How Oldschool Sound/Music worked [video] | Hacker News Reader

How Oldschool Sound/Music worked [video]

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34 pointsAudiophilip3 comments

Good video, but it seems to somewhat conflate FM synths (e.g. Yamaha YM3812, YM2610, YM2151) with primitive envelope+counter-based PSGs (e.g. General Instrument AY-3-8910/Yamaha YM2149, Ricoh/Nintendo 2A03, Texas Instruments SN76489). I'd argue that the character of these two classes is substantially different. The PSGs are much more built around pure waveforms (for certain interpretations of "pure waveforms" that include pseudorandom noise), while the FM synths tend to be built around sets of parameters that produce sounds almost, but not quite, entirely unlike traditional musical instruments.

Another interesting bit of trivia is that the Yamaha "FM" synth chips were actually based on phase modulation (PM) rather than frequency modulation (FM). The abstract math can be transformed back and forth between the two, but the PM formulation accumulates less error when directly expressed in digital hardware.

The Commodore SID is arguably in a class of its own and probably can't be fully explained without some kind of textbook-length exegesis.

edited to add: samples to try to demonstrate what the heck I'm blabbing about with the difference between PSG and FM:

PSG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg The Legend of Zelda - Main Theme (Koji Kondo; 2A03)

FM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWPNxSD9YNY - The Revenge of Shinobi: The Shinobi (Yuzo Koshiro; YM2612)

Man, the swell of that Shinobi tune at 25 seconds is an awesome thing.

About the video, somehow it managed to describe the Commodore SID without mentioning the programmable filter, too. Having said that, there are many great SID tunes (including Commando) which don't happen to use the filter at all.

I did enjoy the video though. Made it clear that the differing sound (and graphic) capabilities gave each system a unique personality.

Probably anyone reading this has already seen it but in relation to Japanese game music, Diggin in the Carts is a lovely, heartwarming series altogether. http://rbma.github.io/digging-carts/

Also this Youtube user has some mesmerising plots of C64 tunes with the waveforms nicely stabilized so you can really see them. https://www.youtube.com/user/KapteinKUK/videos

There are a lot of aspects of the phenomenon of "chiptune sound" that aren't given much due. For example, early arcade hardware was more prone to using analog components - think of the rumbling explosions of games like Space Invaders, or the 6-voice subtractive synth used in Sente games[0], reused by Sequential Circuits as a standalone synth[1]. The Atari 8-bit chips(both TIA and POKEY) contained "distortion" effects (based on a variable-length LFSR) that could be used for both noise and guitar-like tonal timbres[2]. The true successor to the SID is the Ensoniq DOC used in the Apple IIGS[3] and SQ-80[4], but it gets little attention. And lastly a number of later chips, including the Game Boy, had a low-res wavetable on at least one voice, which allowed for some more timbre options(albeit 90% of the time it was a sawtooth)[5].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xCiOXQJO18 (MAME emulates this chip but does a terrible job)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa-Cwn4po40

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDeV7wrB2c0

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WujTzBCRBAY

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y8fNnDJUx0

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caz21XapSiA&list=PL3B271CECB...

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