MMC5 audio polarity

The MMC5 audio page on the wiki states that "the polarity of all MMC5 channels is reversed compared to the APU."

What does that mean, exactly? Should the 0s and 1s in the APU's duty cycle sequences be swapped?

It means that if the NES squares produce a positive voltage on a "1", the MMC5 squares doing the equivalent thing will produce a negative voltage.

I would suggest inverting the output. Don't make changes to the internal digital logic before output. Simply exchanging 1 and 0 is not the right idea, as remember this squares also have a volume control. 0 should still output 0, and this makes a difference especially if you are simulating an analog filter on the output. If you could replace 1 with -1, that would be conceptually more like what you want, but it would only be the correct implementation if you are multiplying it with the volume and not using some boolean logic on the volume.

So the MMC5 is actually outputting a negative voltage?

Yes. If your resampler can handle only unsigned signals, try subtracting the MMC5's output from 30.

Signed signals aren't a problem; I'll give it a try. Thanks, guys.

This seems to work fine, but I have a couple of (maybe dumb) questions:
- Where is the MMC5's negative voltage source?
- Why doesn't this cause issues? For example, wouldn't similarly setup square waves on the APU and MMC5 cancel each other out?


That's inverting the signal, though, not generating a negative signal...

They might cancel if they're exactly in phase, just as a 2A03 pulse wave with duty cycle $40 (1/4) and one with duty cycle $C0 (3/4) cancel. But in practice, such waves are rarely exactly in phase because they're playing different notes in the first place.


There's no audible difference between the two.

Voltage isn't absolute, it's a relative difference. Whatever the baseline output of the 2A03 or MMC5 is, there is a highpass filter which shifts that baseline to ground (0). It doesn't need a negative voltage source, it only needs to go negative relative to its baseline output. Inverting and negating are the same thing in this situation.

ok -- I think I get it now. What you're saying is that, pre-highpass filter, whether the signal looks like this:

or this:


the output post-highpass is the same. Right?

Yes, that is correct.

It's standard for a lot of audio devices to include a mild highpass filter to get rid of DC offset, because it can reduce amplifier headroom, cause inefficient use of power, or cause other problems for an audio system. You also can't hear a DC offset.