rainwarrior wrote:I have seen some people in Famitracker put a temporary pitch detune on an A-3 so they can use wider vibrato on it, but that also has the minor negative effect of putting that note out of tune (and requiring more data, and an engine that supports the detune effect-- not famitone). You could also shift the whole pitch table away from A-440 so it's further away from the base pitch, but again only addresses weak vibrato, and it's not something Famitracker can do. ...or you can transpose your whole track up or down a semitone or two just so the note you want to put vibrato on isn't A anymore-- which is also in the same category of why I think it's acceptable to just use the lowered pitch for PAL: just straight up transposing a whole song up or down after composing it is something that is done ALL THE TIME by professional and amateur composers alike. People even frequently requested a feature for Famitracker to automate that.
Funny you mention this.
Not having access to the detune effect, i've used detuned envelopes to avoid the troublesome flutter in NTSC mode. Sometimes they remain useful outside that context which justifies it, but (as you might remember from a recent discussion), i'm basically overusing instruments, and there's a cap on 3F instruments in famitracker no matter how well they reuse envelopes, so this isn't really viable anymore. I was thinking of hex editing famitracker to "correct" the pitch table in some direction by a few cents (as to achieve "What you hear is what you get" if using a different table outside FT).
Just transposing the songs that use the troublesome notes would be easier, but i try to use a variety of keys as to impose a sense of difference between areas. I'm probably not going to end up using all 12 keys, but having the freedom to move around freely without being afraid of touching the trouble notes is somewhat valuable to me.
Since PAL has a different colour gamut, should PAL versions also adjust their palettes to match the artists original intentions?
Should is a strong word in this context - but just sometimes maybe that could be beneficial. But palette data changes are probably going to differ more than gamut differences, so it'd be if the new colour was somehow closer to what the artist had in mind or would find favourable than was made available in the NTSC version.
lidnariq wrote:These NESes and Famicoms are 30-35 years old now, and the resistors could have drifted several more percent.
Some extrapolated points from this discussion and that paper:
-Carbon resistors are thought to be somewhat like metal film resistors except the manufacture process makes them vary a lot more, so they also have to sample and sort them in classes of tolerances up to 10%.
-Worst case scenario, metal film resistors can drift a lot
-Worst case scenario, under the responsibility outside the component factory, mostly means using the wrong component in wrong application*, and soldering for too long.
-*Basically, use a resistor that is able to dissipate heat/prevent buildup at the rated wattage required. Larger sized resistors = better heat dissipation.
-The single most important factor is heat. Most of all, drift/degradation seems to occur at high internal temperatures. 55 degrees could be a reasonable internal temperature during operation, at which degradation happens over time. Could also be a lot hotter, or colder. The paper is measuring and predicting based on 55 degrees, and 125 degrees.
-Storage temperature would be around 12-30 degrees of ambient heat, depending on environment and storage type?
-The scale of degradation is ppm (parts per millon) over 1000h (usually commercial) to 5000h (usually medical/military). ppms measure anywhere between 20 and thousands depending on alloy, class, hours, and temperature (55 or 125).
It seems to me resistors wouldn't degrade by much at all in normal ambient temperatures. On the other hand, storage time is constantly ticking.
Resistors seem to mostly drift with use/when warmed up, especially when excessively heated. In other words: leaving your nintendo on overnight repeatedly might be mildly bad for your resistors.
If those resistors were hand soldered, there might be deviancy if someone working at the assembly line was inconsistent in timing when soldering, as those levels of heat are well above the point of excess.
While i personally would measure and match resistors in my synth projects if it had some significant bearing towards timing/pitch, filtering or volume (and sometimes counteract temporary in-use drift with thermally coupled thermistors), i doubt the plant making NESes and famicoms had a process for sorting duds out/matching deviances. Likely, they just went with a tolerance class that was acceptable for the task (likely 5% or 10%).
Edit: corrected some typos