NES/MOD/POWERPAK/VRC6/VRC7 (Page 2 of 2)

I'ma give it a go and see if I can get it going on my own. If it comes to it, I might take you up on that, but I don't really know if I have the time to head up to the cities. I super-appreciate the offer.

i assume this would allow for mmc5 as well? is there a way to do this without modding? back lighting my game boy was frightening enough for me lol. isn't retrousb eventually going to release mappers that would make expansion chip sounds possible?

Last edited by HPizzle (Jan 26, 2011 1:31 am)

did you put the pot across the pins ? or ... output to one side, ground to the other, and the wiper to the "input" of your mix bus pin.. either way you should have a series resistor. that way you're simply making a voltage divider for the vrc6 output...before it goes to your mix pin or dedicated output.

if that didn't make sense.. i should just draw it. lol i'm tired.

Well, I don't actually know for certain that the VRC6 is too loud on the powerpak. Part of me is suspicious that the saw is too loud in Castlevania from an arrangement standpoint to begin with...
But it did sound kind of annoyingly loud, yes.

However, the emulated FDS channel was very noticeably out of tune when I ran some FDS games on the powerpak, so there are certainly some flaws to be found. My general concern/ skepticism about sound expansion is that, unlike 2a03 stuff, we don't have lots of good reference points for how it's "supposed" to sound. With normal NES music, we've all heard it a bajillion times, so poor emulation can really stand out. Otherwise, I've heard the VRC7 sound very different between two NSF players, so how are we supposed to know which is better?

I've begun collecting sound expansion games with the intention of sampling their soundtracks properly from hardware.
So far I've gathered-
Gimmick! (FME-07)
Madara (VRC6)
Akumajou Densetsu (VRC6)
Lagrange Point (VRC7)

I'm planning on getting all sound expansion games that exist (asides FDS games), if non are rare/ super expensive. I'm sure other people have done hardware recordings before, but I'd love to put up something nice and organized for them...

This may be needlessly anal-retentive, but I also wanted to compare a couple tracks from each game when sampled from the RF output of a Famicom, the RCA-out of an AV-modded Famicom, and the RCA-out of a modded NES. Perhaps low-gain or someone else may have some insight, but I'm not too trusting that the 47k resistor mod 'guarantees' the proper levels between the expansion and 2a03 like the original Famicom has. I have no technical understanding to back this hunch up, but I'm definitely interested in double checking the quality of everything.

I guess it doesn't really matter for most musicians-- you compose for what you have, so it's not like the VRC6 being mixed "perfectly" matters for original music. But I figure why not poke around and see how to get the most proper sound for these game soundtracks.

Anyways, back on topic-
I also think there'd be a demand for a low-gain sound mod w/ expansion support. To echo theta-frost, I know someone else who was interested in low-gain's mod but passed because they were concerned how it'd work with sound expansion. I'll also put in a vote that you should make one dude!

Last edited by bucky (Jan 27, 2011 1:14 am)

The mod is made for the powerpak to send an emulated audio to the output. Any other cartridge wont have the programming to send the audio to that specific pin. The mod is for powerpak only. to run the other games w/ extra audio you will need a famicom to do it. to get the nes to play the real deal you will have to do a mod that gets the audio directly from the pin of the expansion chip and have it sent to mix in with the other audio channels. it is probably do able it would take some time and more know how than i can offer.