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France Eure Et Loire

Hi,

I started using deflemask a few days ago. And I'm wondering : does the sound is really better on real hardware? I have a megadrive 1 and the everdrive x7 flashcard. So I listened what I did on deflemask on my megadrive 1, but I can hear a "hum" on the real hardware and some instruments are too long (this can probably fixed with note off)

These who use deflemask, do you generally record on real sega genesis/megadrive or export directly to wav via emulator?

I'm just talking about the sound quality, not about the cool thing of play it with megadrive. I didn't compare yet with my monitor sound system yet but I yould like to know what people usually do.

PS : I use deflemask on an ipad, it sounds very good

Last edited by MazHoot (Dec 2, 2020 12:27 pm)

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Hello MazHoot!

There is the Crystal Clear Audio Mod for megadrive 2, I don't know if it can be used on megadrive 1.

I think that you will hear even more differences with samples. they tend to be gritty on real hardware, and should be much cleaner in deflemask.

About the instrument envelope differences you hear, I think deflemask can be buggy. Do you hear 'long' instruments when you export the song as .vgm and listen to it with vgmplay on your PC?

when you use your everdrive, you export as a .bin file, right?

you could also try to see if you song sounds different with this vgm player: http://mjsstuf.x10host.com/pages/vgmPlay/vgmPlay.htm

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France Eure Et Loire

@Cyberic Thank's for your response!

I have to take a look of this audio mod for megadrive 2.
I also thought about buying a sega sg from analogue. Do you know if there is hum on it or not?

That's just an idea, maybe I will stay on emulator, the thing I like the most on the real hardware is creating chiptune directly on it. (Maybe with MD TRACKER if this project continue and fix the save state and nonstop sound issue) and also test things about programming for megadrive. Make a song on pc or ipad and use megadrive only for play it isn't so interesting for me except if there are a sound quality interest

Sayed that I noticed several bugs on deflemask on ipad. There are a lots of crash.

About the long note I heard, it's something in the high, an instrument seems to be continuing or the highest frequencies of it.
I have to try listen vgm format on PC.

The export from my ipad deflemask is .gen I expected a .bin but it seems to be normal as .gen as there is only save rom, save vgm or save wav available and when I choose save rom the format is .gen

Last edited by MazHoot (Dec 2, 2020 3:59 pm)

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yeah, try the vgm on PC and on hardware. I think they will be more faithful to real hardware

About analogue, yeah, I think the sound will likely be cleaner, but I had no chance to hear it yet

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Bratislava, Slovakia

I also use Deflemask on iPad, my main motivation to use Sega Genesis mode is Jesper Kyd's soundtrack to Batman & Robin, which is very great. FM synthesis is digital synthesis so differences can be only via D/A converter because emulation is really very accurate. In the future maybe i will purchase MEGAfm synth from Twisted electrons, it is not cheap, but it have two YM2612 chips and realtime controllers, so it is great for live performance. Another option is real console with mods from catskull electronics/Jamatar. smile

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France Eure Et Loire

@martin_demsky
Do you have also crashes on ipad Deflemask? If not that's maybe because I use a lot noise channel and commands on it, and perhaps i'm the only one haha...

for mega sg I think I will buy it only if I succeed make something in megadrive programming, but that's so hard (because of the fm synthesis and because the exemples on internet about sounds are often in assembly...) that I don't know if I will continue trying. Or maybe I will buy also mega sg if native MD TRACKER project will fix some problems.

I have genMDM too, I use it with arduinoboy + gameboy, but that's complicate to set up, I had good results but after stoping doing it since 3 weeks, I forget completly the complicated parameters and I don't know if I want to write a manual and read it every time I want to make music with it... at a time I used it also with organelle, I made a patch for using it with it (it should be a duplicate if I bought jamatar's tool).

I discover with deflemask a different approach which is also very interesting

Last edited by MazHoot (Dec 3, 2020 9:39 am)

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Bratislava, Slovakia

Crashes of Deflemask? Not, but when i use all channels (including psg) and start video recording in the background (you know, slide down from right top corner and hit record) sometimes it stops, or there is some gaps in recording, so recording and genesis emulation takes many cpu resources. But now i don't publish these tracker videos, i simply render song to wav.

I also use commands, mostly TL (total level of each operator), MULTI and some arpeggios (arpeggios can be also used on FM sounds which is quite unique), so this is one of ways to get sounds modulated or animated, because it doesn't have filters etc.

Last edited by martin_demsky (Dec 3, 2020 11:38 am)

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Adelaide, Australia

It's apples and oranges, really. What sounds better is really subjective.

If by better you mean cleaner, crisper and clearer, then of course a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis sound chip emulation on a computer will be better.

But if you want better as in more organic, authentic, genuine and closer to the slightly unpredictable noisyness of the real hardware, then you won't get that from Deflemask. Having something that sounds good in Deflemask is one thing, but it will almost certainly sound different on the real hardware and this is part of the fun of making this type of chipmusic. big_smile

For that sound you need to use real hardware or another good way to get that on your computer is to use something like the Plogue chipsynth MD VST which literally emulates the noise and filters and actual electrical behaviour of the sound hardware.

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Bratislava, Slovakia

I believe you, it is for example as on emulations of Yamaha DX7, some softsynths offer crispy clean sound, and some of them have modes which adds aliasing and some of that glitches that you mentioned. In my case i feel that i learned to do something in Deflemask, but i am not now interested in YM2612, i can say i fulfilled my wishes what can i do with it.

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France Eure Et Loire

@freezedream
"It's apples and oranges, really. What sounds better is really subjective."

It's IOS, not apple (joke haha... ...i'm on linux lol... but also ipad because one thing was only on it...)
Yea of course I expected responses like that, and I totally agree. I just wanted to know what is the most practiced in the community. For example, I know in lsdj community, there is a consensus on the fact that real modded gameboys sounds better than emulators even if BGB is really good.

I know good lsdj and gameboys but I'm new for sega genesis and deflemask so I wanted to know what usually people do and if there is good modded hardware which can sounds better than software. But as I understand here, there are no such rules on sega genesis music because there is no comparable prosound mods for megadrive or modded megadrives which can be buying so for what I expect (no hum) deflemask tend to be better.

Generally I prefer make music on real hardware but for me it's for the most that I love make music with gamepad, A,B, cross direction etc... and bring with me the machines when I move. That's why I never compose on computer. I tryed to use a gamepad on deflemask on ipad but it don't seem to work. I'm more quickly with LSDJ.

@martin_demsky
For me it's real crashes of deflemask, I didn't tryed yet do something in the background but what you said remember me the garageband problems with inner-app. Close to every time I use inner-app, with a lot of differents softs, it allways stop playing garageband (it's very annoying). So normally I record on zoom h4n and then insert audio in garageband for don't have this problem.

For deflemask, it just sometimes completly crash without make something on the background, all freeze and I can do nothing except quitting it and restarting. One time I even lost my last steps of work.

Last edited by MazHoot (Dec 7, 2020 12:29 pm)

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Bratislava, Slovakia

MazHoot: hm, it is strange when it crashes, i use iPad almost 10 years and i never had that issues (only some free synths sometimes crashed which i deleted it), i was recently betatester of Deflemask but for Mac and i discovered some bugs, but now i don't have time for that, if you want discuss things about Deflemask, you can join discord channel, there is a lot of people including developer Delek.

About others things, working in tracker on tablet is tough task, i can say that i am 10x faster in NanoStudio 2 than in Deflemask or any other tracker (SunVox, Sidtracker 64...) so of course motivation to create something in tracker is smaller. LSDJ or nanoloop is very well designed so although Game boy dont have keyboard, only a few buttons, working in it is really fast and intuitive.

BTW i have seen your recent youtube videos where you also use some tracker on real Sega Megadrive, so you are for sure more experienced than i smile

Last edited by martin_demsky (Dec 7, 2020 1:05 pm)