PCE PCM

[ccovell]

Dude. I'm just giving you some shit. No worries. It's like, every time MSX is mentioned - it's always by arkhan lol. It's more weird to mention it here on PCE forums because its user base seems to have a pretty big disconnect from PCE (and everything else; it's its own thing).

We're just lucky nobody needs to complain about shitty scrolling in PCE games, otherwise the MSX would get invoked every 4th post!

[Arkhan Asylum]

Ah, thats pretty cool.    Im curious to see what it is when the game is done. 

Msx though, is like pc88 and 98...   the fm wasnt originally in them.   They added it later as an expansion card, as it didnt exist when the computer was originally released.

( '-^ )b

Thats one perk to computers!  You can stay with the hardware as it arrives, way easier than a console, lol.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Dude. I'm just giving you some shit. No worries. It's like, every time MSX is mentioned - it's always by arkhan lol. It's more weird to mention it here on PCE forums because its user base seems to have a pretty big disconnect from PCE (and everything else; it's its own thing).

We're just lucky nobody needs to complain about shitty scrolling in PCE games, otherwise the MSX would get invoked every 4th post!

Lolol just saw this. 

I have to laugh when people use that as their way to dismiss msx, citing youtube and never actually playing one.

Thats a good example of real hardware or at least ok emulation mattering.   Youtube drops frames and makes the chunk scroll look worse than it is. 

And even so, it doesnt really ruin the games.   Id take msx gall force over fds! 

[ccovell]

Dude. I'm just giving you some shit. No worries. It's like, every time MSX is mentioned - it's always by arkhan lol. It's more weird to mention it here on PCE forums because its user base seems to have a pretty big disconnect from PCE (and everything else; it's its own thing).

We're just lucky nobody needs to complain about shitty scrolling in PCE games, otherwise the MSX would get invoked every 4th post!

Lolol just saw this. 

I have to laugh when people use that as their way to dismiss msx, citing youtube and never actually playing one.

I would never dis the hardware having never played on the real thing; that would make me look like an idiot.  No, I've played games on real MSX computers, and after 10 minutes the shake & bake scrolling made my eyes hurt.  Even ZX Spectrum games often did a better job.

[elmer]

P.S. I also make Grafx in case someone didn't catch it, check out this example I did within the MD's limitations:

There's 3 overlapping layers, the tree in the middle layer is a sprite, I think you get how it works from just looking...

I meant to mention this before ... that looks really good, to me, nice work! 

[Michirin9801]

I meant to mention this before ... that looks really good, to me, nice work! 

Thank you very much ^^

[Arkhan Asylum]

Dude. I'm just giving you some shit. No worries. It's like, every time MSX is mentioned - it's always by arkhan lol. It's more weird to mention it here on PCE forums because its user base seems to have a pretty big disconnect from PCE (and everything else; it's its own thing).

We're just lucky nobody needs to complain about shitty scrolling in PCE games, otherwise the MSX would get invoked every 4th post!

Lolol just saw this. 

I have to laugh when people use that as their way to dismiss msx, citing youtube and never actually playing one.

I would never dis the hardware having never played on the real thing; that would make me look like an idiot.  No, I've played games on real MSX computers, and after 10 minutes the shake & bake scrolling made my eyes hurt.  Even ZX Spectrum games often did a better job.

MSX1 is sometimes hit or miss, and the speccy ports kind of just suck.   most of the good MSX1 games are single or flip screeners .     

Legend of Kage on MSX1 will make your brain melt .  its the worst of the jerky games.

MSX2 is where most of the good stuff is.

[elmer]

Those great 5V ARM microcontrollers from Cypress you brought up over a year ago are still the best solution here. Analog out is included, and if you add some sort of bidirectional comms in a mapper you can use it as a Cypress FX.

I ended up going with the FM3 family for my current project (specifically the MB9BF524K) and ported over my Windows softsynth without any huge issues. But this is a full music player, and I think in the case of the PCE it would be more useful to just complement what's already in the box.

That's one heck of a lot of impressive hardware in a $5 80-pin package! Wow! 

Sure ... you could run a lovely soft-synth or possibly an OPL3-emulation in that and feed it to the PCE.

I was kinda trying to keep to hardware that was actually available when the PCE was manufactured, to keep it more "authentic" in terms of something that really could have been sold as an add-on at the time ... but your way is far more practical in modern terms.

Either way, it would just be a "curiosity", and there would be no software for it, and no user demand, and I don't have the hardware skills anyway ... but it sure would have been cool! 

I can just-about-imagine a homebrew game shipping with one as a "collector" sort of thing.

Yep, we'd only get mono through the HuCard ...

Those old FM chips had lousy stereo-positioning anyway, so I don't think that we'd be losing much by keeping it mono.

The PCE's PSG could be used for all of the stereo-panned instruments.

Gotta love that FM-sound! ... and mixing it together with the PCE PSG channels would make something seriously fun. 

Still not going to happen, though, especially since the PCE already offers even-better-than-that ... full on orchestrated, engineered and effected CD-Audio! 

[Michirin9801]

Yep, we'd only get mono through the HuCard ...

Those old FM chips had lousy stereo-positioning anyway, so I don't think that we'd be losing much by keeping it mono.

The PCE's PSG could be used for all of the stereo-panned instruments.

Gotta love that FM-sound! ... and mixing it together with the PCE PSG channels would make something seriously fun. 

Still not going to happen, though, especially since the PCE already offers even-better-than-that ... full on orchestrated, engineered and effected CD-Audio! 

You know, that's kinda the point, if you wanted to do FM, you're probably already working on the Mega Drive or something like that...
If anyone comes to the PC engine wanting to make chiptunes, they want the PSG, they want those 5 bit waveforms, and maybe some samples to go with them...
Yeah an FM expansion would be a pretty cool novelty, and I sure would use the hell out it (although personally I'd stick a YM2151 in it)
But anyone wanting to work on the PC engine but wants music other than chiptunes, they're absolutely gonna use the CD...

[Arkhan Asylum]

If anyone comes to the PC engine wanting to make chiptunes, they want the PSG, they want those 5 bit waveforms, and maybe some samples to go with them...

But anyone wanting to work on the PC engine but wants music other than chiptunes, they're absolutely gonna use the CD...

This is precisely my point when I am a bit naysayer-y about good synth bass via samples.

It's not even the PC Engine sound at that point if you go crazy dragging in sounds from elsewhere.

I'd honestly figure that super synth'd out bass in the middle of a PCE tune might sound out of place.

Percussion is about the only exception to the rule, because nobody runs to any specific chip going DAMN, IM GONNA GET ME SOME DRUMS.   

They *all* suck at drums equally, (Except for the C64 probably).   FM is totally limp with drums half the time.  MSX-MUSIC (OPL2) drums are those standard FM drums you hear in toys and stuff.  It works, but you only get one sound out of it.

As weak as the bass can be for PCE, the super-sharp plucked bass, or the pretty plain bass from something like Bonk fits well with the rest of the sound.

and, the reason I pushed so hard to get something working for PCE chiptunes in the first place is because this thing is my favorite sound chip, and always has been since like 1990.

There's hardly anything special going on in this song technically but it sounds so good.    There's sampled bongos, and some pretty standard PC Engine sounds.   

It was pretty annoying that back then (2008ish), we didn't really have any option that was easily workable with a game while those asshats over in Nintendoland were jizzing all over famitracker and shit.

I'm glad there's more chiptune occurrences for PCE happening, as long as we don't get inundated with those stupid chipwank songs.  They're terrible.


I like being able to mix sounds if the machine was expected to do so, as was the case with MSX.   They always intended for it, being a computer, to be expandable.

and that's how we ended up with AKB48 on the MSX.   lol

CHECK OUT THE MML IN THE VIDEO. 

;)   2016.

If you want to mix shit on the PCE, just use CD.   Stop dicking around.   They put the CD there so you can store huge amounts of data, and add wacked out music.

[Michirin9801]

If anyone comes to the PC engine wanting to make chiptunes, they want the PSG, they want those 5 bit waveforms, and maybe some samples to go with them...

But anyone wanting to work on the PC engine but wants music other than chiptunes, they're absolutely gonna use the CD...

This is precisely my point when I am a bit naysayer-y about good synth bass via samples.

It's not even the PC Engine sound at that point if you go crazy dragging in sounds from elsewhere.

I'd honestly figure that super synth'd out bass in the middle of a PCE tune might sound out of place.

Percussion is about the only exception to the rule, because nobody runs to any specific chip going DAMN, IM GONNA GET ME SOME DRUMS.   

They *all* suck at drums equally, (Except for the C64 probably).   FM is totally limp with drums half the time.  MSX-MUSIC (OPL2) drums are those standard FM drums you hear in toys and stuff.  It works, but you only get one sound out of it.

As weak as the bass can be for PCE, the super-sharp plucked bass, or the pretty plain bass from something like Bonk fits well with the rest of the sound.

Well, there's a difference between wanting an FM bass and wanting the whole song to be FM...
You know, I actually really like the basses that I can get out of the PC engine PSG, but I just think that FM makes for even better basses, and being able to use one in a PC engine song, alongside sampled drums, strings, choirs and/or orch hits and still have the PC engine leads, all without having to use the CD add-on?
That's like PCE Batman but taken to the extreme! I just LOVE that idea!
With that in mind, using a sampled bass isn't gonna stop the PCE from sounding like a PCE, it's just gonna make it sound a bit better than it already does...
Also, it's not like I'm gonna stop making regular PCE music with no samples just because I could use an FM bass and Super Nintendo strings, choirs, orch-hits and percussion... I just welcome the ability to do that with open arms~

Oh and, I'd argue that the PCE does better drums than the C64 if you use the envelopes and the noise mode right... Also, you gotta cram the drums and the bass in the same channel on the C64 if you wanna make anything worthwhile anyway...

and, the reason I pushed so hard to get something working for PCE chiptunes in the first place is because this thing is my favorite sound chip, and always has been since like 1990.

There's hardly anything special going on in this song technically but it sounds so good.    There's sampled bongos, and some pretty standard PC Engine sounds.   

It was pretty annoying that back then (2008ish), we didn't really have any option that was easily workable with a game while those asshats over in Nintendoland were jizzing all over famitracker and shit.

And I applaud you for that!
The PCE may not be exactly my favourite-sounding soundchip, my favourite is always gonna be the Super Nintendo for several reasons including but not limited to nostalgia because I grew up with the cute little grey brick...
But the PCE has earned its way into my heard and it easily sits way up there in 2nd place tied with the Game Boy Advance (No seriously! And it's for surprisingly similar reasons to the PCE)

But the thing is that the PCE is the most fun system to work with (thanks in part to Deflemask being the most intuitive, user-friendly and fun-to-use tracker EVER), to quote the composer for Devil's Crush "It's easy to make awesome music for the PC Engine" and I couldn't agree enough!

But me loving the sound of the system as it is doesn't mean I wouldn't want to experiment with a new sound driver that makes it capable of even more out-of-the box!

[Arkhan Asylum]

Well, there's a difference between wanting an FM bass and wanting the whole song to be FM...
You know, I actually really like the basses that I can get out of the PC engine PSG, but I just think that FM makes for even better basses, and being able to use one in a PC engine song, alongside sampled drums, strings, choirs and/or orch hits and still have the PC engine leads, all without having to use the CD add-on?
That's like PCE Batman but taken to the extreme! I just LOVE that idea!

Yep, but, with great power comes great responsibility.  People tend to overdo it.  That's how that stupid arp sound got so popular. 

Also, at some points, I think PCE Batman is too overpowered with the samples and that slappy bass sound.   It ruins the leads in some songs especially if you listen to the one song that had an NES version.   The song sounds better on NES, to me.   A few volume tweaks would have been nice for the PCE one...  lol.   Good example of nice samples, that can inadvertently mess things up.

With that in mind, using a sampled bass isn't gonna stop the PCE from sounding like a PCE, it's just gonna make it sound a bit better than it already does...

Depends, really.   Shitty sounding samples are often a thing, lol.   I want to see someone do a good FM style synth bass sample on PCE.  If someone can do it, I really would like to see it.   I'm picky about those sounds though and would likely just prefer a standard PCE bass, because it is practically guaranteed to fit.

Oh and, I'd argue that the PCE does better drums than the C64 if you use the envelopes and the noise mode right... Also, you gotta cram the drums and the bass in the same channel on the C64 if you wanna make anything worthwhile anyway...

Eh...  I don't really think so.   I don't think you can do better than C64 with stock PCE drums.   Samples, definitely.   Chip?  No.

There's lots more examples.
having to cram stuff together isn't that bad either considering what these people have managed to figure out, lol.

And I applaud you for that!
The PCE may not be exactly my favourite-sounding soundchip, my favourite is always gonna be the Super Nintendo for several reasons including but not limited to nostalgia because I grew up with the cute little grey brick...
But the PCE has earned its way into my heard and it easily sits way up there in 2nd place tied with the Game Boy Advance (No seriously! And it's for surprisingly similar reasons to the PCE)

But the thing is that the PCE is the most fun system to work with (thanks in part to Deflemask being the most intuitive, user-friendly and fun-to-use tracker EVER), to quote the composer for Devil's Crush "It's easy to make awesome music for the PC Engine" and I couldn't agree enough!

But me loving the sound of the system as it is doesn't mean I wouldn't want to experiment with a new sound driver that makes it capable of even more out-of-the box!

I grew up with TG/SNES/MD simultaneously.  Outside of Squaresoft (Secret of Mana), I go TG, MD, SNES in terms of favorite.

I think you are only a little bit behind me in terms of age. 

I'm not saying don't go for a new sample driver thing, I am just stating that it shouldn't be used incorrectly.  That would suck.

[elmer]

Oh and, I'd argue that the PCE does better drums than the C64 if you use the envelopes and the noise mode right... Also, you gotta cram the drums and the bass in the same channel on the C64 if you wanna make anything worthwhile anyway...

Eh...  I don't really think so.   I don't think you can do better than C64 with stock PCE drums.   Samples, definitely.   Chip?  No. 

I'll go out-on-a-limb and say that you *may* well have to eat-your-words on that one when Michirin9801 finally gets the toolchain-capabilities that he's been asking for.

The ability to switch between a couple of waveforms in the 1st few frames to get the initial hit, followed by a frame-by-frame decrease in the in the noise frequency, all under a volume envelope ... should (IMHO) get some pretty-darned-nice results.

We'll have to see! 

AFAIK, the sheer number of the PCE's noise-frequency settings and their fine-granularity, is pretty-darned-rare for the time.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yeah, I'd be happy to do so if someone actually shows it to me.

Currently, it's the usual lots-of-talking with no evidence to back it up.   I'm more into the put up or shut up / believe it when I see it thing.

No offense, the PCE scene has been plagued with lots of rambling/talking/hypothetical wankery that has never actually come to fruition, lol.    It's influenced my own pessimism about a lot of things.

There's certainly not been any commercially released PCE games to ever have chip drums that sound as percussive as a SID can do, mostly because they just used samples instead.

I got a good kick drum simply by using a tonal sweep, and got an OK snare, but nothing near as punchy as a C64. 

Some of the C64s trick might actually be an aural illusion though.  They often created kicks/snares that also played bass at the same time to save on channels.   So, the mix might just inadvertently create the illusion that the drums are super thick. 

[esteban]

INTERLUDE: Honest question: I always thought the bass in China Warrior main tune was quite nice and always wished more HuCARDs pumped out bass like that... I take it that nothing special (no samples) were used to generate the bass line.

Otherwise, please continue your friendly arguments concerning the virtues/pitfalls of FM on PCE, sampled vs. PSG drums, the tragedy that Blodia only has a couple of songs, etc.

[Arkhan Asylum]

INTERLUDE: Honest question: I always thought the bass in China Warrior main tune was quite nice and always wished more HuCARDs pumped out bass like that... I take it that nothing special (no samples) were used to generate the bass line.

the bass in China Warrior is simple.   It's just a strange envelope that gives it this bubbleup kind of effect.

It works really with the style of music.   I had similar sounds for Atlantean but the music is different so it didn't have the same outcome.

So, I switched to the bass that it has now.   

[_Paul]

I would say Tatsujin's unsampled drums are a great example of what the PCE can do in that respect.

City Hunter had some nice drums, I don't think any of those were samples.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I would say Tatsujin's unsampled drums are a great example of what the PCE can do in that respect.

City Hunter had some nice drums, I don't think any of those were samples.

Yeah those might be the best examples of non sampled drumming, especially when City Hunter is belting out the tom rolls..   Even so, I don't know that I'd say these are better than the C64's drums, id say they are maybe punchier at times, but the C64 ones are thicker?

It's just too bad lots of C64 games were terrible but had nice music, lol.

[Michirin9801]

Oh and, I'd argue that the PCE does better drums than the C64 if you use the envelopes and the noise mode right... Also, you gotta cram the drums and the bass in the same channel on the C64 if you wanna make anything worthwhile anyway...

Eh...  I don't really think so.   I don't think you can do better than C64 with stock PCE drums.   Samples, definitely.   Chip?  No. 

You know, I can make better unsampled drums in Deflemask than most commercial games, not all, but most, but if I have to go for an example in a game, my go-to is always gonna be Xanadu II, particularly this song:

Other than this song, the drums from Xanadu are quite a bit softer than C64 drums, but personally I like them better than most C64 drums I've heard...
Currently I'm basing my drums on those of Xanadu, but I'm also trying to do some original ones that are 'less soft'...

I'll go out-on-a-limb and say that you *may* well have to eat-your-words on that one when Michirin9801 finally gets the toolchain-capabilities that he's been asking for.

The ability to switch between a couple of waveforms in the 1st few frames to get the initial hit, followed by a frame-by-frame decrease in the in the noise frequency, all under a volume envelope ... should (IMHO) get some pretty-darned-nice results.

We'll have to see! 

AFAIK, the sheer number of the PCE's noise-frequency settings and their fine-granularity, is pretty-darned-rare for the time. 

If only I had the right wavetables and access to the other noise frequencies I'm sure I could make something really nice!
Like what Kommisar did in this song:

Great DAC Kicks! Would make for some amazing electronic-sounding music which I'm also a fan of, and I've asked them if I could have the wavetables they used, but I haven't gotten an answer sadly...
_{oh and, I'm not a 'he' >w>}

Also, at some points, I think PCE Batman is too overpowered with the samples and that slappy bass sound.   It ruins the leads in some songs especially if you listen to the one song that had an NES version.   The song sounds better on NES, to me.   A few volume tweaks would have been nice for the PCE one...  lol.   Good example of nice samples, that can inadvertently mess things up.

Well, I like the PCE version better, I just wish the PCE game was a platformer more along the lines of the NES game, but with its soundtrack intact...

having to cram stuff together isn't that bad either considering what these people have managed to figure

If anything that impresses me more

I grew up with TG/SNES/MD simultaneously.  Outside of Squaresoft (Secret of Mana), I go TG, MD, SNES in terms of favorite.

I think you are only a little bit behind me in terms of age. 

I'm not saying don't go for a new sample driver thing, I am just stating that it shouldn't be used incorrectly.  That would suck.

Umm, nah... I've said it before in another thread, but I grew up in the 2000s, I wasn't even born to experience the 4th generation, but that didn't stop me from playing on my older cousin's Super Nintendo and even borrowing it for years, and even after I had to give it back I had ZSNES to back me up and not too long after I got a Game Boy Advance, and being able to play Super Mario World during school recess was like, the best thing ever!
While my classmates were playing GTA and... Uhh... Whatever else was on PS2, I was having my mind blown by Donkey Kong Country and Megaman X

I only discovered the MD and the TurboGrafx-16 through the Wii's Virtual Console, and later on emulation, and I fell in love with both systems, however I think you can guess which one I was more attracted to ;3
It does help that my first impression of the system was Rondo of Blood, I thought the game was gonna be identical to the SNES version which I grew up playing or worse, but it was so unacceptably better that it stabbed me right in the nostalgia! And I just HAD to have more of that!

And I know where you're coming from, but I can't help but to be excited about it and the possibilities it brings~
If I can make an FM bass sound good in 1 bit then I can make it sound good in 5 bit, it's just a matter of knowing which bass to sample, and the one I have in mind is neither too harsh/gritty, nor too twangy...
(If you're curious, it's the bass from Valkyrie the Power Beauties on the PC-98)

[Michirin9801]

Okay, you wanted an example of a sampled FM bass? Here's one!
http://sta.sh/0tqlyutfr4w (Mind you this song is incomplete)
What I did here is sample the bass I've mentioned in the previous post (the one from Valkyrie TPB) resample the samples to 7KHz in Audacity, then import them into Famitracker to use with the DPCM...
Why NES though? Because it's the closest approximation I can get right now to what the sampled FM bass might sound like on the PCE...
That said though, I expect them to sound better than this on the PCE given how the DPCM is 1 bit and the PCE PCM is 5 bit and it's gonna loop the samples which I can't do on the NES... (Not to a useful extent at least)

If anything, I have plenty of other basses ripped from lots of other PC-98 and X68000 games, so if this isn't good enough I could try it with a number of other basses and see which ones work best!

[Arkhan Asylum]

I was excited that this was going to be a cover of the Ventures' "Walk Don't Run", lol.

That FM bass doesn't sound that great to me, and gets pretty weak in the lower registers.   I'm not sure if the extra-bitness is really going to help us that much.  I could be wrong. 

On PCE, you might as well just use a normal, punchy, enveloped bass and not waste the resources, as the timbre may not be much different.   Good FM/Synthy bass is the kind of phat, thumpy/punchy sound that you can feel in your nuts while you're playing.

How old are you exactly?  I mean, I was growing up playing PS2 also.  We can't be that far apart really, lol. I was born in 1988. 

At least you grew up with broadband basically, so downloading and experiencing all of this stuff wasn't a pain in the ass.

Technically, Batman's soundtrack is better on PCE, but the mixing could use some work, I think.   The rhythm tracks shouldn't drown out the lead.  That's not a good time.

I'm curious how some C64 drums would sound if you sampled them onto the PCE, actually.    You can get some pretty rattly percussion out of the C64.   Some of it might sound cool.  The drums are also fairly wet.   The reason PCE drums often sound "better" is that they're more dry, so they have a better contrast against the leads.

Those same kind of drums would probably get completely lost, or sound out of place against a SID tune, as most sid stuff is pretty wet sounding. 

But, wet drums against the usual PCE sound miiiiight sound cool.

I'm surprised you don't like the SID more, honestly.   You like eurobeat and crap right? 

^^^ This is probably my favorite SID tune ever.   It's 100% lit as fuck.  One of the rare times where the arps are doing something productive with their existence, instead of being some blaring dumpster fire that's trying to be the lead.

[ccovell]

I'm surprised you don't like the SID more, honestly.   You like eurobeat and crap right? 

I love all this lighter-bridge interfacing you're doing.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I'm surprised you don't like the SID more, honestly.   You like eurobeat and crap right? 

I love all this lighter-bridge interfacing you're doing.

What?  I like that crap too, lol. 

[TurboXray]

Technically, Batman's soundtrack is better on PCE, but the mixing could use some work, I think.   The rhythm tracks shouldn't drown out the lead.  That's not a good time.

Yeah, the mixing on some tracks needs some work, but the bass instrument sounds great. But that's not what's special about it; it's the fact that they did attack phase samples and sustain phase samples (with looping). Because of the looping, the whole 28 note range sample pack is pretty small. This should have been exploited more on the PCE. It's sensible and doable for programmer back then, and definitely within the means of the PCE's resource capability.




 But I wanted to mention thing related to Batman: attack phase. Supposedly the most advance and complicated part of any instrument is the attack phase (I don't mean the volume, but replicating an instrument). LA synths use samples mixed in with other parts of waveform generation just for the attack phase of an instrument. That's a clever idea. Something that could be exploited on the PCE; sample attack phase and normal PSG for the rest. Why PSG for the rest and not samples? Because if you've played around with samples on the PCE, at lower rate and lower bit depth, you've come the realization that some samples just get too crushed by the reduction - especially stuff with important high frequency meat to the sample.  In this respect, you don't even need soft sampler support; attack phases are short so you can have lots of presampled ranges for them with little storage space needed.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yeah, that sort of idea is what made Roland synths able to do some of the stuff that Yamaha (FM) stuff was already good at (percussive/woodwindy/metallic sound). 

Before this, subtractive synthesis was Roland's jam, and you couldn't get realistic sounds.   You just get what sounds like Rush or Journey's albums, lol.

I remember trying for hours to get my Alpha Juno 1 to sound like a real piano.  It never worked.  You'd almost get it, but it never sounded right.

The ironic thing is, I finally got a synth from Roland that does that, and I still end up preferring my SH-101 and crap.  Go figure.    I sold the D-50 for a pretty decent chunk of money.   I think they are back to not being worth too much now.   

It was pretty fun to use.   I sort of miss it, because you could still do some of the usual rolandy sounds with it

They've actually got a D-50 card you can use with that fancy ass Roland V-Synth now.   

It's probably more reliable than a real D-50.



Doing that sort of stuff right is probably how you'd get away with really, really good sounding samples.


But, this doesn't really help with that synth-bass issue I keep mentioning, lol. 

[Michirin9801]

That FM bass doesn't sound that great to me, and gets pretty weak in the lower registers.   I'm not sure if the extra-bitness is really going to help us that much.  I could be wrong. 

The bass isn't good enough? Perhaps it isn't, but as I've said before I have plenty of other basses to try and sample, I'm gonna try with one of the basses from Carat Magical Blocks next...
As for it getting weak in the lower registers, that's more due to the DPCM than the samples themselves, I doubt the PCE would have that problem...

OR I could go the opposite route and make the PCE sound more like a GBA, and sample the Leads and drums while playing the bass and harmonic support on the PSG (the harmonic support would be square waves of course)
But I'm probably not gonna do that because I need more variety in the leads than in the basses, so that would take more samples and eat up more of the system's memory...

How old are you exactly?  I mean, I was growing up playing PS2 also.  We can't be that far apart really, lol. I was born in 1988. 

At least you grew up with broadband basically, so downloading and experiencing all of this stuff wasn't a pain in the ass.

I'm 20, gonna be 21 this summer, so I was a 90s baby and a 2000s kid...
And because I'm from a poor-as-f*** family I only got access to the internet in 2007, before that I had to wait for my dad to come home from work in the weekends, where he had internet access, with a Super Nintendo Rom in a Floppy Disk so that I could play it on my Windows 98 Pentium III computer built with donated parts >w>
Good times... Played lots of Super Bomberman 3 with my sis!

I'm surprised you don't like the SID more, honestly.   You like eurobeat and crap right? 

I do love me some Eurobeat ;3
But the thing is that Eurobeat can only be done justice with Samples!
SID synth doesn't cut it >w>
And even if I had all the right samples to use, I'm hardly skilled enough to do Eurobeat justice...

[Arkhan Asylum]

But the thing is that Eurobeat can only be done justice with Samples!
SID synth doesn't cut it >w>
And even if I had all the right samples to use, I'm hardly skilled enough to do Eurobeat justice...

Samples? bitch please.       SID is actually pretty spastically good at sampling.   The SID is such an impressive soundchip overall... that's unfortunately used wrong sometimes (arparparparparparparparparpapr)

lololol.  OU OU OU OU OUTRUN.

Jeroen Tel is a fucking genius.

and yeah, you're the exact age as I figured.  I have a buddy that's your age.    You guys are at that weird age gap where you guys think the library is just this building with free wifi.   lol

I don't think you should ever use samples for the leads in a PCE song.   The lead sounds are where the PC Engine truly shines, IMO.  Taking those away is just a bad idea. 

Try using the bass from Romancia:

[Arkhan Asylum]

shit I left out Savage.   Shame on me.

[Michirin9801]

Samples? bitch please.       SID is actually pretty spastically good at sampling.   The SID is such an impressive soundchip overall... that's unfortunately used wrong sometimes (arparparparparparparparparpapr)

Might I add that the C64 can only handle 4 bit samples, and the PCE can do 5 bit ;3
(But yeah, 4 bit is better than the Nintendo's 1 bit DPCM)
Oh hey there's that! The C64 using bass samples in the Outrun song, that's more or less the quality I'm expecting to get out of the PCE, maybe a little higher due to the 5 bits...

I don't think you should ever use samples for the leads in a PCE song.   The lead sounds are where the PC Engine truly shines, IMO.  Taking those away is just a bad idea. 

Agreed, which is why I said I'm probably not gonna do that...

Try using the bass from Romancia:

Will do!

[Arkhan Asylum]

I am wondering how that bass is going to actually sound when stacked up with PCE stuff.  It might be the case that all this effort goes into a less than impressive end result because the PCE leads and such aren't exactly thick. 

I always described the PCE leads as warm and chirpy.    They've never been very phat. 

That bass in Outrun is not my favorite though.  It's more thunky and percussive but fits well with the like breakdance rapjam beat and musical style. 

For the synthy/phat basses, C64 doesn't exactly *need* to sample, though.  It can already just do that.

What it can't do on it's own though, is the thunky / percussive bass sounds.   Which goes into what Tom was talking about with LA synthesis. 


LA Synthesis sounds like a gym for musicians.

[elmer]

I would say Tatsujin's unsampled drums are a great example of what the PCE can do in that respect.

City Hunter had some nice drums, I don't think any of those were samples.

It would probably be nice to rip-apart the .hes files for those games, and the Xanadu games, and try to see exactly what they're doing to create those drums that people like.

Yeah, the mixing on some tracks needs some work, but the bass instrument sounds great. But that's not what's special about it; it's the fact that they did attack phase samples and sustain phase samples (with looping). Because of the looping, the whole 28 note range sample pack is pretty small. This should have been exploited more on the PCE. It's sensible and doable for programmer back then, and definitely within the means of the PCE's resource capability.

Yep, this is definitely something that we could do in a new driver.

I'd love to be able to give people that option, and especially with your 4-samples-in-2-channels code (both frequency-scaled and fixed versions).

Giving folks the options, and then letting them choose which ones work for them, would seem like the best route to take.

Oh ... and the soft-mixing will, of-course, be much cheaper to implement with the fast CPU on the PC-FX!  Creating a driver for that machine is definitely a goal.

But I wanted to mention thing related to Batman: attack phase. Supposedly the most advance and complicated part of any instrument is the attack phase (I don't mean the volume, but replicating an instrument). LA synths use samples mixed in with other parts of waveform generation just for the attack phase of an instrument. That's a clever idea. Something that could be exploited on the PCE; sample attack phase and normal PSG for the rest. Why PSG for the rest and not samples? Because if you've played around with samples on the PCE, at lower rate and lower bit depth, you've come the realization that some samples just get too crushed by the reduction - especially stuff with important high frequency meat to the sample.  In this respect, you don't even need soft sampler support; attack phases are short so you can have lots of presampled ranges for them with little storage space needed.

Yep, this is another great idea, too, and might really allow the musician to create some interesting sounds at little cost.


Michirin9801: Both of these two capabilities that bonknuts mentions are things that seem like they could be triggered by abusing deflemask's Wave Macro and Arp Macro, again (at least for now) ... although Delek's cooperation and a bit of UI work would be my preferred long-term solution.

I suspect that having someone actually create a tune that used these features would help encourage him to make any changes ... but there's still the small roadblock of actually getting the base huzak driver written first, before we go wild with samples. 

[Michirin9801]

Michirin9801: Both of these two capabilities that bonknuts mentions are things that seem like they could be triggered by abusing deflemask's Wave Macro and Arp Macro, again (at least for now) ... although Delek's cooperation and a bit of UI work would be my preferred long-term solution.

I suspect that having someone actually create a tune that used these features would help encourage him to make any changes ... but there's still the small roadblock of actually getting the base huzak driver written first, before we go wild with samples. 

I'm kind of already doing that with that steel drum instrument you know? >w>
The problem is that the Deflemask forum seems to be a little, umm... Dead...
I post there and nobody answers...

My guess is that Delek is working hard on the next version of Deflemask, and thus is too busy to answer, but I don't know...

[TurboXray]

LA Synthesis sounds like a gym for musicians.

Ahhahahaha it does

[Michirin9801]

Okay so, here's a couple more examples of sampled FM basses at 7KHz on the NES
Carat Magical Blocks - BGM#5 with the bass from the exact same song on the PC-98
http://sta.sh/0i7cvoanj38

and CyberBlock Metal Orange - Stage 3 with the bass from Romancia's Opening theme
http://sta.sh/09472c9hxd4

So, the Romancia bass sounds more like what I wanted the Valkyrie bass to sound like, I'd just put it on the Walk Don't Run cover, but I forgot to save the song after I exported the .nsf so all of that work is pretty much lost now >w>
So I covered another song, one that I know like the back of my hand and could finish pretty quickly...
Also, forgive me for the popping in the song, artifact of the DPCM channel whenever I turn it off..

Both basses sound kinda similar, but then again, it's the NES DPCM, it makes a lot of basses sound really similar... I also made these basses a bit louder than the previous one, but now I think I went a bit overboard with their volume yet again...
Out of these two, personally, I'm a bit more satisfied with the sound from the Carat bass...

Another bass that I'm willing to try is actually one from Final Fight 3! Yeah I know, it's not sampled from FM, but that bass already sounds a lot like FM so... Why not? ;3
Oh and, there's yet another bass from a different Carat song that I'd like to try and sample too!

[elmer]

Okay so, here's a couple more examples of sampled FM basses at 7KHz on the NES
Carat Magical Blocks - BGM#5 with the bass from the exact same song on the PC-98
http://sta.sh/0i7cvoanj38

and CyberBlock Metal Orange - Stage 3 with the bass from Romancia's Opening theme
http://sta.sh/09472c9hxd4

Errr ... this will probably sound terribly ignorant ... but what's a .nsf file, and what plays it? 

[spenoza]

.nsf is the format of NES music files.

[elmer]

and that's how we ended up with AKB48 on the MSX.   lol

CHECK OUT THE MML IN THE VIDEO.

Hahaha ... I thought that it was particuarly funny that the MSX player software crashed and random garbage text just started scrolling up the screen! 

...

...

...

Oh! That was the MML? Sorry!   

[Michirin9801]

Okay so, here's a couple more examples of sampled FM basses at 7KHz on the NES
Carat Magical Blocks - BGM#5 with the bass from the exact same song on the PC-98
http://sta.sh/0i7cvoanj38

and CyberBlock Metal Orange - Stage 3 with the bass from Romancia's Opening theme
http://sta.sh/09472c9hxd4

Errr ... this will probably sound terribly ignorant ... but what's a .nsf file, and what plays it? 

.nsf is the format of NES music files.

Yeah, just try these files with your NES emulator of choice, but I had better results with FCEUX than Nestopia...
Chipamp can also play them, but it adds a fake stereo that the NES doesn't really have, and I find it to be unauthentic so I never use it for NES music...

I went with NES for these examples because it's the closest approximation that I can get to what the sampled FM basses at 7KHz might sound like on the PC engine as of right now...
They're most likely gonna sound noticeably better than this because the NES DPCM isn't exactly up to par with what the PCE can play sample-wise, but still, it's a rough idea of the kind of sampling I have in mind to use with Bonknuts' driver!

[elmer]

.nsf is the format of NES music files.

Yeah, just try these files with your NES emulator of choice, but I had better results with FCEUX than Nestopia...

Thanks! 

Ahhh ... OK. I *never* run NES stuff, so I had no idea.

As usual, Mednafen comes to the rescue! 

BTW ... I know that you don't like command-line programs, but something like this is just a case of dragging-and-dropping the .nsf file onto the "mednafen.exe" icon in Windows Explorer and it fires right up and plays.

Mednafen is an outstanding-accurate emulator, and Rypheca and her team have done an amazing job with it.

I went with NES for these examples because it's the closest approximation that I can get to what the sampled FM basses at 7KHz might sound like on the PC engine as of right now...
They're most likely gonna sound noticeably better than this because the NES DPCM isn't exactly up to par with what the PCE can play sample-wise, but still, it's a rough idea of the kind of sampling I have in mind to use with Bonknuts' driver!

Yeah ... I think that we're going to need Bonknuts' expertise here.

A 7KHz sample rate should be fine for bass frequency samples, but getting a good result is going to require the 8-bit or 10-bit output that his driver provides. 8-bit should be plenty if it's reasonably linear instead of logarithmic.

The granularity of the volume stepping in the channel's regular 5-bit output is just too harsh for a good low-frequency waveform output (IMHO).

[esteban]

and that's how we ended up with AKB48 on the MSX.   lol

CHECK OUT THE MML IN THE VIDEO.

Hahaha ... I thought that it was particuarly funny that the MSX player software crashed and random garbage text just started scrolling up the screen! 

...

...

...

Oh! That was the MML? Sorry!   

Hahahahahhaha.

[TurboXray]

A 7KHz sample rate should be fine for bass frequency samples, but getting a good result is going to require the 8-bit or 10-bit output that his driver provides. 8-bit should be plenty if it's reasonably linear instead of logarithmic.

The granularity of the volume stepping in the channel's regular 5-bit output is just too harsh for a good low-frequency waveform output (IMHO).

I can do a few driver versions (mixers). 4 channels at 7bit mixed to 9bit, scaled to 10bit is fastest. Or four channels at 8bit steams but saturation on paired streams, mixed to 9bit -> scaled 10bit. Actually, you could probably modify the mixer however you want once you see them. I did 16 steps of volume, linear, and it sounded pretty decent. You can do more, but the LUT will be bigger. 7bit streams makes the volume table twice as small as one for 8bit streams.

 The idea is pretty simple: 7bit unsigned samples -> volume LUT -> becomes 8bit 2's complement value -> add all four channels -> some flag checking and branch to 10bit decode LUT -> two 5bit values (in byte form) in two different buffers for the playback driver.

 I mean, I can write it - but something tells me you probably don't need me to ;)

[Michirin9801]

A 7KHz sample rate should be fine for bass frequency samples, but getting a good result is going to require the 8-bit or 10-bit output that his driver provides. 8-bit should be plenty if it's reasonably linear instead of logarithmic.

The granularity of the volume stepping in the channel's regular 5-bit output is just too harsh for a good low-frequency waveform output (IMHO).

I don't know, I think 5 bit would be plenty good enough >w>
If these basses already sound pretty good in 1 bit, then 5 bit should be A-OK, and you know what? Being 5 bit could actually make the sampled basses fit better with the PSG sounds! Or at least that's what I imagine, but then again what do I know? I have yet to hear them playing on the actual PCE...

[TurboXray]

All this discussion about samples and soft drivers, reminds me of Nintendo's Sappy engine for GBA.
You can find the doc on RHDN; search for "sappy" in documents section.

 The driver is mixing 8bit PCM streams into a single 8bit DAC. But the driver doesn't support saturation, so too much amplitude (which translates into bit depth on a fixed system like this) causes wrap around. That means if you wanted something like 4 sampler channels, you'd have to use 6bit samples (or samples with amplitude that doesn't expand beyond 6bit levels). There are custom mixers for GBA, but a lot of games used this default Sappy engine.

 I also think I might investigate using the 10.5khz mode for 10bit DAC output. 44% cpu resource on even Timer calls and ~9% on odd calls. averaging overall 26% cpu for the driver. And what, 10% for the mixer? I could use that kind of setup.

[TurboXray]

Or at least that's what I imagine, but then again what do I know? I have yet to hear them playing on the actual PCE...

Make me a quick XM with just the bass or whatever type sampler instrument and I'll use my XM player to test it out and record it from the real console.

[Michirin9801]

All this discussion about samples and soft drivers, reminds me of Nintendo's Sappy engine for GBA.
You can find the doc on RHDN; search for "sappy" in documents section.

 The driver is mixing 8bit PCM streams into a single 8bit DAC. But the driver doesn't support saturation, so too much amplitude (which translates into bit depth on a fixed system like this) causes wrap around. That means if you wanted something like 4 sampler channels, you'd have to use 6bit samples (or samples with amplitude that doesn't expand beyond 6bit levels). There are custom mixers for GBA, but a lot of games used this default Sappy engine.

I really wish there was like a tracker or something for the GBA which used the Sappy engine, I've been struggling to get authentic-sounding GBA music done for a while now, and the closest that I could get was to run the samples that I wanted through the PCE to lower their bit depth to 5 bit, then record the samples and do an 8 channel song on openMPT and combine it with a Game Boy tune from Deflemask, and then I put the two together and try my best to make them not go out of sync (which always happens, every single time)
What I want to do with GBA audio is get a sound similar to that of Densetsu no Stafy or Mario Kart Super Circuit, which in my opinion sound absolutely gorgeous and are the perfect mix of sampled music and chiptunes~
So I have sampled leads, drums and maybe strings/choir/orch-hits, GB DAC bass, GB Noise Hi-Hats and GB Pulse harmonic support, and I think it's the lower bit depth of the GBA samples that make them blend so well with the GB chiptunes and make that perfect blend of the two~ ♥I LOVE IT♥

But unfortunately, I can't find any other way to intentionally lower the bit depth of samples to anything lower than 8 bit, much less a tracker that lets me use both a GB soundchip and an adjustable amount of sample channels at the same time with varying bit depths so I have to struggle to sync 2 songs from 2 trackers together which is a major pain in the arse...

Or at least that's what I imagine, but then again what do I know? I have yet to hear them playing on the actual PCE...

Make me a quick XM with just the bass or whatever type sampler instrument and I'll use my XM player to test it out and record it from the real console.

Right on!

[Michirin9801]

Okay, here's a 1 channel XM with the 4 basses I've sampled thus far:
http://sta.sh/0hwn4lvw2hz
The order is Valkyrie Bass -> Romancia Bass -> Final Fight 3 Bass -> Carat Bass

And here's a 4 channel XM with the Carat Bass, Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu Drums, a random SNES Choir and occasionally a vibraphone playing Carat BGM5:
http://sta.sh/02dmn2v53cvb
It lacks the leads and half of the harmonics because that would play on the remaining PSG channels, but still, I wanna hear this playing in a proper PCE rom!

[TurboXray]

My XM player is just quick and dirty - it doesn't support finetune per instrument and doesn't support mapping multiple samples in a back to different notes (JCAKF instrument). The player was just something quick and dirty to test and show off the PCM driver. The driver does support fine tune, but I didn't implement it in the XM reader/parser for the player. It doesn't support the volume envelope format either. I literally wrote it in ~3 hours.

 In other words, if I converted these they'd probably sound like ass without that support.


 If you need an app to do bit depth reduction on wave files, I can adapt something I already have for that. Simple turnication of bits (shifting) - nothing fancy. (Edit) Also, Cool Edit Pro 2.1 does bitdepth reduction (though the results are still stored in 8bit or whatever format).

[Michirin9801]

My XM player is just quick and dirty - it doesn't support finetune per instrument and doesn't support mapping multiple samples in a back to different notes (JCAKF instrument). The player was just something quick and dirty to test and show off the PCM driver. The driver does support fine tune, but I didn't implement it in the XM reader/parser for the player. It doesn't support the volume envelope format either. I literally wrote it in ~3 hours.

 In other words, if I converted these they'd probably sound like ass without that support.

 If you need an app to do bit depth reduction on wave files, I can adapt something I already have for that. Simple turnication of bits (shifting) - nothing fancy. (Edit) Also, Cool Edit Pro 2.1 does bitdepth reduction (though the results are still stored in 8bit or whatever format).

I see... Well, when you can actually convert these examples into something that will play on the PCE, please let me know...
Also, thanks! I'm gonna check Cool Edit Pro now, I don't mind it not actually 'being' lower bit depth, so long as it 'sounds' lower bit depth

[elmer]

If you need an app to do bit depth reduction on wave files, I can adapt something I already have for that. Simple truncation of bits (shifting) - nothing fancy. (Edit) Also, Cool Edit Pro 2.1 does bitdepth reduction (though the results are still stored in 8bit or whatever format).

SOX is another tool that supports that kind of truncation ... I'm using it in the pre-processing stage for the PCE/PC-FX ADPCM conversion. But I know that Michirin9801 isn't a fan of command-line tools.

But ... do we know if the waveform data is in linear-space, or in logarithmic-space? 

The amplitude levels in R1, R4 & R5 are all logarithmic, and I was finally curious-enough to look at the volume level number in excel.

Wow! I didn't realize that we were compressing down an approx 15-bit linear audio range into only 5-bits! 

If the waveform data uses a similar logarithmic-space ... then the simple bit-truncation method isn't going to give great results.

I think that you and ccovell and mednafen have already checked this kind of stuff with oscilliscopes.

Do you know whether it is linear or logarithmic?

The idea is pretty simple: 7bit unsigned samples -> volume LUT -> becomes 8bit 2's complement value -> add all four channels -> some flag checking and branch to 10bit decode LUT -> two 5bit values (in byte form) in two different buffers for the playback driver.

 I mean, I can write it - but something tells me you probably don't need me to ;)

Ahh ... but the devil-is-in-the-details, and it's always much nicer to use tried-and-tested code rather than having to write every darned thing by myself. 

I'd much rather be able to take what you've got, give you appropriate credit for all the hard work that you've done, and be able to concentrate my limited time on the other stuff that hasn't already been written! 

I should be able to update the dmf2pce project on github with the latest code this week, and I'll be adding in the work-in-progress version of the huzak driver at the same time.

I'm hoping that it will have a solid-enough foundation by then that it'll be a matter of making improvements, rather than the large-scale reorganization that's still going on right now.

The point, once again, is to make this stuff open source (like Uli's improvements to HuC), so that any programmer can take it and modify it for their own needs.

[TurboXray]

But ... do we know if the waveform data is in linear-space, or in logarithmic-space? 

The amplitude levels in R1, R4 & R5 are all logarithmic, and I was finally curious-enough to look at the volume level number in excel.

Wow! I didn't realize that we were compressing down an approx 15-bit linear audio range into only 5-bits! 

If the waveform data uses a similar logarithmic-space ... then the simple bit-truncation method isn't going to give great results.

I think that you and ccovell and mednafen have already checked this kind of stuff with oscilliscopes.

Do you know whether it is linear or logarithmic?

Volume (channel, pan, global) for all channels is log, but waveform data is linear. The 10bit waveform data for paired channels for 10bit is linear as well; the second channel volume is set to be 1/32 that of channel 1, so it all lines up. You can do 12 or 13bit with three channels I believe, but it's not really worth it.

 I just ordered an Owon SDS1702 scope, so I can retest test stuff if you need. Probably gonna pickup a 100mhz 16 channel logic analyzer soon too.