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Hardware Hacking Media Music Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

SNES Audio Unit As Stand-Alone Player 168

Posted by timothy from the you-must-stand-alone dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Raphael Assénat successfully turned the SNES' audio processing unit into a stand alone unit which can be controlled through a parallel port, allowing people to play SNES music separate from games and the SNES' main unit. Elsewhere there is also a tutorial about adding S/PDIF digital sound output to the SNES."
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SNES Audio Unit As Stand-Alone Player More

SNES Audio Unit As Stand-Alone Player

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  • This is excellent (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nine Tenths of The W ( 829559 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:24PM (#10958690)
    I'm torn though - do I want to listen to Shitty Beep Concerto, or Tinny Licensed Song in G minor

  • oh my (Score:5, Funny)

    by goobenet ( 756437 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:26PM (#10958708)
    In the first 10 posts, the poor SNES/Spdif page is slashdotted... Maybe hosting on his dreamcast might've been a better idea?

  • Love SNES music... (Score:4, Informative)

    by WilliamsDA ( 567274 ) <derk@der k . o rg> on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:26PM (#10958712) Homepage
    I love SNES music.. I've got a few OSTs (original soundtracks) dumped to mp3, but they just don't sound the same as the original. Zophar.net has a good archive of SPCs and links to plugins for winamp, etc. Very cool stuff. Also, Skytopia [skytopia.com] has a lot of interesting and relevant info. Axelay will always be my favorite!

  • No need (Score:5, Funny)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <fireang3l.hotmail@com> on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:26PM (#10958717) Homepage
    I SO don't need this.

    I got SNES tunes playing in my head since I'm young, and can't seem to stop. Damn you, Final Fantasy!

    (For the curious, I do have voices in my head too, and they're telling me to do nasty stuff. To hurt curious persons. That would be you.)

  • Listen to Video Game music without this hardware (Score:5, Informative)

    by lou2ser ( 458778 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:30PM (#10958741)
    I'm sure some people know about listening to old videogame software without out this hardware hack. You won't be as leet as this guy, but you can still enjoy the music.

    You can find a player at http://www.zophar.net/utilities/music.html [zophar.net], a huge archive for just about every platform.

    After you get a player for your choosen platform, you can click through to a song database. For example, here are the SNES songs available: http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/ [zophar.net]

    Have fun.
    • At least the SNES one (which is the one I've concerned myself with). The Alpha-II player is really hard to tell from actual SNES hardware in when it's told to emulate it as accurately as possible. However also fun is it can get much better sound. The orignal SNES mixed at 32khz 16-bit with Gaussian sample interpolation, which leads to a fair amount of error, even with the low quality samples it used. The Alpha-II player can kick it up a notch and mix in 32-bit floating point at whatever sample rate your sou

  • Minibosses! (Score:3, Informative)

    by z3021017 ( 806883 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:30PM (#10958744)
    There's group out there called Minibosses which use your favourite 8-bit video game tunes to make music:
    http://minibosses.com [minibosses.com]
    • All fans of video game music remixes should also know of Overclocked Remix [ocremix.org] and VGMix.com [vgmix.com]. There's some really great talent floating around these sites, combined with all those nifty tunes you've been humming for the last 20 years.
    • MegaDriver [megadriver.com.br]
      Megadriver is a brazilian heavy metal band devoted to videogame music.

      Some of their best work are the renditions of SF2's Ryu stage music and the unbelievable Alex Kidd in Miracle World (SMS) theme.

      You can download their work for free, but please be gentle with the /.'ing.

  • obsolete... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:31PM (#10958753)
    Any music of any SNES game has been available for many years with the .spc file format. The audio files sound exactly as the music would sound on the SNES console.
    A really large .spc database can be found here: http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/#so [snesmusic.org]
    • I wouldn't say "exactly". None of the emulators manage to emulate the SPC perfectly, and the music playing apps are just emulators with everything but basic CPU emulation and sound core emulation ripped out. We've seen it before with the SID chip, why shouldn't it happen again with the SPC?
    • You missed the point. With this little hardware hack, the guy can actually load spc files directly on a REAL SNES SPU, instead of running them through an SNES SPU emulator. Now how cool is that?

  • usefulness? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dermusikman ( 540176 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:31PM (#10958754) Homepage
    i think that's very cool. i love to see new efforts being drawn on retro hardware.

    but i do wonder why one would bother building a parallel port unit to play the music when there are software emulators doing that work for us already?
    if it were truly *standalone*, then it would be a fun, useful way to incorporate it into music projects or just have fun - but as it's tied to the computer already, why not just use the software?
    • I wish i had a mod point for you. You point out what screamed at me when I first read this. I guess it's just one of those "Well, I just wanted to see if I could do it." projects. Emulating would have been alot simpler but no where near as cool.
    • I am very fond of the SNES sound processor. The SPC-700 is an amazing little machine that still makes me smile even today. But there are actually some software engines that can enhance the original SPC code.

      www.alpha-ii.com has a winamp plugin that can sample the sound up to 96Khz 32bit Stereo with Bicubic interpolation.

      The SPC-700 by default runs a guassian interpolation @ 22khz 16 bit Stereo. Now sure we're not talking about SACD quality this software enhancement does take the original cassette resol
    • Emulators are far from perfect. In order to get 100% accurate SNES sound, you need to use the actual hardware.

  • Another Cool Hack! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:32PM (#10958762) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, I know why bother? But most of the time when new gaming hardware comes out it is only used to a fraction of its full potential before the next generation arrives. So part of me really thinks it's cool to squeeze out some of that perhaps untapped potential like this. Maybe Tree Wave [treewave.com] will play something with this.
    • Thanks for the plug :o) but when I get time to take on a new system I'm hitting the Genesis next. I'm a huge fan of those old Yamaha FM chips and I recently was informed about this [tototek.com] flash cart which will make it easy to get code up and running on the real thing.
      • I saw you (Treewave) live at the Polyphonic spree show in Dallas-- I was pretty psyched out when that Epson printer started whipping back and forth. It was a great show, all around. I found myself wanting a camera angle looking down at your hands and the equipment-- it would be a nice break from the Atari visualizations.
        Anyway, good work, I'll be sure to buy your CD(s) when I'm not a poor student. :)
        • haha, well it's your lucky day. Guess what one of the new things in our set is?... A song where we use two video cameras (one of them overhead) and I built this Atari 2600 controlled box that switches cameras in sync with the music. ;o)

  • don't know (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:32PM (#10958765) Homepage Journal
    For things like the commodore audio chip you can't get exactly the same sounds without the real hardware. But for SNES I think that zsnes + roms + alsa does a pretty faithful rendition of the sound. And if I fiddle with the sound options you could argue that however unfaithful the sound becomes, it is actually superior in quality to that of just an SNES.

    That's one thing the SNES did have over the Genesis. The sound quality was vastly superior. I remember the "echoy" cave noises in super mario world, that was something else.

    • Game audio chips (Score:3, Insightful)

      by base_chakra ( 230686 ) *
      For things like the commodore audio chip you can't get exactly the same sounds without the real hardware. But for SNES I think that zsnes + roms + alsa does a pretty faithful rendition of the sound. And if I fiddle with the sound options you could argue that however unfaithful the sound becomes, it is actually superior in quality to that of just an SNES.

      That's one thing the SNES did have over the Genesis. The sound quality was vastly superior. I remember the "echoy" cave noises in super mario world, that
      • I *almost* bought a SidStation until I found out how damn difficult it was to fool around with. Also, I was doing my best to sell all my hardware, so I bought QuadraSID, a virtual SID synth VSTi plugin. It gives you the equivalent of Four SID chips or something close to that.

        Find out about it here [refx.net].

        It's a whole lot of fun!

      • Well that's because the SNES chip was just a simple sampler. Samplers are still in heavy use, in fact there's a huge market in samples these days and the quality is stunning in many cases. Check out the demos for SO platinum form soundsonline.com and keep in mind it's all synthesized.

        So the SNES's chip doesn't hold any special intrest, other than recreating old music, since there are new samplers that are much better. I mean why would I want to be limited to a tiny amount of compressed 8-bit samples when K
      • even the dookie sound chip in the MD/Genesis could be refabbed with an interface that liberates it and affords it a special niche all its own.

        Perhaps not; wasn't the sound on the Genesis/Megadrive handled by a separate 6502 8-bit CPU acting as a copro to the main 68000 CPU, rather than custom hardware?

        Thinking about it, did that 6502 run some sort of audio soft synthesis code, or was it completly up to the game designers to program it to generate sounds?

        Jon.

    • The Commodore SID is a waveform synthesizer. The SNES sound chip is a sampler. They are two different classes of synthesizers. The SNES sound chip has the opportunity to sound much more realistic given good samples. But this doesn't mean it is "better" in any way than SID - they are incomparable because they are fundamentally different. For example, what if I don't like sounds that sound like real instruments? Listen to some of the C64 compositions. Would they all have sounded better with real instru

  • Mirrordot link (Score:3, Informative)

    by Djupblue ( 780563 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:32PM (#10958769)
    Server seems to be getting slower, here is link to mirror: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/cbe721b01c7832be3 7d0c41898de0ba1/index.html [mirrordot.org]
    • As slower is a relative term, did you sit there with a stopwatch, hitting refresh after a certain interval, and timing it to judge when you could safely get away with posting a mirror?

      P

  • alternative departments (Score:3, Funny)

    by chaffed ( 672859 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:33PM (#10958770) Homepage
    geek-with-too-much-time

    geek-breadline

    will-hack-snes-for-food

    give-me-an-avacado-snorkle-and-piece-of-tinfoil

    my-mom-says-i'm-cool

  • Nice idea, needs to be taken further... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Aphrika ( 756248 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:34PM (#10958784)
    ...like the SidStation [sidstation.com] based on the legendary MOS 6581 (aka. SID) chip from the Commodore 64.

    The SidStation is essentially a MIDI synth expander that uses the SID chip as it's main sound source. It'd be interesting to do the same kind of thing with a SNES sound source, although from memory, it wasn't a sound chip worthy of any merit [sidstation.com].

    • Damn right ... I was about to write a similar post. Whats so damn special about the SNES audio processor when compared to the MOOG of retro sound chips - the SID ?

      Nick...
    • Inexpensive alternatives for the PC include the PCI Catweasel [jschoenfeld.de] (also an Amiga keyboard and mouse controller, and a versatile floppy controller). I've got one of these and a nice collection of Commodore SIDs that I use Acid64 [acid64.com] to listen to. The quality is great and you can use the SID chip of your choice. (I actually got the card to read some old floppies, but the SID is a great bonus feature.)

      For more synth power (more like the SidStation) you can get a HardSID [hardsid.com] PCI card with up to four SID chips for advanc
    • It's the first console I can recall that used sampling instead of FM or analogue synthesis for music. Older systems, like the NES generally just used analogue synthesis, they had a couple extra pins whacked on to the processor that controlled analogur wave generators. Other consoles of the day like the Genesis and Neo Geo had FM synthesizers of some kind or another, like what you found in PCs on Adlib/SoundBlaster cards.

      The SNES was a sample based synthesizer, like the Amiga. It was fairly limited, given t

  • Other uses of Videogame Music (Score:5, Informative)

    by lou2ser ( 458778 ) on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @07:36PM (#10958807)
    Here are some other places to listen to videogame music in nontradional ways.

    First there are the minibosses http://minibosses.com/ [minibosses.com] They are a cover band of videogame music that preform live shows. They even have a few MP3s on their site.

    Then there is djpretzel's remix.overclocked.org http://remix.overclocked.org/ [overclocked.org] Here you can find tons of songs set to a beat. For the true emulation nerd, check out the original overclocked.org http://www.overclocked.org/ [overclocked.org] comic strips. They are well dated, but still bring a smile to my face.

  • Coming next (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Coming next from this company is a tiny module that lets you get the blindness and headaches of an Nintendo Virtual Boy [virtual-boy.org] without actually having to lug the unit around.

  • Shameless plug of my website:

    An alternative to SPC files are MIDI file recreations of the music [vgmusic.com]. Its interesting to see how close they can get to the real sound.

  • Nes Music (Score:5, Informative)

    by bdcrazy ( 817679 ) <bdc_tggr-forums@yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @08:08PM (#10959033) Homepage
    Some old nes music has been remixed by a few talented people. For game music in general, and a fair amount of nes remixes in specific, take a quick trip to http://www.ocremix.org/ [ocremix.org]
  • Now I can play the wonderful tunes of Nobuo Uematsu without actually having to play the game! Let the inspirational 8-bit sound inspire all!
  • "I've been slashdotted, please come back in a few days."

    Gotta give the guy a bone for this message. The e-locust swarm strikes again.

    I'm off to dust the SNES of now....
  • The one thing I really wish ZSNES/Snes9X had is the ability to isolate individual sound channels during sound playback. I remember that Nesticle used to have the ability to turn off and on the various NES sound channels (i.e., triangle wave, square wave, etc.). That was really useful for sampling e.g., just the bass line of a particular song. Is there an SNES emulator that does this? Or better yet, is there an SPC player that does this?

    • Re:Isolating SNES sound channels? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes, ZSNES can do this. F5-F12 toggles channel 1-8

    • Yes, SNESAmp (a .spc player) supports turning off each of the 8 Super NES DSP channels.

      Or you can just rip all of a ROM's samples in one go with Snessor, available here [zophar.net].

      • Or you can just rip all of a ROM's samples in one go with Snessor, available here.

        Only problem with that is that SNESSOR rips sound samples from a ROM - it doesn't make a dump of SPC memory, which is the important bit if you actually want to be able to listen to the music. There is no feasible method for extracting the music data from the ROM itself.


  • Interplay created their own custom sound system for the SNES. I had an issue of Nintendo Power where they talked about it, in relation to the Clay Fighter game.

    Anyone have some back issues and want to scan the article?
  • Kevin Horton's done a couple of kickass players like this. He's got a NES player [tripoint.org] and several SID players [tripoint.org]. And while yr at it, there are a bunch of other awesome projects worth checking out on his homepage [tripoint.org].
  • Emulators (last time i read) were not able to re-produce the sound of the snes because it had a funky analog controller/processor/output/or something.
  • I have a band concept that will be a reality soon. It's hard finding dedicated people though. You'd be suprised how many people play guitar, until you need a guitar player. Ugh.

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