Okay guys, how's this? I went back and modified a few things. Should be a bit more gritty and growly at the beginning. Same link as before.
https://soundcloud.com/user-716572978/tfiv-lsa-pc-engine-chiptune-cover
See? This is why i wanted to warm up with a short little TFIV diddy before attempting something bigger. I knew it was going to be hard to get to sound right. I can't be having Metal Squad or whatever sounding like Steely Dan haha
It's doing the same thing I ran into with Atlantean, where it sounds gritty to the point where it then sounds muddy once the other stuff comes in. It sounds good until the 0:17 mark basically, to me.
You have to like, envelope the sound so it filters it a bit.
Are you using multiple channels to create a doubling effect? I would pan one a little left and one a little right.
Yea, I made another minor update. That's about as gritty as I could get it and maintain decent stereo separation later in the song. It's not just multiple channels. I mean, there are multiple channels basically playing variations of the same thing... hell, 5/6 channels are all guitar most of the time. I don't even know which ones are supposed to be the leads and what to call to call the other two that aren't the bass guitar. I just tried to copy the notes/timing exactly from the original music and worry about getting the precise sound i wanted later.
To get the gravelly sound, I basically took one of the guitar channels (one with virtually no decay) and adjusted the arpeggio macro down an octave. It kind of gives the two other plucky guitars something to overlay. I've also got some moderately tricky stuff going on with the vibrato/pitch-slide effects to get a phasey type sound... no note offsets needed. like the two plucky guitar channels both have a slight downard pitch slide, but the other guitars do not. also, i have the vibrato effects set up differently for each guitar, so the frequencies play off each other and create that phasey/reverby sound. in addition to that, one channel will ONLY vibrato up, while the another will ONLY vibrato down, while another vibrato both up AND down. i got kind of creative haha
I've never heard the Turbo/PCE do drums like that before, with so much bass. Usually they're pretty thin.
I know, I was quite pleased with how the percussion turned out! Very bassy and hard hitting. Only three samples too! And they sound virtually the same at 7-8KHz, which would be the sample rate you'd likely hear in a game.
It's interesting that the Genesis never even touches the DAC or the PCM channels for this track. All the percussion is done by FM channel1 with three instruments.
