spacecowgoesmoo Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 OK, I've just made a crappy lil OST with a NES soundfont I found. I then discover this. ApulSoft Chip32 <3<3<3. Now, I notice that all of it's parameters are in hexadecimal. (00 to FF, and FF is a 8 bit maximum number, I believe.). I'm thinking of reinstrumenting the whole thing with this, but I'm not sure of the NES hardware, specifically, will it still be NES-authentic if I play around with this synth and use anything other than the default presets? I tested it out already on one song and it sounds loads better Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OverCoat Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 Chip32 isn't really accurate to the NES so much as it lets you draw basic waveforms that sound approximately like what the NES can produce. Pretty fun synth, though, I have it. For making "authentic" NES tunes, you just need to remember that you only have 5 voices to work with by default: 2 square waves, 1 triangle, 1 whitenoise, and 1 PCM voice. The PCM channel is typically used for drums, though iirc some Sunsoft games use it for a bass sample and the white noise is almost always going to pretend it's a hihat or cymbal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecowgoesmoo Posted July 24, 2008 Author Share Posted July 24, 2008 I see, I had thought that one test track was sounding suspiciously good! One more thing then, the NES soundfont I used had about..maybe 30 patches. A LOT of those were like, 'Square Wave 1 - 8' and such (Konami Drums!!), but I think I can assume that they're all...acceptably realistic variations on those 5 voices you mentioned, right? It doesn't really matter, I'm just obsessive Let me try to dig up a link... ....hm, the website has 2 NES .sf2's now..I'll have to check back on my mac at home. Anyway, if you google 'Zophar Soundfonts', its the first one that comes up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OverCoat Posted July 25, 2008 Share Posted July 25, 2008 The NES soundfonts aren't very good, mainly for the fact that the samples aren't really simple waveforms, some of the samples even have attacks on them, and that is just no no no. The quality of the waveforms is bad, not as clear as if you use better samples or a VSTi that actually generates the sound itself. Also yeah, there's different types of square waves you can use, with different types of width to them to sound a bit different. I should probably tell you right now that I'm pretty anal about this sort of thing - I'm kind of a chiptune "purist" so if someone calls their song a NES chiptune that they made in FL Studio, I get into RAGE mode and remind them what NES is supposed to sound like. Most people won't respond that way though, as long as the song is good, or fun, or whatever Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecowgoesmoo Posted July 25, 2008 Author Share Posted July 25, 2008 Lol, RAGE MODE!! I think it sounds close enough for what I'm doing then, I guess I'm a bit less purist than you Thanks for the help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OverCoat Posted July 26, 2008 Share Posted July 26, 2008 As long as you don't end up like these guys you should be OK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.