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/vr/ - Retro Games

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5785816 No.5785816 [Reply] [Original]

And no, I'm not criticizing the composers, as there's great composers on the platform. What I mean is that the sound hardware is complete shit.

>> No.5785838

>>5785816
No dedicated sound chip. Limited space on carts meant compressing the fuck out of the audio.

>> No.5785848

They got butthurt over partnering with Sony for the SNES sound chip and decided to never use sound chips again over it.

>> No.5785854

>>5785848
R.I.P. Wouldn't it have been better though had they made it a disc system to allow CD audio or am I missing something? I don't get how they were so scared of piracy when they jumped to CD for the next few gens.

>> No.5785870

>>5785816
Given what it was being output through in nearly every case (shitty tv speakers), I think it sounds good. But then I also think the SNES sounds good and don't really 'get' the YM2612 fart huffing, so take that for what it is.

>> No.5785882

>>5785870
This. Hell I'd bet at least a quarter of TVs it was hooked up to weren't even using the stereo signal.

>> No.5785906

>>5785816
>What I mean is that the sound hardware is complete shit.
The system doesn't have conventional sound hardware. You can basically do whatever the fuck you want on it as long as you're willing to sacrifice CPU time.

>> No.5785909

Bad how? It has some of the best soundtracks of 5th gen, namely Wave Race 64, Goemon and 1080 Snowboarding.

>> No.5786003

>>5785906
Doesn't matter since the N64's whole selling was based off of it being better than the 32bit consoles available at the time (never mind the fact it was released a year or two later when 3d technology was booming). So most developers would push for 3D. Meaning it will most likely sound like shit compared to the 32 bit consoles.

>> No.5786029

>>5785816
>spoon feed a retarded zoomer
Not even once

>> No.5786052

>>5786029
Are you kidding me? The N64 was released almost TWO YEARS after the 32 bit consoles in this generation. And this was during a period where both sound quality AND 3D visuals were booming. Why are you defending the sound quality for a system that had more development time than the other 5th generation consoles and winds up sounding WORSE?

>> No.5786060

>>5786052
>sounding WORSE?
Did it really sound worse than the other systems? Not counting CD audio (not every PS1 and Saturn game used CD audio, a lot of them only used the CD capabilities for FMV).
I still don't see how N64 has band sound. See: >>5785909

>> No.5786087

>>5785816
>What I mean is that the sound hardware is complete shit.
But F-Zero X is has a great OST...

>> No.5786104

>>5786087
>>5786060
Those games posted though held back on the polygons and textures for both visual and audio performance, and look almost the same as what the 32 bit consoles could produce, but at a better resolution.

>> No.5786113

>>5785816
>try to redpill me on the Nintendo 64's sound
Do you talk like this in public?

>> No.5786121

I use a Retrotink because I'm poorfaggin in a closet and N64 is the only console I have that doesnt work with it, precise because all the sounds come out as fart static.

>> No.5786160

>>5786113
Nice argument you've got. Really helped with the discussion.

>> No.5786172
File: 48 KB, 600x600, 13668_front_grande.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5786172

AND DON'T FORGET THE JOKER

>> No.5786225

>>5786172
The only reason Tony Hawk N64 has music quality issues is Activision cheaped out and used budget cartridges. 12MB and 16MB respectively. if they'd paid for 32MB carts they wouldn't have had this issue.

>> No.5786230

https://youtu.be/JMum40OPp4Y

>> No.5786293
File: 56 KB, 355x355, goeOST.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5786293

>>5786104
>Those games posted though held back on the polygons and textures for both visual and audio performance
Wave Race? Looks the same as on 32-bit consoles? Are you sure?
>but at a better resolution
I dunno if "resolution" is the word, N64 games generally had an advantage at 3D in general.
So make up your mind, it's the same as 32 bit, or it's better?
N64 sound is fine, Mystical Ninja starring Goemon is one of the best adventure games on the system, with many locations, looks great and plays nicely, and it has not only a great soundtrack but also full voiced songs. And it didn't use any extra RAM pak or anything.

>> No.5786305

>>5786293
iirc Konami used a bigger cart just for the music to be high quality
>looks great
I'll say the NPCs and enemies are extremely low-poly compared to other characters and they have pretty limited animations.

>> No.5786306

>>5785906
>You can basically do whatever the fuck you want on it as long as you're willing to sacrifice CPU time.
We need to clear this up. While the N64 doesn't have a dedicated sound chip, the task of making sound doesn't entirely fall to the CPU. The vertex shader in the N64's GPU was designed to handle sound processing as well. In fact, the N64 programming manual assumes developers will use it and not the CPU (supposedly though the best developers for the system would divide half their sound channels each way).

The N64's vertex shader is 128-bit wide (8 x 16-bit operations per cycle). It's insanely powerful for a 1996 device. This was done to give the system sufficient leeway for graphics and audio. The whole thing about "more sound = worse graphics" only makes sense for games that lean hard on vertex shading like Battle for Naboo. Most N64 games bottleneck on the pixel operations (to be more exact, they choke on RAM modify ops), not vertex shading. N64 games primarily had bad music due to limited cartridge space, bad use of cartridge space, the fact that most games had talentless Western composers.

There is good N64 music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YRGbfufHG8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y0RwyI8j8k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu1RI9rzKoE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuQSKUTe89g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rcpLWo-GeU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KImIoK2dEOw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL0wco0l-Tg

Even early games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBPbJyxqHV0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv9_EYRfDxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggVmUXgs9y4

>> No.5786312

>>5786225
If Nintendo had used a real medium for storage then the system would have had better audio.

>> No.5786314
File: 509 KB, 639x479, Mystical Ninja starring Goemon map.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5786314

>>5786305
So we are now talking about graphics on an audio thread? What's your point?
Also, source about Konami using a bigger cart?

>> No.5786316

>>5786312
>defending activision
It's okay to have a hateboner for nintendo, but there's a limit.

>> No.5786326

>>5786314
>source on the cart
the wikipedia article of MNSG
>Mystical Ninjafeatured a cartridge size of 128megabits, designed much larger than most of its peers and predecessor games to allow high quality musical numbers and voice samples.

>> No.5786334

Another thing which is often not mentioned is that unlike the PS1 and Saturn, the N64 supports real-time Dolby Surround. This is due to its programmable audio pipeline.

PS1 and Saturn (and the SNES for that matter) only support baked Dolby Surround.

>> No.5786341
File: 748 KB, 1326x2300, RE2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5786341

>>5786334
Strangely enough, the only version of RE2 with dolby surround is the N64 one.

>> No.5786347

>>5786121
Get a better cable/different console at that point

>> No.5786374

>>5786326
Thanks, but 128 isn't that big, maybe compared to other earlier N64 carts, but to give you an idea, some of the biggest N64 carts are 512mb.
Still, what Konami did there was kinda magical, but in general, I still don't see the problem with N64's sound or why this thread was made (and with a Langrisser picture, why?)

>> No.5786384

>>5786374
>I still don't see the problem with N64's sound
Some anti-N64 zealots actually claim the console had worse sound capabilities than the SNES, as in the system regressed.

It doesn't take long to disprove the morons though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j68QmOjUpE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKLAUNc58iA

>> No.5786386

>>5785816
It is especially compared to cd audio

>> No.5786425

>>5785816
>the sound hardware is complete shit
It had no sound hardware.

>> No.5786428

>>5786386
Many PS1 games didn't use cd audio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL3boAkvkA4

>> No.5786429

>>5786052
>Are you kidding me? The zoomer was released almost TWO YEARS after the 32 bit consoles in this generation. And this was during a period where both brain quality AND reading comprehension were failing. Why are you doing things that are only happening in my imagination
Honey. The babys eating your bath salts again.

>> No.5786434

https://youtu.be/dRMN7GzZ3ic

>> No.5786442
File: 31 KB, 682x654, n64_audio.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5786442

>>5786425
>It had no sound hardware.

>> No.5786446

>>5786442
Yeah, it had an audio interface, obviously, but it didn't have dedicated sound hardware, everything was done in software.

>> No.5786449
File: 108 KB, 300x250, spheal_with_it.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5786449

>>5786429
Sorry that you take hardware criticism as a direct insult.

>> No.5786452

>>5786449
But it doesn't sound worse than the sound from the other systems, CD-audio aside (remember, not all PS1 or Saturn games used CD audio)

>> No.5786457

>>5786452
Yes, but even the midi tracks on the PS1 and Saturn are more impressive. Hell, even Liana's theme from Langrisser Dramatic Edition, which uses a vibraphone audible in some N64 games, has a much smoother, rounded sound.

>> No.5786460

>>5786446
Did you miss the part about the microcode engine which executes audio?

>> No.5786465

>>5786460
>microcode
microcode is software

>> No.5786468

>>5786457
>Hell, even Liana's theme from Langrisser Dramatic Edition, which uses a vibraphone audible in some N64 games, has a much smoother, rounded sound.
So you are OP.
You just seem biased, friend. N64's sound is fine. People have already posted many good tracks to probe you wrong.
The fact you like a Langrisser track a lot doesn't invalidate the N64 sound.

>> No.5786472

>>5786465
If microcode is software, then every single GPU since 2001 has been rendering graphics in software.

>> No.5786478
File: 137 KB, 1067x816, PC-Speaker_IMG_8161_(cropped).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5786478

>>5786472
You're right, OP. Here's my favorite sound hardware, why even get a sound card at all when you have this bitch right here.

>> No.5786489

>>5785816
The idea than N64 had bad sound comes from Sony marketing tumping up their newfangled CD audio feature, which the N64 obviously lacked. Indeed, on PS1 you could put any level of audio, whereas N64 could only do the ole samples. Therefore, something like the FFVII soundtrack is possible on the N64, but something like the SotN soundtrack is not. Today, the CD audio feature is barely any more relevant than the FMV streaming off the disk feature: it's all equally outdated tech, and the only thing that matters to this day is the the quality of composition rather than the technical aspects of audio.

>> No.5786496

>>5786334
>baked Dolby Surround
Like, only the music and FMVs are in Dolby Stereo (Dolby Stereo is the cinema equivalent of Dolby Surround) and the actual gameplay is still in plain stereo.
The Dolby Stereo mixing in Ocarina of Time and especially Majora's Mask was great.

The N64 version of RE2 is really interesting.
Too bad they never added Dolby Stereo to the GameCube and Dreamcast versions.

>> No.5786512

>>5786472
Ok, seriously though, most N64 games did all the audio on the CPU. Sometimes but rarely they would use the RSP for audio decoding, for example, decoding MP3s.

Microcode is really software, just as shaders are software. Code that runs on a CPU? That's software too. But the point is the RSP didn't have any audio specific capabilities like synthesis, sample playback, etc.

>> No.5786541

>>5786512
>most N64 games did all the audio on the CPU. Sometimes but rarely they would use the RSP for audio decoding, for example, decoding MP3s.
It’s the opposite. By default, developers were encouraged to process audio on RSP.

>But the point is the RSP didn't have any audio specific capabilities like synthesis, sample playback, etc.
It had a hardware vector unit for accelerating all of these things. Much like a sound chip, but flexible enough to be reused for graphics processing too.

>> No.5786704

>>5786449
Sorry that you take bath salts as a direct food source

>> No.5787624

stop posting langrisser you faggot

>> No.5788690

>>5785816
>What I mean is that the sound hardware is complete shit.
the sound quality output is actually quite good. the problems lay with developers, unimaginative musicians and rom space. the way music worked on the n64 is like a MIDI player. uses one giant sample bank containing all of your instruments in ADPCM format. sample quality was always sacrificed. musicians were given an allotted amount of ROM space to fill and all samples and music data had to fit in that space. some games sounded like cancer, some sounded good. sadly there were a lot more shit musicians on n64 than talented. the bar was set low. all you needed to make music for n64 was a MIDI keyboard using generic GM patches.

>> No.5788695

>>5786512
>RSP didn't have any audio specific capabilities like synthesis, sample playback, etc.
rsp handles all of the audio functions. can mix up to 100 channels of audio, so it's more than capable of doing synthesis of all kinds of sounds.

>> No.5788718
File: 66 KB, 758x720, 481776a.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5788718

>>5787624

>> No.5789779

>>5785816
>>5785838
From what I know it worked like a nerfed Midi device with very limited memory, so they had samples of real instruments but they weren't very good or realistic. That can't beat PSX's uncompressed CDA music.

>> No.5789894

>>5789779
Speaking of the PS1. it had a great sound chip as well. A lot of games did use compressed music or something similar to SNES music generation. Just listen to DOOM on it, the sound samples are tiny and everything is generated by the sound hardware.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV5UnANIj3c

>> No.5789907

>>5788690
>the way music worked on the n64 is like a MIDI player. uses one giant sample bank containing all of your instruments in ADPCM format
>some games sounded like cancer, some sounded good.
>all you needed to make music for n64 was a MIDI keyboard using generic GM patches.

Can you please stop? Thx

>> No.5790789
File: 30 KB, 211x399, 1564725632927.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5790789

>>5789907

>> No.5790824

>>5786306
gba had mostly the same deal (except with no vector processors to help out)

another example of a good composer and sound programming making lackluster sound hardware sound great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84nHg2EuS24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK5d4K56Nzg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6i1XtqNj8k

>> No.5790845

>>5790824
Id say the biggest issue with the GBA sound is how fuzzy it is. Its like listening to slightly out of tune AM radio.

>> No.5790849

Castlevania 64 had great music but some youtuber said it was a bad game so no one talks about it anymore.

>> No.5790869

>>5786341
The DC version running at 60FPS is the best way to play RE2.

>> No.5790930

>>5790845
yeah it had poor sound hardware but some people put it to pretty good effect regardless. LoG2 has one of the better soundtracks on the hardware.

>> No.5790995

>>5790849
I'm playing Castlevania Legacy of Darkness and I actually like it a lot. Is the first Castlevania 64 that much worse or am I just missing something

>> No.5791027

>>5785848
Not to mention the failure of the Nintendo PlayStation must've had bad blood between the two when Sony wanted to pretty much buy out Nintendo and Nintendo went off to do dealings with Phillips instead and that resulted in the infamous CDi games. I feel things could have improved slightly had the DD not been in development hell and turn out to be such a massive failure, but add-ons usually don't bode well for consoles so it's hard to say if the DD would have made genuine improvements for the consoles lifespan and popularity, it was mostly a way for Nintendo to swoon over devs who were iffy about the limited cartridge space "d-don't worry, this add-on will solve all of your problems!"
The N64 was already delayed for a decent amount of time, I wonder what other ideas Nintendo had in mind because while the console came out at just the right time before 3D hardware advanced, they couldn't match up with the demands of their install base because so many 3rd party devs would rather work on a cheaper much more easier to develop for piece of hardware like the PlayStation.

>> No.5791036

>>5790995
64 was rushed to release but was far from bad, just kinda unpolished. Legacy of Darkness is a much more complete package with some remixed sections compared to the original and you need to beat the first two campaigns before unlocking the original two characters from the original release. There's some decent amount of differences between the games that warrant owning both, and C64 has the better opening with the violin cover of Opposing Bloodlines, genuinely one of the most beautiful musical pieces on the N64.
And for context, there was an old episode of AVGN where he covers the Castlevania franchise and blatantly just lies saying he couldn't beat Castlevania 64 and that it was broken, but he was just in the entirely wrong location and basically implied that the game was broken. It's far from perfect, but I still think the original game is pretty fun, and the prequel/remake is even better....I won't forgive Konami for removing Opposing Bloodlines from the intro.

>> No.5791046

>>5790789
No really, I'm getting second hand embarrassment. Please stop.

>> No.5791047

>>5786489
It's more so that devs were too lazy to compensate with the N64s less friendly hardware while the PS1 was easier to compensate with and a lot cheaper to develop for, but otherwise yeah you're right. Games along with their soundtracks are only as good as the people behind the projects, if there's anything the original Gameboy has taught us it's that lesser hardware can be capable of so much even when the competition is technically a lot more impressive ie. Game Gear and Lynx.

>> No.5792068

>>5791036
I saw that AVGN episode a very long time ago. Is that really where so much of the disdain comes from? I'll probably give 64 a shot after I finish LoD.

>> No.5792440

>>5791047
Harder to develop for means it takes more time and therefore costs more money. As a programmer, I love a good challenge, but it's not a good idea to take on needless challenges when your company depends on the result being delivered on time. Calling not wanting to gamble on needlessly difficult hardware laziness is pretty stupid.

>> No.5794267

>>5792068
>Is that really where so much of the disdain comes from?
Honestly no. Back when it came out I didn't know a single person who thought it was good. It was average at best. When the castlevania64 defenders come out it reminds me of the Starwars prequel defenders trying to claim those video reviews are the only reason people would dislike it.

>> No.5795520

>>5790849
>>5790995
>>5791036
I like CV64 but I don't think it's as good as the other CV games. cool concept, imperfect execution.