Apparently, the GB had no actual square wave. more of a mix between saw, square, and just a hnt of sharkfin
All square waves output should be perfect square waves, but they don't.
The GameBoy (DMG-01) has a very nice square, very similar to the NES square waves.
The GameBoy Pocket distorts a lot the DMG square wave and, the Color version, is a very strange square with a lot of noise inside, that doesn't sound like a DMG square at all.
Ahh, so never mind my lowpass filter suggestion (fuzzy memories make the sound fuzzy in my mind...), though some sort of highpass filter does seem appropriate, which Famitracker actually has. On bass-range tones you definitely do see the slope on your squares.
Actually, I quite like the sound of Famitracker these days. I used to like to render in NSFPlug, but I think FT does a good job now.
Apparently, the GB had no actual square wave. more of a mix between saw, square, and just a hnt of sharkfin
Correction: it did have a square wave, it's just the lower quality of the chip caused the waveform to change from square to "square". It was like that on the NES too.
Apparently, the GB had no actual square wave. more of a mix between saw, square, and just a hnt of sharkfin
Correction: it did have a square wave, it's just the lower quality of the chip caused the waveform to change from square to "square". It was like that on the NES too.
It's not only the chip's quality that affects the square wave's shape; it's mostly capacitance in the system's audio amplifier. You can generate a near-perfect square wave using a Gameboy's CPU, but it's still a very low voltage that can't be heard. So, you have to pass that signal through an amplifier (which is riddled with filter capacitors). The result; noise from interference is reduced, but the wave is distorted as the capacitor charges & discharges. The sound isn't as noticeable on a 1st gen Gameboy because the square wave isn't distorted as bad as later generation Gameboys (due to less capacitors being used).
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