Most accurate chiptune emulation players avaliable

[BlackGuyRX]

I made a thread on this subject a good while back, but didn't get much answers and wanted to go a bit more in detail-

I'm currently gathering up files for various chiptune formats and I'd like to know of what's the most accurate players available in windows. Here's what I'm planning on recording-

NES (Mainly using NSFPlay now)
GameBoy/Color
SNES
Genesis
Master System/Game Gear
TurboGrafx 16
Various Arcade boards (Mostly use GameMusicEmu in Foobar, though I realize some chips aren't emulated properly or missing altogether in some VGMs)
X68000
N64
PS1

I largely use Foobar as it's the most convenient for me, but I realized NSFPlay has more accurate audio for FDS & various special chips.

Thanks in advance!

[koitsu]

"Most accurate" is a matter of opinion, especially when you consider for several of those console there are "homebrew" tunes that were created (i.e. not necessarily game rips -- but even those vary in quality (NSF rips are great example; proof). What file sounds right in one player may sound wrong in another, and what sounds wrong to one person may sound right to others (proof -- don't miss the finale).

Just something to be aware of. *gets popcorn*

[Dwedit]

The thing about high accuracy is that you also get bad sounds too.
One such bad sound is the DC level change artifacts (clicks and pops) that accompany DMC samples.
Another artifact is the level change pops that accompany a square wave's volume level changing. Going from volume 15 to 14 is a subtle but audible pop.

[hawken]

With GameBoy and Famicom, I'd 100% recommend getting the hardware and music generating carts like LSDJ and recording directly off the device.

[93143]

IIRC there are a couple of recent works by KungFuFurby and Augustus Blackheart that don't sound right on any SPC player. And apparently you can't even perfectly restore APU state on real hardware, due at least partly to the fact that SPC doesn't store the full state; I'm not sure which tracks this affects, if any.

Not to mention a number of games that incorporated CPU/APU communication into the music engine, rendering SPC dumps unfeasible. I'm unaware of any really accurate SNSF players, which means you might need real hardware to properly record stuff like Star Ocean or The Lost Vikings or NBA Live '96.