Hey all, awhile back I reached out here to find someone with a GenMDM that I could purchase. The purpose was to aid in the creation of a new tool for creating chip music, and now that tool is finally done! I'm proud to introduce Super Audio Cart, a virtual instrument powered by the free Kontakt Player plugin, which runs on Mac/PC in VST, AU, and AAX formats.
In a nutshell, Super Audio Cart is composed of 5,500 samples recorded from 7 game systems: Atari 2600, Commodore 64, NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Game Boy, and Genesis. We used hardware tools like the aforementioned GenMDM, Synthcart, MSSIAH, LSDJ etc. to capture direct output from each console, so unlike Chipsounds this is not emulated - it's deep multisampled direct-out recordings. Besides a huge range of standard waveforms we also did (D)PCM material like custom drum samples recorded through various sound chips, LOTS of noise variations, circuit bent stuff (on the NES), wavetable channel (extra tonal waveforms on the Game Boy) etc.
For the Genesis we multisampled about 130 patches using TFI instrument data from classic games, covering a range of timbres and tones. We plan on including even more Gen sound sources for free too. The SNES was the trickiest because of course, it doesn't have a synthesizer and is totally sample-based. So we created a library of over 400 *new* SNES instruments using ultra-tight editing, looping, downsampling, and BRR compression, along with ROM data and an EverDrive cart. The result is a totally legal and royalty-free bank of SNES sounds ranging from orchestral stuff to guitars, basses, keys, synths, ethnic instruments and so on.
All of that sample material is encapsulated in a Kontakt interface with a ton of features like a poly-arpeggiator/sequencer with wavetable sequencing, filters, pitch/volume and filter envelopes, 5 FX racks, and 64-slot modulation matrix. There are also over 1,000 factory presets included, which range from authentic sounds to hybrid stuff using multiple systems/waveforms, FX, and modulation to create modern sounds.
You can read more about the instrument right here.
And here are some demos to show what it can do. We got great feedback on it from, among other people, Yasunori Mitsuda and Yuzo Koshiro... so that was cool... 