No one is fucking talking about Neo Geo or 3D0 so shut up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
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No one is fucking talking about Neo Geo or 3D0 so shut up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
No what about the Philips CDi, people heard of that back inthe day despite it having less than 1% market share. People hear about products even if it’s a horrible failure and complete flops like NGage, Game.com.Quote:
Originally Posted by SegataS
Not even choosing to view post but going to assume he thought I was targeting him when the person I had in mind was someone else but keep thinking so highly of yourself dude.
Sorry someone should of told you about TA.Quote:
Originally Posted by SegataS
Yep first it was the Amiga now TA is dragging the NeoGeo, 3DO and CDi in to this discussion in a failed attempt to prove his stupid point. I've forgotten what the real discussion was now since TA has derailed it so many times.
Par for the course when TA is involved.
But look how happy he is. It's hard to get that frustrated...
How did I get owned? So what if the composer is an Amiga and SNES fanboy? That's completely irrelevant here. It doesn't change the fact the Genesis version of that game sounds better. The SNES version by comparison sounds more flat, and is less dynamic. Chris can be the biggest SNES fanboy on the planet, it still didn't keep him from having to face reality and make sacrifices to get the music on the SNES version due to it's limitations. On top of of sounding flatter and less dynamic, the tracks themselves are shortened. Have a listen for yourself:Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Genesis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLqos66n3Qo
SNES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFKx6H_qYss
Notice how on the SNES at around the 1:44 mark it starts repeating, while on the Genesis it keeps going for about another minute and a half before it starts looping. Why do you think that is? Could it be the need to store samples on the ROM cart made them have to cut the song short due to cart space limitations? Could it be that the instrumentation is different in those sections which would again require more samples and cart space?
Because the instrumentation is better, the stereo separation is better, the bass is punchier, and the tracks are actually complete unlike the shortened SNES tracks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Which as stated, is not due to the samples or a hardware limitation. It's due to Capcom being incompetent programmers having their game engine DMA everything twice and not having their sound driver deal with that DMA properly. Stef's patch is proof that it could have been done and sounded just fine without any hardware modifications. Other developers were able to pull that off during the time period as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
No, it ran into issues when developers didn't program a sound driver that could handle 2 or more digital samples at a time. Some developers didn't feel that was necessary and settled for just one sample at a time. Why? Who knows, ask them. It's not because the hardware is incapable of it or that the sound suffers from it. It's been proven time and time again that that is not the issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
So you were impressed by the sound of the Sega Y board but not the X68000 or CPS1? You do realize that all three of those use the same YM2151 with a separate PCM chip or DAC for sound effects and drums right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Uh, what?
The Genesis version of Mega Turrican starts looping at 1:56 and then throws in some hot mix stuff, but it's nothing special. It was also published nearly a year after Super Turrican. Super Turrican also has Mode 7 effects in place, so that also has to be taken into account. The Genesis soundtrack is much cleaner though and is a nice showcase of the hardware.
Mega Turrican was released after Turrican 3 despite the fact that Turrican 3 is clearly the port. It's well known that Mega Turrican was stuck in publisher hell.
Being published after Super Turrican in this case means nothing, the two were developed at the same time.
Also Mode-7 is nearly free on the SNES, only the landscape effect requires some effort.
I don't think the game sounds better at all (music wise) , The game looks way better on the Mega Drive and features better sound effects, but the music doesn't sound better and to me this piece of Turrican Amiga music sounds better than any tune in both Mega or the 1st Turrican on the Mega DriveQuote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cilm5TpiUtU&index=6&list=PLErsx10Ke4uwVsJM bwLYuxvRFaJr-jHdi
This line is just lame and pathetic. Capcom did a great Job on the MD port, its a better game than the Snes vesrion it plays better, looks better and the music is better and closer to the Arcade, the only issues is over the sound samples and where the MD version is the only version that had these issues or seemed to suffer the most.Quote:
It's due to Capcom being incompetent programmers having their game engine DMA everything twice and not having their sound driver deal with that DMA properl
I highly doubt it's down to Capcom being idots, because none of their other MD games or games on other systems suffered from this issue and its not like the speech is that bad or much better in SEGAs very own Eternal Champions on the MD, which for me looks far worse and sounds far far worse.
Most games didn't need it or you could work around it. It was an issue, but hardly a killer one.Quote:
Some developers didn't feel that was necessary and settled for just one sample at a time
Yes becasue SEGA Arcade games simply sounded the best at the time. Does it really get any better than theseQuote:
So you were impressed by the sound of the Sega Y board but not the X68000 or CPS1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS90-v5bj7M&index=3&list=PLKvFxXIPCnPFv5d_cssU12RABLW-yxKaU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF6yNvl-jhU&list=PLMx9nl9VYhtN4qF2nMZ4k4TdWf_hetQtq&index= 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP2Df4RtqoU&list=PL-vD6rIjXrcLgpAcmuuJ2lGrvhBiDr2oW&index=3
SEGA were just miles ahead of the comp for their Arcade sound and music.
*facepalm at this thread. I thought this was supposed to be about the Saturn and the Super Nintendo. How the fuck did the NeoGeo Pocket get dragged into this shitstorm?
Barone responding to Andromeda in a not so good manner, and Andromeda damage controlling by mentioning other systems. Topic ran its course a month or two ago. It's like that way in several other topics.Quote:
Originally Posted by BonusKun
So you're now using Revenge of Shinobi, which is a 1989 game, to assess the MD sound capabilities? Thanks for telling me that I hand pick games. Lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
And it's not like the SNES doesn't have it's own limitations with samples playback - beyond all that we've already discussed.
Given its audio RAM limitations, you'll eventually need to play samples which aren't loaded into the RAM yet and you'll have to load them first and then play. Unlike the MD which can stream samples directly from the ROM.
Furthermore, SNES takes a long time to do that.
You criticized Greatest Heavyweights on the MD but it's actually unlikely that the SNES would be able to play those taunt phrases without a long ass break between them to load new samples to the audio RAM. Most likely scenario, they'd shorten'em and play them sped up like SFII does.
WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game suffers form the same issue. The SNES audio system simply can't keep up with the pace of the arcade commentary:
From 12:37 till the end of the round:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkgu6VepF8o
From 9:23 till the end of the round:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiHbZB8Feug
From 2:47 till the end of the round:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qonLws-S3cI
The MD version is how it should be and pretty much in the same way the arcade version does.
Also, for good measure here's a NESDev discussion dedicated to the audio RAM limitations of the SNES:
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic....208397#p208397
Quote:
As for the rest, the worst sounding SNES games (for sound quality - not music composition itself) are the ones which loads the entiere game soundtrack in RAM at the same time, such as Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past. Those who have voices loaded in all the time (hem hem... Street Fighter 2... hem hem) are also bound to sound poor.
The best sounding games are the ones which loads the minimum stuff in RAM and allows as much memory as possible to be used for sound. So the music engine has to be very small, use few RAM and the music and sound effect data has to be packed as tightly as possible, to leave RAM free for samples and echo buffer.
Personally I think Dragon Quest III, VI and Tactics Ogre sounds the best (they mostly sound the same) - they're close to a real orchestra sometimes. The PS1 version of Tactics Ogre sounds much worse than the SNES version ironically.
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic....208605#p208605
Quote:
In general, I think the typical way most "accomplished" SNES soundtracks manage their memory budget is to use relatively simplistic lead instruments with short loops, so that more resources can be allocated to sound quality for the rhythm section instruments. That's how soundtracks in the style of DKC works. The more average sounding soundtracks tend to be more jack of all trades for sample quality, so nothing really stands out and leaves a nice impression. Then you have a select few soundtracks that use a very limited pool of instruments that are in turn very high quality, such as Actraiser 2. There's also some pool game I remember (Side Pocket?) which had very barebones instrumentation but the pianos were nearly of the same quality you'd hear in an actual rompler, which is very unusual on the system.
I think Tim Follin's various SNES soundtracks are the absolute best showcase of thinking outside the box to get the most out of the limitations. Analyzing them is really fun and interesting. Probably the coolest single example I can think of is Equinox, where in one ambient track you hear this very nice waterdrop sound effect with a very long tonal reverb. I thought to myself there was no way he'd fit that in there as a single sample, so I took a closer look, and the way he did it was to use a separate dry waterdrop sound, and then he made this seamless looping reverb noise that is dynamically faded in and out. Genius.
Another cool trick he did are the hihats in Plok. In the beach music for example, the way the hihats are played are not by the standard method of just retriggering the sample. Instead it's a cymbal sound just continually looped while the volume is automated separately from standard instrument envelopes. So each new "note" will be played from a different offset in the sample, making it sound less repetitive and much more natural. Also in Plok, the guitar lead sounds really good while the sample itself is rather simplistic. It owes everything to very elaborate and expressive programming. Apart from just the obvious stuff like vibrato and glissandos, he also selectively plays quick flam notes to make the pluck in the sample's attack more prominent, as a means to simulate more accentuated tones.
And to complement:
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic....187853#p187853
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic....4385506#p60871Quote:
Huh? Capcom came with what is highly reconized as some of the best music for the SNES for example in the Mega Man X series (but also Mega Man 7 and Mega Man & Bass), and the Breath of Fire bi-logy. You're probably the only weirdo calling that "muffled" or "horrible quality" or whatever.
The reason the audio in Street Fighter games is so bad is because they wanted to have voices, and the SPC700 is not suited for voices. In Steet FIghter II they simply had very low quality voices to take few memory (which does indeed sound "muffled" as you describe), and in Street Fighter Alpha they load them dynamically but it takes a hell of loading time and ruins the experience (which is IMO much worse than simply sounding "muffled"). I believe it would have been best to port those games without using voices at all, but that just isn't the path they took. Juding Capcom on those two games alone is ridiculous - let alone that Street Fighter Alpha doesn't even use Capcom's sound engine in the 1st place.
Quote:
Muffledness of SNES stuff is what bothers me the most... I wish reas SNES could sound like emulation where sample rate is set high and all interpolation and filtering is turned off so the sound becomes crisp. The output sample rate is high enough for somewhat crisp sound but the interpolation nulls all there could have been.
The simple 8ch sampler in MegaCD has no interpolation whatsoever and very close sample rate to SNES, I lifted the fitering point well above 20KHz and damn the sound became ultra crisp, pleasure to listen to. Unfortunately it did not happen on SNES when I did that :(
SNES and other sample based setups are easier to work on, on some aspects... you don't have to create instreuments from ~50 parameters like you do on FM, you just use a recording of some.. drawback is that you only got limited amount of memory to hold the samples and you need to share it with the sound engine, music data and sound effects data aswell not just samples needed for music itself... Synthesizer will be better on that part since an instrument will take negligable amoun of space, whether its crappy or good it will take same amount of space... now how good the isntrument will be is greatly dependant on the composer... FM is rather difficult to get around to and its very overwhelming in the beginning. It will take quite a lot of time before you actually understand what all of the parameters do, and when you can think about "today I'll make a flute" and you go and make it...
Some comments about the crappy sample playback on MD : this is all about the quality of the code that handles sound... MD does not give you any high enough percision timers that generate interrupts, there's no FIFO on the DAC channel nor any other features... just a DAC which is completely software driven. YM offers you 2x timers, but neither is wired to the interrupt, only VBL is but that is useless for sound. From my experience though, I just cannot understand how could 99% of the single PCM channel music drivers have so crappy sample playback... I would understand it if it was 2 or more channels because the banking mechanism on Z80 side is truly horrible and slow....
MD does offer much more freedom on the sound area though, the Z80 has more or less full access to the rest of the system, only thing you hold in RAM is the sound playback code and perhaps some related data, all else you can access directly from the ROM. That is how I manage ~450KB of samples that any of the tunes can use at any time in my sound system. On SNES you have these slow ports and you have to involve both sides into getting data in and out from either side... not so on MD, one side can run totally independently from other, only problem is communications... because of a timing problem, reads and writes to 68K RAM from Z80 are ineffective so for comms the 68K has to stop Z80 and read/write values from/to its RAM. That will have some negative effect on sample playback quality, but this is something you do not do very often so the effect is minimal.
MegaCD has one advantage, which is that in that 64KB of RAM sound PCM chip, you do not have to store music playback code, but the samples are all uncompressed... but things sound rather good. None of the recordings there have been processed in any way, just direct recordings.
The Silpheed recordings have YM and PSG in the mix also. I'd like SNES to sound that crisp.....
Go listen more carefully. It's not actually looping yet. It does another variation of the main theme in a different key. The point where it actually start's it's main loop of the entire thing is at about 3:06.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
It's well known that Mega Turrican was the original game and that the Genesis was the lead platform. The Genesis version simply got stuck trying to find a publisher and ended up releasing later.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
I'm sorry but that track sounds like shit compared to anything in Mega Turrican if you ask me. It has that typical Amiga sound to it which I honestly don't like. It sounds flat and it's clear they have less channels to work with. If you want to show off Amiga sound there's probably better examples than that, like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLdBw_hg6dw
That sounds great, it has depth, bass, punchy drums, etc. That said, it's not like a system like the Genesis could replicate that particular track. The Atari ST version pulled it off with a Software MOD player after all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Uy69Jjk9M
And we know Toy Story does that exact same thing on the Genesis.
Street Fighter II SCE is literally using DMA to write the same data to the same locations twice for every frame it draws. There's no need for that at all and it's part of what makes the speech samples sound awful. It's clearly a bug and and oversight that Capcom did when they ported the game. That too me screams incompetence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Did you care to even read the rest of my comment there or did you just stop and feel the need to spam Sega Arcade music? The CPS1, X68000, and Sega Y Board all use the exact same kind of audio set up. A YM2151 for the main musical instruments with a separate PCM chip for sound effects and samples. To say you're impressed by one and not the other just makes you look like a fanboy as you're literally praising one and dissing the other for using almost the exact same hardware.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Why are you quoting some morons from another forum?
The Saturn version has the sound all kinds of jacked up, but I'm pretty sure that the Saturn hardware had nothing to do with why it is that way.
I think it's not only one of the best MD games ever made, but also one of the best sounding and 'The Shinobi' is my fav single piece of chip gen music from that Gen. I'm not knocking Revenge, but praising its brilliance:daze:. Did it matter, if it came out early?. I think Virtual Fighter on the Saturn features some of the best quality sound effects heard on that system and that was a launch game. Some say Sonic is the best sounding and looking MD game and that came out in 91, still early in the system life. Sonic Adv onthe DC is one of the best sounding game on the system and that came out a month after the system launch, many hold up Halo as one the best sounding games on the OG XBox a launch game and speaking of launch games many hold up Star Wars RS II as the best looking Cube game, RR one of the best looking games on PSP. So you've lost me on that one, sorry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barone
Highlighting an issue is not bashing a game. I think its the best boxing game ever made, but it couldn't play the sound samples at the same time due to issue with Hardware, not that it made much difference. What next pointing out, polygon folding in 32bit classics is slating a game and the system, rather than where hardware limitations can show their head.Quote:
You criticized Greatest Heavyweights on the MD
Looking past how utter crap the game was, I would say the Snes speech was better not that was anything to shout about with this pile of crap.Quote:
WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game suffers form the same issue.
And If it makes you feel better, I didn't like Capcom output on the Snes, I never used their music in Snes games trying to point score on the MD and I don't know why you even feel the need to quote someone from another forum, like that that makes it fact. Mind you at least we could agree with the Mega CD, that really did have a great sound system and the best of all worlds FM, PCM, and CD-DA support thats why I much rather play the likes of Pitfall on the system compared to their Snes or MD counterparts, better sound and music.