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letsap
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« on: April 17, 2009, 11:50:04 PM » |
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Pardon if this topic seems ignorant or whatnot, I'm not an audio guy at all.  I'm actually hoping to fix that a little. Lately I've been getting my feet wet with musical theory I'm wondering how to recreate the sound of the SNES, from things like instruments to sound effects. As far as music goes I've been told trackers are the way to go, but there's so many that I dunno which to choose from. I'm not entirely sure what a tracker is. I've been fiddling with Musagi lately, but the lack of instruments makes it a bit hard to work with. Are there particular synthesizers or samples that people use or is it something else? How about tools other than trackers? In the way of sound effects, I dunno where to start other than SFXR. If anybody has tools or knowhow that'd help me I'd be eternally grateful. |
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henzenmann
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« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2009, 01:10:38 AM » |
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The SNES uses a lossy compression format for it's samples. One way of emulating the SNES sound would be to take regular 16 bit instrument samples, then "dirtify" them by converting them to the SNES format, and then convert them back to 16 bit samples to use in a tracker. I think command line tools exist for this (WAV to BRR conversion and back). Also lowering the sample rate might help, I think the SNES uses 30kHz. I also remember that loops in samples on the SNES have to be aligned to blocks of 16 samples, so experimenting with "unclean" loops could also help. Other than that the unique sound and capabilities of the SNES sound chip will make it difficult to reproduce that sound... especially regarding fx. The perfect way to do it would be to use an SPC emulation library and provide your tunes and effects as an SPC program... |
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YagerX
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« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2009, 03:24:53 AM » |
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Milky tracker.
Quite daunting when you first look at it but once you get the hang of it, its amazing.
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battlerager
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« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2009, 03:39:03 AM » |
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Yeah, the SNES used samples (at a pretty lossy quality). They also often tried to emulate real instruments. So possibly you could sample the real instruments you want to emulate, then save that sample at a low (dont know just HOW low) quality and then use that sample as an instrument in a tracker.  I should probably think about this more, seeing how it would be somewhat of a logical next step for me. (I do midi, but people tell me the music sounds like SNES, so making music with SNES limitations and sound would make sense) But let me tell you, a huge part of "the SNES sound" lies in the composition.  |
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pgil
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« Reply #4 on: April 18, 2009, 04:29:26 AM » |
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Have you tried Sound Club? It's freeware, has a piano-roll interface, and comes with a bunch of lo-fi instrument samples. It can also export .mod or .s3m. Like battlerager mentioned, SNES usually had lo-fi samples that emulated real instruments. That's probably the key to getting the right sound. Other little tidbits about the snes I can think of off the top of my head: -The SNES only had 64kb of sample memory. -It has 8 channels -The sample rate after mixing was about 30khz (not the samples themselves.. they could be anything) -That cheesy echo. |
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letsap
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« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2009, 07:49:15 PM » |
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Ohhh, great advice, guys! Thanks.
Sound Club is surpassing my expectations, and I'll be checking out Milk Tracker and PXTone, too. Thanks a ton.
By the way, isn't PXTone what Pixel made/used?
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Vice President of Marketing, Romeo Pie Software
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« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2009, 07:55:19 PM » |
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PXTone is indeed a child of Pixel. You might be able to do something with these. Although I'm no musician. |
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Willow
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« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2009, 01:03:23 AM » |
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A year or two ago I was charged with writing a "snes-like" mini-soundtrack. The tracks are on my other computer, so I'll have to upload them tomorrow (or Monday :s). Also, I'll upload a "SNES SountFont" courtesy of Setzer- (from VGMusic). It's incomplete, but contains a nice array of SNES sound samples (including the characteristic Final Fantasy VI string ensemble sample). I used the soundfont as a sound source for 3-4 MIDIs in that project I mentioned. Pongball (VGMusic/Omidia) currently has some samples of music she has written specifically for the soundfont: http://www.myspace.com/pongballmusicAlso, as I understand it Dave Harris/Lunar (VGMusic/Omidia/TIG) is versed in ripping SPC samples and converting them to sf2. He took a non-VG sequence of a Hiroki Kikuta piece that I made a MIDI sequence of and ... put it through a Secret of Mana soundfont that he had devised. Very clever stuff. EDIT: http://www.vgmusic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=11269There's some SNES SountFont love, plus a how-to on ripping the samples. |
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« Last Edit: April 19, 2009, 01:12:49 AM by Willow »
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jikoo
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« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2009, 11:23:22 AM » |
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« Last Edit: January 18, 2010, 09:23:05 PM by jikoo »
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Likfisken
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« Reply #10 on: April 27, 2009, 01:55:35 AM » |
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hexageek
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« Reply #11 on: April 27, 2009, 05:53:06 AM » |
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I believe most accurate way to recreate snes sound would be to use a snes emulator and a genuine snes tracker rom. but if you want a modern interface with good emulation http://famitracker.shoodot.net/ is a very nice NES tracker for windows. |
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JLJac
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« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2009, 01:48:37 AM » |
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Have you tried Sound Club? It's freeware, has a piano-roll interface, and comes with a bunch of lo-fi instrument samples. It can also export .mod or .s3m. Like battlerager mentioned, SNES usually had lo-fi samples that emulated real instruments. That's probably the key to getting the right sound. This seems awsome, but when I'm trying to export to wav it gets stuck in the load bar forever, and the file keeps growing like a tumour(Got to 3.7 gig before I cancelled it, and that was just a single note!  ) I have vista, so I propably shouldn't expect it to work, but it still makes me sad... |
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pgil
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« Reply #14 on: May 14, 2009, 09:09:28 AM » |
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Shit, that's weird.. I don't think I've ever used the wav export in sound club. Are you sure it's supposed to export the whole song, or just record to WAV while it's playing?
And yeah, I think it was made for Windows 95, so Vista might not like it. Did you try s3m export? You can play those in winamp, and probably record a wav from there.
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TekSupport
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« Reply #15 on: May 18, 2009, 03:20:23 PM » |
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If you're using a VST compatible DAW on PC, you can use some of Tweakbench.com VSTs. They're free and have a bunch of NES retro sounds/synth.
Peach/Toad are my favs.
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s0
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« Reply #17 on: January 28, 2010, 05:29:56 AM » |
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Mario Paint Composer is what the cool kids use.  Problem is, it can't export audio files yet, so you'll have to use some kind of recording software but it's fun nonetheless.
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« Last Edit: January 28, 2010, 05:47:01 AM by CAsinclair »
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Labbed
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« Reply #18 on: January 28, 2010, 08:52:43 AM » |
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You can rip samples from SNES roms using SNESSOR. |
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cheapshot
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« Reply #19 on: February 10, 2010, 03:42:19 PM » |
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This is a valuable source for anyone interested in "chipmusic". +1 |
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Developer
