Best sound chip in a console?

The hardware is only as good as the compositions created for it. The best stuff was written for the Super Famicom/SNES, IMHO, but it's not technically the best audio processor. When consoles moved to CD music, it ended a special time of gaming music achieved through despite restrictions and relied on extreme creativity to overcome those limitations. However, it also opened up a whole new class of compositions using full orchestras and so on.

 

So your opinion of the best is?

 

Oh I see. Wasn't quite sure what it was. Sorry!

 

x

 

I should keep this in mind when i get Vectorman LOL.

 

I'm not a massive fan of the C64 SID Chip but it sure can produce some great sound. Check this mix of Magical Sound Shower full of samples
[video=youtube_share;OHZBiGC2vjQ]http://youtu.be/OHZBiGC2vjQ[/video]

 

I think the SID is awesome! Especially for its time. It has that fat warm sound that is unique to it. Really a badass chip. Just like the yamaha FM chips, it is amazing what awesomeness can be squeezed out of it by skilled hands.

 

IMO I think the Konami VRC6 is somewhat a better sounding chip than the MOS SID. IIRC it was mfg'ed by Toshiba for Konami. People say Castlevania 3 used the MMC5 (in its American and European counterparts) for sound in addition to its other features but that is false if you weren't sure (I think all MMC5's are made by NEC. Not sure if Sharp or Ricoh made any as I don't have any MMC5 games.)

 

The VRC6 on its own wouldn't be a very good chip--the square/pulse channels are very basic, better than the SN76489 but worse than the AY-3-8910. It's meant to complement the 2A03, especially by updating its poor triangle channel with volume-controlled sawtooth.

It's also kinda irrelevant who manufactured these chips, because unlike Ricoh who designed the fully-custom 2A03, mappers were designed by Nintendo, Konami, etc., and manufactured as semi-custom ASICs (mostly on inexpensive gate array processes) sometimes by multiple sources, as you mention. This is done in an automated workflow with minimal involvement from the manufacturer, sort of similar to today's FPGA designs.

 

Always liked CPS2 QSound:



Although YM26XX is probably my favorite (bias towards 2612 and admiration for 2610). Anything Sonic, Ristar level 2-2, Mes Voltes Blues from Viewpoint, Streets of Rage 1-2 soundtrack, Revenge of Shinobi, Lightening Force IV.
RP2A0X would be next up.
GB/GBC could sound beautifully complex in the hands of the right composer.
SPC700 always sounded a bit muffled and froggish (think Street Fighter II) but could produce a distinct and admirable sound whenever samples were done right (almost anything 1st/2nd-party/Square/Konami/Enix).

There's a lot more that I can't think of right now.

 

I see. I sorta meant the VRC6+2A03 combo. I knew Konami, Nintendo, Namco, etc. designed the mappers and subcontracted them to different corporations (Toshiba, Fujitsu, NEC, etc.)

 

Capcom QSound "hardware" isn't reeeeally a soundchip. It's implemented as firmware for an AT&T DSP-16A and AFAIK is primarily (fully?) sample-based.

 

CPS2 sound and music is great! Too bad you can barely hear it with those cooling fans...

 

I grew up a Ninty fanboy so I would normally instantly state the SNES had the best soundchip. But having now owned a Mega Drive for the past two years I have to acknowledge a grudging respect for its sound. By the end of its life it was producing some remarkable stuff, and it came a long way from the tinny beeps and whines in games like Altered Beast or Alien Storm. The sound sampling and music in The Lion King is testament to this.

As for the N64, I love my 64 but I have to say I've never admired its sound/music capabilities. It always felt so limited in capability to me. But perhaps some more knowledgeable types here could demonstrate how it was as good or better than the Saturn/PS1 counterparts...

 

Well if the RCP were only for music, it would have 100 PCM sound channels but most games used 16-24 channels if not more or less. Hell some later games used MP3's mainly for voice, notably Conker. Sound had to be lowest priority for some devs because the RCP had to do not only graphics processing, but audio processing as well. Remaining resources had to be audio related.

 

I suppose the N64's obvious Achilles' heel was storage space, so sound/music had to be compromised to make the game fit.

 

+1 for the Mega Drive, the Yamaha sound chip it uses is a cheaper version of the Yamaha YM2151 that was used in many many arcade machines of the day and those developers (especially Japanese) who had the experience with the 2151 from the arcades knew how to really make it sing. In fact the Mega Drive was very much designed to follow what Sega were doing on their arcade machines with a 68000 as the main CPU, a Z80 to run audio, a Yamaha sound chip for the music, a digital sample player to handle sound effects, drum samples etc and a graphics chip clearly inspired by the arcade boards.

Many arcade games that got ported to the Genesis and also to other consoles have audio on the Mega Drive that is much closer to the arcade than the music on the other consoles (Street Fighter 2 and its Mega Drive port vs its SNES port, the MD port had music that is much closer to the arcade)

 

That's true. Another example is the Genesis version of Out Run. While it's been significantly scaled down graphically, the music is really close to the arcade system.

 

C64 music is amazing.