Glad you found it helpful! A more subtle stereo implementation would have been nice, but overall I still vastly prefer it's sound to the PCE/TG16's PSG. It might have more complex stereo, but it also only has six channels total with some pretty severe restrictions on what you can get out of it.

@@InglebardGaming I really like the PC Engine sound. Look up a Deflemask rendition of Sonic II Chemical Plant. Amazing. PCE had such killer soundtracks, Neutopia II, Gunhed, Bomberman 94 (no idea why Mega Bomberman got a total crappy track replacement), Jackie Chan, Cross Wiber, After Burner II. A bit rougher maybe thanks to 32x32 "pixel" waveforms, but it has its charm and programmers really had the hang of its possibilities.

I think the ideal use of the Genesis Stereo would be for an off screen event: for example, playing an explosion sample through only the Right speaker will suggest that something big went down just ahead, while playing it only through the left implies that you're not going to be able to backtrack Of course, this wouldn't work with the Noise Channel, but you could play a Sample with something like "Over Here!" and suddenly give a sense of depth to the level

The main events are still a ways off, but at least the foundation is here now!

Thanks, glad you liked it and good luck!

Thanks, glad you liked it! I do plan to do more stuff like this down the road and of course, those deflemask tutorials I talked about.

Great video indeed!

Thanks!

I guess Lost Painting does sound a little Chistmasy, lol. Anyway glad you enjoyed it, hopefully it'll cover some new ground down the road!

Yeah, back in the 90s, I was mystified why some newer games sounded so rough when older games sounded so good. No one trashes arcade sound hardware that was REALLY similar to the Genesis hardware, but since the internet became a thing, it's been open season on the poor Ym2612.

Thanks! It'll squeeze into January at some time.

Pinkie Pie is that you?

Uh... what?

Glad you found it helpful!

Thanks! And great, go ahead and check deflemask! In a few weeks I'll have the first real tutorial video up and it'll cover both the free and paid versions.

Me too!

Thanks! There will definitely be more!

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks! And that's definitely the idea, I want to demystify everything so people can make some cool stuff!

Thanks!

Thanks! But I do have to disagree on Spider-Man 😁 Personally I feel its music is both bad AND out of place. Too much of it sounds classically Asian-influenced which doesn't fit in with the game at all - just listen to the death jingle for the most glaring example. Now, the Sega CD version on the other hand, that one has great music and it fits the game better, IMO.

NP, glad you liked it!

Yeah, I've seen that. I'll probably cover it on the channel relatively soon.

@@InglebardGaming 32X in general! Many 32X games took advantage of the PWM channel which was where multiple samples were able to fit into one channel, examples from After Burner, Knuckles Chaotix, Virtua Fighter and Tempo. Something about "audio-streaming", I'm not sure about how the it works but interesting to take a look at anyhow! :D

Eh, more like here and there. Quite a few games went the lazy route and just used Genesis music and sound. But yeah, it can do perfectly fine digital music.

The 32X has it's own dual SH2 CPUs and a VDP processor... but still has to use the MegaDrive Genesis 68000 cpu, VDP, the Z80, YM2612 etc... The idea to notice is that some of the games mentioned that maybe seemed to sound better were because some of those devs like the internal Sega Japan teams basically could have expanded the processor resource usage. Originally the launch year Japanese MegaDrive games would use the Z80 and YM2612/PSG chips for that amazing chip tunes that were nearly drowned by Sega of America's GENS driver games... Some of the later years Japanese MegaDrive games were actually using the 68000 CPU and Z80+YM2612/PSG because they had stacked years of coding experience on the MegaDrive hardware and were figuring out some advanced usage which can only be analyzed iirc in games appearing either in 1992 and after but it depends on the game as some later games didn't seem to have better sound despite still not using GENS and using custom sound drivers... Also some of the allied Sega third party devs who made exclusive Sega MegaDrive games in Japan were known to have developed their own custom sound driver tools because these devs had some highly talented coders. So maybe you could see something like CS Team (a Sega Japan headquarters internal team) seeing the additional processors of the 32X and developing a solution for the launch games that would EXPAND the range of the known sound capabilities that were known from the Sega MegaDrive without the 32X. Btw the removal of the YM2612 is known to have been borne from pressure from Sega of America's staff to "cut prices of the Genesis in U.S., etc" which affects Japanese hardware once that rubbish "Non-High Definition Graphics" (that term was really because of the arcade Graphics look in the late 80s of larger character sprites and plenty of them at 60fps with no glitches because the original Sega MegaDrive was indeed an affordable mass production consumer arcade hardware... it was never about HDTVs) So that Sega of America pressured removal of costly processors to have the appearance of "lower prices" instead of building up their distribution and expanding it in North America (which was Sega of America's responsibility but apparently Michael Katz over promised one million units sold and apparently had bad communication issues with Sega Enterprises Japan which is something he could have avoided as despite his issues, he wad going on the correct path and target audiences of late teens and older 20 plus) Meanwhile people like to blame Nintendo for monopolistic practices but Nintendo of America is not Nintendo hq Japan as much as that applies to Sega but it was not just a 1985 launch of the NES buy steady management staff that eventually you had the U.S.A., Canada and Mexico the latter a Spanish language country that basically had their own official Nintendo fanclub magazine with almost the same to the date information as Nintendo Power Magazine... and magazines can be propaganda... thus when you look at Sega of America's management staff, after November 1990 to 1995 all SoA focused on was paying off EGM and probably Gamepro mags for biased coverage and articles as well as having EGM publish their own official "Sega Force Magazine" in the US despite SoA being responsible for Sega Visions magazine which both combined during those five years barely make 50 issues (which were hardly available or even known about) while it only takes 4 years for Nintendo Power Magazine to make 48 issues... As much as books like Game Over, Console Wars and Service Games have deep seated one sided biased perspectives in writing and still use the "hero and villain" trope to blame a scapegoat... which is just dangerous for casual readers. I find it funny how people would praise the 32X even years later... maybe I had an adult's perspective and noticed the manipulative tactics used by Sega of America's staff chief to change the image from the arcade hardware at home to ZOMG oh teh noes Nintendo is 16 bitzez, let's get a dump load of Disney and mascot character games and delay, censor, block and reject many of the fine crafted software custom made for MegaDrive in Japan but not getting out of there. Also while in 1989 Sega of America did try to make awareness of the Genesis stereo capabilities by telling people to use headphones or additional speakers... most casual and initial early 90s Genesis owners like me would not be easily finding this information printed or suggested in game manuals or an official Sega magazine or EGM and others... So most Genesis owners were basically still using RF and often not even using the headphone jack... Then you have the dumbed down Genesis 2 hardware and the SoA created 32X... adding too many wires, cord... and processors and you gotta wonder who was it that was really complaining about the real cutting edge high powered hardware in the Sega Saturn. Especially when the Sega Saturn's sound system boasts some insane capabilities that also implied that the original Japanese Sega Saturn design was targeting a rom cartridge and CD-ROM combo machine where ROM Cartridge games could have done some insane chip tunes that would have smoked the N64 chip tunes out the water... but once that 32X got approved the rom cartridge capabilities of the Saturn were castrated and denied ever having existed because the engineers are too proud to admit they were cornered by a whiny subsidiary branch and their add on.

Thanks, and I agree, of course!

Thanks and sorry for any confusion. The music channel has to stay separate from everything else in case it gets any copyright strikes. The idea there is that if it ever gets taken down it won't affect any of the many, many other videos I've made on the other channel. Also I mentioned the how sound works video / tutorial in a community post on the music channel 😁 So to cap this off, all the tutorials will continue to be on the gaming channel to protect them while the music channel will be for individual songs only.

@@InglebardGaming Oh, yeah, that's a good idea, I didn't think about that. I really hope the other channel is never taken down by any silly copyright strikes though, I love your covers in there :)

I hope not either! I started out putting my chiptunes on this channel originally, but created the newer channel after getting a few copyright claims on them over here. It just wasn't worth risking this whole channel over, especially when claims or possibly even strikes could come from someone that doesn't even own the materials, so it's an annoying situation all around. Glad you like the music channel! Hopefully you'll enjoy this one, too!

Yup, it's got a great, distinct sound when used well.

Thanks, glad they helped you out!

Same.

Thanks, glad you liked it!

They often built the sound chips into other components like the vdp.

NP, glad you liked it!

Thanks, appreciate it!

@@InglebardGaming no prob be sure to check me out

I'm no expert on the sn76489's ins and outs. My understanding from people that know is that it takes basically all the processing power of the z80 to play samples back on it, which would make it unusable for samples in Genesis music at least. Now, if I've been misinformed here, I'm definitely willing to learn the correct stuff, just point me in the right direction!

Thanks! Hey, you'll be a pro by the time I'm done with these. Sometime. Eventually. Not for a while, lol.

Thanks! Have to disagree on the TI though. It was extremely underutilized. There are too many games that go FM only without making any use of it at all. Even some big ones like Castlevania: Bloodlines.

@@InglebardGaming thanks for answering man! Yeah, it may be a lie, we heard a lot of crap back in the days regarding computing and video games: from buzz, magazines and even the manufacturers themselves . It was a magic moment for kids living the tech advances, and there is no magic without lies after all 😃

It in the 'system' option of the deflemask menu. There are separate choices for Genesis and Genesis ext ch3.

Hmm, a bit I guess. Nothing intentional, I play that arpeggio throughout the whole song.

@@InglebardGaming sounds cozy :)

Alisia Dragoon at times used all four PSG channels for sure. In the level 1-1 song it uses 3 square waves for the music and the noise channel for some sound effects (not part of the music). There are a few games that keep the noise channel open for sound effects instead of using it for music. I can't name them all off the top of my head but there are definitely a few. Thunder Force III sounds like it uses two square waves in most songs and the noise channel for effects... it might be using the full range noise mode to achieve some of the explosion sounds they use which would prevent them from using the third square wave channel. Its pretty interesting how the PSG was... or wasn't... used back in the system's commercial life time!

I'll have my first in-depth deflemask tutorial coming in a just a few days 😁 If you haven't heard any of my Genesis music, it's up on my other channel: www.KZfaq.com/c/Inglebardmusic

Thanks! The samples themselves on the ym2612 have to be mono, however, they can played in either the left, right or both channels. I have something about that in the video somewhere. Meaning you can have a cymbal crash mono sample play in either the left or right speaker, but you cant have a single sample that has stereo built into it. For the PSG, from what I've read, using it as a DAC uses all the channels at once basically and requires so much processing power from the Z80 that it maxes it out before the YM2612 is even accessed.

​@@InglebardGaming So, you could have a sample clip of a guy saying "Over Here!" And play it through a single speaker to suggest that guy is left or right of the player?

@spindash64 Yes, you can have a sample play left speaker only, right speaker only, or both. With newer drivers like XGM that can play multiple samples at the same time, every sample played simultaneously would have the same panning, since the panning is for the whole channel. But if you're doing a normal single sample channel vgm, you can do things like have a high hat that switches between left or right every other beat if you wanted... or have your scenario of a voice sample playing from either the left or right speaker depending on program code.

Glad you got something out of it! I will save further pictures of my cats for the next installment of the tutorial series, which will hopefully be in about 2 weeks!

Thanks, appreciate it! As for the goal, I've helped a few people individually almost in that situation, so we'll see how unrealistic it is after I have a few videos in the series out :) For Capcom, I think SF2 SCE get's a little too much flak, really. While the sample quality (and driver for playback) were kind of rough, it was still the only version of CE back then (including the arcade) that actually played two voice samples at once. That, plus most of the music was pretty close to the arcade version, especially compared to some of the apalling music in the SNES version. For GEMS, yeah, I'll let it of the hook a bit for not being utilized as intended. On the other hand, if GEMS was never created, I imagine Genesis music would have been in a better place. So, I don't want to defend it TOO much. In the end, some people did manage to make decent music with it, like Tommy Tallarico.

​@@InglebardGaming Does it matter whether the complaint was entirely fair? Most didn't have the technical knowledge needed to understand the positives of Capcom's decision. And that ignorance doesn't just affect Sega's hardware. The SNES cpu earned a reputation for slowdown due to a Super Ghouls N' Ghosts programming bug. And due to other developers being unable to afford running the cpu at full speed. It also won a great reputation for audio, despite often being very...I'm not sure what you'd call the SNES's soft, reverb heavy elevator music...you know, the kind that signaled a developer sleepwalking through their assignment? The offensively bland nothing that was to Nintendo's console what a bad GEMS rusty fart was to the Megadrive? However, I can say that as a layperson whose musical tastes are based on....words and concepts I don't have the vocabulary for... (Hell if I know which notes the Atari 2600's TIA is missing. It just sounds like a drunk car alarm.) Dubiously faithful SNES soundtracks like StreetFighter 2 and Ys III sounded good enough, back in the day, to convince me it was the superior audio experience. And I'm not completely tone deaf, either. I can tell that the Neo Geo Pocket is using the same sound chip as the Colecovision and the Master System. I can tell that Samurai Shodown on the DMG Gameboy has a soundtrack that's way better than it has any right to be. (Ukyo's stage would stand out in a Megaman title.) But without knowing how or why the music in Ys III and Streetfighter II falls short...the flaws just don't register? When I heard those terrible audio samples in a Genesis title? And I could, without any understanding of what a PCM channel was, compare them to World Championship Wrestling on NES? Sega's detractors instantly won the battle to convert me. Obviously, learning from educated voices like yours helped me better appreciate what FM syth can offer. (Also "helping", Sega Smash Pack on the Dreamcast.) So, with all that said....a question? Why isn't Capcom's solution better? I know there are amazing homebrew patches for Special Edition. But even if they involve something Capcom couldn't have known back then, why wasn't it possible for Capcom to only spit the sample channel when two samples overlapped? Kind of like how sprite flicker works?

@@InglebardGaming [As for the goal, I've helped a few people individually almost in that situation, so we'll see how unrealistic it is after I have a few videos in the series out :)] I look forward to it. Even if you don't manage a miracle, I'm at least 65% confident I'll be able to do better than say....Crazy Bus.

I really don't know enough to say why Capcom did things the way they did. The only thing I can really point out is Capcom was really late to the Genesis party. Sega's own ports of Capcom games were great of course, but Capcom didn't start making their own Genesis games until 1993(!). I think if they had more experience working with the Genesis in prior years, they would have probably had a better solution by 1993. For the SNES sound, well, I have strong opinions, lol. Yes, there are AMAZING soundtracks on that system. The Final Fantasy games, Actraiser 1 and 2, the Castlevania games and more. But like you pointed out, so many games on the system sound awful. I'm going to assume its mostly from two things: the 64k memory limit for samples and a lack of ability and/or experience on the part of developers. 64k for samples is a tiny amount of space. That limitation led to lots of low quality samples being used. Devs also went nuts with reverb. As much crap as the internet gives Genesis sound, I think it has fewer games that sound absolutely terrible than the SNES does. It's just the high points on the SNES are, well, very high and I have no problem admitting that. On the whole though, I like a lot less SNES music than I do Genesis music. For the most part, it's basically modern but with limited sound channels and lower quality samples.

As a lifelong Sega fan who bought SFIICE and 2 6-buttons day one, the vocal samples overshadowed any accuracy the music may have had. The icing on the cake for the SNES is its antialiasing filter that smooths out all the low-memory samples. The SNES may well be home to many uninspired soundtracks, but as far as I can remember, no SNES OST has actually caused me pain. I can’t say the same for my beloved Genesis. I also wanted to throw out an “um actually”…..I would say that the issue with crappy GEMS implementation is more a North American issue than a western one. A lot of European devs created their own drivers, and that technical self-determination often applied to their composers as well. Obviously, not every European game sounded great, but I think the overall quality of sound implementation on Euro games was better than its North American corollaries. And although Tommy Tallarico was a solid Genesis composer, I don’t think anyone in NA was doing Genesis music on the level of a guy like Matt Furniss (and his phenomenal sound programmer Shaun Hollongworth). His Mega Drive output ranks up there with the best Japanese stuff.

Thanks and welcome!

@Inglebard Gaming imagine you did a video if described the sound of NEO-GEO AES !!! I can't wait to see that video 🎵🤘😃🎧🎶

Ah, the thing with that is, the song that's playing isn't Pray for Mercy which plays in the church. It's the song from the mountains, I had the Eldam Mountains song playing and had switched the the list and just left the text on Pray for Mercy while going through the songs.

@@InglebardGaming Thanks, I managed to find it, it's actually [15] Fighting Soul kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oKyGdKqAkri4ink.html

All the songs I make I do directly in Deflemask. Afterwards, I usually give devs a VGM and they import it into a game that can be played on a real hardware. You can also output directly to rom from Deflemask and then run it on any emulator or flashcart if you want to see how any song sounds on real hardware.

Yes, I was just showing an example of what the chip itself originally looked like.

Yeah, I was just doodling it out while recording an example. I've redone the whole song for Genesis on my music channel. You can find the link to my music channel in pretty much any of my recent videos 😁 It'll be at the end of the video and also in the description.

The samples are mono because you can't play a sample that has some components in the left channel and some in the right. For example, I can't have a single sample that plays independent sounds in the left and right speakers in one wav file, we can only use mono samples that have one channel. BUT, I can take that mono sample and play that mono sample in either the left or right channels, or both. People complain about the Genesis not having 'true' stereo sound because it's FM channels are either entirely in the left channel, entirely in the right, or both. They argue you have to have degrees of seperation for 'true' stereo, meaning you'd sort of be able to control the volume of the left and right channels independently which you cannot. But, I disagree with that concept of stereo. If you have independent sounds in each ear, you have stereo, IMO.

@@InglebardGaming Ah, okay, I didn't understand the distinction. I think I agree with you. I mean, the channels are typically just one sound/instrument playing at a time anyway, with multiple channels combined to make up the full tune, at least from what I can tell. So, if you have like one channel over on the left and another over on the right, some playing on both, and then they all play together as a full tune, I think that definitely sounds like that tune has stereo to me. I guess this is one of those things where some people are getting too technical/audiophile about it and not just using common sense interpretations of what stereo means to most people's ears. So, yeah, I'm with you on that one. But, hey, maybe that's just me being too simple about it.

It is sample based. And they didn't overcome the size issue! All samples, music instruments and sound effects, have to squeeze into the 64k of sound RAM. That's why so many SNES games sound muffled, they often had to use low quality samples (low frequency) that were very short.

It's one note per channel. To create a chord you have to place the individual notes in different channels at the same time.

@@InglebardGaming Thanks!

@alanredversangel np, enjoy.

Check my chiptune channel, I already did three songs from Double Dragon 😁 No one has any way to easily hack them into the existing game though, someone would have to redo it from scratch to use them, sadly. But I have offered to donate them to anyone that will redo the game for Genesis. I did the title theme, mission 1 and mission 2.

I talked about either in this video or the first tutorial one, don't remember which. I did make a little boo boo, though. In ext ch 3 mode, you can play 4 full FM sound channels, FM channel 3 is split into four individual single operator channels giving us 8 independent channels total, we can have the 4 psg channels.which gives us a total of 12 channels and then another 4 simultaneous samples (xgm) which brings us to 16. I was thinking 5 fm channels + the split channel 3, plus the 4 psg and 4 samples, but I forgot channel 6 wouldn't have any FM sound in that scenario, it'd be for the 4 simultaneous samples only. I'll add a correction card to the video, it should be 16, not 17.

I can't really answer any questions regarding legality. I'm not a lawyer and these things also vary a lot by region. I don't want to give you any incorrect advice and possibly put you in a bad position. I'm not really sure who the best people would be to ask about something like this, maybe someone at the EFF (electronic frontier foundation)... their website is at eff.org.

@@InglebardGaming I'll try asking them. Thanks a lot!

Np, good luck!

Hmm. I don't know if more dedicated ram would have been necessary. They could have went with a YM2151 and a dedicated PCM chip, though, that would have helped a lot and most arcade ports would have been identical to the original since they used that setup. The biggest problem with samples are the size on cartridge, which led to low frequency samples being used to save space. On top of that, poor drivers were often used leading to that scratchy sound we all know for Genesis voices. When you listen to modern Genesis 'homebrew' or aftermarket releases, samples sound WAY better, but most come on 32 mega it carts so we don't have to worry about cart sizes like they used to in the 80s and 90s. More ram MAY have helped a little, but I don't think a lack of ram was the main source of the sound quality issues.

If you're talking about the section where I mention 512 kilobytes to about 3000 kilobytes, I correctly called those half a megabyte to about 3 megabytes. There are 128 kilobytes in 1 megabit and there are 8 megabits in one megabyte. So, for example, 512 kilobytes is 4 megabits which is another way of saying half of one megabyte. 2048 kilobytes is 16 megabits aka two megabytes and so on.

Ok, here's the breakdown, and this applies to the Genesis only. The ym2612 has 6 fm channels. If you run in ext ch3 mode you can break channel 3 into its four individual operators. This lets you have 9 independent FM channels, but 5 are complex and 4 and simpler, but it's still 9 channels. Then you have the SMS PSG, so you have 3 square wave channels there plus one noise channel. So with those we now have a total of 13 independent sounds we can play at one time on the system. Finally, the 6th FM channel can play either FM sound or samples. If we enable sample mode, with the current XGM drivers (well technically the 'old XGM drivers' now), we can play four independent samples all simultaneously. So we subtracted 1 FM channel, but added 4 digital channels. So technically we're at 16, I miscounted when I said 17 so that was my fault. This stuff only applies to the sound chips in the Genesis. I don't knoe of anyway to play more than 6 sounds on pce/TG or mire than 8 on SNES. As someone whose done professional SNES music, if I had the ability to use more sound channels, I definitely would have, but I don't know of any current tools or formats that support that. Even in the old days on Genesis, some companies like Capcom were using multiple sample channels, see Street Fighter II SCE, which could play two samples at the same time (maybe more, but at least 2). So this stuff has been used in commercial titles back in the day and almost all new Genesis games use the XGM driver, so these are real, practical things being done in games.

@@InglebardGaming OK. Thanks for the explanation. So, what stopped you from using all 16+ channels in your SotN audio for Genesis then--at least that's how it appears to me at the end of the video anyway--like some reason you didn't take full advantage of all the extra audio channels there too in much the way you said you would if extra audio channels were somehow made available on SNES, which I think would also be great and absolutely worth using if there was an option to have more and more channels via whatever methods?

@@inceptional There are a few reasons I don't do that for SotN, but for reference, a few of the SF Alpha 1 and 2 songs I've done use ext ch 3 mode, so they use 13 channels. For SotN, I needed all four operators for each FM instrument to make them sound as realistic as I could, so I didn't use ext ch3 mode with single operators. Also, we dont have tools right now to easily to 4 music samples at once, BUT that is OK. I used only 1 channel for digital sounds, the other three are used to play the digital sound effects in game. Since these are being used in a game, some channels need to be open for sound effects.

@@InglebardGaming OK, that makes sense. For more sophisticated and realistic sounds--I guess that's what I'll call it--it makes better sense to keep the channels undivided as it were to get the best result possible, but, if it's more important to have a lot of sounds at once, it can be useful there to break the channels up a bit and do it like that. I presume that means each time you break a channel into more channels it inevitably comes at a cost of the quality, so it's basically a choice between less but higher quality sound channels or more sound channels at once but at a relative lesser quality for each individual channel there?

In order to have the one hardware based pcm channel play 4 samples at once uses a lot of the CPUs power leaving little left for running a game. Despite this games like Toy Story with came out in 1995 used that method in order to play full a song on just the pcm channel alone for both the main menu and credits

NP! I think this is the kind of thing that's fun to learn about even if you don't make anything yourself.