Best use of drum samples in PSG music

[malducci]

 Fiend Hunter has a cool drumkit and other samples. It's uses ADPCM for complex samples.

 Anyway- the PCE doesn't have PSG generation, it has PCM sample generation and direct streaming. Although you can setup the sample bank to do PSG style sounds: square, triangle, and saw tooth.

[ParanoiaDragon]

I LOVE Shockman's drums, & music in general!  It's one of the best IMO.

Agreed, great soundtrack. I also really love the first game's soundtrack, possibly even more.

I was going to mention the first one, but, to me, it seems a little "off" for some reason.

[runinruder]

I've been playing a little Xanadu 2 lately and noticed that it has some cool-sounding "non-redbook" drums.

How about an instance of awful drumming?  I remember VG&CE bashing TV Sports Basketball's title screen music because the drums sounded like a bored student tapping on a textbook with his pencil. 

[Keranu]

Pencil tapping on a notebook drum would sound pretty rad in a game I think.

[Black Tiger]

 Fiend Hunter has a cool drumkit and other samples. It's uses ADPCM for complex samples.

 Anyway- the PCE doesn't have PSG generation, it has PCM sample generation and direct streaming. Although you can setup the sample bank to do PSG style sounds: square, triangle, and saw tooth.

Maybe the word 'generation' is confusing, but what do you mean exactly?

The way I understand it:

PSG: system generated music
PCM: recorded sound
ADPCM: recorded sound that utilizes a chip in the CD-ROM hardware.

[2X4]

That's how I understood it too. 

best drums in psg:  How about Champions Forever Boxing!

[Keranu]

Champions Forever Boxing had awesome music.

[offsidewing]

Soldier Blade.  Sound like the drummer from Def Leppard laid down the beats.

"I've got a lot of pedals now..."

[ccovell]

Maybe the word 'generation' is confusing, but what do you mean exactly?

The way I understand it:

PSG: system generated music
PCM: recorded sound
ADPCM: recorded sound that utilizes a chip in the CD-ROM hardware.

If it helps, the Japanese call the PCE's sound type Waveform Memory [PSG], or "WSG" in Namco's case.

[malducci]

If it helps, the Japanese call the PCE's sound type Waveform Memory [PSG], or "WSG" in Namco's case.

 Do you mean PCMPSG? From what I understand PCMPSG is PSG in a sample bank, but the sound is still pulse sound tone format(square,triangle,saw_tooth,etc), not wave.

Btw, too bad they didn't increase the sample buffers for for the PCM channels in the SGX.


Black Tiger: PSG is pulse sound generation(generator) or programmable sound generator. The sound is a tone; either 1 or 0 ( on or off). PSG can only generate tones, while PCM uses "wave" samples. But.. the sample bank for each channel is small so complex samples can not be used without some trickery.

ADPCM format is the same as wave, but it's compressed. On the PCE CD, the ADPCM is 12bit while the PCM is 5bit, so the samples are clearer/cleaner and require no CPU resource to playback *long* samples. The SGX error screen for the CD demos I put out does 32khz 12bit streaming form the CD. Sounds pretty nice IMO.

[ccovell]

Black Tiger: PSG is pulse sound generation(generator) or programmable sound generator. The sound is a tone; either 1 or 0 ( on or off). PSG can only generate tones, while PCM uses "wave" samples.

This is not really accurate.  Many sound chips considered PSG generate sawtooth, triangle, and random noise sound, all of which have varying volume levels in their waveforms.  Only square waves are 0 or 1 at any point in the waveform.

[Ninja Spirit]

Konami's got one of the best too, in fact they had two different types. However, the drum samples used in Parodius, and the PSG tunes in Snatcher and Tokimeki Memorial just didn't sound right.

Simon's Quest PCE Remix


Now in Gradius, Salamander, and Detana Twinbee, that's what I'm going for.  If you got the right audio setup and turn it up loud enough, these drums KNOCK.

Toccata and Fuge in D Minor (Gyruss) PCE


I do one thing to add though, because of their drum kits, anyone think Space Invaders, Barunba, and Burning Angels sound like 8-bit NES/Famicom games?

[Black Tiger]

That's how I understood it too. 

best drums in psg:  How about Champions Forever Boxing!

Champions Forever Boxing is one of the best examples of sampled sfx in a HuCard, but the soundtrack is 100% PCM/sampled. There are only a couple sfx that might be PSG.

[Black Tiger]

[quote author=malducci link=topic=3275.msg45792#msg45792
Black Tiger: PSG is pulse sound generation(generator) or programmable sound generator. The sound is a tone; either 1 or 0 ( on or off). PSG can only generate tones, while PCM uses "wave" samples. But.. the sample bank for each channel is small so complex samples can not be used without some trickery.
[/quote]

The way you're making it sound, is that the PC Engine can't generate music other than the pre-8-bit console type and that all it's sound is sampled like the SNES/SFC.

But all HuCard music, that is refered to as 'PSG' in the actual games, sounds similar and super clean.

[malducci]

Actually, all I'm trying to say is that the PCEs sound system is not the same the NES Tone VS samples. You *can* write samples that will generate tones like on the NES on the PCE if you like, but you're not limited to that.

 In general, the PCE is similar to the SNES/SFC in that it uses samples (very small wave files - if you like) - but it ends there. The SNES's DSP sound unit is one complicated beast and superior to the GEN and PCE sound systems. But whether you like the samples used in there games in another thing  .

 If the PCE sound unit had hardware envelope and or a larger sample buffer for each channel (even just double), the capabilities would be much greater IMO.

The way I look at it; the Gen has higher fidelity sound samples but more limited in it choice while the PCE is not nearly as limited, but the samples are of lower fidelity because of the short sample buffer and lack of hardware envelope.

***Also when I mention the NES, I'm referring to the basic NES sound unit - not the addon chips. The PCE hucard slot has an audio input pin and why no games ever included additional sound hardware on the hucards like with the NES - is beyond my reasoning.

Most of my sound knowledge/experience comes from "trackers" back in the day, so I'm partial to the PCE and SNES ( though I love a good Gens bass guitar  ). ...I miss Fast Tracker II 

ccovell: Chris - someone wrote a mod player with visual oscillator for a 68B90E running at 2mhz. The 6809 series is very similar to the 65CS02 (even has zeropage and such). If I can get the source, would you interested in doing a mod player for PCE  based on it (maybe using Sarah's 10bit sample trick)?