Totally noob questions about sound/music

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Thu May 03, 2012 5:15 pm

Stef wrote:If you are speaking about the YM2612 and PSG chip

Are there others?

Stef wrote:, of course they can be used simultaneously.

Do most games use them together? I'd suppose they do. Do they typically do something like dedicate one for music and the other for sound effects?

Stef · Post by **Stef** » Thu May 03, 2012 5:32 pm

djcouchycouch wrote: Are there others?

Nope, but as i was surprised by the question i though you were mistaken with some sound extension coming from SegaCD or 32X

Do most games use them together? I'd suppose they do. Do they typically do something like dedicate one for music and the other for sound effects?

Not most games... because it's more complicated to compose music using both YM2612 ans PSG chips but technically there is no problem to do it.
I'm not sure that any games really use the PSG for sound effect, the PSG is far less capable than YM2612 so you rarely use it alone (except maybe for rain sound effect which is easy with noise channel) :p

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Thu May 03, 2012 5:38 pm

Stef wrote: Nope, but as i was surprised by the question i though you were mistaken with some sound extension coming from SegaCD or 32X

Right. I keep forgetting that Sega CD and 32X provide extra hardware features. I'm only working on a vanilla Genesis, so I never think of them.

Stef wrote: Not most games... because it's more complicated to compose music using both YM2612 ans PSG chips but technically there is no problem to do it.
I'm not sure that any games really use the PSG for sound effect, the PSG is far less capable than YM2612 so you rarely use it alone except maye for rain sound effect (with noise channel) :p

Right.

The rain sound effect idea is pretty neat, though.

andlabs · Post by **andlabs** » Fri May 04, 2012 6:31 pm

Um actually no, most games do use both simultaneously. In some cases the PSG is an integral part of the music (example (out of an entire soundtrack of examples). example). The Sonic games are examples where the PSG is used for both music and sound effects (Sonic's jumping sound).

And using the PSG is almost free. You don't need to wait for it and you can get it to produce sound by writing at most three bytes (two to set frequency, one to set volume). The only issue is handling envelopes, where you're on your own — but because changing volume takes one byte write it should be easy.