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[nkarafo]

This is an issue nobody talks about. I never see it being discussed in retro gaming or emulation forums/threads. Yet it affects every single game in all 8/16bit consoles (and some computers).

I'm talking about the sound mixing issue of sound effects replacing music instruments.

For the younger folk who don't know what i'm talking about, imagine playing a game that has a cool background music track that you really dig, but every time a sound effect is heard one or more of the music instruments gets cut off, to make room for said sound effect (because of the limited sound channels).

Sounds annoying right? And yet, every game used to have this. Basically the music was messing up during gameplay, 100% of the time. It stopped being an issue only after 5th gen consoles that had more sound channels than they ever needed.

But it's weird to me how this is the only technical issue in retro games that never gets mentioned. We always complain about things like low resolutions, low poly counts, wobbly polygons on PS1, blurry graphics on N64, dithering, low frame rates, etc. But never about the sound mixing problem that affected every game we used to play on our NES, Genesis, SNES, etc.

Plus, emulation fixes/improves all the above except the sound mixing issue. The only case where i see this being bypassed (not fixed) is a handful of 16bit game mods that replace the original music with redbook CD audio.

And this is why i mentioned the modern Sonic ports in the title (the ones by Christian Whitehead). These are not emulation but ports on a new engine. And despite having the exact same chip tunes, the music never gets cut off (Sonic A.I.R also does this). I didn't notice it at first but when i replayed a Sonic game on a Genesis emulator it hit me. To the point where i can't go back to those originals.

So, am i the only one who finds this old issue important? Although i'm not playing on consoles anymore, i know they get a lot of emulated retro games on their services. So all gamers have access to such games (without having to setup emulators on PCs) today. I'm sure they sell well too. But those games still have this issue. I feel like im the only one who gets bothered by it, lol.

 

[MadchesterManc]

I remember first noticing this back when I got the Sonic collection on Sega Saturn. As emulation wasn't much back then the games were actually ported to the Saturn hardware so had the more advanced audio to work with, added bonus of better performance with much less of the noticeable slowdown compared to the native Mega Drive games. I guess when younger playing on the Atari 2600, Master System, Mega Drive etc it never really bothered me, and its part & parcel of the charm of the old systems so just put up with it these days. It's definitely more noticeable unfortunately now as someone with a pretty good audio setup for games, movies etc these days

 

[K' Dash]

I have never noticed this on NES or SNES, I was never interested in Sega, so I wouldn't know.

 

[nkarafo]

I remember first noticing this back when I got the Sonic collection on Sega Saturn.

You mean Sonic Jam, right?

Yeah, these are also ports and not emulation. I need to try them and see the differences.

 

[poodaddy]

I have never noticed this on NES or SNES, I was never interested in Sega, so I wouldn't know.

Happened on NES and SNES too, I was a Nintendo kid and yeah it was a thing, we just didn't think of it back then.

 

[K' Dash]

I rocking to Hot Head Bop and Stickerbush Symphony and never realized, the 16 bit era had some of the best soundtracks ever made.

 

[nkarafo]

I would say the NES suffers the most from this since it has very few channels for music so when a single one is muted it makes a big difference.

I also remember most of the time it's the bass/rhythm channel that gets muted. Maybe devs thought the main melody is more important to be kept alive but it ends up being more bothersome, audio wise.

 

[Guilty_AI]

i remember but never bothered me too much, i'd say the greatest issue right now is still needing a CRT filter for modern TVs.

 

[FMX]

SNES had excellent sound. I think that it was the first to have a separate sound chip in the system.

 

[nkarafo]

SNES had excellent sound. I think that it was the first to have a separate sound chip in the system.

Genesis/Mega Drive had the Yamaha YM2612 sound chip before that.

Pretty sure older consoles had some sort of dedicated sound chip before that one too.

 

[Chuck Berry]

I think I know what you mean, but some examples would be great

 

[nkarafo]

I think I know what you mean, but some examples would be great

Listen to what happens to the poor music track during the collapse platform sound



Also, every time a ring collected is played, or when an enemy is destroyed, or when the waterfall sound is heard, etc, one of the music instruments also gets muted.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Listen to what happens to the poor music track during the collapse platform sound

Perfect. And man that brings back some memories Genesis games in particular were notorious for this. Definitely happens a bunch in Mick & Mack: Global Gladiators off the top of my head.

 

[nkarafo]

Perfect. And man that brings back some memories Genesis games in particular were notorious for this. Definitely happens a bunch in Mick & Mack: Global Gladiators off the top of my head.

It actually happens in almost every game on the system and all other 8 or 16bit consoles.

Maybe in some games it's less frequent than others. Some games may hide it better than others.

Some other games may also use simpler music with less instruments to let more channels for the SFX but i'm not sure.

 

[MadchesterManc]

You mean Sonic Jam, right?

Yeah, these are also ports and not emulation. I need to try them and see the differences.

Aye that's the one. Has the original trilogy with Sonic & Knuckles, and also that 3D Sonic World. It's a neat little collection but for me it would have been a lot better to get a pure 32-Bit 2D Sonic on the Saturn

 

[Holammer]

Commando on the C64 for example briefly mutes a instrument channel to play the grenade sound. Ghost'n Goblins also did it where the "blop" sound effect when you kill an enemy does the same.

(timestamp)

 

[alabtrosMyster]

SNES had excellent sound. I think that it was the first to have a separate sound chip in the system.

Many consoles had sound chips before that, even the atari 2600 offloads this task to the graphics chip.

The ColecoVision and intellivision definitely had proper, dedicated, audio chips.

From the NES days that wasn't even a question.

 

[cireza]

This wasn't an issue on SEGA-CD games with Redbook Audio (and maybe even all games actually).

 

[nkarafo]

This wasn't an issue on SEGA-CD games with Redbook Audio (and maybe even all games actually).

Makes sense since CD audio is like a completely separate process from the game.

 

[cireza]

Makes sense since CD audio is like a completely separate process from the game.

Whereas on Master System, sound effects are going to use both the third channel and the noise channel. So when making your music, you have to be careful to organize it so that the least important part of it happens on the third channel. And you will lose your drums of course.

You can still work around these constraints pretty well. I am making an RPG for the console right now. You rarely get sound effects during exploration.
During combat, I decided to fade the battle music a bit during attack animations, so you get to hear the sound effect better, and don't notice as much that the drums and backing melody are missing. Then I fade back to the normal volume of the sound.

 

[ManaByte]

The only issue with modern Sonic ports is the censoring of Sonic 3’s music.

 

[nkarafo]

The only issue with modern Sonic ports is the censoring of Sonic 3’s music.

Not if you play A.I.R

 

[Soodanim]

I think the simple answer is that no one cares about enough to discuss it. It's just how things were, and it's not a limitation that significantly effects the experience.

Even a bigger issue, sprite limits, doesn't often hold games back in a significant way.

Slowdown is where you start to get into truly gameplay affecting stuff, but to use an example when I overclock an emulator to remove any slowdown in SotN (e.g. after a boss when the particle effects generate the health+) you lose the idiosyncrasy of the original experience.

 

[ReBurn]

It isn't a bug to be fixed. The game's code gives the sound effect priority on that channel until the sound finishes. I'm not sure how an emulator would fix that without an accompanying rom hack unless it had some secret sauce that could detect when sound effects interrupt and divert it to some new channel that the emulator provides.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

think a bit more interesting is how console revisions would get different sound chips and/or the chip could be integrated differently, which could greatly affect audio quality.

you may remember a stage's music a bit differently from your friend depending on your console revision.
(plus CRT speakers tended to be god awful)

 

[Sledge]

I also remember most of the time it's the bass/rhythm channel that gets muted. Maybe devs thought the main melody is more important to be kept alive but it ends up being more bothersome, audio wise.

I think there's a real art to "sfx ducking" (for want of a better term) and it can enhance the experience when tastefully done. For example the Master System's PSG chip has a noise channel whose musical role is normally restricted to some sort of closed hi-hat & open hi-hat rhythm (because it can't really do a convincing bass drum or snare). This is also the channel that produces those chunky Master System explosions, so while the percussion stopping to let SFX play is a technical necessity it also makes aural sense that the percussion would be drowned out by loud noise. It sounds "right", a classic example being Space Harrier:



Something else you might notice with the Master System is that, while it has three tone channels, musical compositions are quite often restricted to a combination of "bass" line (the chip can't actually go particularly low in pitch) and melody with the third tonal channel carrying easily ducked echoes or supplementary dyads, meaning it can be mostly used for non-noise bleep-bloop sound effects. See (well, hear) R-Type's hidden level:



The limitations of the sound chips is possibly why the 8-bit systems fare better where this sort of practise is concerned. Noise can only be replaced by noise, a square wave by a square wave and so on. The 16-bit era sound chips were more versatile, so it became increasingly true that any kind of instrument could duck out for any kind of sound, which your ear is always going to notice more.

Anyway, a few more examples from one of my fave consoles. Here's Power Strike with the bass-melody-incidental combination on the tone channels that we've come to expect, with a whole hierarchy of sound effects that take precedence over each other. It's impressive that this is remotely coherent:



And you can, of course, always reinforce the idea that sound effects are supposed to drown out the music by making it a feature, as the evergreen Kenseiden does:



Great topic OP.

 

[nkarafo]

The limitations of the sound chips is possibly why the 8-bit systems fare better where this sort of practice is concerned. Noise can only be replaced by noise, a square wave by a square wave and so on. The 16-bit era sound chips were more versatile, so it became increasingly true that any kind of instrument could duck out for any kind of sound, which your ear is always going to notice more.

It's true that i mostly remember this issue bothering me on 16bit consoles more, so this might explain why.

 

[Sintoid]

You make me feel so old
Audio chips had very few audio channels so if you wanted to do great music and audio effects you had to "interrupt" music and audio effects
Many C64 games let you choose if you want to hear music or sound effects for the reason the hardware wasnt able to handle both simultaneously

 

[nkarafo]

S Sledge

What's your opinion about this game when it comes to how it handles sound channel mixing?



It's sounds crazy to me for an NES game. And the sfx ducking thing never bothers me.

 

[nkarafo]

think a bit more interesting is how console revisions would get different sound chips and/or the chip could be integrated differently, which could greatly affect audio quality.

you may remember a stage's music a bit differently from your friend depending on your console revision.
(plus CRT speakers tended to be god awful)

This is true for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive for sure.

The second revision had a weaker chip IIRC. Part of making the console cheaper to produce i guess? Funny thing how back in the day i was sure the second version must be better because it's newer tech. Silly little me.

Some emulators do handle both sound chips and you can choose which one you want in the options. GenesisPlusGX does that.

It isn't a bug to be fixed. The game's code gives the sound effect priority on that channel until the sound finishes. I'm not sure how an emulator would fix that without an accompanying rom hack unless it had some secret sauce that could detect when sound effects interrupt and divert it to some new channel that the emulator provides.

Technically, none of all the issues i mentioned in the OP are bugs.

But you are right in wondering how an emulator would fix this. With slowdown all you need is to speed up the emulated CPU/GPU. And any other visual shortcomings can be improved via upscaling, filters, etc. But what sound channel plays and what mutes seems to be hardcoded behavior. So yeah, i suppose it would be impossible without modding the actual game itself.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

It was just how things worked, and for the games of the time, you could argue that sound effects (ie, elements of gameplay giving you feedback about what was happening onscreen) took priority over the background music. The music was repetitive enough that you’d get a good listen at it anyway in the course of a single attempt through the game. Moreover, TV speakers weren’t that sophisticated, and many TVs were monaural. The devs must have rightly thought that hearing telltale SFX would be much more important than enjoying a chiptune bassline in the heat of the action.

Glitches, lag, flickering, sketchy hitboxes and bad controls were all much worse things to worry about.

It’s ironic that nowadays we don’t have this problem with audio, but game music has also gotten so generic and unimpressive that I wouldn’t mind if some music lines were cancelled by SFX.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

I am currently emulating X-Men legends and let's just say that sound recording has come a long way...

 

[nkarafo]

It’s ironic that nowadays we don’t have this problem with audio, but game music has also gotten so generic and unimpressive that I wouldn’t mind if some music lines were cancelled by SFX.

It's either this or games that have nearly no music most of the time.

 

[Sledge]

What's your opinion about this game when it comes to how it handles sound channel mixing?

Hey that's an interesting game that I wasn't familiar with. It is playing samples, sounds like alongside at least a few regular channels, yet I couldn't find it listed as using a custom audio chip. How many Famicom games do that? I like that even though the intention seems to have been to make it sound like nothing else, because that triangle bass is centre-stage there is still something unmistakably NES about it.

I will say that I do not enjoy the nails-on-chalkboard lazer noise. Let's patch that out, boffins!

 

[cireza]

because it can't really do a convincing bass drum or snare

You can make good enough drums/snare on MS with the noise channel. I use them a lot in my own games.

 

[Sledge]

You can make good enough drums/snare on MS with the noise channel. I use them a lot in my own games.

I will be sure to check those out if you link them. This isn't a hill I'm prepared to die on or anything, I was listening to Space Harrier earlier and didn't think I could reasonably sell what the noise channel is doing on the off beats as a snare, but if people find themselves thinking of that kind of sound in that kind of way... well I'm not the percussion police (yet).

What are you using to develop MS stuff? I had a look at a C lib last year (I think it must have been devkitSMS) and skimmed the Maxim tutorial but never found the time to really get into it.

 

[Dr. Suchong]

This happens a lot in Secret of Mana on the Snes iirc.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

Very minor issue, nobody ever really cared, bigger fish to fry.

 

[cireza]

I will be sure to check those out if you link them. This isn't a hill I'm prepared to die on or anything, I was listening to Space Harrier earlier and didn't think I could reasonably sell what the noise channel is doing on the off beats as a snare, but if people find themselves thinking of that kind of sound in that kind of way... well I'm not the percussion police (yet).

What are you using to develop MS stuff? I had a look at a C lib last year (I think it must have been devkitSMS) and skimmed the Maxim tutorial but never found the time to really get into it.

I made the game with devkitsms indeed. You can find a demo here if you want, and listen to a few tracks.

Demo

Full game was released last year : Link