Saturn > SNES

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

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.

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Yeah, I know. The are work arounds for it where sample swaps can happen, but steady streaming would tie up the CPU. Super Metroid would load stuff during the door sequences.

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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.

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I checked it out a little bit on my phone. I'll look at the videos later. What I'd heard sounded like really nice Chip tunes and not streaming. :huh:

What MN12BIRD did took over 1meg of cart space and it had voice samples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAlUeROoFco
Here's a better quality video of the second track. It's not streaming one giant song but instead it builds a song out of multiple "clips", large-ish samples but sequenced to make a full song. Kinda like how hiphop tracks are made. Multiple instruments, the complete patterns, all in one sample.

Maybe this clip from the same game makes it clearer: http://mrjester.hapisan.com/01_Publi...e%20Screen.mp3

By cutting the song up like this they can save a lot of rom space. On the SNES making an entire song out of streamed samples like this would kill the CPU, on the Genesis the impact is minimal because of how the hardware works.

Of course, this is still a MASSIVE waste of rom space, and couldn't really be used for a full game. The point is showing that the audio streaming capabilities are different. The Genesis has to stream by default, so something like this is doable.

Of course, the SNES has 8 channels with echo effects and compression, even when limited to 64k of RAM you can get some really nice stuff, and updating an instrument or two between song patterns is also totally feasible. Ultimately this video shows something awesome for demos like this, but not for a real game.

For a real game, you want something more like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNdRVkq1m1Q

For the record, I never claimed that the SNES sound chip could stream music while playing a game. I stated that the chip was being held back by cartridges. It could most certainly do Amiga like intro screens and credits if it had larger storage storage space than cartridges. And the same could be said of the Genesis, where better voice samples could be used if it had storage better than a cart.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

For the record, I never claimed that the SNES sound chip could stream music while playing a game.

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No, your claim was that the genesis couldn't (which I hopefully proved it can). As far as Amiga Intros go, really depends on the intro. Some of those Amiga intros have really big samples (like Cannon Fodder), no way all 4 simultaneous samples would fit into the SNES 64k of RAM, even taking into account compression. Other intros would be perfectly doable given sufficient cart space to waste.

Of course, you could just make the entire intro into one big track and stream the whole thing off the ROM (late Neo Geo style), but the Amiga still had the advantage of simply being able to play bigger samples. In all other aspects the SNES chip is superior.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

No, your claim was that the genesis couldn't (which I hopefully proved it can). As far as Amiga Intros go, really depends on the intro. Some of those Amiga intros have really big samples (like Cannon Fodder), no way all 4 simultaneous samples would fit into the SNES 64k of RAM, even taking into account compression. Other intros would be perfectly doable given sufficient cart space to waste.

Of course, you could just make the entire intro into one big track and stream the whole thing off the ROM (late Neo Geo style), but the Amiga still had the advantage of simply being able to play bigger samples. In all other aspects the SNES chip is superior.

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I was talking about the video I'd posted showing the SNES streaming 16k 32k audio. I made no claims that it could be used in game. I stated that the size of carts kept that from being a reality.

I'm on my phone, so I won't be able to see how good those Genesis videos are until I get on a real computer. I do know that the SEGA chorus takes up 2 meg of cart space alone.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

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.

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Something does not sound right with that comment. If the Z80 was truly streaming music, the 68k would have to load everything into the system RAM for the whole level, or there would be pauses in the music, even with the 8k buffer.

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

I'm looking at the music files he has listed below the video. 2 of those are just FM and the other 2 are DAC. The DAC files are being streamed from the WAV. device inside of the Everdrive cart. Those files are really low quality, and like I'd said, it probably wouldn't be possible to stream the 8-bit 26K music (with a game) that MN12BIRD had in that video.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Something does not sound right with that comment. If the Z80 was truly streaming music, the 68k would have to load everything into the system RAM for the whole level, or there would be pauses in the music, even with the 8k buffer.

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Streaming doesn't mean it's accessing the ROM non-stop.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Streaming doesn't mean it's accessing the ROM non-stop.

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Yeah, that's where the 8k of sound buffer would come into play, but that would mean that the samples are not of high quality.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Yeah, that's where the 8k of sound buffer would come into play, but that would mean that the samples are not of high quality.

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The Z80 only needs to buffer 0.016 seconds of sound per frame. At 26KHz that's around 400 bytes. It takes the Z80 around 7 cycles to load a byte, that's 2800 cycles total. Add around 200 cycles for worst case bank switching, that's 3000 cycles. The Z80 has around 58000 cycles per frame. Most of that will be taken up by the sound playback, the actual loading is minuscule in comparison.

Markey's drivers can play 2 sounds simultaneously with pitch shifting and volume support (see the Sonic CD cover) which requires a LOT more CPU power than dumb playback. It won't ever reach 26KHz but that's just the tradeoff his driver took (which is totally worth it). I'll take 2 channel mod playback over streaming huge tracks any day.

When it comes to streaming audio the MD completely and utterly destroys the SNES. The SNES can play much higher quality audio (16bit, 32KHz vs 8bit, 26KHz) but only at a very heavy load on the main CPU, while the 68k doesn't even realise it is happening on the MD.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

No, he hates on it

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs

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Originally Posted by Barone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs

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http://playstationeu.i.lithium.com/t...e?v=1.0&px=600

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrg9Iqi57_s

Tried this game recently. SNES audio at its finest.

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Originally Posted by Lion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrg9Iqi57_s

Tried this game recently. SNES audio at its finest.

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This is the kind of thing I've talked about in the past, how whenever discussions of SNES sound come up, someone inevitably posts a clip(s) of bad SNES sound as an example of why SNES sound is the best.

Most of the bgms sound like broken out-of-tune midi tracks and the sound effects/voices have the stereotypical problems.

I think he was being sarcastic.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

This is the kind of thing I've talked about in the past, how whenever discussions of SNES sound come up, someone inevitably posts a clip(s) of bad SNES sound as an example of why SNES sound is the best.

Most of the bgms sound like broken out-of-tune midi tracks and the sound effects/voices have the stereotypical problems.

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I thought it was obvious I was kidding, given how bad it sounds. And it's even worse on real HW.