What are your opinions on RF audio on the NES?

[wyatt8740]

I've been playing a lot of my NES games recently, and some foreign games on my flash cart as well. I've noticed that, while the video quality is terrible, I really like the way that the audio from my NES's RF output sounds. There's much less treble, and I think that NES game designers (especially in Japan before the AV famicom) made their music with the intention that it be heard going through the RF modulator, because the original Famicom did not support composite signals and the standard 'RCA jack' audio.

I think it's the same reason that people like the SNES sound - that famous low-pass filter / gaussian filter that made the SNES soundtracks sound a little 'mushy', for lack of a better term.

Playing through Mother (earthbound zero) this really struck me. The entire game sounds better with the RF audio output. I think the composer was using the famicom for reference, as the american NES was half the world away, and in 1989 the only way in japan was RF.

I like it so much, actually, that I am running the RF output through a VCR to extract the audio signal, and viewing the composite video with the RF audio.

So if it's not too much to ask, I'd like to know other people's opinions. Dig out one of those RCA - to - F-connector things (you know, those things you use to hook up an atari):

and try this out. Use the composite video (or RGB if you're rich), though - the RF video is BAAAD.

[rainwarrior]

I much prefer the brighter RCA sound.

It is very clear, though, that the 8-channel N163 Famicom games (e.g. Erika to Satoru no Yumebouken, King of Kings) were intended to be played through RF, as with 8-channels there is a very loud high frequency ringing noise that is quite unpleasant without a strong lowpass to hide it.

[wyatt8740]

That's what I meant. I sometimes hear it (to a lesser extent) in other games, though - I mentioned earth bound, but I've also noticed it in dragon warrior/dragon quest, and games like 'blades of steel' that use PCM. I really need to take a minute to figure out making a low pass filter sometime... Won't help with the ringing CRT sound, though.

...also, that rick roll PCM demo, now that I think about it.


While you're here, I'd like to thank you for your Dark side of the Moon 8-bit album, by the way. I use RCA audio to listen to that one

[lidnariq]

You could build a special inline RCA plug that would lowpass the output of your NES... a 3rd order Butterworth or Chebyshev-1 lowpass at ≈8kHz should reasonably reproduce the sharp edge you get from RF modulation.