Deprecated: mysql_connect(): The mysql extension is deprecated and will be removed in the future: use mysqli or PDO instead in /storage/content/49/145849/famitracker.com/public_html/forum/classes/dbHandler.php on line 29
FamiTracker
The bass samples in Batman:RotJ sound very detuned to me... did Sunsoft try to reduce the deviation from the correct frequencies by detuning their starting samples in a such a way so that they'd have the least amount of badly tuned notes?
If you import a DPCM sample at the highest quality (15), it will be imported at a sample rate that's 17.8829 cents flat. This isn't an issue if you're going to use it at only one pitch, but if you use it as DPCM bass without correcting it beforehand, some notes will be horribly off-pitch. (up to about 35 cents)
I think the sunsoft bass samples are pitched up to compensate that. It's not a cure-all though, as most notes are still out of tune, which probably is what you're hearing in Batman's soundtrack.
I found the following topic very useful as there's a handy table of DPCM pitches and their corresponding out-of-tuneness.
[url=
http://famitracker.com/forum/posts.php?id=180
]
http://famitracker.com/forum/posts.php?id=180
You should not detune your samples before importing. Tune your samples the way you want, then import them. Play them only at the pitch you imported them at.
If you play them at other pitches, they will be detuned, because all of the intervals in the DPCM's tuning set are crummy. There's a more complete table here: [url=http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/APU_DMC]http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/APU_DMC
Sunsoft's problem is they had only so much ROM space to devote to samples, so they try to reuse the same sample at multiple pitches.
example, if you import a sample at pitch 15, playing it at pitch 14 will be pretty good (perfect 4th down, -17-(-15)=-2 cents), pitch 13 will be awful (minor 6th down, -17-17=-34 cents) at pitch 12 it will be awful (octave, -17-14=-32 cents), etc.
I consider it a critical failure for the DPCM's hardware design that only one of the octaves is an exact ratio of 2, and they could easily have been. Instead they tried to tune the samplerates to an A-440 scale for some useless reason (presumably they wanted looped tonal samples, but they screwed that up by having the DPCM sample consume an extra byte on the end, i.e. 17 samples instead of 16, etc., destroying the possibility of that idea).
Yes I know that, but I've never made individual samples for each note, it just seems like cheating for me as you'd never see that much DPCM in an actual game. Speeds lower than $A seem to be manageable.
Also, I wonder how they solved the problem of the horrible DPCM playback speeds of the 2A07 for PAL releases, since one of the lower sample rates is really detuned there as well.
[quote=za909]Yes I know that, but I've never made individual samples for each note, it just seems like cheating for me as you'd never see that much DPCM in an actual game.
[/quote]
That point is rather moot. We're not living in the 1980s anymore, and arbitrary restrictions are based on style of the composer.
What if za909 wanted to make music for his homebrew NES game? The restrictions are very real in this particular scenario.
_______________________
Follow me on [url=https://twitter.com/jrlepage2a03]Twitter.
I record (some) NSFs on hardware. Feel free to [url=http://www.famitracker.com/forum/posts.php?id=3633]request a hardware render.
