Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

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Drew Sebastino
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Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by Drew Sebastino »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au_CTlKU_7o
Video Description wrote:I think I had read in an article or a forum post somewhere that the best argument for the SNES having better sound than the Genesis was that the SNES could mimic the Genesis, while the Genesis could not mimic the SNES. That makes for an interesting argument, but it's meaningless without a demonstration showing that it's actually possible. That got me wondering just how close I could make the SNES sound to a Genesis, and this is the result. Sonic 2 is one of my favorite games ever!
I read in the comments by the creator ("Kulor Research Labs Inc.") that it was created entirely from sampled FM instruments from the game. How he recorded these though, is beyond me. Perhaps the most surprising thing to me though, is that he said it only took 22KB, because the instruments were very small. The sound quality could actually be heightened further by having some copies of instruments at different pitches, I imagine, but people already thought he just played the Genesis version. :lol:
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by nesrocks »

Interesting! Yeah, the same people who claim tool-assisted speedruns are hacks. Just download the source file and verify :)
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by Dwedit »

This is really well done!
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by tepples »

nesrocks wrote:Interesting! Yeah, the same people who claim tool-assisted speedruns are hacks.
To some, even a console-verified TAS is a hack because you aren't using a licensed controller. Handcam plz, or Twin Galaxies might do to you what it did to Todd Rogers and Billy Mitchell. On the other hand, is a real-time speedrun that exploits an ACE vulnerability also a hack?
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by tssf »

Hey all.

I reached out to Kulor and asked him if he wanted to collaborate. Unfortunately he didn't have enough time to but he did inspire me to do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDWbl3YKjj0

It has Sega Megadrive/Genesis, Sega CD PCM, and a 32X song in there..as well as a couple custom songs.

There's multiple ways you can record the FM instruments..from a multitrack that you create by recording one track at a time, etc. But the easiest method is usually taking a VGM file and inputting it into a tool like VGM2TFI. TFI's can then be imported into a Genesis tracker (like VGM Music Maker or Dephlemask) and then you can just sample the instruments one at a time.

I employed both techniques.

Anyway I didn't want to post a new thread about this when someone was talking about this already. :) Hope you all enjoy. Here's the SPCs with sources if you want to listen:

http://tssf.gamemusic.ca/Remakes/Best_o ... c_SNES.zip
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by nesrocks »

Amazing! I'm listeing to the youtube video. Zip link isn't working for me though.
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by tssf »

Thanksn! :)

Link works fine for me. There's a Google drive mirror in the YouTube description though.
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by tokumaru »

Sounds great!
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by Bregalad »

Video Description wrote:I think I had read in an article or a forum post somewhere that the best argument for the SNES having better sound than the Genesis was that the SNES could mimic the Genesis, while the Genesis could not mimic the SNES.
That's definitely true, but it is also limited in how it can limit it and it cannot do absolutely everything. Just like the GBA graphics supperior to SNES in almost every possible thing, except that it can't do colour math substration, and that the resolution is much lower.
Espozo wrote:I read in the comments by the creator ("Kulor Research Labs Inc.") that it was created entirely from sampled FM instruments from the game. How he recorded these though, is beyond me.
I'm fairly certain that the drums are not FM.
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by GradualGames »

GENESIS DOES WHAT NINTENDON----ah crap not anymore :lol:
tssf
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by tssf »

Espozo wrote:I read in the comments by the creator ("Kulor Research Labs Inc.") that it was created entirely from sampled FM instruments from the game. How he recorded these though, is beyond me.
I'm fairly certain that the drums are not FM.[/quote]

Kulor sampled the Genesis drums from an emulator. My method for my versions of the songs above we're loading the vgm files as raw files, resampling them without interpolation so they wouldn't sound muffled. I think they turned out well. But definitely are samples. Just really low quality samples
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by Rahsennor »

tssf wrote:Here's the SPCs with sources if you want to listen:

http://tssf.gamemusic.ca/Remakes/Best_o ... c_SNES.zip
Dayuuuuuuum. I could listen to these all day! Reverb's a bit painful on (say) Sweet Sweet Sweet, but otherwise, they sound better than the originals!

Some of them crash my SPC player (Game_Music_Emu 0.5.2) though. Not entirely sure why, and probably not your fault, but I can't listen to them.
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by tssf »

Rahsennor wrote:
tssf wrote:Here's the SPCs with sources if you want to listen:

http://tssf.gamemusic.ca/Remakes/Best_o ... c_SNES.zip
Dayuuuuuuum. I could listen to these all day! Reverb's a bit painful on (say) Sweet Sweet Sweet, but otherwise, they sound better than the originals!

Some of them crash my SPC player (Game_Music_Emu 0.5.2) though. Not entirely sure why, and probably not your fault, but I can't listen to them.
Yeah, I'm locked in so I can't change them .. well I mean I could sneak in some updated ZIPs with no one noticing but that wouldn't be consistent. haha :) Anyway, thank you!

I'm not sure what's crashing them, it is using SNESMOD..but I know the Alpha II player screws up the timing on the panning in a lot of songs.
I'm doing things like pitch modulation, noise generation, etc. It's also using Pulse Width Modulation (Sonic 3 last boss, Sandopolis zone act 1), could they be? They're trying to dynamically change the square sample in instrument one so maybe the player isn't handling it properly.
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by Rahsennor »

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I mean they're crashing the entire player, not just sounding wrong. No stable media player should ever do that, on any input, so I'm not blaming you for anything, but it's annoying and I can't figure out the cause.

The problem tracks are 02, 03, 10, 29 and 44. Are you doing anything in particular in those five?
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Re: Chemical Plant Zone SNES (Sampling FM Instruments)

Post by tssf »

It could be some channels are inversing phase, otherwise there's really no correlation that I can see other than complex gain envelopes, or samples that might go out of pitch range. That being said, there is the final boss track that's part of your list that is dynamically changing sample 1 to different pulse widths. I wish I could be more help!
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