Believe it or not, but the Commodore 64 Sid Chip can play back full songs at a sample rate of upto 48Khz!!!
Not to make this achievement seem any less significant or anything! ;)
Do a search for "Limon REU wave player v2 Demo".
The user is using a 16MB RAM Expansion cartridge to load the audio files into memory. But it's all processed through the original 1Mhz CPU in the c64, all audio is coming from the SID!
I suspected it would be capable of something like this. Comes to no suprise if its pretty much either the only song/sound effect on the cartridge or just the only thing on the cartridge period. XD
@coondogtheman1234 WAV is a containerformat from Microsoft and it could contain several types of PCM audio, like this one (mono/8Bit/26KHz). I don't know what the PCM-file for the genesis is called, but I doubt that it's a .wav-file
Another excelent example of Genesis PCM audio chip ?v=wU5pGjXEN5Y the pirate game Show do Milhao from Brazil use all time PCM sound and look really impressive. ahh work on emulators with no problem.
Hey, is the TMEE's driver open for everyone? If yes, where may I get it? oh and also, somewhere someone told me that the TMEE's driver can also play songs with 10 channels instead of just 9, due to hardware limitations.
@HCKTROX I wouldn't have a clue but you could ask on sega-16 dot com I know there's been a thread about this and TmEE is a usual over there. I know he also has a website he posts his work on.
@MrGoomba909 The Genesis couldn't handle that much memory... You'd have to release, like, a cartridge for each song if they're about 2 mins long, any longer and it would not work.
@PrrrromotionGiven genesis can handle 16 megabytes or 128megabits cartridge, considering a mp3 98 or 128bitsrate take about 3megabytes for 2~3 minutes you would have 5...6 musics for one bootlegs...
For the curious, I suggest opening up Mega Lo Mania / Tyrants: Battle Through Time inside Goldwave as a raw PCM file (8-bit signed audio at 10000Hz). The entire second half of the ROM is audio samples for the game, this takes up around 480 kilobytes. The game's total size is 1024 kilobytes, with padding.
Whatever Virgin Games was smoking, it was working. I'd link to a raw rip of what I mean here, but YouTube's comment filtering would remove the link. I'll make a video response at some point.
RAM was a limitation to the SNES at the time due to the fact it was barely enough to fit any thing with out streaming data for the next piece of the music and when you call upon different samples and replace them at a time.Many of the samples uses in low quality games sounded like shit because of these. Some dev get around this without using streaming by using the same samples for other stuff which is creative. Though TOP and Star ocean seem to be the only games that use streaming for samples.
Does the Genesis always use 8-bit? I always thought the DAC or something was butchering the relatively high-quality sound as it came out. (See Sonic 3, for example, where the samples always sound rougher in the game than they actually are on the cartridge.) For all I know, though, they might have been using 1-bit playback or something weird like that. (I don't know too much about the Genesis's hardware.)
@3dmarth I'm sure it could do 16-bit but not at 26khz so this might be the best combination. I also have a clip of a BNL song that I think sounds even better but I couldn't put it up on YouTube since it was Warner music or something.
You don't need 8-bit samples. It wastes space and really doesn't sound different from 16-bit. Most samples are 4-bit or lower.(The problem with the Genesis sound is how it handle sample playback. Which make PCM sound like shit.)
@SgtThom So it is indeed the DAC messing things up?
And yeah, even modern games often use 4-bit sounds, and they sound clear.
MN12BIRD: I was just wondering why Genesis PCM normally sounds so bad compared to this video (when the samples stored on the cart are of a somewhat half-decent quality).
@3dmarth Well there's a few reasons for this, the DAC was an extension of the FM chip and by using it you lost 1 of your 6 FM channels to it. They had to lower the quality of the sound because the genesis wasn't fast enough to do decompression on the fly and anything higher quality would haven taken too much space up.
@Dant2142 Space was definitely a significant issue, but the ironic thing that I've been pointing out is that Genesis games would sometimes use PCM sounds with a decent sample rate, but the DAC would always mangle them and make them sound rougher. Whether it's the Contra Hard Corps characters' chatter or the Michael Jackson samples from Sonic 3, everything sounds noticeably clearer when extracted directly from the ROM.
@null1023 Of course, you'd be limited in what you can play, seeing as the Genesis only has hardware support for one PCM channel. Adding more would no doubt tie up the CPU like crazy (but might be reasonably possible).
I have had a lot of fun making PCM-based NSF files in Famitracker, though, and the NES likewise only has one channel.
The only reason I mentioned this is because there's a 4 channel MOD player for the NES -- very lofi [11kHz, 7bit], but it works pretty well, and the Genny should more than be able to do something similar.
Also, have you heard of Sonic VR? It's a Sonic romhack that has to use a 6MB ROM [with the SSF2 mapper] because it uses sampled audio for the ingame BGM like shown here... I really understand now why devs didn't use this back then now, that was a lot of space to use!
@null1023 Thanks, I need to look these things up- I had read that the NES could theoretically pull off four 7-bit channels, but all I've seen is one-channel 7-bit PCM (the Big Bird game and the impressive Rickroll'd demo)!
And a Sonic game with sampled audio sounds really neat, though again I've seen something on a smaller scale: Jester's Challenge. As far as I know, the biggest licensed Genesis games were 4 MB, though it seems that they were less common than SNES cartridges of the same size.
About the NES module player, it's called SuperNSF.
Look for "supernsf mukunda" on Google, the first link should have it.
It lets you use all the NES sound channels, the VRC6 ones, and then 4 software mixed PCM channels. It takes IT files, but they need special song comments for it to know which IT channel is mapped to which NES channel.
The NSFs it makes can even play on stock hardware, but I don't have a video.
wow now that,s just what ,m talking about,digital sound and the genesis proves that it can generate8bit samples at 26khz,this can brings those wars back ,sgea just could,ve only use this channel for their mega cd games instead of adding a $ hich expansive soundchip into their segacd addon.
also for the 32x sega could,ve only use this channel for their 32x games instead of adding a $ hich expansive hardly use pwm soundchip!!!!
Great to see someone actually giving the Genesis some props for having good sounds, all I ever hear is fanboys bashing the Genesis and saying how great the SNES was. They're both good at what they do, gen does good rock/techno SNES does great orchestra stuff.
@Snotnarok But then, someone might go and make a demo of the SNES playing 48 KHz stereo sound, defeating this all over again. :P
The SNES could play 8 channels of PCM, but the Genesis could only play one. As much as I like Genesis music (and yes, I can think of times that it sounds better than the SNES), the hardware limits it to certain sounds, whereas the SNES doesn't have that limitation. (On the other hand, having to use only PCM makes developers go cheap and use muffled sound on SNES...)
Wrong. The genesis with maybe the aid of the main CPU can do multiple sound channels. The same thing could be said about the SNES. 8 sound channels was a limit imp laced by the dev kit and reverb take away potintal sound channels.The SNES could have done 32 sound channels without reverb(which would be much more benfical). As for the muffled sound that was the problem of interpolation, which you can't turn off so don't blame devs.
@SgtThom Ah, right. Similar to how the NES could play 7-bit PCM (and multiple channels, as I remember), though it would eat up more resources and potentially slow things down thanks to using the CPU. But are you saying that the SNES had hardware support for 32 channels?
As for the muffled sound, sure, some of it is to do with that (that can be bypassed on emulators, can't it?), but the samples themselves were often very low-quality. (Such as Final Fight, where the voices are as low as ~5khz.)
Sorry for late reply but yes the snes could support up to 32 sound channels.But reverb halved it quite a lot so it only used 8 sound channels. Also I heard from a music programmer that standard dev kits only allowed up to 8 ound channels. More ram would have help with the sound quality though cartridge space was a big limitation. As you said most game have crappy samples. Even with the PSX if you disable filthing many of the samples would sound scratchy(with a few high quality ones
@SgtThom Okay, it makes sense that reverb would require 4 channels (per instrument), as the echoes overlap... but using that by default was a questionable decision, IMO.
However, the effects helped cover up the cheesy samples, even on PS1, as you said. Try listening to Final Fantasy VII without reverb (even the choir in One-Winged Angel sounds like four people sitting in a small room)!
And yeah, cramming a 5 MB game onto a 1 MB cartridge is going to take its toll on the sound quality. :P
@SgtThom The SNES could support 32? Even with reverb forced off, (using an SPC emulator) the limit is still 8. It's not really reverb either, but called "echo". I guess it just effects all audio in general, rather than individual channel reverb. The PlayStation 1 could not even go up to 32. It had a limit of only 24 channels.
@dissident93 You'd need to do some serious reprogramming (like when high-quality PCM is played through software on NES/Genesis), though, and most emulators probably wouldn't support it. Or they'd probably play the 32 channels, but wouldn't include any way of controlling them.
24 channels for PS1? That's kind of lame... didn't the N64 have twice as many? (Then again, we are talking about 1994 here...)
@dissident93 I thought Nintendo GameCube had 64, and N64 had 48, but I must be mistaken. Apparently, I was right on the GCN, but a quick Google search turns up a broken page that, in the excerpt, states that the N64 has no built-in limit for channels. Which makes sense, considering that it had no dedicated sound hardware, and its music playback had to share the processors with everything else.
@dissident93 Yes, I believe it was the same processor as the video. Which is why some 4-player games dropped the music. I don't quite know what its 93 MHz CPU (equivalent to a small stack of PlayStations :P ) was doing all that time, though. Probably underused, except when other tasks were offloaded to it from the other processor in more advanced games or something. I'm not exactly a Nintendo 64 hardware guru...
@TheDukeljk Take it easy, there... I know that the Genesis is two years older than the SNES (and Genesis's sound hardware was up-to-par at the time). I was just stating that the PCM sounds in Genesis games always sounded worse coming out of the system than they actually were. (If you pull the samples out of the ROM, they sound considerably clearer.) But there's no denying that the SNES had superior sound playback.
For the record, I have both a Genesis and an SNES, and I enjoy playing them both.
That's really interesting, so thanks for making the clip. I always tell people that the MD & SNES could do even greater things with larger rom sizes. All the issues such as weak voice samples, crackly sound, limited range of sprites etc.. was basically done to limited storage capacity. Both machines did amazing things with higher mb carts, so imagine what a 100mb+ cart could deliver.
@MN12BIRD Yeap, WAVPLAY only gets until 4MB=32 megabits of capacity, no longer samples, Tiido told me that, but those 32 megabits are enough to fit 2:40 minutes of audio.
@megamanfan3 Close but not quite. This one's actually from the sequel of sorts that was only on the Japanese Saturn. I think it's the same song just a better version. The 32X version actually sounds much worse than this.
As much as I love both the SNES and Genesis, you gotta admit the Genny had it made in the sound department. Just listen to a song from Streets of Rage or Thunder Force and you'll get what I mean. ;)
What can I say, thats really impressive for a device from 1989. I'd be interested to see how well something like the NES or SMs would do, don't forget that some NES games had speech, I believe Action 52 has some digitized music and speech on the introductory screen.
If they had the technology to fit larger sized roms then the Sega CD wouldn't have been useful. The Sega CD is awesome for homebrew games and Sonic Hacks though :D
@sonic3243 Don't forget the special ASIC in the SegaCD can help with scaling and rotation like in the special levels in SonicCD. Plus this sounds okay, but it's nowhere near CD quality. You can still hear some crackling in the voices of the males when the female isn't singing in this video and it's only mono, not stereo like off a CD.
I remember reading an article about Zyrinx and how their games were technical marvels on the Genesis/Mega Drive, and it stated that the audio engine developed by them could pull an incredible 44100Hz out of that thing, and that's with the game running as well. It sure wasn't PCM, though.
I actually always wondered if it was because of space or the PCM-chip that the majority of Genesis games had crappy voices. Though I never imagined it could sound THAT good!
It´s weird that many develepors chose to have the sound at a super-low level of quality, I mean how much space could a 1-second sound clip with maybe just a little worse quality than in the video take up?
Of course the Genesis sound hardware is underrated. People can't seem to grasp that it is capable of more than the SNES. FM and PSG channels weren't easy to use for composers back then and because of that, alot of Genesis music isn't optimized. If anyone says the Genesis isn't as good as SNES, they are wrong.
I guess there was a reason Sega wanted CD technology then. After hearing this Im kinda amazed, The super nintendo always seemed to dominate the genesis with audio. and if it is true that 1/8th of the cart was used on "SEEGGAAA" then the whole idea for CDs just makes perfect sense. If i was a programer back then Id fill that CD with more diverse enemies, (maybe also more frames of animation if needed), Good music, more levels, and Easter Eggs. basicly drive the system to the MAZ, btw and NO FMV.
it's probably only interesting if its done by Z80A CPU... if not.. well.. who cares actually... Genesis does not need this pre-digitized rubbish anyway...
@samikaze The Genesis' digital-to-analog converter can only convert up to 8-bit 26KHz PCM mono sound (recorded sound effects, voices, etc.) reliably. The YM synth chip in the Genesis is stereo, however, the SN chip (the one that creates bleeps and bloops) is mono as well. The Z80 CPU controls all these chips and can sometimes give the illusion that the SN chip is stereo (for example, listen to Sonic, and notice that when you collect rings, the sound alternates between both speakers).
ha! I thought the introduction songs in Toy Story to Earthworm Jim 2 were impressive for the Genesis, but this satisfies my curiosity completely. Still sounds grainy overall, except for this: does the Sega CD use this quality playback, or does it have it's own sound processor?
Is there a type of converter to turn any mp3 to PCM? It would be cool if someone would make like a program or loader on the Everdrive to just play music files of the Genesis. I'm not sure how many files would fit on the card itself but it would be pretty awesome though.
@Terryracoon I got mine from Stoneagegamer (dot com) they come and go they get a few at a time and they sell out all the time. But if you keep looking you'll find one.
If I remember right, the "SE---GA" on the beginning of Sonic 1 takes like 60% of the rom space. What a pity that Sega didn't use a PCM based sound format(at least as an option for developers with 4-6 channels), like the SNES did.
I have to admit as much as loved both MegaDrive and Snes games, i had no idea the audio could be as good as that
Actually what you said made sense about storage being the major limitation, We're really starting to see what these older systems are really capable of with a few hardware modifications like added storage, Added CPU and some extra RAM (Just look at the C64 with the SuperCPU for example, YOWZA)
What pisses me off is how these modern faux Genesis that have no region lockout (excellent), play on modern HD TV'S (Excellent), allow use of origional pads (thank the Gods) all have SHITTY sound! Why can they not manage to emulate Megadrive sound properly yet? These made in China shitbag devices are apparently licensed by SEGA/SAMMY as well? What were they thinking? A&D I think is the name of one of the worst - the sound is ungodly, so poor.
@andy7666 they base the sound on the model 2 genesis/megadrive. there was a flaw in the model 2 and that shows up in the cones too. that is why they are all like that. there was something in the chip was backwards and that is what is doing it.
After a bit of tinkering with files in Audacity, I managed to get a voice recording of me matching these specs! Perhaps it could be possible with a full song at some point?
That doesn't sounds bad but really yeah consoles usually have very good audio chips. Except that yes many times the game simply has limited storage space.
I have a PS1 1002 laying around. I yet have to fix the laser. But well it has 3 RCA plugs and if I get to fixing it up it ought to be a prime audio cd player [the laser seems in need of adjusting]
I hope not :( I have 2 old 3 button and two new 6 button controllers I have recently purchased off of Amazon.com. I have the same problem with all 4 controllers
@strictlysega LOL dude I used to hook my diskman up to my original Sound Blaster Pro (8-bit stereo) in a little old 286 and record audio clips too. It didn't sound all that bad at the right settings!
That's a problem with the older systems back in the day was how large the games could be. Just take a look at the N64, the sound chip in the system was able to do great things but because of how large (or small on the cartridge) they can make the games, most of the time the sound was worst than on the PS1.
Believe it or not, but the Commodore 64 Sid Chip can play back full songs at a sample rate of upto 48Khz!!!
Not to make this achievement seem any less significant or anything! ;)
Do a search for "Limon REU wave player v2 Demo".
The user is using a 16MB RAM Expansion cartridge to load the audio files into memory. But it's all processed through the original 1Mhz CPU in the c64, all audio is coming from the SID!
Similar to what's going on in this video.
djsmithy 2 weeks ago
@djsmithy That is sweet! I'll check that out when I get a moment.
MN12BIRD 1 week ago
I suspected it would be capable of something like this. Comes to no suprise if its pretty much either the only song/sound effect on the cartridge or just the only thing on the cartridge period. XD
MastaGambit 3 weeks ago
This has been flagged as spam show
This is one very "giddy" video. =p
dustykeller924 1 month ago
Holy... it's videos like this that makes me feel happy about one of my favorite consoles ever. :D
SammEater 1 month ago
What format is the audio file being played, is it really a wav file?
coondogtheman1234 1 month ago
@coondogtheman1234 WAV is a containerformat from Microsoft and it could contain several types of PCM audio, like this one (mono/8Bit/26KHz). I don't know what the PCM-file for the genesis is called, but I doubt that it's a .wav-file
iIIcommunication 1 month ago
This video is a favorite on Melekeok
robbiepeters512 1 month ago
Nooo waaaay!! I never knew what my all-time favorite system was truly capable of!!
mistertitanic 2 months ago
Have you tried to run this program on either your GenMobile or Gopher? If so, what happened if anything?
Lachlant1984 2 months ago
Another excelent example of Genesis PCM audio chip ?v=wU5pGjXEN5Y the pirate game Show do Milhao from Brazil use all time PCM sound and look really impressive. ahh work on emulators with no problem.
claudiorlz 2 months ago
Holy crap, that's amazing....
chocolatehoney15 2 months ago
Technological breakthrough, who would have thought?
Natashaaaaaaaa 3 months ago
did you know that you can be rick roll'd by a nes rom
DarkLuigi4321 3 months ago 3
@DarkLuigi4321 LOL yeah I've seen that. That is also very impressive! I think it sounds great.
MN12BIRD 3 months ago
Hell, it can even do stereo! I'm not shitting you.
xan1242 3 months ago
Hey, is the TMEE's driver open for everyone? If yes, where may I get it? oh and also, somewhere someone told me that the TMEE's driver can also play songs with 10 channels instead of just 9, due to hardware limitations.
HCKTROX 3 months ago
@HCKTROX I wouldn't have a clue but you could ask on sega-16 dot com I know there's been a thread about this and TmEE is a usual over there. I know he also has a website he posts his work on.
MN12BIRD 3 months ago
Seems that in this...
Genesis does what Nintendon't
SantuXD6 3 months ago
Isn't this that intro song from the 32X game "Tempo"?
PrrrromotionGiven 4 months ago
@PrrrromotionGiven Yep but it's actually the higher quality version taken off the CD of the Saturn version.
MN12BIRD 4 months ago
Genesis does, what Nintendon't :)
xXBurningSpiritXx 4 months ago 2
mind blowing.
SatoshiMatrix1 4 months ago
can something like this be done with the graphics too? can you make it real short but have incredible graphics?
BX5BT 5 months ago
Sonic 1 was only 4 megabits. Very cool demo!
Ui2019 5 months ago
By the way,I found something that you can add your own PCM sounds.(Sorry for advertising someone else's video)
watch?v=nyi_yCl55d4
xan1242 5 months ago
I thought that the PCM was handled by the x68k.
xan1242 5 months ago
.. WHAT?? wow
nuniruro1515 6 months ago
*Now, I'm speculating here, but, If you had unlimited space in a cartrige, you would be able to put a full album of music in it?
...
...
... MUST. BUILD. GENESIS MUSIC CARTRIDGE.
MrGoomba909 6 months ago
@MrGoomba909 The Genesis couldn't handle that much memory... You'd have to release, like, a cartridge for each song if they're about 2 mins long, any longer and it would not work.
PrrrromotionGiven 4 months ago
@PrrrromotionGiven genesis can handle 16 megabytes or 128megabits cartridge, considering a mp3 98 or 128bitsrate take about 3megabytes for 2~3 minutes you would have 5...6 musics for one bootlegs...
tonmasboy 3 months ago
@tonmasboy Why not just use the damn Sega CD lol
PrrrromotionGiven 3 months ago
@PrrrromotionGiven thanks for replying...just because if it was on genesis only collector would have!!!
tonmasboy 3 months ago
Where can I download this rom? I could not find this on the sega 16 forums.
thepirategamerboy12 7 months ago
8megbytes?
You do know there's audio compression (mp3 or Flacc anyone?)
kawaiifreak860 8 months ago
@kawaiifreak860 and you think a 7MHZ CPU without any hardware mpeg decoders is fast enough to process MP3 compression? Nope. Not gonna happen.
MN12BIRD 8 months ago 14
@MN12BIRD
Simple build a chip into the Cartridge to process the mp3 files before they're sent to the CPU oh wait that'd be cheating! lawl
Plus today's Cartridges have much more storage a Genesis built with a modern cartridge system could easily utilize a Ton of High fidelity audio.
kawaiifreak860 8 months ago
@MN12BIRD C64MP3? ;)
Ninjaznexx 3 months ago
@Ninjaznexx
C64 could barely handle tracker music. No. Not even in real time it uses 3 sound channel music tracker in games. Mostly used as menu music.
SgtThom 3 months ago
@SgtThom check
noname (dot) c64 (dot) org/csdb/release/?id=87985
Ninjaznexx 3 months ago
@MN12BIRD If someone suddenly comes up with an ultra fast way to do FFTs then it can! *runs*
Oerg866 4 days ago
@kawaiifreak860 8megabits is 1 megabyte
PANDEMONIUMDJ 4 months ago
@kawaiifreak860 Megabits, not megabytes.
therealinfotoxin 4 months ago
8mbit is 1mbyte
TailsX97 8 months ago
For the curious, I suggest opening up Mega Lo Mania / Tyrants: Battle Through Time inside Goldwave as a raw PCM file (8-bit signed audio at 10000Hz). The entire second half of the ROM is audio samples for the game, this takes up around 480 kilobytes. The game's total size is 1024 kilobytes, with padding.
Whatever Virgin Games was smoking, it was working. I'd link to a raw rip of what I mean here, but YouTube's comment filtering would remove the link. I'll make a video response at some point.
flygonbreloom 8 months ago
RAM was a limitation to the SNES at the time due to the fact it was barely enough to fit any thing with out streaming data for the next piece of the music and when you call upon different samples and replace them at a time.Many of the samples uses in low quality games sounded like shit because of these. Some dev get around this without using streaming by using the same samples for other stuff which is creative. Though TOP and Star ocean seem to be the only games that use streaming for samples.
SgtThom 10 months ago
Does the Genesis always use 8-bit? I always thought the DAC or something was butchering the relatively high-quality sound as it came out. (See Sonic 3, for example, where the samples always sound rougher in the game than they actually are on the cartridge.) For all I know, though, they might have been using 1-bit playback or something weird like that. (I don't know too much about the Genesis's hardware.)
3dmarth 10 months ago
@3dmarth I'm sure it could do 16-bit but not at 26khz so this might be the best combination. I also have a clip of a BNL song that I think sounds even better but I couldn't put it up on YouTube since it was Warner music or something.
MN12BIRD 10 months ago
@MN12BIRD I thought the DAC was limited to 8-bits?
flygonbreloom 8 months ago
@3dmarth
You don't need 8-bit samples. It wastes space and really doesn't sound different from 16-bit. Most samples are 4-bit or lower.(The problem with the Genesis sound is how it handle sample playback. Which make PCM sound like shit.)
SgtThom 10 months ago
@SgtThom So it is indeed the DAC messing things up?
And yeah, even modern games often use 4-bit sounds, and they sound clear.
MN12BIRD: I was just wondering why Genesis PCM normally sounds so bad compared to this video (when the samples stored on the cart are of a somewhat half-decent quality).
3dmarth 10 months ago
@3dmarth Well there's a few reasons for this, the DAC was an extension of the FM chip and by using it you lost 1 of your 6 FM channels to it. They had to lower the quality of the sound because the genesis wasn't fast enough to do decompression on the fly and anything higher quality would haven taken too much space up.
Dant2142 5 months ago
@Dant2142 Space was definitely a significant issue, but the ironic thing that I've been pointing out is that Genesis games would sometimes use PCM sounds with a decent sample rate, but the DAC would always mangle them and make them sound rougher. Whether it's the Contra Hard Corps characters' chatter or the Michael Jackson samples from Sonic 3, everything sounds noticeably clearer when extracted directly from the ROM.
3dmarth 5 months ago
That is extremely impressive. Very clear, crisp audio.
Does it eat processor time? It'd be interesting to see a module [XM/S3M/MOD/IT] player made with this... :D
null1023 11 months ago
@null1023 Of course, you'd be limited in what you can play, seeing as the Genesis only has hardware support for one PCM channel. Adding more would no doubt tie up the CPU like crazy (but might be reasonably possible).
I have had a lot of fun making PCM-based NSF files in Famitracker, though, and the NES likewise only has one channel.
3dmarth 5 months ago
@3dmarth
The only reason I mentioned this is because there's a 4 channel MOD player for the NES -- very lofi [11kHz, 7bit], but it works pretty well, and the Genny should more than be able to do something similar.
Also, have you heard of Sonic VR? It's a Sonic romhack that has to use a 6MB ROM [with the SSF2 mapper] because it uses sampled audio for the ingame BGM like shown here... I really understand now why devs didn't use this back then now, that was a lot of space to use!
null1023 4 months ago
@null1023 Thanks, I need to look these things up- I had read that the NES could theoretically pull off four 7-bit channels, but all I've seen is one-channel 7-bit PCM (the Big Bird game and the impressive Rickroll'd demo)!
And a Sonic game with sampled audio sounds really neat, though again I've seen something on a smaller scale: Jester's Challenge. As far as I know, the biggest licensed Genesis games were 4 MB, though it seems that they were less common than SNES cartridges of the same size.
3dmarth 4 months ago
@null1023 I can't find this MOD player anywhere- what's it called?
And Sonic VR is indeed quite spiffy, by the way!
3dmarth 4 months ago
@3dmarth
About the NES module player, it's called SuperNSF.
Look for "supernsf mukunda" on Google, the first link should have it.
It lets you use all the NES sound channels, the VRC6 ones, and then 4 software mixed PCM channels. It takes IT files, but they need special song comments for it to know which IT channel is mapped to which NES channel.
The NSFs it makes can even play on stock hardware, but I don't have a video.
null1023 2 months ago
@null1023 I'll take a better look at it later, but it looks really neat. Thanks. :)
3dmarth 2 months ago
wow now that,s just what ,m talking about,digital sound and the genesis proves that it can generate8bit samples at 26khz,this can brings those wars back ,sgea just could,ve only use this channel for their mega cd games instead of adding a $ hich expansive soundchip into their segacd addon.
also for the 32x sega could,ve only use this channel for their 32x games instead of adding a $ hich expansive hardly use pwm soundchip!!!!
johneymute 11 months ago
where did you get that ROM?
kargaroc386 11 months ago
@kargaroc386 Someone on sega-16 dot com had a link to it in a post about this.
MN12BIRD 11 months ago
Great to see someone actually giving the Genesis some props for having good sounds, all I ever hear is fanboys bashing the Genesis and saying how great the SNES was. They're both good at what they do, gen does good rock/techno SNES does great orchestra stuff.
Snotnarok 1 year ago 10
@Snotnarok But then, someone might go and make a demo of the SNES playing 48 KHz stereo sound, defeating this all over again. :P
The SNES could play 8 channels of PCM, but the Genesis could only play one. As much as I like Genesis music (and yes, I can think of times that it sounds better than the SNES), the hardware limits it to certain sounds, whereas the SNES doesn't have that limitation. (On the other hand, having to use only PCM makes developers go cheap and use muffled sound on SNES...)
3dmarth 10 months ago
@3dmarth
"Genesis could only play one"
Wrong. The genesis with maybe the aid of the main CPU can do multiple sound channels. The same thing could be said about the SNES. 8 sound channels was a limit imp laced by the dev kit and reverb take away potintal sound channels.The SNES could have done 32 sound channels without reverb(which would be much more benfical). As for the muffled sound that was the problem of interpolation, which you can't turn off so don't blame devs.
SgtThom 10 months ago
@SgtThom Ah, right. Similar to how the NES could play 7-bit PCM (and multiple channels, as I remember), though it would eat up more resources and potentially slow things down thanks to using the CPU. But are you saying that the SNES had hardware support for 32 channels?
As for the muffled sound, sure, some of it is to do with that (that can be bypassed on emulators, can't it?), but the samples themselves were often very low-quality. (Such as Final Fight, where the voices are as low as ~5khz.)
3dmarth 10 months ago
@3dmarth
Sorry for late reply but yes the snes could support up to 32 sound channels.But reverb halved it quite a lot so it only used 8 sound channels. Also I heard from a music programmer that standard dev kits only allowed up to 8 ound channels. More ram would have help with the sound quality though cartridge space was a big limitation. As you said most game have crappy samples. Even with the PSX if you disable filthing many of the samples would sound scratchy(with a few high quality ones
SgtThom 3 months ago
@SgtThom Okay, it makes sense that reverb would require 4 channels (per instrument), as the echoes overlap... but using that by default was a questionable decision, IMO.
However, the effects helped cover up the cheesy samples, even on PS1, as you said. Try listening to Final Fantasy VII without reverb (even the choir in One-Winged Angel sounds like four people sitting in a small room)!
And yeah, cramming a 5 MB game onto a 1 MB cartridge is going to take its toll on the sound quality. :P
3dmarth 3 months ago
@SgtThom The SNES could support 32? Even with reverb forced off, (using an SPC emulator) the limit is still 8. It's not really reverb either, but called "echo". I guess it just effects all audio in general, rather than individual channel reverb. The PlayStation 1 could not even go up to 32. It had a limit of only 24 channels.
dissident93 3 months ago
@dissident93 You'd need to do some serious reprogramming (like when high-quality PCM is played through software on NES/Genesis), though, and most emulators probably wouldn't support it. Or they'd probably play the 32 channels, but wouldn't include any way of controlling them.
24 channels for PS1? That's kind of lame... didn't the N64 have twice as many? (Then again, we are talking about 1994 here...)
3dmarth 2 months ago
@3dmarth Huh. I Googled it, and apparently the N64 was capable of 64 channels. Then again, when did it ever make full use of all 64?
dissident93 2 months ago
@dissident93 I thought Nintendo GameCube had 64, and N64 had 48, but I must be mistaken. Apparently, I was right on the GCN, but a quick Google search turns up a broken page that, in the excerpt, states that the N64 has no built-in limit for channels. Which makes sense, considering that it had no dedicated sound hardware, and its music playback had to share the processors with everything else.
3dmarth 2 months ago
@3dmarth Ah. So the N64's audio was only limited by how much it could take from the processor (from the video).
dissident93 2 months ago
@dissident93 Yes, I believe it was the same processor as the video. Which is why some 4-player games dropped the music. I don't quite know what its 93 MHz CPU (equivalent to a small stack of PlayStations :P ) was doing all that time, though. Probably underused, except when other tasks were offloaded to it from the other processor in more advanced games or something. I'm not exactly a Nintendo 64 hardware guru...
3dmarth 2 months ago
@3dmarth Now, I wonder how good the N64 could potentially have been..
dissident93 2 months ago
@3dmarth You are a total cock sucking tool, genesis came out way before the snes, which makes super nes all that more horrible.
TheDukeljk 5 months ago
@TheDukeljk Take it easy, there... I know that the Genesis is two years older than the SNES (and Genesis's sound hardware was up-to-par at the time). I was just stating that the PCM sounds in Genesis games always sounded worse coming out of the system than they actually were. (If you pull the samples out of the ROM, they sound considerably clearer.) But there's no denying that the SNES had superior sound playback.
For the record, I have both a Genesis and an SNES, and I enjoy playing them both.
3dmarth 5 months ago
That's really interesting, so thanks for making the clip. I always tell people that the MD & SNES could do even greater things with larger rom sizes. All the issues such as weak voice samples, crackly sound, limited range of sprites etc.. was basically done to limited storage capacity. Both machines did amazing things with higher mb carts, so imagine what a 100mb+ cart could deliver.
kingstonlj 1 year ago
wooooooooooooow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- what can i say
PanterAmetal100 1 year ago
now dont take this seroiously pcm means plastic cock measuar
matthewrobinsonsz 1 year ago
There is just something about a old console like that generating audio like that in real time. I wonder what the neo geo is like for wave playing.
dilliot2k 1 year ago
Anyone know who produced the audio clip and where it came from?
css1323 1 year ago
@MN12BIRD Yeap, WAVPLAY only gets until 4MB=32 megabits of capacity, no longer samples, Tiido told me that, but those 32 megabits are enough to fit 2:40 minutes of audio.
villahed94 1 year ago
Now I know why the audio there was of Sega CD/32X quality. That audio sample was from the 32X game Tempo.
megamanfan3 1 year ago
@megamanfan3 Close but not quite. This one's actually from the sequel of sorts that was only on the Japanese Saturn. I think it's the same song just a better version. The 32X version actually sounds much worse than this.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
@MN12BIRD That's because the 32x version is heavily compressed.
HaloSpartanG13 8 months ago
Amazing. Just amazing. :D
As much as I love both the SNES and Genesis, you gotta admit the Genny had it made in the sound department. Just listen to a song from Streets of Rage or Thunder Force and you'll get what I mean. ;)
SonicTheJackrabbit 1 year ago
That's when you get a SEGA CD; burn it on disc and it will fix up the 8 mega bit issue. AND, you're running it through the genesis still.
mattsprinter 1 year ago
What can I say, thats really impressive for a device from 1989. I'd be interested to see how well something like the NES or SMs would do, don't forget that some NES games had speech, I believe Action 52 has some digitized music and speech on the introductory screen.
Lachlant1984 1 year ago
@Lachlant1984 Yeah even the NES can do amazing things with PCM you should lookup rickroll (dot) nes in Youtube and you'll see what I mean!
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
SCREW SEGA CD!!!!!
If they had the technology to fit larger sized roms then the Sega CD wouldn't have been useful. The Sega CD is awesome for homebrew games and Sonic Hacks though :D
sonic3243 1 year ago
@sonic3243 Don't forget the special ASIC in the SegaCD can help with scaling and rotation like in the special levels in SonicCD. Plus this sounds okay, but it's nowhere near CD quality. You can still hear some crackling in the voices of the males when the female isn't singing in this video and it's only mono, not stereo like off a CD.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
I remember reading an article about Zyrinx and how their games were technical marvels on the Genesis/Mega Drive, and it stated that the audio engine developed by them could pull an incredible 44100Hz out of that thing, and that's with the game running as well. It sure wasn't PCM, though.
macuserbrazil 1 year ago
Comment removed
macuserbrazil 1 year ago
sounds pretty good. Too bad those cartridges were filled with games to not have the space for great music like this.
Zazabar 1 year ago
I actually always wondered if it was because of space or the PCM-chip that the majority of Genesis games had crappy voices. Though I never imagined it could sound THAT good!
It´s weird that many develepors chose to have the sound at a super-low level of quality, I mean how much space could a 1-second sound clip with maybe just a little worse quality than in the video take up?
JonteP0nte 1 year ago
So you have a choice of a super crisp audio file, or a 16 bit game? That should be an easy choice.
David315842 1 year ago
Isn't that the music for Tempo for 32X?
ivanvalerian 1 year ago
@ivanvalerian Yeah but I think it's actually from the Japanese Saturn sequel.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
i wonder how the model 2 would do with this. comix zone game has the best sound i heard i think too.
james42519 1 year ago
That audio sample sure was Sega CD quality, I can tell you right off the bat.
megamanfan3 1 year ago
thats sounds cool coming out of a megadrive nice one
brettscotland 1 year ago
i would like to see what the snes could do now.
james42519 1 year ago
Interesting stuff mate
ianwilson1978 1 year ago
smokey and the wildebeest?
AlfredRusselWallace 1 year ago
Of course the Genesis sound hardware is underrated. People can't seem to grasp that it is capable of more than the SNES. FM and PSG channels weren't easy to use for composers back then and because of that, alot of Genesis music isn't optimized. If anyone says the Genesis isn't as good as SNES, they are wrong.
XBladenoJutsu 1 year ago
nice
SarahKreuz78 1 year ago
impressive
ClassicConsoleReview 1 year ago
sounds like something coming out of a Dreamcast :)
ChurroEmiliano 1 year ago
I guess there was a reason Sega wanted CD technology then. After hearing this Im kinda amazed, The super nintendo always seemed to dominate the genesis with audio. and if it is true that 1/8th of the cart was used on "SEEGGAAA" then the whole idea for CDs just makes perfect sense. If i was a programer back then Id fill that CD with more diverse enemies, (maybe also more frames of animation if needed), Good music, more levels, and Easter Eggs. basicly drive the system to the MAZ, btw and NO FMV.
Sypran 1 year ago
so the sega could handle voices? cool! :)
37474748 1 year ago
it's probably only interesting if its done by Z80A CPU... if not.. well.. who cares actually... Genesis does not need this pre-digitized rubbish anyway...
maiki60fps 1 year ago
Man, if only they sold song singles like this to listen to on your genesis, that would have been epic.
LMA187 1 year ago
Awesome amp! What brand is it?
TeamNES1 1 year ago
@TeamNES1 Nikko witch is like I dunno lower end Japanese I guess. It's okay but nothing too special.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
@MN12BIRD Ah, okay. At first glance, I thought it was a vintage Pioneer amp or something like that. I wonder if my vision is failing me... XD
TeamNES1 1 year ago
hey did you know in the sonic games for the genesis the intro where it say's sega takes up about 1 / 8 of the cartridge space, or something like that
segaatari25 1 year ago
thats pretty cool, thanks for the video bro
killerkevin001 1 year ago
Any word on how I can fix the "missing sounds" problem I get on my Mega Drive and where I can get the neccesary parts?
The sound you should hear upon choosing a character in Golden Axe is missing.
Sometimes, certain sounds in Micro Machines 2 just disappear.
The highlighter sound in The Smurfs doesn't sound if moving the highlighter up on the Password screen.
an1man1ac54l1f3 1 year ago
@an1man1ac54l1f3 what model geneses is it? model 2 has trouble i know.
james42519 1 year ago
@james42519 It's a Model 1 PAL console WITHOUT TMSS (it has text above the cartridge slot reading "HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHICS - STEREO SOUND")
an1man1ac54l1f3 1 year ago
@an1man1ac54l1f3 oh ok never mind me then. sorry
james42519 1 year ago
Very impressive. Try recording the output of that headphone jack so we can hear a more clear recording and not a youtube video.
NickTehNewbie 1 year ago
sounds awesome. Man, I can't see spending that much on an everdrive cart.
Captain85Kurt 1 year ago
Your description says "pushes the PCM audio to it's maximum 8-bit mono 26KHz bitrate." What I don't understand is that there are games in stereo?
samikaze 1 year ago
@samikaze The Genesis' digital-to-analog converter can only convert up to 8-bit 26KHz PCM mono sound (recorded sound effects, voices, etc.) reliably. The YM synth chip in the Genesis is stereo, however, the SN chip (the one that creates bleeps and bloops) is mono as well. The Z80 CPU controls all these chips and can sometimes give the illusion that the SN chip is stereo (for example, listen to Sonic, and notice that when you collect rings, the sound alternates between both speakers).
lilmul123 1 year ago
@lilmul123 Aye, thanks for the explanation. Forgot there are multiple soundchips in systems. Derp! ^_^
samikaze 1 year ago
@samikaze Oh yeah lots of games are in stereo but to get this clear 26KHZ PCM it has to be in mono it can't keep up that bitrate in stereo.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
making me want to run out and search for a 'Model 1' Sega Genesis
De5con 1 year ago
Thats cool!!!! but it would be cooler with some old school iron maiden rockin that genesis.........lol
CorporalColeco 1 year ago
That's... freaking incredible. Wow, and I thought I'd heard some games that really push the limit but that's insane.
phreakindee 1 year ago
ha! I thought the introduction songs in Toy Story to Earthworm Jim 2 were impressive for the Genesis, but this satisfies my curiosity completely. Still sounds grainy overall, except for this: does the Sega CD use this quality playback, or does it have it's own sound processor?
nensondubois 1 year ago
Thats pretty cool.
Is there a type of converter to turn any mp3 to PCM? It would be cool if someone would make like a program or loader on the Everdrive to just play music files of the Genesis. I'm not sure how many files would fit on the card itself but it would be pretty awesome though.
ichigo3223 1 year ago
@ichigo3223 There probably is but I can't find any yet.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
Storage was always an issue back then, cool to see what it can do without a cap.
thebonefish 1 year ago
genisis does what nintendo don`t
gustoThegangsta 1 year ago
Fake and gayzors....
JUST KIDDING, this is awesome! (BTW, where can i buy an everdrive?)
Terryracoon 1 year ago
@Terryracoon I got mine from Stoneagegamer (dot com) they come and go they get a few at a time and they sell out all the time. But if you keep looking you'll find one.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
Wow, that's amazing Jake. O_O
atarileaf 1 year ago
If I remember right, the "SE---GA" on the beginning of Sonic 1 takes like 60% of the rom space. What a pity that Sega didn't use a PCM based sound format(at least as an option for developers with 4-6 channels), like the SNES did.
ChrisRenucci 1 year ago
Dam that's really sweet audio. I was a fan of SNES fan because had better sound. I think had a better sound chip.
I really wish Sega Genesis could have more memory for the sound.
mp4podcastDOTcom 1 year ago
TmEE is an absolute legend in the Megadrive community. Guys has his overclocked and has Nixie tubes that spell sega and all kinds of shit.
Cyantist2 1 year ago
Really didn't know the Genesis/Megadrive was capable of this.
markvergeer 1 year ago
wow that's ukw radio quality...
moidc 1 year ago
HOLY SHIT! :D. like the genesis' moto go's: i COULD be awesome...but i choose not to be...
StickPeopleAndPuff 1 year ago
I don't know why people call the YM chip shit in the first place. It's the same sound chip as used in many arcades.
wrestletube1 1 year ago
HOLY COW!!
I have to admit as much as loved both MegaDrive and Snes games, i had no idea the audio could be as good as that
Actually what you said made sense about storage being the major limitation, We're really starting to see what these older systems are really capable of with a few hardware modifications like added storage, Added CPU and some extra RAM (Just look at the C64 with the SuperCPU for example, YOWZA)
AmazonianBeauty 1 year ago
Oh, wow.. Thats really something man! Sweet!
What pisses me off is how these modern faux Genesis that have no region lockout (excellent), play on modern HD TV'S (Excellent), allow use of origional pads (thank the Gods) all have SHITTY sound! Why can they not manage to emulate Megadrive sound properly yet? These made in China shitbag devices are apparently licensed by SEGA/SAMMY as well? What were they thinking? A&D I think is the name of one of the worst - the sound is ungodly, so poor.
andy7666 1 year ago
@andy7666 they base the sound on the model 2 genesis/megadrive. there was a flaw in the model 2 and that shows up in the cones too. that is why they are all like that. there was something in the chip was backwards and that is what is doing it.
james42519 1 year ago
That is awesome
Bert1268 1 year ago
I have actually! That's amazing. I knew there was one PCM channel on the sound chip.
shaurz 1 year ago
After a bit of tinkering with files in Audacity, I managed to get a voice recording of me matching these specs! Perhaps it could be possible with a full song at some point?
topsyandpip56 1 year ago
That doesn't sounds bad but really yeah consoles usually have very good audio chips. Except that yes many times the game simply has limited storage space.
I have a PS1 1002 laying around. I yet have to fix the laser. But well it has 3 RCA plugs and if I get to fixing it up it ought to be a prime audio cd player [the laser seems in need of adjusting]
masticina 1 year ago
srry jake. your camera dose no justice for what the gen plays. I would love to try that on mine.
zslion15 1 year ago
How big was the file size for that audio?
But I know later N64 games used MP3 files for audio tracks.
LarryBundyJr 1 year ago
@LarryBundyJr No they didn't use MP3, they used mono low-freq VOX ADPCM samples. Like F-Zero X for instance.
8bitbubsy 1 year ago
@8bitbubsy That was an early N64 game, I was referring to games like Excite Bike 64.
LarryBundyJr 1 year ago
@LarryBundyJr are you al bundy's son?
scir91 1 year ago
@LarryBundyJr The file was almost 1MB or almost 8Mb.
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
Amazing stuff Jake, I always learn something from your videos hehe.
DANW547 1 year ago
awesome indeed, thanks for this info!
LiveToby 1 year ago
I hope not :( I have 2 old 3 button and two new 6 button controllers I have recently purchased off of Amazon.com. I have the same problem with all 4 controllers
username56026 1 year ago
i wouldnt mind hearing that first hand...
i remember recording audio on my old 386 and one thing that stood out clearly is how big the files were b4 mp3 came along aye...
strictlysega 1 year ago
@strictlysega LOL dude I used to hook my diskman up to my original Sound Blaster Pro (8-bit stereo) in a little old 286 and record audio clips too. It didn't sound all that bad at the right settings!
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
cool :D
FritoFredrik 1 year ago
i wouldnt mind hearing that first hand...
strictlysega 1 year ago
That's a problem with the older systems back in the day was how large the games could be. Just take a look at the N64, the sound chip in the system was able to do great things but because of how large (or small on the cartridge) they can make the games, most of the time the sound was worst than on the PS1.
crusherbad64 1 year ago
o.o
epic :D
Flodder450 1 year ago
WHAT NINTENDON'T!
sinistermoon 1 year ago