Sound Emulation - PCE vs EMU

[sunteam_paul]

I thought this would be an interesting test to do - comparing hardware sound and emulation (in this case Magic Engine, which seems to get much criticism in this department).

I picked 3 completely random Hueys from my drawer that had easy to access music and did some recordings.

LISTEN HERE

Please note that there will be obvious differences in bass and treble due to the shoddy way I very quickly did the recordings, so take that into account!

[Joe Redifer]

It's kind of hard to compare if some of the recordings are "shoddy".  But so far I like the second example of each segment because it sounds brighter and less muddy.

[spenoza]

Of the 3 primary emulators used for gaming right now (Magic Engine, Ootake, and Mednafen/PCEjin (Mednafen w/ GUI and full re-recording support), Magic Engine kinda has the worst sound emulation. It gets sounds wrong and has poor volume balance between PSG, ADPCM, and Redbook audio.

I would like to hear a good comparison between these three emulators and original hardware, though. That would be pretty rockin'.

[Bonknuts]

The brighter ones is Magic Engine and the softer one is the real system (non 6280A). I can hear the tell tale DAC pops in the real version ( and I could see it when I zoomed in at the start of some parts). SGX and Core Grafx 1 have the better sound chip (IIRC the PAL only TurboGrafx 'no 16' has the better sound chip too, but it's 50hz so that sucks) since they lessen those pops to almost nill.

 Why are your real system recordings filtered like that? Mine don't sound like that. If anything, they let more noise through (too much high frequencies to be honest).

[nat]

Interesting, I never knew the SGX actually had a different sound chip than the others. I've always said my SuperGrafx has better bass than my Duo, but I thought perhaps it had something to do with IFU-30 amplifying the audio out or something.

Is there any possibility the "other" chip in the SGX/CG1 has better bass frequencies than the chip the Duos use?

[sunteam_paul]

poor volume balance between PSG, ADPCM, and Redbook audio.

You can manually adjust these can't you? I'm pretty sure I have.

Why are your real system recordings filtered like that? Mine don't sound like that. If anything, they let more noise through (too much high frequencies to be honest).

It's just recorded straight from the TV headphone socket. If I do another one I'll alter the TV settings to make it clearer.

[Bonknuts]

Interesting, I never knew the SGX actually had a different sound chip than the others. I've always said my SuperGrafx has better bass than my Duo, but I thought perhaps it had something to do with IFU-30 amplifying the audio out or something.

Is there any possibility the "other" chip in the SGX/CG1 has better bass frequencies than the chip the Duos use?

 Nah, the SGX/CG1 '6280A' chip just fixes the pops in the DAC for large volume changes (or turning on/off per audio channel). The audio itself coming out of the chip is pure digital looking beauty (perfectly square edged high frequency rise/fall steps on the scope). Then it goes into an amp and some other analog circuitry that filters here and there. I think my SGX has a little better bass in chip audio than my Duo, but neither compare to the unfiltered bass of mednafen emulation. I'd like to mod my SGX someday to those bass frequencies back. TmEE is the only person I know that completely redid the audio lines, amp, etc to a PCE/TG16 system. I'd be interested in seeing what kind of bass frequencies range he got out of it (without making a bass boosting amp).

 I do know that the SGX audio output is inverted. I guess the Core Grafx is as well and that's why Ootake has inverted output for its emulation ('cause the original emulation author Ki based his RE'ing on the CG1). It would technically make some chip audio/effect sound a little different when played against CD audio or ADPCM simultaneously. But I seriously doubt you could even hear the difference. It'd have to be something like a phase differencing effect of a fluke to notice something like that.

sunteam_paul: Some games/tracks are more forgiving than others for the chip audio emulation. Magic Engine is still probably better than the winamp HES plugins. They tend get the noise channel (and levels) wrong.

[SignOfZeta]

I can hear the tell tale DAC pops in the real version

Yeah, that's the same thing I noticed. The real hardware also just sounds more crowded in general, which is typical of any low-end hardware mixing/muxing multiple sounds/streams.

The most objective way I can think of to record this would to record the line level output from the PCE (skip the TV entirely) into a PC for recording, and to do the same with the EMU. If the EMU is going straight to disc, that's really unfair. The real hardware has already been though a mile of crap (DAC, line level amp, cable) by the time you recorded it (two miles, if it went through your TV). The EMU should be recorded from the analog out of the PC making the sounds to another PC for recording (or some other method that would allow for an analog capture).

[sunteam_paul]

I'm going to try something like that now and see how it goes.

[sunteam_paul]

Pumping my old PC throught the TV and recording didn't work as planned so on to plan B:

Here's another collection of random tuneage.

I've tried my best to match the levels between the recordings, so they should be fairly comparable, although in my mind it's not a test of which is clearer or has more bass (as fiddling with the audio settings on a TV or amp can radically change the sound anyway) but how accurate the actual sounds are.

While it will never be 100% perfect, this test surprised me really. I was expecting a lot more of a difference and I could safely say if you played an emulated track to me out of the blue I wouldn't be able to tell if it was from real hardware or not. I certainly don't think ME deserve the bad rep it has. No doubts there are some tracks from other games that show more variation, but everything I tried so far is pretty damn good, if not excellent.

[Black Tiger]

When I listen to PCE music from ME or Winamp, it always sounds unusual in various ways. They both seem to do a poor job with samples and system generated percussion types of sounds. Quite often, the overall tracks or particular channels/instruments sound very different and it feels broken. It might not sound like there is anything wrong to someone who isn't familiar with the music on real hardware. But it really stands out to me with soundtracks/games I listen to all the time.

[Necromancer]

I can't hear many differences in the second recording, though it probably doesn't help that my computer speakers are utter shite.

[esteban]

In an old thread, Kaminari posted a short clip comparing PSG in one of the Tengai Makyo(?) games, IIRC.

The differences between ME and real hardware were strong.

This leads to the obvious question: what is the best (or least horrible) way to listen to .hes rips?

[Arkhan]

I'd like to mod my SGX someday to those bass frequencies back. TmEE is the only person I know that completely redid the audio lines, amp, etc to a PCE/TG16 system. I'd be interested in seeing what kind of bass frequencies range he got out of it (without making a bass boosting amp).

I run the audio out through a Boss EQ pedal sometimes.  You can do some fun things with it.

China warrior sounds great with the mids and highs scooped way down and the bass kicked up.  

... and then you can do some more fun things with other pedals.  Bonk sounds pretty cool with some thick chorus and delay added in.

Its a fun way to experiment with the sound of the console.


As far as emulators go, Ootake and Mednafen sounded closer to real hardware than Magic Engine when Insanity was being tested.  Magic Engine was very brittle.

[sunteam_paul]

Here's one just for Arkhan: Insanity

I think this is the most obviously different of all the tracks I've tried so far and although subtle, can clearly be heard when compared side by side.