There was actually something worse than the 7800 soundwise

[kool kitty89]

There was actually something worse than the 7800 soundwise

 

anything on ZX Spectrum actually.

 

C64 has some awful cat-strangling squeaking sounds too.

 

Oh yeah the Spectrum is terrible

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfn1n2DJHxE

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68U0p4q20wc

 

That's not the original 16/48k beeper spectrum though, I'm pretty sure the context of the above post was for the pre-128k specifically without the AY8912 add-on.

 

The AY8910 and derivatives is obviously a rather capable chip, even with a few advantages over POKEY (and universal advantages over the simple SN76489 -all 3 being introduced in 1979 iirc, though the AY might have been slightly earlier).

 

From Intellivision to Atari ST you've got a huge range of platforms using the AY8910 and compatibles with some examples pushing it a lot further than others, obviously.

 

 

In any case, I already posted some neat PWM beeper demos above. (both by Follin, but others did that too)

 

 

 

TIA was/is a good sound-producer. The only thing was that it didn't make the 7800 sound very advanced in it's day compared with other "consoles" on the market, especially when it came to music. Even POKEY was a pretty aged chip by that time.

It was good for sound effects, but relatively limited for music due to the pitch resolution. (also OK for instruments in music without a large pitch range -like for percussion/beat stuff) The simple SN76489 is better for music due to the number of channels and pitch resolution, but generally weaker than TIA for SFX. (the periodic noise of TIA is particularly nice)

 

POKEY was far more capable and better than the very plain SN76489 used on the Master System and in many ways better than the AY8910/derivatives (with trade-offs, more so depending on the circumstances -POKEY is much weaker if you can't practically use its interrupts for some things). All 3 are ca 1979, so significantly older than the likes of the SID or NES's sound hardware.

 

So with that in mind: the 5200 and Intellivision are generally superior to the Master System in sound capabilities. (the Colecovision is pretty much identical)

Edited March 3, 2011 by kool kitty89

[kool kitty89]

The o.p. says his mom's computer had CGA. Was "Castlevania" that ugly purple or was it red/brown/green?

Given the screenshots I've found online (especially gamespot which usually has accurate CGA shots -including the blue/red/green/brown King's Quest in RGB mode) seem to agree with the use of the cyan/magenta/light gray palette 1 low intensity, so it seems to have been a poor choice on the developer's part. (it's a rather mediocre conversion of the game in any case especially as far as 1990 DOS games go -not too bad for a purely budget game, but I'm not sure of the context -contra was pretty poor too, but at least it used a better palette)

 

Black/green/red/brown (palette 0 low intensity) would definitely seem to be the best option. (maybe a couple areas where you'd use something other than black, but keeping black would probably be done most of the time)

Some decent dithering would have helped too.

 

There's also the 3rd undoccumented palette in RGB achieved by setting the display to disabled colorburst (grayscale composite) which gives black(or indexed)/red/cyan/white. (a few games like Super C used that for CGA)

 

Of course, there's also the use of composite artifacts to rather good affect, but composite/RF use on PCs wasn't really common enough to push that strongly. (a shame there's only 1 color register to use in CGA bitmap modes and no 160x200 4bpp direct color mode -the PCJr/Tandy graphics added 4 color registers for fully indexed 2 and 4 color modes on top of direct 4bbp color modes . . . having characters only hard coded in ROM -none allowed in RAM- also removed the quite useful possibility for character based games other than those using the ROM character set -the 80 column mode would have made for some decent char based scrolling and high res dithering, and colors are fully indexed in the character modes as well with 2 colors per cell -let alone the potential for composite color artifacts on top of that )

[maiki]

There was actually something worse than the 7800 soundwise

 

 

anything on ZX Spectrum actually.

C64 has some awful cat-strangling squeaking sounds too.

 

Well, ZX Spectrum has obviously only a beeper so what do you expect? But at least it is fully capable of reproducing the notes correctly. Only a very few games tend to sound out of tune, because they use very special tricky routines to "enhance" the basic beeps...

 

So, the question is: can these Atari 7800 games, like Donkey Kong, Ninja Golf, etc etc. be fixed so that the music plays right. Because honestly, Donkey Kong on Atari 7800 is nothing more than irritating with that completely out of tune sound...

 

Atari 7800 is by far the most mistuned system I have ever come across... - judging from the real games!!!

 

edit: for those who think ZX Spectrum with its 1-bit beeper sucks check out the following video... it's all Z80 driven obviously (plus there's AY doing the cymbals)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ses2wOj43pU

Edited January 1, 2012 by maiki

[atarian63]

There was actually something worse than the 7800 soundwise

 

 

anything on ZX Spectrum actually.

C64 has some awful cat-strangling squeaking sounds too.

 

 

Woah, now...don't dis the SID. That was some great sound. If there's games on C64 that didn't sound good, it's because whoever did the sound sucked at it.

The computer itself had a great sound chip. Hell, there are C64 games out there remembered solely for their soundtracks even though the games themselves were crap.

and there are load that sound like strangling the cat. just awful

[Zonie]

Anybody remember the PC Speaker Driver for Windows 3.0/3.1? It was actually pretty slick, and would play WAV files over that crummy little speaker, better than expected. It was pretty cool for a free download, back in those days.

 

Yeah, that brought sound to my laptop!!!

[eddhead]

There was actually something worse than the 7800 soundwise

 

 

anything on ZX Spectrum actually.

C64 has some awful cat-strangling squeaking sounds too.

 

Well, ZX Spectrum has obviously only a beeper so what do you expect? But at least it is fully capable of reproducing the notes correctly. Only a very few games tend to sound out of tune, because they use very special tricky routines to "enhance" the basic beeps...

 

So, the question is: can these Atari 7800 games, like Donkey Kong, Ninja Golf, etc etc. be fixed so that the music plays right. Because honestly, Donkey Kong on Atari 7800 is nothing more than irritating with that completely out of tune sound...

 

Atari 7800 is by far the most mistuned system I have ever come across... - judging from the real games!!!

 

edit: for those who think ZX Spectrum with its 1-bit beeper sucks check out the following video... it's all Z80 driven obviously (plus there's AY doing the cymbals)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ses2wOj43pU

 

WHOA!! Thanks for the video! Not only did that song rock, but the screenshots from the game made it look pretty cool... (having never owned one) it definitely changed my mind about ZX Spectrum's sound capabilities.

[16BitMan]

Here are 2 more really good music tracks that only use the 48k Spectrums "Beeper"

 

http://youtu.be/WlytwimJL5Q

 

Agent X - By Mastertronic

 

http://youtu.be/C_hG8ot3Zn4

 

Firefly - By Ocean

Edited January 3, 2012 by 16BitMan

[DracIsBack]

Is the tuning of the TIA a hardware issue or a "non-musically inclinded developer issue"?

 

I have no idea, so asking.

 

Some of the 7800 music seems extra obnoxious, not only because of tuning, but also volume and (in some cases) high pitches. I don't mind TIA music in lower pitches (ie. Midnight Mutants, California Games, Dark Chambers)

[+Stephen]

Is the tuning of the TIA a hardware issue or a "non-musically inclinded developer issue"?

 

I have no idea, so asking.

 

Some of the 7800 music seems extra obnoxious, not only because of tuning, but also volume and (in some cases) high pitches. I don't mind TIA music in lower pitches (ie. Midnight Mutants, California Games, Dark Chambers)

My guess would be limited frequency resolution coupled with the slower 1.19MHz clock. Pokey is often times out of tune when not using 16-bit resolution.