Pulsar out of tune? (Page 1) - Nintendo Consoles - Forums

1 Dec 5, 2014 5:19 pm

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Whitley Bay, England

Running Pulsar on my PAL NES, it is something like a tone and a third flat (or thereabouts), like totally out of tune, which really sucks cause I make my music with a guitar too! Could it maybe be that it's calibrated for NTSC consoles, and is running at a slower rate on my PAL console (and therefore producing lower tones)? I noticed for NTRQ there is a PAL and NTSC version, whereas for Pulsar there's just one version.

I emailed Neil a while ago but haven't had a reply, so I thought I'd maybe put it to you guys! I'm coming at this from LSDJ, so Pulsar is super intuitive for me and easy to use, whereas NTRQ terrifies me. But if there's no way to get Pulsar playing in tune with me (detuning my guitar would be awkward and also mean I couldn't switch between NES and Game Boy songs easily) then looks like I might have to learn to use it!

2 Dec 5, 2014 6:24 pm

yogi

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Jelly Stone park, MD USA

You might be right with the PAL timing, don't know for sure I use NTSC. No mention in the manual as to the timing, it may auto detect the console but just don't know. You could try running it in Nestopia in NTSC and then PAL mode to hear the differences.
You could also try contacting Neil through his shop Marmot Audio,
http://marmotaudio.co.uk/contact/ Might have better response (?)
Yogi

3 Dec 16, 2014 7:01 pm

neilbaldwin

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WOW MAN!

Sorry about the lack of response, I'm a busy boy these days!

Yes, it's because there's no provision for a PAL pitch table but it shouldn't be too much work to get a PAL version out.

Neil

4 Dec 16, 2014 7:10 pm

neilbaldwin

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WOW MAN!

In fact, I already had done one. Not sure why it didn't get released. I think I was having problems getting emulators to detect that it was a PAL ROM, my memory is a little vague on it.

Anyway, you can grab it here. There are two versions in the .ZIP file but I don't know why that is either!

Give it a try.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q88ij1515l7zr … L.zip?dl=0

5 Dec 16, 2014 7:14 pm

CountSymphoniC

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neilbaldwin wrote:

Sorry about the lack of response, I'm a busy boy these days!
Yes, it's because there's no provision for a PAL pitch table but it shouldn't be too much work to get a PAL version out.
Neil

Ah the envy. The NES sounds like a real pleasure to work with in code.

6 Nov 20, 2016 11:05 pm

unexpectedbowtie

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Glasgow, Scotland.

neilbaldwin wrote:

In fact, I already had done one. Not sure why it didn't get released. I think I was having problems getting emulators to detect that it was a PAL ROM, my memory is a little vague on it.
Anyway, you can grab it here. There are two versions in the .ZIP file but I don't know why that is either!
Give it a try.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q88ij1515l7zr … L.zip?dl=0

Looks like the Dropbox URL is dead. Does anybody have a copy of this that I could grab? I'll drop Neil a message too.