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SNES vs Genesis Sound

P

polyh3dron

Banned
Osakadon said:
I used to own both SNES and Genesis and I have really tried to like Genesis sound and music. But compared to the SNES's music and especially sound effects, it's just so bad.

They both have their distinct sound/style, and sometimes there are some great tracks for sure, but 90% of the time, Genesis music sounds like I'm listening to a ham radio being raped by a farting robot through a tin can telephone.
Click to expand...
https://youtu.be/98qL68gpS7Q

Song from Shinobi 3.
Your argument is invalid.
 
D

dogen

Member
Osakadon said:
I used to own both SNES and Genesis and I have really tried to like Genesis sound and music. But compared to the SNES's music and especially sound effects, it's just so bad.

They both have their distinct sound/style, and sometimes there are some great tracks for sure, but 90% of the time, Genesis music sounds like I'm listening to a ham radio being raped by a farting robot through a tin can telephone.
Click to expand...

Just ignore the vast majority of music from american games and problem solved. Even fans of the system don't like that stuff, usually.
 
S

Shaneus

Member
dogen said:
Just ignore the vast majority of music from american games and problem solved. Even fans of the system don't like that stuff, usually.
Click to expand...
Lazy American stuff, usually multi-platform. The Disney/Virgin/Shiny stuff is pretty damn good (EWJ1, Aladdin, Cool Spot), as is Comix Zone (that might get a pass because it's a Sega title) and FIFA (technically Canadian ;P).

I'm sure there are stacks of others, but generally the lazy/license ports for the Genesis are the biggest offenders, and always sounded better on the SNES because they had a default instrument bank that were actually samples.
 
D

dogen

Member
Shaneus said:
Lazy American stuff, usually multi-platform. The Disney/Virgin/Shiny stuff is pretty damn good (EWJ1, Aladdin, Cool Spot), as is Comix Zone (that might get a pass because it's a Sega title) and FIFA (technically Canadian ;P).

I'm sure there are stacks of others, but generally the lazy/license ports for the Genesis are the biggest offenders, and always sounded better on the SNES because they had a default instrument bank that were actually samples.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I didn't mean everything was bad.
 
J

Jazz573

Member
The answer is both. But I have a preference for FM over PCM, so Genesis / MegaDrive has a slight edge for me. The YM2612 is pretty good but I prefer its older brother the YM2608 (used in PC-88 and PC-98).
 
J

jett

D-Member
Osakadon said:
I used to own both SNES and Genesis and I have really tried to like Genesis sound and music. But compared to the SNES's music and especially sound effects, it's just so bad.

They both have their distinct sound/style, and sometimes there are some great tracks for sure, but 90% of the time, Genesis music sounds like I'm listening to a ham radio being raped by a farting robot through a tin can telephone.
Click to expand...

Educate yourself pls.

jett said:
Have some random wonderfulness:
Mega Turrican
Vapor Trail
Sub-Terrania
Gauntlet IV
Shining Force II
Jewel Master
Thunderforce IV
Verytex
Gleylancer (yes, again!)
Click to expand...

lazygecko said:
Been experimenting more over the weekend

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/goa.vgm (no PSG in this one)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/ateot loop.vgm

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/saeed.vgm
Click to expand...

Nice!
 
D

Darknight

Member
That DK remix is cool for a Genesis track.

Nothing against the maker of it, but its not the SNES quality. The only reason you may think its better or 1:1 is because the original is a beast. Being based on a god tier SNES track, how can you dislike the little less good one?

Its like listening to some cool hip hop beats and then later on one day you listen to the original track it came from...bliss. It was always a great song.
 
D

dogen

Member
Darknight said:
Nothing against the maker of it, but its not the SNES quality. The only reason you may think its better or 1:1 is because the original is a beast. Being based on a god tier SNES track, how can you dislike the little less good one?
Click to expand...

It's possible for people to actually like different things than you. There doesn't have to be some reason underneath that makes them wrong about it.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Infected Mushroom - Sa'eed (YM2612 Cover)

Link to .vgm: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByppANKBZSvaSDBjYlNqRE5kNmM

Tons of different innovative tricks were used for this. Channel 3 was split into 4 sub-channels, which effectively gave me 3 extra voices to work with. 3 of them are sine waves while the first one has feedback turning it into a saw wave, which is used for bass. One sine is used for bassdrums, and the remaining 2 are used for simple piano among other things. Dozens of different patches are used, and on top of that there's tons of real time automation effects done to them, like alternating attack values on rhythm guitar, different brightness settings on piano notes etc to get more natural sounding performances, switching around mult values on vocal melodies to get formant-like effects for "singing", and of course all the crazy synthesizer effects. PCM use is relatively minimal. The only samples in there are a few bongos, a snare, and a clap, all at 11khz.

Is this the most technically advanced piece of music ever made for the Genesis? I reckon it possibly is.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
ΙΜΟ SNES wins in sound quality thanks to Starfox and Yoshi's Island. Also, i think Super Turrican has better quality than Mega Turrican, even though the drumming in Mega Turrican is more playful and less boring.
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
lazygecko said:
Infected Mushroom - Sa'eed (YM2612 Cover)

Link to .vgm: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByppANKBZSvaSDBjYlNqRE5kNmM

Tons of different innovative tricks were used for this. Channel 3 was split into 4 sub-channels, which effectively gave me 3 extra voices to work with. 3 of them are sine waves while the first one has feedback turning it into a saw wave, which is used for bass. One sine is used for bassdrums, and the remaining 2 are used for simple piano among other things. Dozens of different patches are used, and on top of that there's tons of real time automation effects done to them, like alternating attack values on rhythm guitar, different brightness settings on piano notes etc to get more natural sounding performances, switching around mult values on vocal melodies to get formant-like effects for "singing", and of course all the crazy synthesizer effects. PCM use is relatively minimal. The only samples in there are a few bongos, a snare, and a clap, all at 11khz.

Is this the most technically advanced piece of music ever made for the Genesis? I reckon it possibly is.
Click to expand...

Bravo! Seriously impressive that this is virtually all chip-generated stuff.
 
T

Timu

Member
lazygecko said:
Infected Mushroom - Sa'eed (YM2612 Cover)

Link to .vgm: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByppANKBZSvaSDBjYlNqRE5kNmM

Tons of different innovative tricks were used for this. Channel 3 was split into 4 sub-channels, which effectively gave me 3 extra voices to work with. 3 of them are sine waves while the first one has feedback turning it into a saw wave, which is used for bass. One sine is used for bassdrums, and the remaining 2 are used for simple piano among other things. Dozens of different patches are used, and on top of that there's tons of real time automation effects done to them, like alternating attack values on rhythm guitar, different brightness settings on piano notes etc to get more natural sounding performances, switching around mult values on vocal melodies to get formant-like effects for "singing", and of course all the crazy synthesizer effects. PCM use is relatively minimal. The only samples in there are a few bongos, a snare, and a clap, all at 11khz.

Is this the most technically advanced piece of music ever made for the Genesis? I reckon it possibly is.
Click to expand...
That is nuts!
 
E

ElectricThunder

Member
lazygecko said:
Infected Mushroom - Sa'eed (YM2612 Cover)

Link to .vgm: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByppANKBZSvaSDBjYlNqRE5kNmM

Tons of different innovative tricks were used for this. Channel 3 was split into 4 sub-channels, which effectively gave me 3 extra voices to work with. 3 of them are sine waves while the first one has feedback turning it into a saw wave, which is used for bass. One sine is used for bassdrums, and the remaining 2 are used for simple piano among other things. Dozens of different patches are used, and on top of that there's tons of real time automation effects done to them, like alternating attack values on rhythm guitar, different brightness settings on piano notes etc to get more natural sounding performances, switching around mult values on vocal melodies to get formant-like effects for "singing", and of course all the crazy synthesizer effects. PCM use is relatively minimal. The only samples in there are a few bongos, a snare, and a clap, all at 11khz.

Is this the most technically advanced piece of music ever made for the Genesis? I reckon it possibly is.
Click to expand...

Damn fine work---and even that feels inadequate given what this has probably raised the bar to while simultaneously kicking the absolute ceiling up that much higher than prior.
 
E

EPSYLON EAGLE

Member
https://youtu.be/CGPjt37d8-U

d46.gif
 
T

Taliban Stan

Member
SNES had better sound for what was considered good at the time. However, it's sound was based on samples that would change in length when you changed the pitch. This is like playing a record slow. However, when you sequenced knowing this you could achieve a much more realistic sound with "real" (general MIDI) instrument sounds than the Genesis could.

The Genesis had a real synthesizer in it. Made by Yamaha, who dominated during the 1980s when it came to synthesizers. A real synthesizer is actually generating the sound and doesn't suffer from the time issue when you change the pitch. If you are making electronic music, the Genesis is far and away better. It's actually a synthesizer that you can program. However, it's a synthesizer. It's not sample based. There are some sounds that it can synthesize in a realistic way, on par or better than a SNES but for the most part, it cannot do "real" (general MIDI) instrument sounds well at all. It's trying to use synths to make something that sounds like it. It blows at that.

SNES is a better overall. Overall. It is not better at anything that is actually supposed to sound like a synthesizer.
 
M

Moon_frogger

Member
When people say that the genesis is better because it had more of a synth/techno sound they are just confused by the fact that every game on the genesis sounded like that, even ones that weren't supposed to because that's all it would do.

One only needs listen to square, capcom, Konami and nintendos own output to realize that the snes absolutely blows the genesis out of the water in every way that matters.

Sure the genesis had some great games with some great osts....but they would have been better on the snes. A lot better .
 
RAIDEN1

RAIDEN1

Member
It's only after more than 20 years later do the quality of these tracks come to the fore, from the likes of Plok, Shinobi, Thunderforce, Donkey Kong et all...I think with the genesis/megadrive it was a case of you couldn't conjure up awesome music straight of the bat unless you knew how to utilise the various strengths/weaknesses of it's sound chip effectively...then again the SNES was prone to some downright bad music as well it could be said...
 
S

Shaneus

Member
Moon_frogger said:
One only needs listen to square, capcom, Konami and nintendos own output to realize that the snes absolutely blows the genesis out of the water in every way that matters.
Click to expand...
In every way that matters to you.

There's a reason that people who release VGM records these days (and people who buy them) rarely cover SNES music: it doesn't hold up today. You can get the fidelity of a 30 year old synthesiser sounding good on a slab of vinyl, but if you want anything from the SNES to sound decent now (and not through an emulator), it'll most likely be performed by an orchestra. See: Final Fantasy.
 
J

jett

D-Member
The Genesis can sound so sharp and bright compared to the SNES. Top tier Genny music is just too fucking good.
 
S

Synth

Member
Moon_frogger said:
When people say that the genesis is better because it had more of a synth/techno sound they are just confused by the fact that every game on the genesis sounded like that, even ones that weren't supposed to because that's all it would do.

One only needs listen to square, capcom, Konami and nintendos own output to realize that the snes absolutely blows the genesis out of the water in every way that matters.

Sure the genesis had some great games with some great osts....but they would have been better on the snes. A lot better .
Click to expand...

We're not "confused" by anything. If we say the Genesis was better for its synth sound, it's because the Genesis was a far better synth than the SNES was a sampler. The Genesis synth was an instrument, rather than attempting to copy instruments. Sure, you could try and copy others instruments anyway, but the point is that the Genesis isn't a heavily compromised sound, unlike the SNES was.

"Every way that matters"? That's just stupid. Synths are used excessively in music production even today, because of their flexibility. You're more limited by your ability to manipulate the sound, than the sound itself.
 
0

00ich

Member
In an alternate universe, where SEGA put a cowbell into the Genesis:

Cowbell said:
We're not "confused" by anything. If we say the Genesis was better for its cowbell sound, it's because the Genesis was a far better cowbell than the SNES was a sampler. The Genesis cowbell was an instrument, rather than attempting to copy instruments. Sure, you could try and copy others instruments anyway, but the point is that the Genesis isn't a heavily compromised sound, unlike the SNES was.

"Every way that matters"? That's just stupid. Cowbells are used excessively in music production even today, because of their flexibility. You're more limited by your ability to manipulate the sound, than the sound itself.
Click to expand...

My point being that the SNES, seen as a developers canvas to express their vision of a game, is far better suited. They are both heavily compromised machines compared by today's standards, but it wasn't all a retro-laugh at the time. The SNES's ability to create fitting background music for about every game scenario with an interface understandable to musicians without engineering or programming experience, is most probably the reason there's so little bad music on the system.
Compare that to the extensive knowledge of the hardware needed by the composer to create music matching the genesis's sound chips. The process is just wrong from the beginning. Creating music should be creative task, not an engineering task and the SNES was far ahead of the genesis in that regard.

This thread also ignores that most examples of good genesis music use the PCM channel, which leaves the actual game to FM-ploings and boings as SFX.
 
D

dogen

Member
00ich said:
The process is just wrong from the beginning. Creating music should be creative task, not an engineering task and the SNES was far ahead of the genesis in that regard.

This thread also ignores that most examples of good genesis music use the PCM channel, which leaves the actual game to FM-ploings and boings as SFX.
Click to expand...

You overstate how much hardware knowledge is needed to program fm instruments. Plus dealing with the snes' sound memory limits could fairly be considered an egineering task as well.
 
0

00ich

Member
dogen said:
You overstate how much hardware knowledge is needed to program fm instruments. Plus dealing with the snes' sound memory limits could fairly be considered an egineering task as well.
Click to expand...


No, you could just use a highlevel lib and don't care at all. Nintendo didd it and provided it to third parties.
https://wiki.superfamicom.org/snes/show/Nintendo+Music+Format+(N-SPC)

The memory limits where fixed constraints. Choose a 64KByte (or whatever) sample set and off you go. One set for the whole game.

Here's the hoops you went through on genesis. This is an atempt on a birdeye view of the system, but I really have no idea what that translates to:
http://www.smspower.org/maxim/Documents/YM2612
The standard FM channels each have a single overall frequency and data for how to turn this frequency into the complex final wave form (the voice). This conversion process uses four dedicated channel components called ‘operators', each possessing a frequency (a variant of the overall frequency), an envelope, and the capability to modulate its input using the frequency and envelope. The operator frequencies are offsets of integral multiples of the overall frequency.
There are two sets of three FM channels, named channels 1 to 3 and 4 to 6 respectively. Channels 3 and 6, the last in each set, have the capability to use a totally separate frequency for each operator rather than offsets of integral multiples. This works well (l believe) for percussion instruments, which have harmonics at odd multiples such as 1.4 or 1.7 of the fundamental.
[...]
The LFO, or Low Frequency Oscillator, allows for amplitude and/or frequency distortions of the FM sounds. Each channel elects the degree to which it will be distorted by the LFO, if at all. This could be used, for example, in a guitar solo.
Click to expand...

So I have to use the same distortion frequency on all channels, but I can choose to what extends they influence my channel. You can use channel 6 as PCM channel for your percussions or have a single percussion voice in channel 3. There are no instrument presets. Play with

Oh, also you need to work with SN76489, too.
 
S

Shaneus

Member
00ich said:
No, you could just use a highlevel lib and don't care at all. Nintendo didd it and provided it to third parties.
https://wiki.superfamicom.org/snes/show/Nintendo+Music+Format+(N-SPC)

The memory limits where fixed constraints. Choose a 64KByte (or whatever) sample set and off you go. One set for the whole game.

Here's the hoops you went through on genesis. I really have no idea what that translates to:
http://www.smspower.org/maxim/Documents/YM2612


Oh, also you need to work with SN76489, too.
Click to expand...
I didn't realise all the composers had to code essentially to the metal when composing, and that no-one bothered to create sound drivers with which people can compose.

Oh, wait. People did. Sega even released their own library to third party developers as well (just like Nintendo), called GEMS.
 
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