DMC channel

[Bregalad]

You are right tepples, that seems like the best sound the DMC can do (silent !). This is usefull if you want to "simulate" mapper IRQ by using a combination of DMC + sprite zero (I never tried this but it sounds easily doable).

And I didn't say anything against the noise channel, on the other way I promote it for faking drums instead of DMC, beacuse I prefer clean and easily customisable noise to crappy fuzzy loud stream. However, the noise channel on the gameboy doesn't sound half as good as on the NES for some reason.

[strangenesfreak]

I've read that the smoothest sound the DMC can play are triangle waves (so maybe you can say that triangle waves are the "best sound" the DMC can make) - even if a programmer really really hated how most DMC samples are of low quality, he/she could still just use the DMC as an extra triangle wave voice in the music.

I personally think that the DMC is best used as a sound enhancer - like to add texture to say, guitar solos or drums. Ninja Gaiden II, Tecmo Super Bowl, and Captain Tsubasa II usually combine noise with DMC well to create what are high quality drums IMO. I think there, the drums are mainly noise, but DMC is used to add texture and realism. As a bonus, the fuzzy noise from the DMC is practically gone.

In the second-form boss music from Hebereke/Ufouria, there's a guitar solo which uses the square channels and DMC at the same time - it sounds really nice and the DMC is needed for this solo, but you can't really hear the fuzzyness at all.

I don't think the DMC works well if its used for sound and music effects where only the DMC is used - this is why I personally don't like certain games' drums, like Klax and Skate or Die 2.

If I was to use the DMC, I'd make sure the other channels also play a part in the effect - like for a scream, I would play the recorded scream from the DMC, but I would also use one of the square wave channels to accompany the scream and try to drown out the fuzziness without drowning out the scream itself.

[Celius]

I didn't feel like starting a new thread for this, but I have a really newbie sound question.

I am messing around with some values for the square wave, and it says that you can make a lower sound with bit 2 of $4003. However, the lowest sound I can make without getting complete silence is by having these values in these registers:

lda #$FF
sta $4002
lda #$0B
sta $4003

In FamiTracker I've heard it go about an octave lower. If I put these values in:

lda #$00
sta $4002
lda #$0C
sta $4003

I get silence. Can someone explain why?

[Disch]

The sweep unit is silencing your channel. Write $08 to $4001.

EDIT

Also, you probably should've started a new thread. This has nothing to do with the DMC and splitting topics up into relative threads makes forum searching much easier.

As blargg says... "new threads don't cost anything"

[Celius]

Thank you, that helped a lot. I can now get it down to that low "A".

I know that starting a new thread doesn't hurt, but I feel kind of annoying when I do it. I guess that talking about something unrelated in a thread is more annoying though .

[NotTheCommonDose]

IMO, Journey to Sillious has great music because the generic slap bass and don't forget about skate or die 2 the electric guitar sound like crap even though it uses PCM.

[tepples]

and don't forget about skate or die 2 the electric guitar sound like crap even though it uses PCM.

The guitar in SoD2 sounds like crap partly because they were trying to read the controller, animate the palette, and run the other channels at the same time as playing PCM.

[blargg]

The Legend of Zelda makes sparing but effective use of the DMC channel for a few samples (shooting sword, door closing in dungeon, boss "breathing" sound, Link getting hurt). Other systems at that time didn't have anything that could compare. Since the Famicom came out in 1983, even including any kind of sample playback was probably novel.

[Dwedit]

If you're going to mention "Famicom" and "Legend of Zelda" in the same post, remember that the Famicom version of Zelda was on the Famicom Disk System*, and as such, got FDS sound. It's the NES that got DMC samples.

*(until its much much later cartridge re-release)

[blargg]

You're saying that the Famicom didn't have two square channels, triangle, noise, and DMC?!? I thought it used the 2A03 and had these from the start.

[tepples]

I read the assertion as follows: The Famicom has DMC, but Zeruda no Densetsu for FDS did not use it.

[Bregalad]

Yes, but I think Zelda FDS uses FDS sounds and doesn't use DMC for the stuff you mentionned.

I remember a C64 game called "Space Taxi" that was able to reproduce (terrible) speech only with square waves, by changing the frequency very quickly I guess. You did have to bring clients who hurls "Hey taxi", "Pad 1 please", Pad 2 please" and so on trough the old C64 SID soundchip, wich doesn't feature any DMC or anything.

[NotTheCommonDose]

Can sounds fro mthe original pitfall be put on the NES?

[atari2600a]

Pitfall originated on the 2600 right? If my memory holds correctly the 2600's Stella had only 2 square wave channels, each w/ it's own frequency (however horridly off) & volume registers. I can guarantee it'd be easier to use the square wave channels than anything DMC can produce.

[Celius]

The 2600 has 2 channels? It sounds like it only has one. It kind of reminds me of when you make sounds in QBasic, where your computer makes the sound instead of your speakers, and you can only do one tone at a time.

But yes, you would want to use something other than the DMC to do atari sounds. I would actually suggest the Triangle channel, or the Square Wave channels on Duty Cycle 2.