Retro sound chips appreciation page

[ommadawnyawn2]

Last update: Finished the SCSP page and added the SCSP music to the yearly lists.
minirevver.weebly.com/ymf292saturn-music.html
minirevver.weebly.com/audio-formats-in-saturn-games.html
minirevver.weebly.com/vgm-1994.html

---

Here's something I've been adding to for the past few months. Please let me know if I've missed something good (preferably from a game) or if you have any other thoughts on the page. For example I could add some specific track recommendations to the top tier OSTs or if anyone has anything they want said about a particular OST, their comments on it. Right now the focus is on PSG and FM chips, but I'll expand it to pre 32-bit era sample-based chips later. 

minirevver.weebly.com/retro-game-music-tribute.html

[condroid]

I sincerely admire the effort you put into this

To me 'impressive' is very dependent on the context and especially release date. Some of the early C64 soundtracks like Forbidden Forest are milestones of video game music, but compared to SID music from 1990 they sound very basic. If I had to do such a list, I would probably order it by release date and then limit it to 10 entries per year. I'm not sure who the intended audience for this is, but I think, in the end, curation is always more important than trying to list every possible soundtrack that somebody considers to be 'impressive', which (for any system with a decent library like the C64) would probably net you hundreds of mentions.

I'll have a look at the specific lists later.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Thanks! That is a good point and why I focus on games from back then rather than recent homebrew efforts, though a year by year list wasn't the goal here. I might try that later though. I do want to mention as many games as possible, I prefer tier-based lists to regular top lists but went with this format for easier browsing, so that you're not overwhelmed looking at a chip that you're not familiar with, and for if I want to add what I mentioned in the OP later.

There's always a degree of subjectivity but you can measure things like sample quality and pitch range of a soundscape, if things like stereo, chorus, reverb or echo, phaser and flanger effects are used, if typical tracker sequencing techniques are used and possibly more.

[Purple Moss]

Wow, nice! I'll check out your page. You have great lists but I have already noticed some things you may be missing I'll edit this post in the following days! Bit busy right now.

EDIT: As promised,

I wanted to make more critical comments on each proposal, but I'm not really good at that; PLUS, I haven't played most of these games (sadly...), so I believe my opinion is skewed without taking into account the OST's true context:

YM2203:
- Mahou Shoujo Fancy Coco: Another work from Umemoto and Takeaki Watanabe (see Black Bird below), with the former's distinct style, but more upbeat.
- Night Slave [Valken with hot girls]: One of the few I have played. When that Stage 1 theme kicked in, I was like "Whoa! This is FM Synthesis?!" I had fewer FM references back then, so it was very surprising. And then I couldn't believe it was only 6 channels...
- Rookies: You have Power Slave listed already; this one comes from the same company (and it's the same uploader ). Similar to Love Escalator (see below; same company as well).

YM2608:
- Black Bird ～鳥達の遠吠～ [dungeon crawler]:
- Love Escalator [eroge]: Very diverse instrument palette. Fun fact, Umemoto covered 'Disunion' in one of his live shows.
- Rhyme Star [board game]: The OST has strong shmup veins, maybe a bit too traditional at times, but there are some innovative tracks as well.
- Harlem Blade [JRPG]: RPG tunes that embrace FM Synthesis.
- Revival Xanadu: Short tunes with a strong and catchy melody.

YM2151:
- 38 Man Kilo no Kokuu: Great jazz, most of it. I can almost hear the sax. Also has a MIDI version.
- Nama Baseball: I had forgotten why I had this, the first tracks were typical baseball tunes, until I went past that -- it's great! Sort of rock, jazz; some tracks remind me of Asuka 120%.
- Cosmic Psycho: This one is already on your YM2203 listing. Naturally the 2151 version is more of the same good things.

I think that is all for now, your lists are very exhaustive already (: I partly agree with condroid and it may be overwhelming for some.

Edit 2: Forgot to mention, I know most of these through Hoot. All of them can be found in the Hoot Archive.

Also I was wondering if maybe you yourself could host samples from the listed OSTs, especially for those without Youtube links or rips. It could help those looking for new music.

[psygnosis8]

This is really cool! There's a lot of games on these lists that I haven't played, and music is something I really love about games. Looks like I'm gonna have to check out a lot of these.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Feb 27, 2017 20:10:47 GMT -5 Purple Moss said:

Wow, nice! I'll check out your page. You have great lists but I have already noticed some things you may be missing I'll edit this post in the following days! Bit busy right now.

Thanks and bring it on.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Thanks for the suggestions, purple moss! I don't know about hosting at weebly, whether there's much space or if it's allowed. I'll look into it later though.

Added a page for YM2610B music, it's almost identical to the NG chip except it uses two additional FM channels. It was mainly used by Taito:
minirevver.weebly.com/ym2610b-music.html

Edit: Added Purple Moss's suggestions.

[Purple Moss]

I'm glad you liked them! I will of course be on the lookout for more OSTs (and I'll be checking out your lists every so often ).

[ommadawnyawn2]

I recently discovered the Apple II GS's sound chip (Ensoniq 5503 DOC). Is it sample based? I don't quite understand what wavetable synthesis means, but this sounds like the Amiga.

Music: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9SmlJdRfFA&list=PLoH9ios4oVy1CQkm2lQcT8m40qLsGEKFf&index=1
Wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavetable_synthesis

[condroid]

In the context of video game sound hardware, 'wavetable synthesis' is a) mostly a marketing term and b) usually refers to oscillators that are fed with wave forms from RAM. This isn't dramatically different from PCM, except that in a wavetable chip RAM is much more limited. As a result, the wave forms have to be fairly simple as there isn't enough space to work with samples from real instruments.

The ES5503 is an 8-bit PCM sampler like the Amiga. In the Apple IIGS it has access to 64K of RAM, but there are ways around that limit from what I remember.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Interesting, can those chips be fed custom waveforms as well?
The PCE chip is described as wavetable and in Deflemask you load short custom waveforms (actually described as wavetables there) that affect the instruments (you can make square/saw/sine etc shapes in an editor), besides it being able to load lo-fi samples. I don't think you have much control over those though besides stereo panning, haven't used it much at all for PCE music.

[backgroundnoise]

Looking under the check list for the OPL2 chip, I can clarify the following:

• Jazz, Epic Pinball and One Must Fall used MOD tracker music (s3m format if the gamerips from mirsoft.info are any indication), so no Adlib
  
• I've checked the setup file for Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and it only supports MIDI and CD audio
• the setup file for Ultima 7 does have Adlib as an option
• the setup file for Albion has both Adlib and Adlib Gold as an option
  

Thanks for the list. I like FM synth music a lot more than I should, if the stigma surrounding the Mega Drive's audio is any indication. I would like to recommend Arumana no Kiseki for the FDS list. Also, if this is any indication, Lagrange point uses the VRC7, basically an OPLL.

[condroid]

Jun 17, 2017 17:50:40 GMT -5 ommadawnyawn2 said:

Interesting, can those chips be fed custom waveforms as well?

Is this referring to sample-based chips like the ES5503 or Paula? Technically any waveform/sample is custom in this context and something that has to be supplied by the composer. There are also a few trackers on the Amiga that work entirely without samples and synthesize all their waveforms in software.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Jun 17, 2017 18:58:23 GMT -5 backgroundnoise said:

Looking under the check list for the OPL2 chip, I can clarify the following:

• Jazz, Epic Pinball and One Must Fall used MOD tracker music (s3m format if the gamerips from mirsoft.info are any indication), so no Adlib
  
• I've checked the setup file for Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and it only supports MIDI and CD audio
• the setup file for Ultima 7 does have Adlib as an option
• the setup file for Albion has both Adlib and Adlib Gold as an option
  

Thanks for the list. I like FM synth music a lot more than I should, if the stigma surrounding the Mega Drive's audio is any indication. I would like to recommend Arumana no Kiseki for the FDS list. Also, if this is any indication, Lagrange point uses the VRC7, basically an OPLL.

Thanks, just wondering if you're sure about HoM&M2 because according to this ADG vid, it supports more formats including Adlib: 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-wRuVyYJEg&t=2m52s

If you've found uploaded FM versions of any of those that I haven't then please link to them! 

I mention Lagrange Point among the NES audio expansion games but will add VRC7 to its notes. 


condroid :
Is this referring to sample-based chips like the ES5503 or Paula? Technically any waveform/sample is custom in this context and something that has to be supplied by the composer. There are also a few trackers on the Amiga that work entirely without samples and synthesize all their waveforms in software.


Yes, exactly. What you mentioned last there seems to be what I'm getting at. Is there a surefire way to identify such music in Amiga or AIIGS games? I've always thought stuff like Battle Squadron sounded more like C64 for example. 


Edit:
More AII GS info by TmEE at Sega-16 forums:
"It is essentially PCE/TG-16 on steroids, allowing 8bit samples with sizes ranging from 256 bytes to 32KBytes (and maximum of 64KB of samples), while PCE is limited to 32x 5bit elements (SCC on MSX is nearly identical to TG16/PCE). There's some other features like channel syncing and pairing too."

[Weasel]

Jun 18, 2017 5:48:30 GMT -5 ommadawnyawn2 said:

Yes, exactly. What you mentioned last there seems to be what I'm getting at. Is there a surefire way to identify such music in Amiga or AIIGS games? I've always thought stuff like Battle Squadron sounded more like C64 for example. 

A pretty common trick among Amiga musicians is loading in existing waveforms from other sound chips. Some of the more famous demo scene compositions use such tricks, resulting in something that'll play correctly on anything that supports the MOD format, while retaining a tiny filesize (since the waveform doesn't need to be anywhere near as long as a traditional sample).

Here is among the more famous examples, Acidjazzed Evening by Tempest: