Is this really a PCE???

[elmer]

This guy seems to claim that he's making chiptunes on the PCE with MML using Husic ...

^{♫ https://soundcloud.com/ropchiptune}

I can hear *some* PCE in there, but it sure sounds to *me* like there's one heck of a lot of high-resolution samples, and low-end bass samples, too.

What do other folks think ... legit or ... not?

[CrackTiger]

I've heard all of those sounds in music from commercial games. Even the samples sound like they just took them from games like Fighting Run.

[Mednafen]

http://rophon.music.coocan.jp/chiptune.htm

ropHES160625_1v1

[Arkhan Asylum]

SOME of those are, I think.  Not all of them. 

I know you can get some of that stuff out of Squirrel because I've done most of it via fucking around.

The one Mednafen mentions is pretty easy to do honestly.    

That style of music is definitely not my kind of fun to make though.   lol

[elmer]

Well ... ... ... *excellent*, someone in Japan still loves the old-girl!   

It's not my kind of music, and I don't think that there exist enough drugs on the planet to really get me up dancing to it, but it's impressive-as-heck to hear!

There *are* some samples in there, but they're actually pretty small sizes and not the abominations that some folks are using in deflemask.

I didn't realize that Husic support samples, and well, it sure *looks* like pretty-much all the kinds of stuff that I'd expect in a good music driver from BITD.

Basically ... wow! 

[TurboXray]

Husic supports samples??? I guess it's superior in one way to the syscard player then.

But yeah, nothing sounds out of range in these examples for PCE, to me (the PCE ones).

[Arkhan Asylum]

The songs themselves are sort of gross.   They're that weird like "lets get fucked up and flail in the dark" music.   Not enough melody, too much ncgngcngcngcngncgncgncgncgn noise.

Still sounds cool, though.  lol

I am pretty sure, yea, Husic supports samples.    When I looked at it years ago, I didn't see a good way to get it working in a project where the CD player (Insanity was on CD) was just sitting there with a thing ready to be molested.

I'll have to go revisit HuSic now, knowing more than like 8 years ago. 

[elmer]

The songs themselves are sort of gross.   They're that weird like "lets get fucked up and flail in the dark" music.   Not enough melody, too much ncgngcngcngcngncgncgncgncgn noise.

So, I see that you've been to some raves then! 

[Arkhan Asylum]

The songs themselves are sort of gross.   They're that weird like "lets get fucked up and flail in the dark" music.   Not enough melody, too much ncgngcngcngcngncgncgncgncgn noise.

So, I see that you've been to some raves then! 

Yeah... this music has a specific usage.  lol

It would be good music for a game like Download, though.

[FraGMarE]

Dude, Speedy from over on the Deflemask forums did a near perfect version of Go Straight from Streets of Rage 2 on the HuC6280.  Apparently, this whole thing about the PC-Engine not doing bass very well is crap... give it some beefy DDA samples, make sure they're cranked up and in the right format, and you're good to go.  So it would seem, anyway.

Here, I've EQ'ed it a bit:
soundcloud .com/user-716572978/go-straight-yuzo-koshiro-pc-engineturbografx-16-arrangement-speedy

That kick bass and clap sample, though... mmmmmmm good stuff.

Also, if you go into the DMF file and turn off channel 3, it makes virtually no audible difference, so using this in-game would have been a very real possibility if you had to leave a channel open for sound effects.  The drum samples still sound pretty good at 8-bit/7khz too.  It's almost depressing to think about it haha... if Yuzo had worked for Hudson or NEC Ave.

Hearing this, I'm really not surprised at the examples you gave.  In the right hands the HuC6280 sounds amazing.

[esteban]

In general:

The history for the page mednafen linked to is intriguing. Look at all those years of dedication and effort for PCE...MUZIQUE...I will have to listen to all of the songs.



"Haters" (aka "polite dissenters"):
I don't mind this genre(s) of music...naturally, I take a break for tea when necessary. I'm not a heathen.



Fragmare: Streets of Rage on PCE, I hope it lives up to the hype. Isn't it best *not* to click on the link and therefore not be disappointed? I know you claimed otherwise...but...

UPDATE: ...pending... Wait, I remember listening to this before. It was mentioned in the forums...it is a nice cover of the song...but...

[NecroPhile]

It's not my choice in tunes, but it's cool that they're coming out of the Turbob.

It made me think of Stewie: https://youtu.be/AyWoF6fwnpQ

[technozombie]

I just listened to the first two tracks, but it sounds like something from Super Hexagon.

[Digi.k]

Dude, Speedy from over on the Deflemask forums did a near perfect version of Go Straight from Streets of Rage 2 on the HuC6280.  Apparently, this whole thing about the PC-Engine not doing bass very well is crap... give it some beefy DDA samples, make sure they're cranked up and in the right format, and you're good to go.  So it would seem, anyway.

Here, I've EQ'ed it a bit:
soundcloud .com/user-716572978/go-straight-yuzo-koshiro-pc-engineturbografx-16-arrangement-speedy

That kick bass and clap sample, though... mmmmmmm good stuff.

Also, if you go into the DMF file and turn off channel 3, it makes virtually no audible difference, so using this in-game would have been a very real possibility if you had to leave a channel open for sound effects.  The drum samples still sound pretty good at 8-bit/7khz too.  It's almost depressing to think about it haha... if Yuzo had worked for Hudson or NEC Ave.

Hearing this, I'm really not surprised at the examples you gave.  In the right hands the HuC6280 sounds amazing.

haven't been able to stop listening to this!  NEED MOAR!!

[Arkhan Asylum]

Dude, Speedy from over on the Deflemask forums did a near perfect version of Go Straight from Streets of Rage 2 on the HuC6280.  Apparently, this whole thing about the PC-Engine not doing bass very well is crap... give it some beefy DDA samples, make sure they're cranked up and in the right format, and you're good to go.  So it would seem, anyway.

Here, I've EQ'ed it a bit:
https://soundcloud.com/user-716572978/go-straight-yuzo-koshiro-pc-engineturbografx-16-arrangement-speedy

That kick bass and clap sample, though... mmmmmmm good stuff.

Also, if you go into the DMF file and turn off channel 3, it makes virtually no audible difference, so using this in-game would have been a very real possibility if you had to leave a channel open for sound effects.  The drum samples still sound pretty good at 8-bit/7khz too.  It's almost depressing to think about it haha... if Yuzo had worked for Hudson or NEC Ave.

Hearing this, I'm really not surprised at the examples you gave.  In the right hands the HuC6280 sounds amazing.

right but if you're using a sample to achieve bass, it just proves the point that the regular chip-generating can't really get the right sound otherwise, lol.

[TurboXray]

PCE is kinda made for samples, so it's kinda irrelevant if the regular channel mode can't get you there IMO.

[CrackTiger]

I didn't hear any sampled bass in that SoR track, only average chip sound bass.

Fighting Run is a good example of how the PCE can do "realistic" bass using samples.

[FraGMarE]

Dude, Speedy from over on the Deflemask forums did a near perfect version of Go Straight from Streets of Rage 2 on the HuC6280.  Apparently, this whole thing about the PC-Engine not doing bass very well is crap... give it some beefy DDA samples, make sure they're cranked up and in the right format, and you're good to go.  So it would seem, anyway.

Here, I've EQ'ed it a bit:
soundcloud .com/user-716572978/go-straight-yuzo-koshiro-pc-engineturbografx-16-arrangement-speedy

That kick bass and clap sample, though... mmmmmmm good stuff.

Also, if you go into the DMF file and turn off channel 3, it makes virtually no audible difference, so using this in-game would have been a very real possibility if you had to leave a channel open for sound effects.  The drum samples still sound pretty good at 8-bit/7khz too.  It's almost depressing to think about it haha... if Yuzo had worked for Hudson or NEC Ave.

Hearing this, I'm really not surprised at the examples you gave.  In the right hands the HuC6280 sounds amazing.

right but if you're using a sample to achieve bass, it just proves the point that the regular chip-generating can't really get the right sound otherwise, lol.

Samples for what?  The drums on channel 5?  Who cares!  lol the Genesis game used samples for the drums too.  Besides, the snare is PSG anyway.  ;)

Honestly, the bass track on channel 6 is the bass-iest part of this whole song, and that's all native HuC6280, right there. 

[FraGMarE]

You wanna hear your Turbob generating some BASS?    Check this out.  It's an HES file I made after tinkering around with the original DMF file a bit.  I've volume adjusted the channels and added cleaner sounding samples to make it sound a bit closer to the original SOR2 mix when played on Mednafen.  As such, it's optimized for Mednafen, but should sound nice in Ootake or on a real PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16.  If you have an everdrive or other flash card, you can load it up and see how it sounds.  Maybe someone could even report back here with how it sounds on real hardware.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/qp0m6s

P.S. Crank the volume.  No, seriously, turn it up... all the channels have been volume adjusted relative to each other, so not every channel is at ZOMG MAX VOL ELEVENTYSEVEN

[Arkhan Asylum]

What you said sounded like they were using samples for bass.  You said use DDA / samples, so I just figured they were using sampled bass.   I didn't listen, because I was on my phone.   I expect sampled drums, because they almost always sound fuckin cool.   Sampled bass is like "eh"

After listening, that bass is weak as shit compared to what you can get out of a Megadrive.

PCE just doesn't really do the good Rolandy synth bass thing.  It's not very phat.  This sucks, and I've just learned to accept it. 

https://youtu.be/P-ShlmeL2Dg

I wish PCE could crank out that stuff.

Maybe you all misunderstand what I mean by bass.  I just mean, the bass timbre sucks.   It might be able to create stuff that ends up being thumpy where you can feel it in your sack if you crank it and fiddle with it, but it never really has the right sound quality.

It can do plucked, punchy bass really well.   See: Devil's Crush.  However, even in that regard, the Megadrive's bass sound shits all over the PC Engine.   The rest of the song doesn't, but, the bass sure as hell does.

It really just sucks at trying to make those phat roland-esque synth sounds.   I can't think of any games that do it, and I've never been able to get that bass sound out of it.  It ends up weakening out.

Sampling bass will not give you a good synth sounding bass.  You'll get Amiga sounding bass, or like Fighting Run, you get Seinfeld Slapbass (TM).   Sampled bass is often very rigid, or sounds too percussive.   There's a reason SNES has plucky/slappy bass almost always (See: Squaresoft).

Synthy bass doesn't really jive well with the constant retriggering of samples unless you exclusively use like, a New Order style setup where it's filtered and the ADSR envelope cuts the notes off because it was meant to be sequenced.

https://youtu.be/v39V9fdlwqc

but even in this case, it's kind of shrill compared to even listening to a C64 version of Blue Monday.

https://youtu.be/fx6imnV7030
https://youtu.be/p_zBvxGSFbg

Fighting Run does better with the envelopey bass that isn't sampled, IMHO.

[Digi.k]

You wanna hear your Turbob generating some BASS?    Check this out.  It's an HES file I made after tinkering around with the original DMF file a bit.  I've volume adjusted the channels and added cleaner sounding samples to make it sound a bit closer to the original SOR2 mix when played on Mednafen.  As such, it's optimized for Mednafen, but should sound nice in Ootake or on a real PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16.  If you have an everdrive or other flash card, you can load it up and see how it sounds.  Maybe someone could even report back here with how it sounds on real hardware.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/qp0m6s

P.S. Crank the volume.  No, seriously, turn it up... all the channels have been volume adjusted relative to each other, so not every channel is at ZOMG MAX VOL ELEVENTYSEVEN

It don't quite pack the same punch on real hardware and the drum snares are  more obtrusive and harsher sounding on the pce hardware.

Has much more of a beat on soundcloud

[TurboXray]

the HES export has a problem where noise channel is twice as loud as it should be. You need to change the noise channel instruments (like snare), when you do Deflemask HES exports.

I wish PCE could crank out that stuff.

Just sample it, and use my HuPCM driver. You can do a lot more bass type instruments than slap or pluck with sample based synth.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Just sample it, and use my HuPCM driver. You can do a lot more bass type instruments than slap or pluck with sample based synth.

did you not read what I just said about sampled synth bass?  It never sounds as good, hence slappy/plucky being the usually heard sound.

If you could demonstrate some really well sampled Roland-esque bass, I'd be interested.

[TurboXray]

Yeah, not as good - but still not limited to (slap/pluck) is my point. And there are ways around it, to make it sound better (multiple samples within a filter range -> allowing filter control effects via a modulator like a real synth on a per sample basis change).

 I can do this on PCE:

[Arkhan Asylum]

You should show me it on a PCE, not on a YouTube Abelton mixjam.

It's not going to sound that good on a PCE, and you know it.  lol.

Slap and pluck sampling pretty much sounds spot on because they don't really rely on as much sound shaping as a nice, phat sounding synth bass.    PCE can do a plucked bass without sampling perfectly fine.   It's also better without the samples usually. (IMO)

sampling other heavy synth stuff tends to sound like it's missing something, because it is. 

I would love to be able to get some of those filter-modulated bass noises that you can get out of synthy stuff, but, none of this stuff was ever really done on PCE, and as such, has resulted it in not being part of the PCE's sound charm.   The most commonly sampled thing seems to be percussion. 

[Arkhan Asylum]

Also, I mean, this is probably some of the best sampled synth bass:

https://youtu.be/iGpU3DicbLQ

It's a famous as all fuck song, and even this song's bass sound lacks compared to what realstuff does, even though they sampled it from a real thing.

For example: SID tunes have phatter bass than Amiga, even when they sample'd a friggin SID to do the bass.   Something just gets lost in translation when you try to fake filtering instead of letting that stuff actually occur, I guess.


Amiga synth bass:
https://youtu.be/PCagkICmHBI&t=86s

What they were trying to do:
https://youtu.be/gDlQKhdo2eQ


They've lost that wet, drippy, "wewbeweoweb" thing that is at the beginning of the notes when they trigger, and the general phatness isn't really there.

sadly, a Megadrive can do that kind of sound pretty easily.   


EDIT: but what a Megadrive ends up lacking on is leads.  You end up with tinny fart noises, or thin leads.   PCE shits all over Megadrive in this department.

Conclusion:  We should make an OPL4 add on for PCE.



EDIT 2:  I was just thinking some more about samples and remembered how bad the guitars were in Menace on Amiga:

https://youtu.be/vnJwLQWlNoU

but, that the synths in Blood Money were OK (but the other shit is awful lol.)

https://youtu.be/Cimu6LpnwmQ


but then there's the anomaly that is Ambermoon that convincingly sampled a SID.

https://youtu.be/_G-TH8K7zhM


I'd be honestly curious what kind of pain in the assery you need to do to get convincing synth bass samples to exist on a PCE

[Arkhan Asylum]

oh man Wolfchild.

Sorry, I'm basically just fumbling around listening to all kinds of shit I have for various machines to compare them lol

Amiga:
https://youtu.be/fw3tkNqB4is

Megadrive:
https://youtu.be/f5Eyl2h9wtw

Wolfchild kind of just sounds better on MD in general, lol.

[FraGMarE]

Here we go, final revision on the HES file.  I've ripped all the actual SOR2 drum waveforms straight out of Gens Kmod and re-mixed all the channels AGAIN to be properly adjusted relative to the drum track.  I'm learning the problem isn't that the PC-Engine can't do decent bass.  It's that the HuC6280 tends to play DDA samples back very quietly.  Any bass-ey samples are easily lost in the other PSG sounds, unless carefully volume adjusted.

As far as doing the twangy-slidey synth bass, yea, of course the Genesis is the king of that.  That's like the trademark Genesis "sound".  It's got an actual FM chip for that.  You can do something adequately close, like the SOR2 track here, and you could even throw in some LFO effects to get you even closer... but it's not going to sound the same.

I'm simply talking about some thumping bass coming out of the PC-Engine that'll make your pecker move a little bit.  And here it is.  Like I said before, crank it, I had to mix it kind of quiet.  Tested in Mednafen and on real hardware. 

https://www.sendspace.com/file/yfo9yn

[Arkhan Asylum]

Here we go, final revision on the HES file.  I've ripped all the actual SOR2 drum waveforms straight out of Gens Kmod and re-mixed all the channels AGAIN to be properly adjusted relative to the drum track.  I'm learning the problem isn't that the PC-Engine can't do decent bass.  It's that the HuC6280 tends to play DDA samples back very quietly.  Any bass-ey samples are easily lost in the other PSG sounds, unless carefully volume adjusted.

As far as doing the twangy-slidey synth bass, yea, of course the Genesis is the king of that.  That's like the trademark Genesis "sound".  It's got an actual FM chip for that.  You can do something adequately close, like the SOR2 track here, and you could even throw in some LFO effects to get you even closer... but it's not going to sound the same.

I'm simply talking about some thumping bass coming out of the PC-Engine that'll make your pecker move a little bit.  And here it is.  Like I said before, crank it, I had to mix it kind of quiet.  Tested in Mednafen and on real hardware. 

https://www.sendspace.com/file/yfo9yn

yeah, PCE can definitely hit the frequency that will give you a bumpbumpbump sound, but, I'm not really into that.  I prefer the synth bass to have that nice sound. 

PCE bass is often like, barely audible, and you just sort of feel that it's there somehow because it's thumping, lol


and this isn't to say this SOR2 track sounds like dick, because it doesn't.

It was mostly just a side-topic.

[Digi.k]

Here we go, final revision on the HES file.  I've ripped all the actual SOR2 drum waveforms straight out of Gens Kmod and re-mixed all the channels AGAIN to be properly adjusted relative to the drum track.  I'm learning the problem isn't that the PC-Engine can't do decent bass.  It's that the HuC6280 tends to play DDA samples back very quietly.  Any bass-ey samples are easily lost in the other PSG sounds, unless carefully volume adjusted.

As far as doing the twangy-slidey synth bass, yea, of course the Genesis is the king of that.  That's like the trademark Genesis "sound".  It's got an actual FM chip for that.  You can do something adequately close, like the SOR2 track here, and you could even throw in some LFO effects to get you even closer... but it's not going to sound the same.

I'm simply talking about some thumping bass coming out of the PC-Engine that'll make your pecker move a little bit.  And here it is.  Like I said before, crank it, I had to mix it kind of quiet.  Tested in Mednafen and on real hardware. 

https://www.sendspace.com/file/yfo9yn

Dumped on my TE and listening via my pce hooked to a bose speaker.

Huge difference and much better sounding.  Thank you!

[xcrement5x]

Waited to get back and use my good headphones just to listen to that rendition of Go Straight.  It's pretty darn nicely done.

[esteban]

Dumped on my TE and listening via my pce hooked to a bose speaker.

Huge difference and much better sounding.  Thank you!

Yes!

Spread the word, brother.

Handhelds will not be victims of emaciated speakers any longer...

[TurboXray]

yeah, PCE can definitely hit the frequency that will give you a bumpbumpbump sound, but, I'm not really into that. 

When you do the two channel method for 10bit samples (even 8bit or 7bit played on the paired setup), the "bump" (low end range) hits soo much harder.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yeah.  The bump isnt quite as nice as the audible sound that goes with what is basically a heavy vibration, lol.

I prefer to get my bumps from the kick drum.

[ClodBusted]

pce hooked to a bose speaker.

Poor PCE deserves something better than Bose. 

[CrackTiger]

pce hooked to a bose speaker.

Poor PCE deserves something better than Bose. 

You mean a ROM ROM Amp?

[Digi.k]

pce hooked to a bose speaker.

Poor PCE deserves something better than Bose. 

You mean a ROM ROM Amp?

That's on a "to buy" list

[NecroPhile]

pce hooked to a bose speaker.

Poor PCE deserves something better than Bose. 

What about official Hudson Bose speakers?

[esteban]

pce hooked to a bose speaker.

Poor PCE deserves something better than Bose. 

What about official Hudson Bose speakers?

I know. I think we need to indoctrinate Clod by recycling old advertisements...

https://archives.tg-16.com/Dengeki_PC_Engine_1993_11.htm#hudson_soft_by_bose

[ClodBusted]

Bose = buy our shitty equipment

[NecroPhile]

I prefer Buy Other Sound Equipment, but yeah.

Better sound through engineering advertising!

[ClodBusted]

Yes, sorry for my rant. And sorry to digi.k, I didn't want to sound like ass, just realized that later.

[Digi.k]

Yes, sorry for my rant. And sorry to digi.k, I didn't want to sound like ass, just realized that later.

*sniff*  I only wanted a small speaker that didn't take up too much space to go with my set up

[esteban]

Yes, sorry for my rant. And sorry to digi.k, I didn't want to sound like ass, just realized that later.

*sniff*  I only wanted a small speaker that didn't take up too much space to go with my set up

Holy shite, digi.k, we must be living parallel lives.

I have the same problem.

I have no room of my own in my entire home, just a tiny desk that has no room.



Subwoofer hidden in "Ottoman" cube under my desk, left (off camera).

I use a Virtual Cushion instead of a chair/stool (off camera).

[ClodBusted]

Both of your setups look cute and cool at the same time!