardware well ? Oh wait, 512k for a sample is total overkill for a game ! That's probably why nobody did that. It's nice to have good sounding samples, but if it required you to double your ROM size then nobody would go for it. The same applies to SNES somehow - a game would typically re-use samples from another song instead of coming with fresh samples for every new song just because of that.

Quote:
SNES has limited sample memory, plus you got to store SFX and music data plus playback program there, so I guess in typical scenarios you got some 40KB of space left for music samples. I use 500KB of samples in my MD stuff, 23KHz samples. When I "SNES" them, they'll take 250KB, then I'll remove the reduntant samples(my setup does not do freq scaling) I'll get some 170KB and when I use only the samples that one song would use it goes to 100KB... now only way to fit them anywhere is by selectively lowering the sample rates, and perhaps using loopping effects on things like cymbals to get things fit better (Capcom did it a lot and it sounds like crap for my ears)...

First of all I should say I'm impressed by the percussion quality in the samples you provided. It really sounds close to a real drum kit. The cymbals sounds especially nice. However, this only increase the contrast with the other instruments which sounds very synthetic.

The SNES's memory allow for 7.2 sec of sample playback at 32kHz. You should remove the space for the code, data and echo buffer so let's say about 5 sec remains. This is enough to record quite a few percussion insturment at full rate, and Chrono Trigger did that - all percussions in this game are even oversampled, recorded at higher than 32k - the only way to take the fullest of them is to use an emulator. I know you'll be saying "crap if you need an emulator to get better sound this suck" ok but at least there is a way to get better sound.

Quote:
One thing where FM shines is bass, there is no better bass than FM bass, and it is very easy to simulate real instruments 1:1 on FM. The fingered bass and picked bass instruments I use in my MD stuff have 1:1 waveforms to my bass guitar, I spent a good while tuning the instruments to sound REAL, the sound is indistingushable from the real instrument (bear in mind that there's million guitars out there, and they all have different sound). FM generally sounds very very good at low freq stuff, on high freqs you may get sample rate related artifacts and things tend to sound tinny... but on low freqs you get clean, full, rich sound.

Would love to hear that... links ?
Anyways, the reason bass doesn't sounds good on some SPCs, is because the developpers thinks "oh well this is a bass sample so we won't need high freqs, let's record it at a very low sample rate and it'll be allright". Needless to say, this isn't the way to go. A game where the bass sample is recorded well is Final Fantasy 5, I think it's recorded at a very low note so you can hear a nice plug on all bass notes.
You can hear this pretty nicely on this song (that you hear 80% of the time playing the game btw) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yLQU4tVOeA

Also allow me to seriously doubt that FM will reproduce an instrument better than PCM. I understand that you are proud to have made good sounding instruments on FM - you can because it's no easy task - but that doesn't make it more accurate than PCM. If basically you based yourself on a sample on your bass guitar to get the FM instrument done, then technically in the best case it'll sound as good than the original sample of bass guitar - that is a PCM sample. Of course, as you say yourself, there is a million different sounding guitars possibles, especially if you use an amplifier which can have a million of settings - you can also use a mute, plug/slap the strings in different ways, have distortion, etc...
This not only applies to guitars, but to all instruments. That's why modern and expensive synthesizers use many samples for each instruments instead of just one, for different key regions and different velocities, and combine them with a digital filter. The SNES can't do much of this because of the limited memory, but yet those synthesizer are PCM based and not FM based.

by smkd on 2010-08-25 (#66707)

May aswell ask this since I don't really tinker with MD audio:

@TmEE: Is there a noticable performance hit on 68k when Z80 frequently accesses cart ROM for sound samples? From what I read before, Z80 gets priority on ROM and 68k is halted by bus arbiter on every Z80 access (unless DMA is running at the same time?) Do you see a noticable impact when playing PCM from cart ROM? It seems like a small impact but I don't know how fancy your engine is =)

Bregalad wrote:
Also allow me to seriously doubt that FM will reproduce an instrument better than PCM. I understand that you are proud to have made good sounding instruments on FM - you can because it's no easy task - but that doesn't make it more accurate than PCM. If basically you based yourself on a sample on your bass guitar to get the FM instrument done, then technically in the best case it'll sound as good than the original sample of bass guitar - that is a PCM sample.

A bass really is better done on FM synth. I much rather hear that than a PCM recording that may sound poorer on certain frequencies and compressed to hell. It is much cleaner compared to PCM and sounds just as real.

NeoGeo has a far superior YM2610 vs YM2612 with many PCM and 4 FM synth, and almost always the musician chose FM synth rather than PCM to do stuff like bass guitars and synth organs. It was like this all the way through to the final releases. It sounds so much better for it. Something like a slap bass IMHO is better done on PCM, but some tracks (Metal Slug) tried it on FM with decent-ish results. Bass through FM synth sounds more real than what PCM could deliver, if only because there are no artifacts.

by TmEE on 2010-08-25 (#66709)

Bregalad wrote:
I guess it makes quite a lot of difference. On SNES, only 1 channel is needed per instrument, but you have only 8 channels.

I got 5x FM, 2x PCM and 3x PSG (PSG noise is not utilized by anything but SFX) channels in my sound setup.
1x FM for bass, 2x FM for lead, 2x FM for backing melody, 2x PCM for percussion, 3x PSG for chords... my typical setup when making anything.

Quote:
That's too bad. I guess I should take your word and say those emulator sucks. So I guess 99% of MD games did just not use their hardware well ? Oh wait, 512k for a sample is total overkill for a game ! That's probably why nobody did that. It's nice to have good sounding samples, but if it required you to double your ROM size then nobody would go for it. The same applies to SNES somehow - a game would typically re-use samples from another song instead of coming with fresh samples for every new song just because of that.

That is true that most MD games did not utilize the sound HW well... I have had thoughts of hacking and improving several games... but hacking is not really my stuff, writing new code is (and building hardware ).
I got 4MBytes allocated for sound alone in my WiP MD game The remaining 12Mbytes is for all else.... going into the GBA territory, lol
Some bigger games did have lots of samples used, like EWJ, there's over half a Mbyte of samples in use there. Mostly voices and SFX, and few percussive samples. most games used one bassdrum and one snare... rarely a cymbal too but most drivers had seriously pathetic PCM playback and things just sound awful... the scratchiness associated with MD voices are 100% caused by lazy/bad/inexperienced coders.

Quote:
First of all I should say I'm impressed by the percussion quality in the samples you provided. It really sounds close to a real drum kit. The cymbals sounds especially nice. However, this only increase the contrast with the other instruments which sounds very synthetic.

I am going to rewrite my sound system, when I have moved out... one thing I will be doing 4 channel PCM playback that is better than my current 2 channel playback, but its got some aid from hardware (a banker, to replace the mindbogginly slow banker on Z80 side).
I don't make "real" music, I always like synthy stuff so that reflects on the instruments etc. I do have couple of unfinished guitar tracks though...

Quote:
The SNES's memory allow for 7.2 sec of sample playback at 32kHz. You should remove the space for the code, data and echo buffer so let's say about 5 sec remains. This is enough to record quite a few percussion insturment at full rate, and Chrono Trigger did that - all percussions in this game are even oversampled, recorded at higher than 32k - the only way to take the fullest of them is to use an emulator. I know you'll be saying "crap if you need an emulator to get better sound this suck" ok but at least there is a way to get better sound.

No, I'm not saying crap
I got inverse situation here... thigns sound bad on emulator, good on real HW... hehe

Quote:
Would love to hear that... links ?
Anyways, the reason bass doesn't sounds good on some SPCs, is because the developpers thinks "oh well this is a bass sample so we won't need high freqs, let's record it at a very low sample rate and it'll be allright". Needless to say, this isn't the way to go. A game where the bass sample is recorded well is Final Fantasy 5, I think it's recorded at a very low note so you can hear a nice plug on all bass notes.
You can hear this pretty nicely on this song (that you hear 80% of the time playing the game btw) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yLQU4tVOeA

I got to check that tune at home... currently at work, no sound here.
EDIT: Listened, and bass is indeed nice... can't say that for the trumpets though

Here's my music ROM : http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... MFPLAY.RAR
There's I think 70 tunes with various quality levels and states of completness... lot of old stuff and new.
I tend to use my synthbass2 instrument a lot, for example "Turbo" uses it. "Empty Streets" uses one of my real basses, "Calm Countryside" uses couple of lovely guitars.
You'll also hear quite a few tunes there with quite busy percussion, I hope you find something you'll like in it ^^

Quote:
Also allow me to seriously doubt that FM will reproduce an instrument better than PCM. I understand that you are proud to have made good sounding instruments on FM - you can because it's no easy task - but that doesn't make it more accurate than PCM. If basically you based yourself on a sample on your bass guitar to get the FM instrument done, then technically in the best case it'll sound as good than the original sample of bass guitar - that is a PCM sample. Of course, as you say yourself, there is a million different sounding guitars possibles, especially if you use an amplifier which can have a million of settings - you can also use a mute, plug/slap the strings in different ways, have distortion, etc...
This not only applies to guitars, but to all instruments. That's why modern and expensive synthesizers use many samples for each instruments instead of just one, for different key regions and different velocities, and combine them with a digital filter. The SNES can't do much of this because of the limited memory, but yet those synthesizer are PCM based and not FM based.

IF I only have FM to work with of course I'll do my best to get good sounds... I never said I don't like PCM etc... I got quite a few sample based tunes. As long as there's enough storage in the synth etc. to hold GOOD samples I am perfectly fine with samples.
2x of my better tunes, made with Yamaha YMF718 + MIDI Tracker :
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3692260/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4208306/ (this should give you an idea why I want 4x PCM channels )
(don't click any links there, otherwise you may end up on NSFW content........)

smkd wrote:
May aswell ask this since I don't really tinker with MD audio:

@TmEE: Is there a noticable performance hit on 68k when Z80 frequently accesses cart ROM for sound samples? From what I read before, Z80 gets priority on ROM and 68k is halted by bus arbiter on every Z80 access (unless DMA is running at the same time?) Do you see a noticable impact when playing PCM from cart ROM? It seems like a small impact but I don't know how fancy your engine is =)

The Z80 will give a tiny hit, its about 5% when Z80 does about 100KB/sec ROM access while 68K runs. There's first come, first serve principle, whoever makes the access first gets it and makes other wait. Luckily 68K does one memory access every 2nd cycle in tightest case, and Z80 can use that one unused cycle, and the performance hit gets negligable ^^
68K slowness has its good sides in some situations

smkd wrote:
NeoGeo has a far superior YM2610 vs YM2612 with many PCM and 4 FM synth, and almost always the musician chose FM synth rather than PCM to do stuff like bass guitars and synth organs. It was like this all the way through to the final releases. It sounds so much better for it. Something like a slap bass IMHO is better done on PCM, but some tracks (Metal Slug) tried it on FM with decent-ish results. Bass through FM synth sounds more real than what PCM could deliver, if only because there are no artifacts.

Slap bass can be very nicely done on FM, just some dedication is needed when fine tuning your parameters. Listen Thunder Force IV on MD, there's some really awesome slap bass there

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-25 (#66729)

I'm wondering if I can find a comparison between a real YM2612 and emulation. Something that would make the difference obvious like using really high frequencies. Youtube is okay if that is all you can find.

by mic_ on 2010-08-25 (#66735)

YouTube is not ok for that sort of stuff. The recordings should be uncompressed.

I might have some comparisons somewhere. I can check if I can find them later, unless TmEE is able to dig something up before that.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-26 (#66746)

Is the difference big, or is it a hardly noticeable difference?

Similar question, if the VRC7 is also FM synth, why does TFM tracker sound out of tone on higher octaves, when Famitracker in VRC7 mode doesn't have that problem?

by tepples on 2010-08-26 (#66757)

I wish I had an Everdrive so I could run my TFM songs on authentic hardware and answer that question. It might be an off-by-one in one tracker's playback code's pitch processing. I remember NerdTracker II's playback code (for NES) had the same problem.

by Jarhmander on 2010-08-26 (#66764)

WTF? There's separate registers for the frequency and the multiplier, so basically if within a full scale it's in tune, then on every octave it should be tuned, 'cause the multiplier is basically what you'll use to change octave. Check this out, this is a rip of the spec sheet of the YM2413, a very closely related chip. Also, this document from Kevin Horton explain the same thing in "How do the frequency registers work?"

by mic_ on 2010-08-26 (#66765)

I only found an old recording from my Megadrive, but no corresponding file from an emulator..

Anyway, I didn't think TFM Music Maker supported OPLL chips(?) OPLL and OPN plays in different leagues and shouldn't be equated just because they both use FM synthesis. The VRC7 is basically a crappier version of the YM2413, which itself is crap.
You'll probably have to ask Shiru or someone else with inside knowledge about TFM Music Maker why it sounds out of tune.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-26 (#66768)

I'll upload a WAV file comparing TFM and VRC7 with supposedly the same parameters, when I get home.

by TmEE on 2010-08-26 (#66769)

The multiplier is per operator basis... if you increase multiplier by one on all operators you get one octave higher note, but if you keep one mul lower then not.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-26 (#66775)

I was just comparing VRC7 and TFM and from the instruments they sounded more or less the same, but when using a ADSR envelopes on the modulator, there is a huge difference. On TFM, a change in modulator amplitude makes a really harsh sound, while the VRC7 isn't as harsh, but more wobbly.

by TmEE on 2010-08-27 (#66820)

The closer the TL is to zero on a modulator the harsher the sound is.

by psycopathicteen on 2010-08-27 (#66840)

I always knew that. I meant the ADSR envelope sounds different on both chips. Okay, I don't know how to describe it.

by smkd on 2010-08-27 (#66854)

TmEE wrote:
The Z80 will give a tiny hit, its about 5% when Z80 does about 100KB/sec ROM access while 68K runs. There's first come, first serve principle, whoever makes the access first gets it and makes other wait. Luckily 68K does one memory access every 2nd cycle in tightest case, and Z80 can use that one unused cycle, and the performance hit gets negligable ^^
68K slowness has its good sides in some situations

Cool, 5% sounds alright for vastly improved audio.

TmEE wrote:
Slap bass can be very nicely done on FM, just some dedication is needed when fine tuning your parameters. Listen Thunder Force IV on MD, there's some really awesome slap bass there

It sounds better than what I heard in MS, but I wonder if the params can be tweaked to sound less 'thin' like this. It's more convincing than what I heard in Metal Slug anyway =)

by TmEE on 2010-08-28 (#66858)

The Galaxy Force II tune sounds close to what my own slap bass sounds like, there's bass chords there... I think the MD version of that game sounds about same regarding that instrument, it's been a while since I last played

Quote:
I always knew that. I meant the ADSR envelope sounds different on both chips. Okay, I don't know how to describe it.

ADSR is of course different between different family chips, OPN and OPM have rsame parameters, but OPL has different and lower accuracy parameters and OPZ(stuff Yamaha use in their synthesizers) have higher accurqacy ones.

by 6502freak on 2010-08-29 (#66882)

psycopathicteen wrote:
I'm wondering if I can find a comparison between a real YM2612 and emulation. Something that would make the difference obvious like using really high frequencies. Youtube is okay if that is all you can find.

The biggest difference between an original YM2612 and a very good emulator, like KEGA, is the aliasing distortion on the real chip. On my Rev. 1 Mega Drive (the one with the EXT connector on the back), when I listen to a tune via headphones, I can clearly make out a distortion effect when a waveform fades out.

This is probably because the on-chip DAC of the YM2612 has a very limited number of bits compared to the external Yamaha YM3012/3014 DAC's used with most of their FM chips. So far, no emulator gets this correctly. Most people using the Emulator would probably complain once this characteristic of the original chip is implemented.

I have played a lot with FM, and it's really like tweaking a real music instrument. It's so easy to screw up, making it sound distorted and shrill, which is probably the reason why lots of MD/GEN tunes don't sound very good. But once, in the hands of a composer who knows this stuff, it can sound really awesome!

by tepples on 2010-08-29 (#66883)

6502freak wrote:
The biggest difference between an original YM2612 and a very good emulator, like KEGA, is the aliasing distortion on the real chip. [...] This is probably because the on-chip DAC of the YM2612 has a very limited number of bits compared to the external Yamaha YM3012/3014 DAC's used with most of their FM chips. So far, no emulator gets this correctly. Most people using the Emulator would probably complain once this characteristic of the original chip is implemented.

Games like Blaster Master and Faxanadu look better on an NTSC TV than on a PlayChoice; this helped popularize NTSC TV emulation in emulators such as Nestopia. Tunes exploiting nontrivial quirks of the BRR decoder for noise generation did the same for SNES DSP emulation. So if we want to popularize accurate emulation of an FM chip's artifacts, perhaps someone needs to make a tune that sounds better on a Genesis than on the current emulators.

To what extent can this be worked around? If an instrument in the mix uses only two operators, perhaps it could be run in the 2x2 algorithm (algorithm 4 in TFMMaker), with quiet noise on one pair of operators with an amplitude of one LSB. Would that work as a dither noise source?

by 6502freak on 2010-08-30 (#66939)

tepples wrote:
Games like Blaster Master and Faxanadu look better on an NTSC TV than on a PlayChoice; this helped popularize NTSC TV emulation in emulators such as Nestopia. Tunes exploiting nontrivial quirks of the BRR decoder for noise generation did the same for SNES DSP emulation. So if we want to popularize accurate emulation of an FM chip's artifacts, perhaps someone needs to make a tune that sounds better on a Genesis than on the current emulators.

I think there is a very real chance that some Genesis/Mega Drive composers fine tuned their songs according to the audio output of the real chip. It's hard to describe how that difference changes the characteristics of the sound. It's quite subtle, but once you realize it, you always hear it.

To me, YM2612 emulation sounds more transparent, but also more... "glassy". The sound of the real chip is a bit more... "beefy".

It seems the lack of DAC resolution adds, in a noisy way, more amplitude to the lower volume spectrum.

Quote:
To what extent can this be worked around? If an instrument in the mix uses only two operators, perhaps it could be run in the 2x2 algorithm (algorithm 4 in TFMMaker), with quiet noise on one pair of operators with an amplitude of one LSB. Would that work as a dither noise source?

I think it always acts as some kind of dither source, hence the subtle impression that the sound is less glassy, but also a bit less defined, on the real chip. I think it can be compared to the triangle wave of the NES. The first Nesticle versions emulated it straight, by using all the bits of the sound channel available. This resulted in a much more dull sound compared to the "beefiness" created by the aliasing of the actual triangle wave, which is only 4 bits in resolution.

We know that the YM2612 mixes sound by multiplexing the six channels through one single DAC. A naive viewpoint would assume that this DAC is 8 Bit, and that the software DAC register is simply being sent to it when the timeslot for channel 6 is reached (given that the FM portion of the channel is deactivated).

But that wouldn't explain the amount of distortion going on for the FM sound, because it sounds more like 6-7 Bit. We know that the other YM chips output their sound data in a floating point format to their external DACs, so maybe this distortion is a result of a simplified on-chip conversion. Like there is some kind of non-linear mapping going on which emphasizes the lower bits of the DAC.

This can only be resolved by decapping the YM2612 and tracing the MOL and MOR lines.

by TmEE on 2010-08-30 (#66940)

The discrete YM2612 chip used in MD1 has a 9bit DAC. The one used inside MD2 ASIC seems to have more than 10bits, but not above 12bits. The quantization noise is much lower on MD2 than it is on MD1.

Then there's a load of other issues caused by external analog circuitry... most MDs got heavy filtering happen and when it comes to MD2s then low quality opamp chips with their bandwidths exceeded thus producing high amount of distortions. MD1s generally suffer from hiss and muffledness but those are all caused by headphone amp chip + the lowpass filters.

by 6502freak on 2010-08-30 (#66942)

TmEE wrote:
The discrete YM2612 chip used in MD1 has a 9bit DAC. The one used inside MD2 ASIC seems to have more than 10bits, but not above 12bits. The quantization noise is much lower on MD2 than it is on MD1.

I am somehow not convinced that the noise is generated by the 9 Bit DAC. I have the feeling that the internal data being fed to the YM2612 DAC is somehow altered to make it appear like listening to a 6 Bit sample. Even 8 Bit samples don't sound nearly as noisy as the real YM2612 when playing quiet sounds. And it's ONLY in quiet areas this strange distortion happens.

Quote:
MD1s generally suffer from hiss and muffledness but those are all caused by headphone amp chip + the lowpass filters.

Yeah, but this is again no explanation for this strange anomaly in the sound output. I can also hear it on the AV connector on the back.

It's a shame I have currently no possibility to test any kind of code on my Mega Drive.

by TmEE on 2010-08-30 (#66946)

It may be because you're not running the channels in full blast. For example PCM is 12...18db more quieter than FM at full blast and games are thus using low enough volumes on FM so that PCM is not overshadowed.
Also, I have noticed thato n MD1 the PCM is much more noisy than on MD2. So I guess there is a design flaw somewhere.... ?

MD2 certainly does not have any of those features... sound is crisp and clean, and rather close to what emulator would produce.

by 6502freak on 2010-08-31 (#66993)

TmEE wrote:
Also, I have noticed thato n MD1 the PCM is much more noisy than on MD2. So I guess there is a design flaw somewhere.... ?

As far as I know, the MD2 has an integrated chipset which merges the YM2612 with the VDP, so chances are high that they reworked the chip design. I never had a MD2, so unfortunately, I can not comment on this.

Quote:
MD2 certainly does not have any of those features... sound is crisp and clean, and rather close to what emulator would produce.

If that's the case, then the distortion effect would have to be made optional in an Emulator, or simpler, let the user choose between MD1 and MD2 configurations. However, I doubt that any game released before 1994/95 takes the non-distorted sound into account.

I wonder if the CMOS version of the YM2612 (YM3438) has the same design flaw, or if Yamaha fixed it. In theory, they should be swappable. Have to get my hands on a System 18 board...

by TmEE on 2010-08-31 (#66996)

I had a chance to listen a recording from a YM3438 chip in a MD1 and it sounded identical when it comes to noises etc. My firend had to rework the input stages of the mixer though as the output is different form YM2612 (higher impedance).