I didn't use the MD version because I wanted to showcase a track produced by two samples based audio processors
The C64 rendition of the Desert Dream tunes is incredible for example
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Has the Snes sound chip gotten a bad rep recently?
- Thread starter Oscarzx n
- Start date
I didn't use the MD version because I wanted to showcase a track produced by two samples based audio processors
The C64 rendition of the Desert Dream tunes is incredible for example
I see. Neat stuff nevertheless. Always love it when people push hardware beyond its supposed limits.
The homebrew scene has created some really impressive stuff on the Genesis.
Or SavagedRegime just doing absolutely wonderful stuff
Look at all dem channels being put to use. Crisp audio. Crystal clear sample playback. Goddamn.
SNES can emulate Genesis/MD sound with samples...
The SPC700 was crazy far ahead of its time. It could even match the SEGA CD's PCM chip, a console that came out a full year after the SNES and at nearly double the price!
The SPC700 was crazy far ahead of its time. It could even match the SEGA CD's PCM chip, a console that came out a full year after the SNES and at nearly double the price!
That's a nice approximation. Matthew Valente does good work.
But how is the SNES matching the Sega CD's PCM chip? This sounds noticeably cleaner than anything on the SNES.
I don't even know if this is the best example of PCM music on the Sega CD, since it's the only example I know of.
It's not emulation but a port and it's extremely well done at that.
It's a metaphor. It's an approximation, just like Zsnes was an approximation of a real SFC
I guess it all depends on:
-people's tastes
-the ability of the devs to make the most of the sound chips.
Genesis tracks don't have to all sound metallic just like SNES tracks don't all have to sound flat.
Example of a good use of the Genesis sound chip: (Streets of Rage 2)
Example of a good use of the SNES sound chip: (Lord of the Rings)
When I said it all boils down to preference, it's because some people will prefer one version over the other, even when it's so different that it's hard to compare per se. For example, the absolutely rockin' level 5 of Battletoads and Double Dragons (Composed by David Wise!)
Genesis version:
SNES version:
-people's tastes
-the ability of the devs to make the most of the sound chips.
Genesis tracks don't have to all sound metallic just like SNES tracks don't all have to sound flat.
Example of a good use of the Genesis sound chip: (Streets of Rage 2)
Example of a good use of the SNES sound chip: (Lord of the Rings)
When I said it all boils down to preference, it's because some people will prefer one version over the other, even when it's so different that it's hard to compare per se. For example, the absolutely rockin' level 5 of Battletoads and Double Dragons (Composed by David Wise!)
Genesis version:
SNES version:
to me it was just an insult to whoever went that way to recreate it well enough that it could actually fool people in thinking it came from a real Genesis which is not unlikely at all in a double blind test
SNES soundchip made very warm sounds... but to me, there is this special charm to the MD - something very unique, characteristic of its time, being able to pull out songs like Koshiro did...
The SNES was where it started sounding like classic audio tracks/songs, like on a CD (DKC for instance), even though early SNES games had this very particular sound too (Zelda LTTP ?)
The SNES was where it started sounding like classic audio tracks/songs, like on a CD (DKC for instance), even though early SNES games had this very particular sound too (Zelda LTTP ?)
No it was a reply to Muffin's claim that the SPC700 could outdo or match the PCM chip inside the MegaCD.
Both Valente and the ZSnes team did good work but even with how good their work was, it was still just an approximation of the original work.
Thankfully there's this
David Wise's original work on the Genesis is awful.
Hot damn, I prefer this to the official Genesis version. It almost sounds like a PC-88/PC-98 game!
I don't know why so much of the conversation in this thread is about the Genesis sound chip, or comparisons against the SNES.
When the OP was only about SNES, and conversation can be had about that subject without so many direct comparisons. Or at least without always comparing to only one contemporary competitor, when there are so many more (even from previous or later generations) .
It's obvious to me some people can't handle technical commentary about SNES limitations, even if it's civil and reasonable, and get pretty defensive.
I think nobody here is denying the SNES chip was a big technical advancement at its time, and some of the best videogame OSTs ever were delivered through it. It also made some kinds of music, like orchestrated or vocal music, feasible for the first time in consoles.
Just like the original Playstation was a big leap forward when it comes to graphics with the generalization of 3D, and gave us milestone creations like Metal Gear Solid games, that some people appreciate even today. But that pioneering nature came with some big limitations that nowadays are really clear, like lack of filtering, low poly counts or texture warping. And it's stupid to deny that many polished 2D games of the time or even before, like Metal Slug, Sonic 3 or Yoshi's Island, might look better and be much more pleasant to the eye of the current observer.
For my reasoning above, I have to disagree with this. SNES soundchip was not actually "really good" at sample based music. It was a pioneer that made sample based music possible, which was no small feat. But wasn't really good at it just as PSX wasn't really good at 3D graphics. Genesis (and other FM chips of the time) were really good indeed, but at a more limited set of possibilities.
When the OP was only about SNES, and conversation can be had about that subject without so many direct comparisons. Or at least without always comparing to only one contemporary competitor, when there are so many more (even from previous or later generations) .
It's obvious to me some people can't handle technical commentary about SNES limitations, even if it's civil and reasonable, and get pretty defensive.
Like this example, which labels reasoned criticism as "hate", and states that music from Capcom arcade games like SF2 or UN Squadron was "given to us by SNES".
Or this, comparing the cost of the whole units of Sega CD and SNES as a way to validate its sound chip, as if having a Compact Disc drive in 1991 was a lesser factor to that cost difference!
I think nobody here is denying the SNES chip was a big technical advancement at its time, and some of the best videogame OSTs ever were delivered through it. It also made some kinds of music, like orchestrated or vocal music, feasible for the first time in consoles.
Just like the original Playstation was a big leap forward when it comes to graphics with the generalization of 3D, and gave us milestone creations like Metal Gear Solid games, that some people appreciate even today. But that pioneering nature came with some big limitations that nowadays are really clear, like lack of filtering, low poly counts or texture warping. And it's stupid to deny that many polished 2D games of the time or even before, like Metal Slug, Sonic 3 or Yoshi's Island, might look better and be much more pleasant to the eye of the current observer.
For my reasoning above, I have to disagree with this. SNES soundchip was not actually "really good" at sample based music. It was a pioneer that made sample based music possible, which was no small feat. But wasn't really good at it just as PSX wasn't really good at 3D graphics. Genesis (and other FM chips of the time) were really good indeed, but at a more limited set of possibilities.
I like music from both sound chip, but the Genesis had notoriously bad sound drivers, so alot of western games sound like screeching.
SNES sound chip is IIRC sample based, and due to cartridge limitations, a lot of SNES games sound kind of muffled.
Both chips sound amazing with the right talent. David Wise got around the memory limitations by playing with the waveforms and this is how DKC trilogy sounded so brilliant. Uematsu and the Square-Enix RPGs on the SNES produced some of the most iconic soundtracks of gaming. Similarly Yuzo Koshiro did amazing work on the Genesis with Streets of Rage, among other titles.
I tend to think with decades removed from the console wars of the period, we can appreciate both the SNES/GENESIS as bringing 1) unique libraries 2) unique looking/sounding games unlike the current gen of consoles which are just homogenous PC parts from the same manufacturer packaged in a closed box with special sauce.
SNES sound chip is IIRC sample based, and due to cartridge limitations, a lot of SNES games sound kind of muffled.
Both chips sound amazing with the right talent. David Wise got around the memory limitations by playing with the waveforms and this is how DKC trilogy sounded so brilliant. Uematsu and the Square-Enix RPGs on the SNES produced some of the most iconic soundtracks of gaming. Similarly Yuzo Koshiro did amazing work on the Genesis with Streets of Rage, among other titles.
I tend to think with decades removed from the console wars of the period, we can appreciate both the SNES/GENESIS as bringing 1) unique libraries 2) unique looking/sounding games unlike the current gen of consoles which are just homogenous PC parts from the same manufacturer packaged in a closed box with special sauce.
The SPC700 didn't pioneer sample based music, Amiga's Paula from 1984 was already doing it with ease at either 28 or 56 khz depending on how much main memory you were willing to give it.
The SPC700 was more of a midi "alike" sound processor, which is why it made "orchestral" composition so much easier. But Midi wasn't anything new by then so I'm not quite sure what the SPC700 was pioneering exactly. The X68000 and the FM Towns already had Midi expansion cards exploited in various games (if say, you connected it to a Roland Soundcanvas) before the SFC even came out and so did the ST and Amiga of their time.
The quality of a given design choice in a console - especially on matters that can be described as "reputation" - is very commonly viewed in the context of competing hardware. And, the modern comparison between the SNES and the Genesis was brought up by the OP in the thread's original post, so it's hardly straying from the topic.
Man...Savaged Regime continually gifts us with awesome.
That's how that should have sounded in the first place.
Not to knock David Wise...his work on DKC is aces, but BTDD should have been better.
You're right. I don't really feel like regurgiating all the well trodden points in a thousand other threads directly comparing the two and wanted to keep the scope of the discussion centered around the original question. Hence why I don't really participate in responding to all the tired same old arguments being thrown about.
There are two main differentiators with the SPC700 with the first one being gaussian interpolation on a per-sample basis. People mainly bring it up as a sonic hindrance these days but at the time it was a huge novelty factor. People already familiar with sampled audio in video games just sort of took for granted that they would have this really crunchy, quantized "video gamey" sound to it from low rate samples played without any interpolation. SNES audio was comparatively very clean without much audible aliasing artifacts responsible for that type of sound, so that would come across as something quite new and novel to people at the time.
The second is that the SPC700 chip basically had its own self-contained ecosystem with dedicated memory. It's a pretty hard bottleneck to be sure, but the flip side of that at the time was that audio did not have to directly compete with the rest of the game for hardware resources like the Amiga does. Amiga games for the most part may have some impressive sounding title and intermission music, but then more often than not get a very noticeable downgrade in complexity/fidelity when you actually start playing the game.
I think both of these reasons are why Tim Follin stated he prefered the SNES many times over to the Amiga.
Capcom was never good on the SFC, their DNA was deeply rooted in FM music through their arcade roots.
I can't think of a single good sounding Capcom game on the SFC, it's just not their forte. Final Fight is a huge downgrade over the arcade, same with Street Fighter, Muscle Bomber and UN Squadron. Super GnG sounds way worse than the arcade GnG and so on.
IIRC GBA has no soundchip, it's all done through the CPU
Pretty much. It's still got the sound hardware from the original Game Boy, but other than that I believe it just has stereo DACs for digital audio that have to be fed by the CPU.
Exact but in the right hands the GBA could produce prety amazing music. Just load any Shin'en game and marvel at the Amiga demoscene like tracks and production values (Iridion and Iridion 2 have incredible soundtracks for exemple)
It was always dependent on how creative they got with the music(that goes for the Sega Genesis as well).
Thank you.
I personally only think about 50% of snes music sounds good. There was a lot of shitty sounding music that was prominent on 3rd party snes games.
i think folks are finally moving beyond the lazy "robot farts" AVGN mess and hearing/playing more varied examples, so the synth is finally getting its flowers & others take that as a shot on the SNES because the soul still burns
i love the SNES sound, it's fantastic for sweeping strings & the kind of vibe you'd want of jrpgs, which absolutely fit the slower processor. some folks worked absolute magic out of that chip.
i love the SNES sound, it's fantastic for sweeping strings & the kind of vibe you'd want of jrpgs, which absolutely fit the slower processor. some folks worked absolute magic out of that chip.
what on earth am i reading here?
mmx? sfii? goof troop? all have amazing sounding music!
So much this. SNES sound chip was good in that is was cheap and could be put in a low-cost console, but that's about it.
Dunno why people have to make it so it was groundbreaking or something (well, I have an idea but whatever).
SNES music sounds like crap on good setups, no matter the quality of the compositions.
They use low quality samples and it shows.
I always took it that people on Era needed their daily dose of Nintendo bashing which is why we often see SNES music appreciation threads dilluted with the best Genesis music out there, often just short of saying "why haven't you started hating SNES music yet"?
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In all seriousness though, I often appreciate it when sound programmers are able to push the hardware of whatever platform it is they're working on and make the system sing. The Super Nintendo, by having sample-based audio, managed to make a lot of sound engineers/programers get a lot of milage from taking advantage of data-streaming on carts (such as Tale's of Phantasia's opening credits song), and other neat treaks like abusing reverb and other "post-process" effects the SPC does to audio.
I think the "bad" rep is mostly from Era posters constantly defending the Genesis Yamaha soundchip, which, while indeed superior to its Master System bretheren, is definitely not the best Yamaha could offer in terms of FM sythesis. One could expect Sound Blaster-quality audio, but them the system price would no doubt skyrocket if they jammed in every bit of that soundcards modules in the system.
But the Super Nintendo/SPC 700 does not deserve the hate its been getting as of late. The issue arrises when you're comparing analog audio signals passed through an RCA jack compared to a direct digital feed, such as a Mega SG/Super NT. People will start to notice the difference in clarity for audio. That said, sample rates aren't everything when it comes to sound...and it just so happens the Super Nintendo can sound pretty pleasant even at low kHz audio.
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In all seriousness though, I often appreciate it when sound programmers are able to push the hardware of whatever platform it is they're working on and make the system sing. The Super Nintendo, by having sample-based audio, managed to make a lot of sound engineers/programers get a lot of milage from taking advantage of data-streaming on carts (such as Tale's of Phantasia's opening credits song), and other neat treaks like abusing reverb and other "post-process" effects the SPC does to audio.
I think the "bad" rep is mostly from Era posters constantly defending the Genesis Yamaha soundchip, which, while indeed superior to its Master System bretheren, is definitely not the best Yamaha could offer in terms of FM sythesis. One could expect Sound Blaster-quality audio, but them the system price would no doubt skyrocket if they jammed in every bit of that soundcards modules in the system.
But the Super Nintendo/SPC 700 does not deserve the hate its been getting as of late. The issue arrises when you're comparing analog audio signals passed through an RCA jack compared to a direct digital feed, such as a Mega SG/Super NT. People will start to notice the difference in clarity for audio. That said, sample rates aren't everything when it comes to sound...and it just so happens the Super Nintendo can sound pretty pleasant even at low kHz audio.
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I agree that FM can sound great, but I'm not terribly impressed by SF2's Arcade music. I enjoy several of the SNES tracks more.
The OPN2 chip in the Genny is definitely superior to the OPL2 chip on the Soundblaster. What is not superior is the Z80 chip used to drive the OPN2. Most composers aren't Z80 programmers and were stuck with whatever Z80 software they got handed to them.
Or perhaps it's not "hate" but simply a clearheaded analysis of its pros and cons.
Nowadays when you criticize anything there's a defense force forming up to say that "no, it was good!"
Hell if I don't love F-Zero's soundtrack (among many other SNES soundtracks obviously, too many to name), but it doesn't change the fact that low quality samples are very much audible now that we have good setups and don't simply listen to the game through crap TV-speakers.
I've heard these before, they're awesome. so, quick question. Would it have been possible for me to have heard these tunes back in the day coming from my actual Mega Drive or does this require some extra "stuff" from modern softwhere.
Also, is there a YouTube channel that's generally regarded as the best one in audio quality terms for listening to 16-bit era tunes.
These people like SavagedRegime creating remastered versions of music and outputting them through the original Genesis or SNES sound chips, they have access to better music creation technology, or have better understandings of the chip's technical specifications than someone making music for those consoles would have had in the early 90's, right? Or at the very least, since it's a fan effort they're not limited by project deadlines and can rework it a thousand ways to find the optimal way to use the sound chips?
huh. i have the opposite experience. getting better speakers and audio equipment made snes games sound even BETTER than what i remember on old crt t.v.s.
Everything in this post is true, the bolded especially, but it makes Capcom's piss-poor music output on Genesis look even worse in retrospect.
Capcom, Konami, and Sega all used FM synth chips in their early '90s arcade boards, which should have translated excellently to the similar FM synth chip in the Genesis. Sega and Konami did fine with it. I'm not sure what on earth Capcom was doing.
Pretty sure it's all possible on real hardware. The only "cheating," per se, is that homebrew composers like this have the liberty of using every single sound channel for music, while a real game would have to dedicate some of those towards SFX.
Pretty much all of the above. ~30 years of matured understanding and tools plus lack of corporate mandated deadlines allows for a lot more freedom.
No it's really not.
Which games lead you to that opinion? I feel like this is really key as a lot of games developed with, say, Gems tend to sound like garbage. Bad sounding Genesis games ARE truly awful to listen to. Yet, when it's done well, the results are amazing. There's a lot of great sounding games on the system.
Man... HARD disagree.
All this sounds like to me is like an inferior version, deeply limited by its synthesizer's sound palette. It sounds like every other synth track on the genesis. This is my whole problem with genesis sound chip. It was rare that you ever got anything that sounded unique, where snes could use different samples and you could have whole unique sounding games. Super Metroid sounds nothing like Donkey Kong Country, which sounds nothing like Mega Man X.
I shudder to think what Super Metroid's moody ambience would have been replaced with on Genesis.
A good example of the differences is the Lemmings soundtrack. Overall I prefer the SNES but the Mega Drive did some of the tunes better.
I owned a Genesis. I just don't like the sound, even some of the best sounding games. Sonic 3, and Vectorman are probably the most positive music memories I have of the system and going back to them, I'm still not in love the sound fonts. It's not that they sound "bad" per se. It's just... limited. It sounds like a synth. That's part why the sound effects are all kind of a bummer to me as well, they just sound like a synth attempting to make weird facsimiles of sounds. The timbres are pretty limited.
I say this as someone in music production and as an audio engineer. I would NEVER put the majority of genesis sounds in any production or song I'm writing. I just viscerally don't like it. Most of it just sounds.. cheap? I guess for the lack of a better term. The percussion especially reminds me of the cheap toy Casio keyboards I so hated the sound of.
This really isn't nearly as much of a problem as people make it out to be and I don't really understand how this narrative has proliferated so much. Allocating channels purely for SFX was a pretty rare thing on just about any system. Games override music channels for SFX all the time. You're just not going to notice it when it's done competently. As long as you're not overriding the lead melody, bass, or drums, then it's not going to be very noticeable in a gameplay session. Things like echo and harmony layers are much more expendable for that purpose.
Also, I did all the music and SFX for Xeno Crisis and there's no channel cutoff for SFX in that game, since all the sounds are PCM (due to driver limitations) and there are an extra 3 virtual PCM channels mixed in software.
The tools are pretty much a wash entirely depending on what custom tools old composers had available to them. There are actually quite a few disadvantages I have when I'm entirely beholden to what public community developed tools are available today and what features are available in them. Main frustration is that the XGM audio driver doesn't allow for FM SFX mixing (apparently because the author funnily enough has a personal vendetta against FM sound effects), forcing you to exclusively use samples for SFX which really balloons the file size for a full game that needs sounds.
The main advantage is that I've had over a decade of time to analyze and reverse engineer the techniques of all my favorite composers and then build my own techniques on top of that.