I've seen some SNES games having dolby surround sound but I can't figure out how is it supposed to work. Does it fake the surround sound using stereo speakers? Or could SNES really be connected to the actual surround 4-channel audio system?
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I've seen some SNES games having dolby surround sound but I can't figure out how is it supposed to work. Does it fake the surround sound using stereo speakers? Or could SNES really be connected to the actual surround 4-channel audio system?
Pretty sure it's fake surround using stereo speakers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Orchid87
IIRC, the SNES had some of the first implementations of Dolby Pro Logic in video games. In those games, there are 4 channels of sound.
I don't understand how a game like Fatal Fury Special would even use the 4 speakers.
Some of Ocean's games like Jurassic Park 2 have the Dolby Surround logo on startup. Maybe check out how those games work.
The surround sounds are just matrix encoded using the Dolby Surround formula. If only certain sounds were used for surround they could have been pre-rendered this way rather than needing the SNES to do it in real time, but I believe the SNES was capable of phase inverting sounds, which is all that is really needed to produce a surround channel. When a Dolby Pro Logic decoder detects that the left and right channels are 180 degrees out of phase with each other, the sound is steered to a single surround channel (stereo surrounds didn't come until Pro Logic II).
Simply put, some games would give you a single surround channel when played through a Pro Logic compatible decoder/amp.
Dolby Surround is very easy to do with sample-based sounds. You can't do it with just 2 speakers, that's Q-Sound and other bullshit. Dolby Surround is for real and not complete bullshit on a stick. You need a processor (receiver) with Dolby Surround Pro Logic built in and it must be engaged. Here's how Dolby Surround works, take it from this former theater technician and current sound mixer (me):
Left and Right are treated as Left and Right in most cases. They are routed to the left and right speakers.
Sounds that are common in both the Left and Right channels and IN PHASE aka mono (what you'd normally hear right in the middle of your brain if wearing headphones) are routed to the center channel speaker.
Sounds that are common in both the Left and Right channels aka mono but 180º OUT OF PHASE are routed to the two surround speakers. Both surround speakers play the exact same sounds at all times. If listening with headphones out of phase mono sounds sound mono but they don't sound quite right, kind of like they're floating there. Whenever I mix in 5.1 discrete (like the new Game Chasers DVD menus I did which are coming out soon) I shift the phase of each surround channel 90º so that anything in common will come out the surround channel for Pro Logic users (if there are any left).
That's it! Dolby Pro Logic II attempts to separate the surrounds and it is somewhat successful but it's nowhere near as good as real 5.1 discrete like Dolby Digital.
I didn't think the way certain SNES games used Dolby Surround was very good. For one why would you need it in a 2D side-scrolling game? And stuff coming from the surround channel was rare and just not impressive.
It used magnets, thus confounding people with blatantly KISS-inspired makeup for ages.
You wouldn't, it was just a gimmick; sticking a Dolby Surround logo on something was de rigueur in the early - mid 90s.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
"how does it work?"
...very primitive. The god damn console only has 8 audio channels, and its using cartridges on top of that. I.E. its just a gimmick, as mentioned above. I don't have any Dolby SNES games, but I do have common sense.
PS1 games put it to use pretty good. Croc 2, to be exact. But thats with 44.1 KHz, 24 audio channels and CD format.
The Dreamcast had very impressive sound hardware(better than PS2), but I can't find a single game that used Dolby. Nope AirForce Delta doesn't have it, people just confuse it with the PS2 version(which has Dolby PLII).
Even though Star Fox doesn't advertise Dolby Surround, it sounds pretty good on a Pro-logic receiver.
I found this while searching "SNES Star Fox Dolby":
http://www.gamnesia.com/articles/thr...s#.VC4QCn_86Ul
How about Factor 5 games like Super Turrican? I remember this game sounding amazing.
From the article linked above:
Bzzt. WRONG! Well, they may be muffled. It's the SNES after all. Muffled is what it does. But sounds can't be missing from stereo that are there in surround. Not unless you have your stereo speakers connected to a Pro Logic receiver and the surround speakers physically not there or disconnected (with surround mode engaged).Quote:
when played in stereo, it sounds like things are muffled or missing—and that's because they are.
So, SNES could be connected to Pro Logic reciever for surround sound. Interesting but not really needed for the console which has mostly 2D library.
On the other hand I really like QSound stereo effects in Capcom 2D arcade games. They sound like 3D while using only two stereo speakers.
Yea I can't believe they added stuff like that, its such a small niche for a console like that, one that most people hooked up through RF on some 17inch TV etc.
I found a bunch of articles from May 2000 saying Sega has added Dolby surround support to the Dreamcast. I'm not quite sure what that means, since anything with stereo sound and a decent number of channels can already do Dolby Pro Logic. Maybe they added some ready-made code to the SDK or something. But then no games that I know of support it. It's possible for games to have "stealth" Dolby support without advertising it, but why would Sega press release Dolby surround for the Dreamcast, and then do that? Weird.Quote:
Originally Posted by azonicrider
The number of channels is irrelevant as long as the device can play stereo and proper sampled sounds. That's all you need. The "surround" sounds can be digitized out of phase, it's not like the hardware has to do the phasing. The Genesis cannot do surround sound.
Yea I don't know what the deal with that is.Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
Even high-budget games like Sonic Adventure 2 were released after May 2000, yet don't have surround sound.
So why can't the Genesis do surround sound then? I thought it was because it only had one sample channel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
Is there any word on this issue from people actually going through and testing games, to see if they have undocumented surround sound?Quote:
Originally Posted by azonicrider
Nice explanation. For folks wondering how you make a signal 180º out of phase, the simplest way (and the primary way used on old consoles/computers) is to invert the signal. In plain English, if the signal is 'x', 180º is '-x'. That's it - just negate the sample and you're done. As mentioned, you need an audio receiver that can decode Dolby Surround to make use of this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
If you want to be TECHNICAL, the center channel for DS should be +90º, and the surround channel -90º. In practice, no one has ever done that, making the center 0º and the surround 180º as the hardware (or software if done in software) is SOOOOOOOOOOO much more simple.
The box art says it all:
http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/7/0/4/5704_back.jpg
NHL 2K is the single Dreamcast game with confirmed surround sound support.
Interesting. But that's not the only one. The obvious next game to check:
http://puu.sh/d1M6R/29e7c71833.jpg
But then you try seeing if their sister franchises have them, and they don't:
http://pics.mobygames.com/images/cov...3676502-00.jpg
http://www.emuparadise.me/dccovers/2...BNTSC-U%5D.jpg
http://pics.mobygames.com/images/cov...0813037-00.jpg
Dolby support on the Dreamcast is one of the screwiest things in retro gaming.
Also you know that NBA 2K2 is a game ported to all 6th-gen consoles? I thought there was only one game that did that, being Pyu Pyu something puzzle game.
I wonder if it's as simple as: CRI's software compression doesn't support Dolby surround, and most Dreamcast games use it, therefore no Dolby. I'm not really sure how a Dreamcast game handles audio if it's not using CRI ADX. (I don't think the lack of the CRI ADX logo on the back means the game doesn't use it -- usually ADX and MPEG Sofdec go together.) IIRC, CRI ADX was used because it was very light on the CPU/memory, and there's some kind of bottleneck in the Dreamcast's actual audio hardware.
Puyo Puyo Fever. It's one of the most officially ported games of all time. Only a few mid-80s computer games beat it, IIRC (namely Ultima IV and Lode Runner). They intentionally put it on an many platforms as possible. The only one they "missed" was the N-Gage, which had received a different game in the series shortly prior.Quote:
Originally Posted by azonicrider
Perhaps you made the discovery of the century. it can't be just a coincidence that the only Dolby games are the only ones that use a different codec.