/vr/ - Retro Games

Easy. I would use the C64's SID as basis and expand it to no end. Heck, the original design for the chip was pretty out there, but sadly was toned down quite significantly (I would even call it crippled, yet still it was one of the best sound chips of the time). So yeah, I'm not a fan of FM synthesis sound chips at all.
>Emphasis during chip design was on high-precision frequency control, and the SID was originally designed to have 32 independent voices, sharing a common oscillator.
>However, these features could not be finished in time, so instead the mask work for a certain working oscillator was simply replicated three times across the chip's surface, creating three voices each with its own oscillator. Another feature that was not incorporated in the final design was a frequency look-up table for the most common musical notes, a feature that was dropped because of space limitations.
>The support for an audio input pin was a feature Yannes added without asking, which in theory would have allowed the chip to be used as a simple effect processor. The masks were produced in 7-micrometer technology to gain a high yield; the state of the art at the time was 6-micrometer technologies.

>>6490462
Easy. I would use the C64's SID as basis and gimp it to no end. Heck, the original design for the chip was pretty out there, but sadly was toned down quite significantly. So yeah, I'm not a fan of FM synthesis sound chips at all.
>Emphasis during chip design was on high-precision frequency control, and the SID was originally designed to have 32 independent voices, sharing a common oscillator.
>However, these features could not be finished in time, so instead the mask work for a certain working oscillator was simply replicated three times across the chip's surface, creating three voices each with its own oscillator. Another feature that was not incorporated in the final design was a frequency look-up table for the most common musical notes, a feature that was dropped because of space limitations.
>The support for an audio input pin was a feature Yannes added without asking, which in theory would have allowed the chip to be used as a simple effect processor. The masks were produced in 7-micrometer technology to gain a high yield; the state of the art at the time was 6-micrometer technologies.

>>5082597
Well, there are later 8-bit sytems that are better than the c64, but that makes you wonder what year to choose as the cutoff point for 8-bit?
1987 saw the release of the Pc-Engine, the Amiga 500 and the Sharp 68k, so pretty much passing the torch to 16-bit in the home space. So maybe up to '87?
Between MSX2, PC-88 and C64 it would be hard for me to choose. The japanese computers have an edge over the c64, but they don't have the SID chip. As much as I love FM sound, SID is still boss.

>>4167475
Greatly depends on the FM Chip.
My first computer was a C64... and it's SID-Chip pretty much spoiled me for the rest of the 8- and 16-bit era (just listen to the ever growing High Voltage SID Collection). Only the Amiga's Paula chip came close, despite based on samples (but you could use computer generated waveforms to use synth too)

When looking into the other systems (despite that they of course partially were graphically better systems) had a glaring flaws in their limited FM-Synth capabilities. On paper the C64's SID-Chip should be inferior with just 3 channels, but it was just much more flexible (or even exploitable) then the other chips

To me the audio of NES, Master System/GameGear, MegaDrive and SNES just sounded kinda flat. Either because of the limited type of waveforms you could use or other flaws like waveforms being bound to a certain channel only, while the SID-Chip could use any of it's sawtooth, triangle, pulse or noise waveform with any channel and you could use the envelope generator or some fancy filtering on top of that (and as well as other partially unintended tricks or exploits) too.

While the audio of the MegaDrive and SNES sounded passable or good in many cases (but that ugly MIDI-like sound of many SNES games and most of the early PC-games was god awful), to me MasterSystem/GameGear and NES mostly still sounded either like nails on a chalkboard or again just flat.

I still find it interesting how the partially analogue C64 SID-Chip (or MOS Technology 6581/8580) was in fact even more ambitious in the first place. Originally planned with 32 voices in mind and other stuff, the final product was a drastically toned down version of what the engineer had in his mind. Yet still IMO the SID chip wiped the floor with pretty much every single 8- and 16-bit-soundchip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzRH1B2tjRE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3t5P7pvxlE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8i_5HJzGBY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfsWYNnJAMU