Sambo
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Hi guys, new to the forum and relatively new to producing chipmusic.

Recently, I purchased Plogue Chipsounds after hearing some pretty convincing sounds and reviews and honestly, not disappointed.  You can get some really beautiful sounds out of it and with a bit of impulse modelling, you can really nail that Gameboy speaker tone.

I've posted here a raw (No EQ/mixing/speaker modelling) cover of the opening bars of Tetris - Music A, staying true to the DMG limitations (which Plogue seems to enforce quite well whilst also giving you the option to tweak for experimentation), using 2 pulse, 1 wave and 1 noise.

http://www31.zippyshare.com/v/XJaZfcaw/file.html

Now it's a work in progress, but for the most part I think it sounds fantastic, although it does sound beautifully clean compared to the version you find online that is from the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZiVn5L9vM

Now being new to Gameboy chip music, is the difference in sound here because of Pogues squeaky clean emulation that should disappear with a bit of impulse modelling, or is there some sneaky modulation tricks on the pulse channels to get that "warble" effect?

Either way, absolutely loving Plogue Chipsounds, anyone else get good results?

BeatScribe
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Chicago, IL

I'm not sure there's much you can do to dirty it up a little bit. Maybe (and I haven't tried this) since chip sounds lets you modify the pulse width at a finite level, some slight widening of it could cause more overlap between the two pulses..but I doubt it'd give you enough overlap without changing the sound of the notes (which you nailed spot on!)

Perhaps a finite distortion or bit crush would just add a touch of buzz to it, but I'm not sure how natural that would sound either.

All in all, you nailed the gameboy sound there. I'm working on a tutorial for gameboy wav table settings in plogue to get some of those really wild wave sounds you can make so easily in lsdj. There are some other plogue tutorials on my blog already.

PULSELOOPER
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São Paulo, Brazil

I really love the stuff plogue puts up. Although I use chipsounds more for [chip impossibility] stuff (eg. putting together 5 SID channels + 8 NES sounds + Amiga ST drums).

And maybe you should try plogue's chipcrusher for your needs.

herr_prof
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Sounds like you need to grab chipcrusher too.

Sambo
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BeatScribe wrote:

I'm not sure there's much you can do to dirty it up a little bit. Maybe (and I haven't tried this) since chip sounds lets you modify the pulse width at a finite level, some slight widening of it could cause more overlap between the two pulses..but I doubt it'd give you enough overlap without changing the sound of the notes (which you nailed spot on!)

Perhaps a finite distortion or bit crush would just add a touch of buzz to it, but I'm not sure how natural that would sound either.

All in all, you nailed the gameboy sound there. I'm working on a tutorial for gameboy wav table settings in plogue to get some of those really wild wave sounds you can make so easily in lsdj. There are some other plogue tutorials on my blog already.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm half deaf in one ear at the moment due to an infection so I thought I might have been way off haha.  Any chance of a link to that blog?  I'd love to see more detailed usage of the Gameboys wave channel.
Good shout on the chipcrusher effect as well, from what I recall this actually contains speaker impulses of the various Gameboy consoles doesn't it?  I've been using some freeware impulse modelling plug in I found online with small speaker responses and not getting close, I'll see f I have the pennies spare for Chipcrusher tonight after work and give it a bash.

BeatScribe
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Chicago, IL
Sambo wrote:

[

Thanks for the feedback, I'm half deaf in one ear at the moment due to an infection so I thought I might have been way off haha.  Any chance of a link to that blog?  I'd love to see more detailed usage of the Gameboys wave channel.
Good shout on the chipcrusher effect as well, from what I recall this actually contains speaker impulses of the various Gameboy consoles doesn't it?  I've been using some freeware impulse modelling plug in I found online with small speaker responses and not getting close, I'll see f I have the pennies spare for Chipcrusher tonight after work and give it a bash.


Various things on www.beatscribe.com, but these are the most plogue related..

https://beatscribe.wordpress.com/2015/0 … explained/
https://beatscribe.wordpress.com/2013/0 … hipsounds/
https://beatscribe.wordpress.com/2014/1 … hipsounds/

It's geared towards making NES sounds, but the Gameboy sounds works the same, you just have more things you can change in the wave table, like cutoff and stuff like that.

I will try to get a tutorial of that up soon.

Last edited by BeatScribe (Feb 5, 2015 3:19 pm)

plgDavid
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Montreal
Sambo wrote:

it does sound beautifully clean compared to the version you find online that is from the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZiVn5L9vM

Now being new to Gameboy chip music, is the difference in sound here because of Pogues squeaky clean emulation that should disappear with a bit of impulse modelling, or is there some sneaky modulation tricks on the pulse channels to get that "warble" effect?

Hey thanks!

The comparison is sadly flawed since that youtube video is
1)Compressed with youtube compression (particularly bad for sharp edges like pulses)
2)From an emulator which aliases quite a bit!

It is somehow widespread to think of emulators as perfect mediums and any chip plugin as "fake", but in reality its quite the opposite.
Emulator authors often focus on video quality (see all interpolations options in name-your-emu) more than accurate audio.
But It's unfair to assume every emulator programmer has an ear for such things as aliasing pulse waves..

I do not remember what is the best GB emu for sound these days (Mednafen?), I just know many are plain wrong.

Tetris on a DMG01 should sound like:
http://plogue.com/davidv/CS/dmg01_tetris.wav  (my own recording)

Last edited by plgDavid (Feb 5, 2015 4:20 pm)

herr_prof
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man chipsound emulations of bad emulator emulations for a future update?

plgDavid
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Montreal
herr_prof wrote:

man chipsound emulations of bad emulator emulations for a future update?

Urgh would need a total rewrite! lol

herr_prof
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/me requests YOUTUBE COMPRESSION for chipchrusher

plgDavid
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Montreal

Would need to reverse engineer it at various video sizes and input sample rates. Seriously, chipsounds 2.0 is next

Last edited by plgDavid (Feb 5, 2015 4:45 pm)

BLEO
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Geneva, NY

Literal LOL'ing at these prof reqs!

Sambo
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How naive of me, it didn't even cross my mind that the YouTube video would be ripped from an emulator, and I am well aware of the inaccuracies in sound emulation.  Shame on me!

Can't listen to that direct DMG rip right now because of work, but I'll be straight on it when I get home.