Saturn > SNES

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03-06-2018, 02:41 PM
gamevet

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barone

I'll say it for the nth time: MD can do music/sfx with FM and PSG; the SNES can't. Audio RAM is a far worse constraint on SNES side.

The 64KB of memory is using compressed files at a rate of something like 9/32, or somewhere over 28%. The 64KB of memory is storing more data, because of compression, just like the 512KB of audio memory on the PlayStation is holding more data than the 512KB audio memory of the Saturn.

Quote:

*Z80 CPU cycles.

I'd heard that the Z80 streams audio files for the PSG, while the 68000 handles the files for the PWM part. The music slows down whenever the 68000 gets bogged down.
03-06-2018, 02:56 PM
BonusKun

OK ladies, Calm the fuck down. I've already gotten a few reported posts in this thread so as much as I'm enjoying the verbal banter TA and Barone are having, just relax and try to be civil.
03-06-2018, 05:05 PM
Kamahl

Quote:

Originally Posted by gamevet

I'd heard that the Z80 streams audio files for the PSG, while the 68000 handles the files for the PWM part. The music slows down whenever the 68000 gets bogged down.

Each sound driver on the Genesis does it's own thing. Some drivers are entirely Z80, others have the 68000 share part of the burden, like handling FM & PSG. The Z80 is universally responsible for PCM, the only exception is the MOD player in Toy Story where both the 68000 and the Z80 work together to handle 4 channels of PCM with variable pitch and volume.

Homebrew devs have managed (on the Z80):

FM + PSG + PCM (selectable rate) - Sik's Echo Driver

FM + PSG + 2ch PCM (22 KHz) - Tiido's TMSE Driver

2ch PCM (selectable rate, volume levels, variable pitch) - Markey Jester's Dual PCM Driver

FM + PSG + 4ch PCM (14 KHz) - Stef's XGM Driver

2ch ADPCM (SNES style compression) (22 KHz) - Available in SGDK

4ch PCM (16 KHz, volume levels) - Available in SGDK
03-06-2018, 06:28 PM
gamevet

I've seen a demo that breaks down the music from SOR. Part of the tune is generated by the PSG and the other half was FM. I'll dig up the video later.
03-06-2018, 07:57 PM
Barone

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

No, I like to leave the doubles standards to you and also the insults. I never said the 3DO looked the best, but it was a Jump over the 16-bit versions and I liked the sound over the Sharp version.

Here's what you said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I know it does and the remixed tracks sound great, the sound effects were fab too and all in Q Sound. A step up, over the Sharp X6800 version as was the colour, but like I said, both the FM Towns Marty and 3DO were a generation above and also hugely expensive 32bit consoles. It not quite fair to compare them.

:roll:

Quote:

Originally Posted by gamevet

I've seen a demo that breaks down the music from SOR. Part of the tune is generated by the PSG (why did I call it PCG?) and the other half was FM. I'll dig up the video later.

I think this is what you're looking for (after 5:50):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb3TEywgwMU
03-06-2018, 08:55 PM
gamevet

It's this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1XlVX1UwSU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1XlVX1UwSU
03-06-2018, 09:05 PM
Black_Tiger

Quote:

Originally Posted by SegataS

Aside from some cool bass SNES just sounds better overall. Can throw technicals all anyone wants but there is a reason that Sony chip is still celebrated and to be frank the only ones who try and debate it are SEGA fans. Listening to the music on both systems and typically SNES just shows more but yes there are times that yes Genesis sound is more fit for a certain game. I much prefer Ys III on Genesis to SNES sound. SNES as hardware was just more capable than Genesis with the only caveat is the CPU and in that regard, SNES was behind and didn't get as many action games or shoot em ups. Something like Terra's theme is one of the greatest examples of that outstanding chip that cannot be replicated in Genesis without sounding like a downgrade. Aquatic Ambiance could've only been done on SNES between the 2 as SNES was just able to have a lot more subtly in the music to create one of the best songs in gaming history to relax to. It's pretty on par with CD midi of the era. I really doubt Corridors of Time on Genesis could replicate that great metal drum sound. I love how both sound but Genesis to me is more to the equivalent of rock and SNES more fit for a symphony.

Video game fans are the ones who genuinely appreciate games and consoles exactly as they are and don't ignore their limitations. It's the limitations and how software is shaped around them that makes classic gaming so interesting, charming and timeless, instead of generic. Only true fanboys resort to the sole argument of "if you like the rival of what I like, then you're just a fanboy". People here regularly talk about the pros and cons of Genesis hardware in general. You can see regulars in this thread criticizing the Genesis sound hardware. How often have there been frank and unbiased discussions about the problems with SNES sound on nintendoage and NeoGAF?

You're not alone in this thread, for being immune to the "imperfections" of SNES sound, which can be heard even in the best music and effects the system received.

If listening to Aquatic Ambiance and then at least the first couple tracks Shadow of the Beast for PC Engine doesn't make the issues of SNES sound finally jump out to you, then you might as well just agree to disagree about the merits of "technicals" and spare us any more matter of fact statements completely lacking any facts to support them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKAc3nYEatw&t=5742s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A98phigEPEk

Bonus technical aide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGMnj-0uSsM&list=PL-vD6rIjXrcLvLV1ymv05o7tthtmVejcA
03-06-2018, 09:19 PM
gamevet

That's just all around crappy music direction for the SNES version, and while the PC Engine version (they changed the heartbeat to a lame drum) is pretty good, it's nowhere near the awesomeness of the Amiga version.

The real limitation of the SNES sound chip was cartridges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_60V8UdYEY
03-06-2018, 09:55 PM
Barone

Quote:

Originally Posted by gamevet

The real limitation of the SNES sound chip was cartridges.

No, it wasn't.
And thanks for linking a demo of one of those "morons" who "claim to be something they aren't" from the forum I linked earlier and that you dismissed. ;)

Here are some quotes from the author about that demo:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=57611#p57611

Quote:

The main challenge here was to reach the full rate of the SPC-700's DAC, to see whether it could even be done. Lower rates allow plenty of time for indexed addressing on the SMP side, and thus buffering, as tepples mentioned. Buffering is more efficient on the S-CPU side too, and allows other tasks like graphics at the same time.

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=57636#p57636

Quote:

You can't do anything else, though, since it ties up the S-SMP. It's more of a curiosity, unless someone sticks an MPEG decoder in a cartridge and uses the SPC-700 as a roundabout DAC. Or maybe someone wants to stick a really high quality, short sample in his homebrew game and play it at the title screen. This just establishes that it can be done...
03-06-2018, 10:00 PM
Leynos

Quote:

Originally Posted by gamevet

That's just all around crappy music direction for the SNES version, and while the PC Engine version (they changed the heartbeat to a lame drum) is pretty good, it's nowhere near the awesomeness of the Amiga version.

The real limitation of the SNES sound chip was cartridges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_60V8UdYEY

https://media.giphy.com/media/Qpfa1kvv5sdXO/giphy.gif
03-06-2018, 10:03 PM
gamevet

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barone

No, it wasn't.
And thanks for linking a demo of one of those "morons" who "claim to be something they aren't" from the forum I linked earlier and that you dismissed. ;)

Here's a quote from the author about that demo:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=57636#p57636

Of course not, but neither could the streaming demos MN12BIRD did of the Genesis running 8-bit 26Khz streaming music from a cart. The CPU would be tied up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG1H_88Vmh0

I skipped a couple of pages, because it was all getting ridiculous. ;)
03-07-2018, 12:17 AM
TrekkiesUnite118

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

No,he just slams the Saturn, now knocking the Mega CD and never talks the DC up over the PS2. He's part of the PlayStation generation, hardly a SEGA man.

He's not really slamming the Saturn, he's just pointing out it's shortcomings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Just like SEGA then, it stuck with quads until the late 90s in the Arcades.

Quads were still relatively new when Sega was using them. They stopped though after Model 3 so it's not like they stuck to them for too long. In the grand scheme of things we're talking maybe 5 years during a very experimental era in Video game graphics.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

The difference was they stuck with the CPU, they just speeded it up. For the sound, they looked to a totally different chip.

Then why didn't they add more sound chips in individual cartridges? It's relatively easy to do after all on the System. And the Famicom showed it was cost effective as well. So if the Genesis sound truly wasn't enough why not add an additional PCM chip to the cartridge for those games that they felt needed it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

They are, but it seems ok to do that here.

No, you just have no grasp of the more subtle parts of the English Language.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Super Hang-On sounds nice on the Sharp, but it loses out for the sound effects and the music isn't quite as good. The sound is about the whole package.

The sound effects I'll give you, but the music sounds fine. And again you originally brought up just the music in this argument.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

The fact that you're quoting and responding, with the countless quotes.. not asking to repeat what was typed or asking to explain the point better.

The fact I have to keep explaining mine and others posts to you because you keep misinterpreting them is proof enough that you don't have as good of a grasp on English as you'd like to admit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

You keep on bringing those systems up, I don't know why. I'm not a huge fan of CPS1 board and never owned or played much of the Sharp system at all.

You brought them up. You flat out said in a post you weren't impressed by the CPS1 or the X68000's sound, but put Sega's arcade boards on pedestals. I brought up that they use almost the exact same hardware set up. And thus this debate started. It started because you made a hypocritical argument that I pointed out was hypocritical.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Yes it is, in its simplest form. Play Striker on the Snes or the latter John Madden and see Mode 7 drawing and handling the pitch to help take the load off the SNES CPU, play both games on the Saturn and see Saturns VDP2 Mode 7 style plans do exactly the same. At the end of the day, its only really a background that can be manipulated.

Except that's really not Mode 7. Just plain old Mode 7 gives you Bowser from Super Mario World. It doesn't give you the landscape effect you see in F-Zero or Mario Kart. That's a combination of Mode 7 + Raster effects. VDP2 is that on steriods. It's far more than just Mode 7. The planes are pure hardware without raster manipulation, plus it has more background layers on top of that where as Mode 7 loses all other background layers when it's in use. VDP2 is much more than SNES style mode 7.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

No I have Outrun and Super Hang-On via digital on my 3DS (and 360 for Hang-On) and go to the Jukebox sound test option and play the music. On the left side of the screen will be displayed X Board 8 channels of FM sound and the 8 channels of PCM.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4792/...297685a0_o.jpg

As do I and this is what mine looks like:

https://i.imgur.com/0NqZG4u.png

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I'm not, I don't really like brining up the FM Marty, but I was super impressed with its Audio thats all at the time. It was like a SEGA Arcade board with FM sound chip and also a Richo PCM sound chip too.

You were too making that comparison. We were talking about the X68000, a home computer, and you brought up the Marty.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Actually, the music just comes off the CD, so it not like the Mega CD or PC Eng CD ROM2 couldn't handle the music. I was just saying that unlike some people.I didn't see CD-DA as the devil and couldn't careless if the music came off the disc, as long as its sound great.

Most of us don't see it as the devil, but we do think it's silly to bring it up as an example to defend the Synth/MIDI hardware of a system seeing as how it doesn't really make any use of that hardware.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

You more than quick enough to insult me and say I should read what people post, maybe you should try the same now and again.

I brought up reading because you are continuing to show that you're not actually reading what people are posting or that you're not understanding what they write. You keep saying people said things that they didn't, or go on arguing something that wasn't being argued. You cause confusion and frustration in these threads because people have to keep repeating themselves to you and carefully rephrasing what they post in hopes you'll finally get the point. It's clear you either don't understand English very well, or that you're not reading the entire post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Only I didn't . I just made the point that I couldn't carless than Outrun music on the Saturn came off the CD, it was Arcade perfect and that I wanted. PowerDrift music comes off the sound chip on the Saturn, but I wouldn't say that makes the music in the game any better or more special . I have no issues with playing back of samples or music played directly off the disc

Yes you did. We were discussing the audio capabilities of the Sharp X68000 and you brought up systems and versions of games that use CD Audio to say it was inferior.
03-07-2018, 06:15 AM
Barone

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

No,he just slams the Saturn, now knocking the Mega CD and never talks the DC up over the PS2. He's part of the PlayStation generation, hardly a SEGA man.

Hahahahaha
I hadn't seen this one.
03-07-2018, 06:25 AM
Kamahl

Quote:

Originally Posted by gamevet

Of course not, but neither could the streaming demos MN12BIRD did of the Genesis running 8-bit 26Khz streaming music from a cart. The CPU would be tied up.

Again, that's incorrect. You're assuming that just because it is one way on one console it must necessarily be the same way on the other console.

Sample data has to be read by the Main CPU on the SNES and transfered to the SPC through a really convoluted protocol, which means you really want to pack as much as possible into the 64k of sound ram and change samples as little as possible.

On the Genesis samples are always streamed by the Z80, in every game. The only challenge is that when the Z80 is reading from ROM the 68k cannot also be reading, but that's easy to work around unless you're Crapcom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGli__8pGY

Or a real hardware one (skip to 6m for the full PCM track):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkcY0DQXOT0
03-07-2018, 11:28 AM
Team Andromeda

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

He's not really slamming the Saturn, he's just pointing out it's shortcomings..

No, he hates on it and you are so quick to make out that I'm a Nintendo boy (for liking the SNES more than the MD( that I haven't a clue what I'm on about. Maybe in the interest of fairness, you should jump on his comments for being a SONY fanboy and also not knowing what he's talking it about; How the Saturn can do Transparent effects and how games like Sonic R and Shining Force III handle them, like you do for me (please don't bring up Saturn Mode 7 style transparent layers)

Quote:

Quads were still relatively new when Sega was using them. They stopped though after Model 3 so it's not like they stuck to them for too long

No just untill 1998, when SONY was using Triangles in 94, Nintendo 96 and it took untill NA@MI for SEGA to go with Triangles.

Quote:

Then why didn't they add more sound chips in individual cartridges?

Becasue they made the Mega CD in 1990. I'm guessing SEGA felt that system addressed the issues over sample channels.

Quote:

The sound effects I'll give you, but the music sounds fine

I never said the music doesn't sound fine, I just said it wasn't up with the Arcade, or the sound one got from Marty Home SEGA Arcade ports.

Quote:

You flat out said in a post you weren't impressed by the CPS1 or the X68000's sound

No I flat out didn't. I said it wasn't as good as SEGAs Y board or the Martys Sound system, which they clearly weren't.

Quote:

Except that's really not Mode 7

Only it was. Super Soccer did the same. Just like how F-Zero Stree Racer, NCAA Basketball on the Snes used Mode 7 to handle the track or the Floor so did Street Racer, NBA Action 98, Vatlva on the Saturn. You could also have Mode 7 handle various rasiet effects too, like the Aera 7 boss in Space Megaforce, in many ways Mode 7 was used in that game like Treasure did with RSG And you haven't got to tell me how good VDP II is.

Quote:

As do I and this is what mine looks like

You quick enough to tell me I don't read, and thown the insults. I wouldn't say too much I clearly said not just 3DS, but also the 'Vintage collection' on the '360' too. In those games M2 puts its jukebox feature. So next time you try and be clever and thrown the inults, bair in mind, somtimes people do know what they are talking about, when it comes to the number of channels on SEGA Y or X boards
And here's Yuzo use of the MD soundchip in SOR II too

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4779/...41752f49_o.jpg

Quote:

You were too making that comparison

Only in response. Its not like I talk the Marty up over the Mega CD or Saturn. I was impressed with the system, but it wasn't for me. Sorry to crush a dream, I'm a SEGA man at heart.

Quote:

We were discussing the audio capabilities of the Sharp X68000

You brought that system up 1st, I only said I was more impressed with sound off the 3DO and Marty, thats all.

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