Saturn Games using FM Sound?

Oohh ! Very good topic !

Your wrong. This description is the commercial description. In fact Saturn's Yamaha FH1 soundchip is a PCM based synthesizer only. Like others soundchip such as 2a03, hu6280 or Genesis' YM2610, the FH1 is fully programmable. It's a sample based soundchip but with channels combination it can produce waveforms without using sample.

The FH1 needs 4 PCM channels to produce 1 FM algorithm. The 8 channels commercial specification are obtained using all 32 PCM operators. In fact only few games uses FM sound on Saturn. Creating FM algorithm on FH1 requires good programming skill and take more time than using sample, streaming or red book audio.

To my knowledge two game uses FM. The most significant is Shining Wisdom. However Tengai Makyo IV use some good "electro" style FM sound for music. But Tengai Makyo IV's BMG are produced at 95% by PCM samples.

Shining The Holy Ark do not use FM sound. It use 8bit signed MSB 22Khz samples only. Maybe Night use FM...

 

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Come on, surely you can do that by head?

 

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Nice find, DruidII., Makes you wonder why they bother with e FM synth though when they could keep it all PCM. Is there any advantage to using the FM side of things?

Yakumo

 

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And for the STV version ?

 

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A bit off topic, I've burnt the game with new soundtracks and when playing CDDA track are altered, it's the only games which makes that. it doesn't happen when playing audio tracks in the bios. Can it have a link with FM sounds ?

 

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Off topic but here's an odd one. Virtua On for the Dreamcast let's you play the audio tracks using the Dreamcast's CD player ! They are short versions so they're not the same as the ones used in game. Now these can't be CDDA can they? Just seems so odd to me.

Yakumo

 

Theres a handful of games that do that on Dreamcast. I say handful because that was my experience, for some reason I discovered that when I first got the Dreamcast, making me, oh, 11 years old? I dont remember which games worked, I just remember that certain games DID work

 

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it was something like distorted/saturated music. maybe effects added to the sound track and it sounded bad.