Off topic slightly

The subject of music being better on Snes.The snes was still only producing chip music from a very excellent chip.The limit being that although you could get some absolutely fine instrument sounds from the very decent hardware, it stll wasn't real sounds you could work with.Not a worry quite honestly to some and lets face it, the snes had some remarkable tunes, but working with synthetic sounds isn't all that nice when you want a rich sound.Turrican 2 and Chris Huelsbeck's work not only showed great understanding of tune but also how delightful this can sound - i imagine his time working on console was just a massive pain

Castlevania does however demonstrate that you could still achieve a very classic sound at least on Snes but this wasn't the case for the most

Chords of course of 3 or more notes could be on just the one track on Amiga and of course Chris Huelsbeck developed his own 8 track

After so long hearing certain instruments on Snes, i'm fairly sure if i were writing music for one that i would crave to have a more authentic drum or a better body string sound that you could quite easily manage from Amiga.It wasn't perhaps as entirely crystal sound you always got when compared to the Snes but the quality Amiga stuff wasn't really noticably hissed

In a similar way to how games were made on console, it strikes me some of the top Snes devs didn't use bedroom tunesmiths and rather real pros - not all of it obviously

Amiga had a lot of bedroom music writers and that showed through heavily with the demos - not always were these tunes in the sense they followed a typical type structure - great though they were of course.Most musicians i would guess were self taught on Amiga with a few exceptions and i would guess that a higher number of Japanese music talent was not

I personally think Amiga music sounded better as it was more thumping generally with hard drums and heavy guitars a lot of the time, but also because there were some excellent tunes of course

Snes stuff was more proffesionally written (obviously a lot of it was also bedroom) when it came to the impressive tunes from a Mario or Zelda, Starfox(brilliantly orchestrated), Secret of Mana, Fzero.Some truly glorious stuff for the machine, but in truth it was really only the most talented of composers(Nintendo, Square music guys etc) that demonstrated how a great sound chip combined with real talent could excell this side of things.Otherwise what you usually had was typically excellent yet limited arcade style ditties half the time or almost half hearted bedroom stuff.Tim Follin of course had a great understanding for chip music and music itself and did some great stuff despite i'd imagine not being classically trained in any sense - at least going by his music

Snes sound was really good and better in fact if you look at it one way.On the whole though you could do much more with Amiga's soundtracks to the point that it could sound very almost entirely real - synthetic sound just can't manage that regardless of how well orchestrated it might be

Both very good systems

First of, the SPC700 (SNES soundchip) isn't a synth, it's just a 16 bits DSP. SNES use PCM (raw sound data), just as Amiga does. The reason for the rather lousy drums on the SNES is because of the low 64kB amount of sound RAM, which obviously makes you want to use super small samples.. Or big samples, albeit only a few.

But I understand your statement, and it's very true. :-)
Also, remember that Amiga is a home computer that everyone could make music for, and develop for. The SNES was a game console, where you had to contact Nintendo to get devkits and so on.
Which all comes down to the fact that there are more good tunes on the Amiga.

So 64k was used for songs that had real sounds and not chip produced?

It all sounds very clear

Yep and yep....
The SNES DSP use gaussian interpolation along with an echo filter + 8 bit 8 tap FIR... Which makes 'sucky' samples sound a bit better.
Also, small samples can sound good! It all depends on how you handle them. The SNES DSP has got some nifty functions, which Amiga don't.
EDIT: Also, the samples are compressed in the BRR format in the sound RAM, so they can be a bit bigger after all.

Well that's quite amazing.Iv'e always assumed because of what is a distinct lack of looping from chords and just general clearless, that it had to be chip based

Was there any synthesised output at all from the chip that it could manage

The SNES SPC700 is a 8-bit soundchip, the additional 16-bit DSP is from Sony.

SPC700 is also from Sony. The Nintendo-designed S-SMP chip has it as its core. And has the S-DSP on another chip.

It's a co-processor.

"Ok"

So the 64 KB sound RAM is a limitation. Thanks for clearing that up, guys.

And Galahad, I apologize for shouting at you.

Yep, but again, remember that the samples can be stored using the BRR compression algorythm, thus you save a bit of the tiny memory. The SMP chip is decompressing them.

So... for synth music the SNES is superior and for sampled tunes the Amiga had the advantage ;) Well, I'm a sample kinda guy, so that explains my preference :)

IIGS beats both, though. ;)

So was there any output at all in the form of generated sound from the Snes hardware

I knew Neo Geo used samples(clearly memory made that fairly effortless anyway) but 64k for all sounds and music just seems mad on a Snes

Sorry to keep this thing going but i'd like to know

Edit: nope all sample based, sure is impressive.Reading up on it does at least explain why it sounded so good and more understandable as to why a certain richness despite the aid of reverb etc, couldn't be heard - richness as in fuller body instruments

Stunning music though when you consider the limitations

Again, the SPC700 is not a synth. It just handles PCM...
Good luck writing a soft-synth for a 2MHz 8 bit 6502 sound CPU...

Fixed.

Your example mp3 is gone, by the way.

To truly appreciate the Amiga's audio quality, download these three files from the Zone:

out.part1.rar
out.part2.rar
out.part3.rar

Sorry about the splitted file, but the Zone only accepst files up to 6 megabytes in size, and besides, WinRar will join them automatically when you unarchive the first one ;)

I made the wav file in the archive by converting a Final Fantasy 8 PSF file to a 44.1 khz 16 bit stereo wav using Winamp, then I converted the wav to 28 khz 16 bit stereo using Sox, which does a great job at preserving the quality.

The resulting wav can be replayed directly using a 14 bit player such as Hippo player. Just make sure that you don't use AHI. Beause the wav is 28 khz it doesn't have to be downsampled, and it can thus be replayed by Hippo player directly. Of course you can use any other 14 bit capable player that doesn't need AHI.

The replay quality in 28 khz 14 bit is actually very good (I use a calibration file, by the way), and I doubt that the SNES can match this quality :D And do try it on an Amiga, don't use WinUae :)

I agree with your agreement! I never could work out the fuss about Superfrog...

Prince of Persia
Harlequin
Gods (I still play this now)
Magic Pockets
Another World
Bubble Bobble
Rick Dangerous 1/2
RAinbow Islands
Parasol Stars
Rodland
Carvup
Hudsun Hawk (although I seem to be its only fan!)
Fire and Ice
Nicky Boom (again, only liked by me I think)
Gods
Rodland (I love this game and play it even now)
Chuck Rock 1/2
Toki


Platformers I think were overated: Switchblade 2, Zool, Flsahback and Superfrog.

Also, don't forget that, unlike 99% of SNES/megadrive console games, these games would not be completed in just a few hours.

I like it too, actually. Those levels are massive!

I definitely agree about the console-wannabes, but Flashback? How can you like Prince of Persia and not Flashback?