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/vr/ - Retro Games


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File: 63 KB, 650x553, 6581 SID.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5384862 No.5384862 [Reply] [Original]

Is it me, or do I just not get the hype around this thing? A lot of SID tunes sound very scratchy and harsh to me, it's not something I enjoy hearing. Also it seemed like SID musicians way overabused arpeggios.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_I1FboBOoA

>> No.5384873

The sheer variety of sounds the thing could make was pretty impressive in its time. But three sound channels isn't a lot to work with (the NES had 5 for example), hence the use of arpeggios to simulate there being more channels. It was the best they could do. Personally I don't mind arpeggios as long as they switch notes every couple of frames rather than every frame, because it makes it sound a lot more "solid"

>> No.5384880

>>5384862
I dunno, but thank goodness CDDA came along and made this orchestra-on-a-chip nonsense redundant

>> No.5384882

>>5384873
>But three sound channels isn't a lot to work with (the NES had 5 for example)
Though a lot more limited in how you can use them, for example they're all fixed waveform.

>> No.5384893

>>5384873
Bob Yannes et al originally wanted six channels and the finished result was something less than they intended, but they had been working on it for almost a year and Jack Tramiel told them he wanted it out the door and it was still better than anything else around at the time.

FWIW the SID has a lot of unused space on the die.

>> No.5384906

>>5384882
That's true, but the fact that percussion took place in its own channel meant you always had 3 tones to use as the essentials: melody, harmony, and bass. On the SID you have to sacrifice one of those, or use arpeggios, or make one channel flip between two if you're really out of your mind. Then eventually NES composers figured out how to use the DPCM channel as an instrument. So in total that's four possible tones at one time, plus another channel for percussion. The SID can make more complex instrument sounds, but the NES can make more complex music in general.

>> No.5384921

>>5384906
NES games do still often have the problem of having to cut out one channel for SFX, for example in Mario when you grab a coin.

>> No.5384928

>>5384921
A problem made even worse on the C64.

>> No.5384940
File: 47 KB, 197x100, YM3812.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5384940

the Yamaha chips do sound a bit smoother, i cant quite put my finger on why that is.... i mean they are a musical instrument company, after all

>> No.5384949

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr0RSz-HPIw

PCM+triangle+pulse for the music, white noise and 2nd pulse channel for sfx.

>> No.5384951

>>5384940
>smoother
Didn't they make the chip responsible for the Mega Drive's fart sounds music?

>> No.5384960

The SID's three channels are a problem since you typically have to choose either music or sfx (a few games like Creatures manage to pull off both) but the tradeoff is that it has a wider range of sounds, soundtracks like Wizball has wouldn't work on the NES at all.

>> No.5384971

>>5384949
Your post is so wrong I don't even know where to begin. That game uses the noise channel+DPCM to create percussion. It uses the two pulse channels as lead and harmony and the triangle as bass. Sound effects are made by dropping out one of the pulse channels or the noise channel. All of this is clearly audible in that video.

Are you retarded, by chance?

>> No.5384972

>>5384951
The Genesis sounding bad is the fault of lazy, typically western composers. FM synthesis is the sound of hundreds and hundreds of top 10 songs, tons of arcade machines, PC sound cards, 8 and 16 bit home computers, Synthesizers, children's toys, literally anything that makes sound has used Yamaha FM sound chips or derivatives thereof. No one says that classic DOS soundblaster sound sounds like farts, and it's literally the same damn thing; 2 or 4 operator FM synthesis.

>> No.5384992

>>5384971
>can't make it through the post without ad hominems and insulting anon

The proper way to phrase this post would be as follows.

>Close but not quite. Batman uses the noise channel+DPCM to create percussion. It uses the two pulse channels as lead and harmony and the triangle as bass. Sound effects are made by dropping out one of the pulse channels or the noise channel. All of this is clearly audible in that video.

>I'm not sure if you're retarded, although probably not any more so than myself.

>> No.5384996

>>5384960
>>5384906
They're both better anyway than the Master System which still has Colecovision-tier sound.

>> No.5384998

>>5384992
It's not my fault you were wrong on the majority of what you said. Don't make excuses, pussy.

>> No.5385000
File: 583 KB, 1024x561, dx7.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5385000

>>5384951
Yamaha made like All the chips. They derive from this bad boy right here, in various forms of cost cutting / slight improvement until PCM sampling took over in the 90s.

Sure, the Genesis had one of the cheaper ones.... some composers were pretty garbage, etc. ....I love me some chiptunes man ....but there is a good reason sampling took over and we basically never looked back. ....sigh

>> No.5385005

>>5384972
To be fair the SID is also only as good as its musician and the examples the OP used were pretty poor ones (besides, Ms. Pac-Man was from 1983 or something). Try Robocop, Creatures, or TMNT: The Arcade Game for some great examples of SID music.

There's a lot of shit NES music too and Nintendo's first party titles also rarely used anything but the default envelopes, they relied mainly on catchy, simple melodies.

>> No.5385008

>>5384996
This I can agree with. I've actually seen people try to argue that the PSG was superior to the 2A03. I can't imagine the kind of brain damage they must have.

>> No.5385026

NES is better at samples easily because it has a dedicated channel for them and it only uses 3% of the CPU. The way you do samples on the C64 involves a hax trick that doesn't work on 8580 SIDs and also uses 50% of the CPU so it's only usable on static screens.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpd87e2PJnE

>> No.5385031

>>5385005
>and the examples the OP used were pretty poor ones (besides, Ms. Pac-Man was from 1983 or something).

The game was done by the same guy who did the Apple II port of Ms. Pac-Man and he admitted to not being as familiar with the C64.

>> No.5385046

>>5384996
>>5385008
The Master System used a clone of the TMS9919 which is mostly the same chip, but has a longer periodic noise which means that the sound channels operate at a 6% lower pitch. This isn't a bad thing either because the TMS9919 sounds pretty ear-splitting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcoxH4QLcLo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oyZ_u_e3Wo

vs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPcEtluIWPY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdwWu-i4WyE

>> No.5385051

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52IzfiXafDY

Also Tim Follins=God

>> No.5385056

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vua4DlsDAI

The game itself is pretty crap, but damn if the SID doesn't shine here.

>> No.5385060

>>5385000
>until PCM sampling took over in the 90s
Eh? Amiga was doing that since 1985.

>> No.5385078

>>5384862
C64 never had a Japanese scene, so we don't know what they could have done with the SID. Most of what we generally associate SID music with sounding like was European musicians who were strongly influenced by the popular music trends in 80s Europe.

>> No.5385089

>>5384862
The arpeggios and thick bass sounds are the main things C64 has going for it as far as I'm concerned. I don't think SID music is as great as everyone else seems to think, but it has its charms.
>>5384940
I have one of their cheap four-operator synthesizers and I was surprised by how smooth it sounds compared to the DX7 variant I own. It's limited, but it seems less harsh and like it has a much wider sweet spot (at least if you're into chintzy FM chip music).

Here's a clip of a piano patch without any effects:
https://instaud.io/private/f7d89d57ae095d2447454e236508db06761d8878
>>5385051
Don't forget his brother Geoff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBUt5a4q3j0

>> No.5385090

Most of the fart noise Genesis music was the result of dumb American developers who only used the default envelopes.

>> No.5385096

>>5385089
>I don't think SID music is as great as everyone else seems to think, but it has its charms.

It has a very spacey, sci-fi aesthetic to it so you have to like that sort of thing.

>> No.5385105

>>5385089
>The arpeggios and thick bass sounds are the main things C64 has going for it as far as I'm concerned

NES can do fat bass too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un9Wy-iKmp8

And actually the C64 Platoon doesn't have as thick bass as the NES, but the music is a lot funkier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBz8GsKIu-E

>> No.5385126

>>5385096
For me it seems to excel at music that sounds a bit industrial-sounding or like aggressive dance music, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPEyUE6sIP0

When I hear C64 games playing more "beautiful" music (no matter how good it can be), I can't help but imagine how they'd sound on a typical analog synth due to how the SID sound sounds like the middle ground between typical chip music and more traditional synthesizers.

You could be right about the space-oriented aesthetic, as stuff like that doesn't usually appeal to me.
>>5385105
The NES bass has that deep triangle wave sound, but it's got less of that chunky, more mid-range kind of sound to it that C64 games often had.

I do prefer the NES version overall, though, and I don't think it's just nostalgia.

>> No.5385128
File: 28 KB, 424x348, commodore_keeping_up.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5385128

>>5385060
Damn right it was! Amiga was a decade ahead of the PC, a good few years ahead of the Mac. Commodore should have ruled the computer industry. They fucked up. Hard.

>> No.5385131

>>5385128
Commodore and Atari both ended up screwing themselves over royally. It's sad, they could've changed history.

>> No.5385152

>>5385126
Though again, >>5385078 also applies. SID music is heavily filtered through the aesthetics of European musicians since that's where all the notable SID musicians are from.

>> No.5385162

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CghxlarV7AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_pDJR0VAS0

Me, I prefer simple, melodic chiptunes like this to the wall-of-noise arpeggio stuff in >>5385126

>> No.5385167

>>5385152
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FILe8utwVU

They did the same music style on NES stuff as well.

>> No.5385174

>>5385167
the original c64 version sounds much better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1AeBgalFZk

>> No.5385175

>>5385167
God I can't help but love that triangle wave bass. No other soundchip used triangle waves the same way and it just sounds perfect.

>> No.5385181

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xarmn0gTCkg

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

I have to say the C64 music is perfect, I don't like the NES music that much here. It lacks that same foreboding atmosphere.

>> No.5385183

>>5385078
It did have an American scene though and 90% of games just use the default envelopes and sound very basic, boring, and bleepy.

>> No.5385184

>>5385174
nevermind, nes was the original. just preference then.

>> No.5385185

>>5385181
Try Commando. Ron Hubbard's music rips while the NES port sounds like just bleeps, though to be fair it was something like the first NES game that Capcom developed in-house and they really didn't know the hardware that well yet.

>> No.5385196

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMm6NIhJFJ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR5nbWlW87U

For some reason on the C64 port they replaced the arcade music with this OC donut steal soundtrack that sounds like an 80s-90s Saturday Morning Cartoon. I like the music in of itself, but it doesn't fit the atmosphere of the game, it's too laid-back and doesn't convey any sense of tension.

>> No.5385198

>>5384906
From my understanding, you could swap out any sound channel to play any waveform you wanted, which is how Euro devs developed the so-called "triangle kick", which is a sharp drop in pitch of the triangle wave followed by a noise effect, to simulate a kick drum. You could do this effect on one channel, while on the NES you had to use two channels. Because of this effect, that's why the stage music of Robocop 3 sounds so complex for one channel, while on the NES it's simpler. In-game music could only be done on one channel, while the other sound channels were reserved for sound effects.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0zLi9nmsvI

>> No.5385206

>>5385196
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjZ0OHIcJpc

Any home conversion would be disappointing though. I mean, TMNT can get pretty freaking insane especially with four players.

>> No.5385210

>>5385206
I'm glad we have MAME today and don't have to play piece of shit home conversions on hardware about 20x weaker than the arcade.

>> No.5385216

>>5385198

>>5384906
It's a tradeoff. While the SID has fewer channels, the ability to flip waveforms on the fly can compensate. Also the NES's triangle channel is pitched an octave lower than the pulse channels and is generally limited to bass (although some games like Dragon Quest 1 use it for the main register).

>> No.5385227

>>5385216
>While the SID has fewer channels, the ability to flip waveforms on the fly can compensate
You're correct about this, but to accomplish this it required using arpeggios, which not everybody finds pleasant to listen to, as in OP's case.

>> No.5385245

>>5385206
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw3UwgqIqBA

The Amiga version was never actually released in stores, the developer went bankrupt and it was leaked out to BBSes, still incomplete and with no functioning in-game music, although part of Jeroen Tel's soundtrack is nestled inside the code.

That wa one of the huge problems with home computer arcade conversions, the fact that stuff like this could happen, whereas Nintendo required developers to have sufficient funds to finish a game.

>> No.5385261

>>5385206
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZKoejwKOs

Simpsons Arcade Game used the same hardware as TMNT.

>> No.5385283

Emulators never seem to capture the SID properly, the real thing sounds warmer and more resonant.

>> No.5385339

>>5384951
>>5383760
>fart sounds
did you mean the meaty bass?

>> No.5385349

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14988&start=255

Cripes, that is one ridiculous wall of text.

>> No.5385486

The C64 got the better Mario music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgJyfkJWroY

>> No.5385524

>>5384862
The C64 also didn't have hd 3d rendered cut scenes. You should avoid it or risk triggering you fragile eyes and ears.

>>5384992
Not even close faggot

>> No.5385554

>>5384882
it all depends on how you use it. here are some impressive AY-3-8910 tunes, which only has three channels (either square waves or noise):
>>>/wsg/2697585
>>>/wsg/2697630

>> No.5385607

>>5385046
A few of them does sound really good though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHjaWPP57EI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzRCYcJMUco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmcHutGeUqE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGSIJju2c8Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiIqZC9A-XE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36rJaj9gAig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBqAadLHDw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKLd-bs307E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_2fKFB2tyo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe-9K5Ycmk8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CahozwSd--0

>> No.5385951

The dedicated PCM channel on the NES is a very nice feature and allows practically free sample playback. On the downside, the 2A01 has a narrower frequency range than the SID so its music will always sound thinner. All the same, there are loads of brilliant NES soundtracks like Journey to Silius, the Mega Man games, Konami stuff, etc.

I think NES games are somewhat less interesting from a technical POV than C64 ones, a lot of them get away with never having to use a raster interrupt.

>> No.5385967

>>5384862
I agree. It has a disgusting screeching quality to it that I can’t stand.

>> No.5385974

>>5385967
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCgzJzrfDvU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIr9D7RlDHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jKHHeufS0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAHmU3bwX-0

Where do you hear that in here? It sounds more crunchy to me.

>> No.5385994

>>5385974
Actually it all depends on how you program the thing. The problem with SID music is that it's very easy to sound like nails on a chalkboard if you don't know what you're doing (try Castlevania for a particularly notorious example).

>> No.5386004

I think that more of my favourite SID tunes sound "deeper" than the NES music; it seems like the channels are used really well and even the individual channel effects can sound more like chords and less like notes; I guess what I'm trying to say is that the C64 can produce really meaty "instrument" sounds; playing Bionic Commando on my telly (which was always the better option at the time, as my PC speakers weren't that good) was made all the more atmospheric thanks to a soundtrack that layered on the different bass, rhythm and melodic elements to stunning effect.

That said, the sounds of the SID also sounded a bit less well defined than the NES sounds, there were harsh effects, fuzzy basslines, squelchy drums (your average Ocean loader is a good example of what I'm on about)

>> No.5386015

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiIKUFjw6KA

I'm not sure what happened with the NTSC version, but it sounds like utter ear rape while the PAL version has a nicer twangy music sound.

>> No.5386053

>>5386015
Likely the music pitch being altered due to the slower PAL speed.

>> No.5386061

You guys are also forgetting that the 8580 and 6581 sound quite different and apparently the former is closer to what Yannes originally intended. The 8580 sounds thinner and not as twangy but it has a larger cutoff range.

>> No.5386067

>>5385967
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwxLChxi8WA

NES music can be annoying too in the wrong hands.

>> No.5386091

>>5386015
This was done by a leaf developer Unlimited Software who apparently did not know the first thing about SID music.

>> No.5386123

>>5386061
I guess some NES revisions might sound different as well.

>> No.5386175

>>5386123
I'm only aware of that being the case on the very first revision Famicom from 1983-84 which lacked the looped noise feature.

>> No.5386187

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cJjsWGohg8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ_a6evZ-ZQ

>> No.5386207

>>5386187
Typical comparison. The NES looks higher resolution but also more anodine. The C64 music is good but there's less of it. I love the sfx though.

>> No.5386278

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS5y9CEUl2g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHtF4AoKAJs

The NES Arkanoid is disappointing, it doesn't even have the intro screen and the sounds are so bland.

>> No.5386291

>>5386278
This is typical C64--it has that gritty cyberpunk atmosphere to it.

>> No.5386318

>>5386278
Maybe a rush job?

>> No.5386331 [DELETED] 

>>5386318
Arkanoid is an NROM game. I was surprised to discover that.

>> No.5386379

I read how Maniac Mansion on the C64 had to use every available byte of RAM and even part of the disk drive RAM, but the NES version manages to fit in the console's 40k ROM space and adds music as well.

>> No.5386402

>>5386379
https://www.pagetable.com/?p=603

The C64 MM has a lot of bloat in it including anti-hacking checks that they didn't have to worry about on the NES.

>> No.5386751

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

I downloaded and tried this out on VICE once but in NTSC mode it was too fast and uncontrollable. Also the music sounded like a fucking rave party. Also it's all in bitmap mode so nice graphics.

>> No.5386763

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8kyhQC5XL8

>> No.5386767

I feel that Jonathan Dunn is a little underrated as an SID musician perhaps because he came along later than Hubbard, Galway, et al. Also don't forget Chris Huelsbeck.