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Can we agree that limited sound channels is the worst thing about old games?

nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
I'm referring to how some of the music channels have to stop/mute, in order for the sound effects to have room to be heard.

As a retro gamer, this is the only thing i can't get used to. It is still just as annoying as it was back then. Its also one thing that seems you can't improve in emulators. You can usually improve graphics, resolution, frame rates, picture quality, overall sound quality etc but i don't remember seeing any emulator that allows more sound channels than normal, in order to eliminate this problem.

Nestopia has an option that allows for more sprites to be drawn without flickering (another annoying aspect about NES games mostly). I wonder if there are emulators that allow all channels to be played without muting and if not, if its possible to be implemented. Any thoughts?
 
P

Putty

Member
Back on the Amiga I converted the Mortal Kombat 2 music into 2 channels, so we could have 2 channels of FX. On other games you might use 3, and others you "might" of used 4 channels, with the 4th channel used as echoes while doubling with the FX.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Putty said:
Back on the Amiga I converted the Mortal Kombat 2 music into 2 channels, so we could have 2 channels of FX. On other games you might use 3, and others you "might" of used 4 channels, with the 4th channel used as echoes while doubling with the FX.
Click to expand...
I wonder if something like this could be done for a 8bit/16bit console emulator.


Zeyphersan said:
This thread taught me what a sound channel is. Thanks!
Click to expand...
And what's that?
 
I

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
What about the visual equivalent? Flicker? Pretty much a 2600 thing I guess...
 
K

Knurek

Member
Putty said:
Back on the Amiga I converted the Mortal Kombat 2 music into 2 channels, so we could have 2 channels of FX. On other games you might use 3, and others you "might" of used 4 channels, with the 4th channel used as echoes while doubling with the FX.
Click to expand...

How was working on Amiga (where you had 2-4 sound channels, but could use weak main CPU to upmix more which nobody did) when compared to working on GBA (where you had 2 sound channels, but could use weak main CPU to upmix more which just about everybody did to some extent)?
 
N

NumberThree

Member
This is just a guess, but was sprite flicker implemented by the hardware while audio channel muting/replacing was handled by the software? That would explain why the latter can't be fixed in an emulator.
 
A

AC!D

Member
Only ever bugged me in Secret of Mana.

In shoot em ups though (like thunderforce iv), the music cutting out when you collect a power up is badass.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Imbarkus said:
What about the visual equivalent? Flicker? Pretty much a 2600 thing I guess...
Click to expand...
I don't know if it exists for the A2600 but for the NES Nestopia allows for more sprites than the real NES, without flickering.


AC!D said:
In shoot em ups though (like thunderforce iv), the music cutting out when you collect a power up is badass.
Click to expand...
Muting one or two music instruments making the music sound unfinished, is much more annoying than muting the music as a whole in moments that make sense though.
 
Z

Ziffles

Member
NumberThree said:
This is just a guess, but was sprite flicker implemented by the hardware while audio channel muting/replacing was handled by the software? That would explain why the latter can't be fixed in an emulator.
Click to expand...

Correct, it's all about priority of what gets played during an event. There's nothing an emulator can do about it, short of a rom hack forcing a game to use a sound expansion chip.

I was never that bothered about sound effects interrupting music on the NES. I always thought it was kind of cute, and I also liked when the beat dropped out when a big sound effect played like on SNES RPGs. It added a tinge of drama.
 
Coonce

Coonce

Member
I hate it so much too, it's so apparent in Chrono trigger when you're flicking through the menu and the music skips out whenever the "tick" sound occurs.

afaik there's no way to fix this :(
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
Shitty UI and controls are the worst thing about old games, not that sound thing.

Ever tried to play Metal Gear on NES? Whoever came up with that UI must've been a de-evolved monkey.
 
Z

Zaku

Member
On the list of problems older games may have, the sound channels are a very low priority when we're talking about what's "worst".
 
Fattony12000

Fattony12000

Member
That sort of "effect" is super low level and really tied into the programming of the game and the software/hardware running the game itself, I would've thought. Try modifying an NES game to work natively with an Oculus Rift, you're going back and messing with stuff that wasn't even possible/thought of at the time, I would've thought.

Maybe?

I would've thought.
 
T

Turrican3

Member
Knurek said:
How was working on Amiga (where you had 2-4 sound channels, but could use weak main CPU to upmix more which nobody did)
Click to expand...
Not sure about ingame, but there were quite a decent number of games with audio courtesy of Chris Huelsbeck that did exactly that during intro/main menu, credits, etc., Turrican 2 being probably the most popular one.
 
T

TyrantGuardian

Member
Yeah, Shovel Knight decided to concede this part of "authenticity" for a reason. It's just bad.

Edit: Referring to games that have music that cuts out. Soundtracks that have been worked around this are obviously both impressive and fine.
 
P

Putty

Member
Knurek said:
How was working on Amiga (where you had 2-4 sound channels, but could use weak main CPU to upmix more which nobody did) when compared to working on GBA (where you had 2 sound channels, but could use weak main CPU to upmix more which just about everybody did to some extent)?
Click to expand...

GBA we used to use 8 channels for title track and 6 for ingame. We had our own driver.
 
S

SatelliteOfLove

Member
Zaku said:
On the list of problems older games may have, the sound channels are a very low priority when we're talking about what's "worst".
Click to expand...

Arguably, like flicker, it very much is (if only for the mood-destroying signifigance that cutting out the music to make for the SFX cues). Also, it makes all those composers and sound engineers who worked around this (hello, Follin brothers!) all the more awesome for it.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Yes that is indeed real annoying. It can't be "fixed" with emulation since that's just the way some games were programmed.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Worst? Unsure about that, the general clunky controls of NES games are probably my least favorite thing, though a rare few games seem to rise above them (I have no idea how it's even possible SMB3 controls as well as it does considering the average platform, simply at a technical level). But yeah, limited sound channels were awful, especially when sound effects bled over into music tracks like is prominent in the DeDeDe fight in Kirby's Dream Land 1.

Sprite Flicker and slowdown are also awful, though slowdown was fairly uncommon depending on genre and can even be used as a gameplay mechanic in shmups. No idea why Metal Slug preserves it though.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
In most cases you can mitgate the effects of this if you're being smart about it. Muting stuff like percussion, backing tracks of notes that play in quick succession is generally a lot less noticeable than muting something like the lead melody.

Fun fact: Tim Follin didn't even use the full 8 channels for his SNES music. 2 were reserved for sound effects.

European composers/sound programmers in general were more binary about this stuff back in the day. Lots of C64 and Amiga games would either have no background music at all, or only music during gameplay with no sound effects to interrupt it.
 
K

Knurek

Member
Turrican3 said:
Not sure about ingame, but there were quite a decent number of games with audio courtesy of Chris Huelsbeck that did exactly that during intro/main menu, credits, etc., Turrican 2 being probably the most popular one.
Click to expand...

All those Huelsbeck and Hippel 7 channel drivers used some volume modulation IIRC, not software mixing (something similar to the way samples are played on C64).
There were some software mixing players available (hippoplayer IIRC), but my Amiga 500 could only play a 8 channel module @12 kHz, with 100% CPU usage. Obviously not something that could've been used ingame.

Putty said:
GBA we used to use 8 channels for title track and 6 for ingame. We had our own driver.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know. It did sound way better than Sappy. On par with GAX I'd say, of course Mr. Brimble is a way better composer than the Shin'en guys, so they might've achieved higher quality mixing. :)
Pity there are no GSF rips for your games, people tend to complain a lot about GBA sound quality, with two of the best music drivers having close to none representation. :(
 
I

Ishida

Banned
Very common in Mega Man games, especially when the Boss' life bar fills up, it mutes some of the music channels.

Not that I mind, though, I've always thought that has some charm to it.
 
ReBurn

ReBurn

Gold Member
Most of the time they did the best they could with what they had available to them. All things considered I think it's a relatively small gripe.
 
P

Putty

Member
Knurek said:
All those Huelsbeck and Hippel 7 channel drivers used some volume modulation IIRC, not software mixing (something similar to the way samples are played on C64).
There were some software mixing players available (hippoplayer IIRC), but my Amiga 500 could only play a 8 channel module @12 kHz, with 100% CPU usage. Obviously not something that could've been used ingame.



Yeah, I know. It did sound way better than Sappy. On par with GAX I'd say, of course Mr. Brimble is a way better composer than the Shin'en guys, so they might've achieved higher quality mixing. :)
Pity there are no GSF rips for your games, people tend to complain a lot about GBA sound quality, with two of the best music drivers having close to none representation. :(
Click to expand...

Well, we have the original source files so maybe at some point we could upload to youtube or something. A big GBA MEGAMIXZ thing!
 
D

Deadpool_X

Banned
Funny thing is, I don't even hear it anymore. It is as synonymous with retro gaming to me as the sprite-based graphics. It adds to the charm of retro gaming.
 
E

executor

Member
As I spent a lot of years in the beautiful Amiga scene I can only approve of limitations in any kind of hardware, cpu, sounds hw etc.
It's only thanks to limitations that people are forced to express the best of artcrafts and push the boundaries of their limits paving the way for new evolutions
 
Mihos

Mihos

Gold Member
Fixing it would just make the game sound 'wrong'. Growing up with it and having these sounds imprinted firmly in your memory, having it sound anything unlike the original is just weird. I don't think I even played a game on a TV with more than one speaker until sometime in the late 80s.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Putty said:
Well, we have the original source files so maybe at some point we could upload to youtube or something. A big GBA MEGAMIXZ thing!
Click to expand...

What quality were your samples stored at? It seems like no matter what fidelity the sounds were, they would always be bottlenecked by the GBA's DAC.
 
W

Widge

Member
Good old Amiga. Two channels left, two channels right. I believe the in-house Team 17 guy used the Octamed technique to do 8 channel audio for their games, Superfrog being the notable title.
 
M

MrBadger

Member
Try playing Cheetahmen. The music pauses every time a sound effect plays. Actually don't try playing Cheetahmen. It's fucking awful.

I think I'm too used to old games to really care about this happening. I notice it, but I kind of like hearing parts of the music disappear for a second.
 
S

Skiptastic

Member
Limited sound channels was awesome. When you would charge up your Mega Buster in MM4 and the background music would sound different? Freaking amazing.
 
A

Azriell

Member
The worst thing about old games is shitty control schemes. Many NES games feel overly rigid in their movement and it makes many games unplayable. There are at least a few games where up is jump, and that sucks. Rigid controls and awkward button mappings were largely fixed on SNES, but there are still some games that are pretty bad about this.

When games switched to 3D, there was more control issues as games struggled with how to handled movement in a 3D environment. Replaying Spryro, it's obvious that the game was meant to be played on a dpad and not a stick, although Spyro is still decent. Croc is a better example; I'm pretty sure it was platformer with tank controls, which made it pretty awkward to play. I can handle Resident Evil's controls, because the pacing is generally pretty slow, but I've never been able to get into Tomb Raider because every demo I've ever played has a section where you have to make Lara run and jump over a gap, and it just feels terrible to do that in a game that's so damn rigid.
 
D

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
jett said:
That is really impressive.

Also, I had no idea Jonne Valtonen was Purple Motion. He spends his current days doing the best video game orchestral arrangements in the world.
Click to expand...

Holy shit, I had no idea that Purple Motion was still around and doing (seemingly awesome) things... his music was a big part of my childhood.
 
N

Noogy

Member
Skiptastic said:
Limited sound channels was awesome. When you would charge up your Mega Buster in MM4 and the background music would sound different? Freaking amazing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I loved this as well. I mean, I'm glad we've moved forward, but there's something raw about your actions in the game actually pushing the audio to its limit.

Nothing better than the explosion sounds in Guerrilla War literally ripping the insides of your NES apart.
 
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