ZSNES Vs SNESAMP

Reznor007 · Post by **Reznor007** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 1:14 am

seiferalmasy wrote:I have listened to the pieces. The Arcade version is awful.

Sounds nothing like the SNES version, or indeed as full as:

Tune is inferior, Its just like a bad remix! Arcade clarity is better but the tune is so far away from the SNES and so god-awful sounding that it's unlistenable.

Anyway, thats settled me on using SNES version. Question now is:

Was that from the real SNES becasue I have to compare it to ZSNES and SNESAMP

Thanks 1000 times for that upload, I appreciate it!

What you mean is, the SNES version is the bad remix. The music was all designed with the YM2151 sound synth in mind.

seiferalmasy · Post by **seiferalmasy** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 1:54 am

In that case the SNES version was by accident, better.

I have listened to them both now, after 3 seconds it was obvious which was better by design or by accident it is the SNES every time.

I don't mean to be rude, just truthful. I wanted the arcade to be really good, but it's obvious it aint. The SNES sound quality might not be exceptional but the arrangement, the way it sounds is just better, what can I say. It is nonsense that samples were downsampled...the SNES is completely different sound wise....

Also when they release offcial OST's liek alpha etc, I am sure they go for the console version rather than the arcade version....and it isn't any wonder why.

Reznor007 · Post by **Reznor007** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:23 am

Actually the official soundtracks are the arcade versions.

Mark7 · Post by **Mark7** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 8:26 am

seiferalmasy wrote:Anyway, thats settled me on using SNES version. Question now is:

Was that from the real SNES becasue I have to compare it to ZSNES and SNESAMP

The arcade track is from Capcom Game Sound Music 4 and the snes track is recorded with Snesamp (settings: 44.1khz, 32bit, stereo(HQ), Cubic, "Surround sound" Off, AAR Off).

Looks like they just did a really great job on the snes music. It's not an accident, the sound hardware is just better. As i said before the snes uses real samples, while the arcade uses a synthesizer.
The Genesis SF2 music is much more like the arcade because it almost has the same (crappy) sound hardware.

Btw. Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the snes seems to have a different snare sample (better i think), you might wanna look into that and see which one you prefer.

powerspike · Post by **powerspike** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:56 am

I guess you failed to notice the sound samples that the arcade game is using. At any rate arguing about which one sounds better is retarded. You can hardly compare two entirely different sound hardware. The actual sound it produces doesn't really matter, it's how good the composition sounds. And you can tell that more effort was put into the arcade version then the snes one.

seiferalmasy · Post by **seiferalmasy** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 1:10 pm

Well the offcial ones are crap anyway, and there isn't one from the SNES of SF2 which is why I must make them;) It's a pity though, I still need a rea; SNES sample....but thanks all for your help.

And its not retarded, 1 sound can be better than another no matter what it was "intended" for etc. Being intended for 1 doesn't make it exempt from criticism.

powerspike · Post by **powerspike** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 2:18 pm

You're going to end up using snes amp either way. Even if you get a recording. It's probably one of the best out there. Setting it up like a real snes is pretty darn close to what the real system sounds like.

seiferalmasy · Post by **seiferalmasy** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:48 pm

powerspike wrote:You're going to end up using snes amp either way. Even if you get a recording. It's probably one of the best out there. Setting it up like a real snes is pretty darn close to what the real system sounds like.

Alas without a real SNES sample I cannot decide whether ZSNES is better or what the real sound is like

Anyway you have all been great! Thanks for the discussion

Post by **pagefault** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:59 pm

SNESAMP is probably the best if you want the "best" sounding sound, not the most authentic. There is lots of settings in SNESAMP that the original SNES did not have so it is most likely to give you differerent sound. But if you don't care about that sort of thing and want the "best sounding" sound then probably SNESAMP is for you. For example playing SPC's a 96khz and 24-bit audio seems pointless to me.

powerspike · Post by **powerspike** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 1:42 am

Yeah but for recording tracks? Like I said snes amp is pretty close. Plus if you get the tracks from snesmusic they already have predefined start and stop times. Which makes it alot easier to rip sound tracks.

Post by **pagefault** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 1:53 am

There is no point after 32khz at 16-bit because all you are doing after that is resampling the audio. The S-DSP only produces 16-bit audio, not to mention all the samples it uses are 4-bit ADPCM. So you aren't going to get it sounding any better than the original.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:25 am

It still amazes me how people manipulate 4-bit ADPCM to produce tolerable audio output :/

powerspike · Post by **powerspike** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:58 am

I'm not trying to argue anything technical pagefault. I don't even use the high quality setting when using Snes amp. The guy was asking which sounded closer to the real system. Zsnes doesn't sound as good to me as snes amp does yet. It'll probably get better since you guys are working hard on it.

Edit: OOOOh you're talking about the 48000Khz setting. Well just bump it back to 32. Problem solved.

Echoecho · Post by **Echoecho** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:25 am

It's kinda silly to compare a ym player to the spc of the snes. The snes was better hands down. It doesn't matter which is the original or not. Besides, it's not like the snes version of SF2 was made by a third party to capcom or something. THey knew what they were doing, and it sounded better than the original. Now, Super SF2 is a different story. The arcade is definitely better there.

Btw, as far as the question, I'd go with snesamp. Zsnes is just plain wrong in some features of the music sequences themselves, nevermind enhancements. That in itself breaks the "higher authenticity" argument for zsnes. That is MUCH more noticable than whichever reverb or sound rate. If you want an example, try R-Type 3.

Don't get me wrong though, it's a great emulator, and it runs great on linux with OpenGL. But the sound is of high annoyance to me compared to Snes9x. I wouldn't even bother with zsnes if snes9x ran decently with joystick support on linux. The lack of GUI also sucks.

seiferalmasy · Post by **seiferalmasy** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:35 am

Well I am still here

I have finished my tests been listening to all variations and settings of ZSNES and SNESAMP and this is what I have found:

SNESAMP is better, no doubt about that. Although setting to cubic means that it isn't gonna sound 100% like the original SNES it makes little difference, the sound is so much clearer with the same arrangement that this "negative" has taken a back seat.

So there it is, SNESAMP using AAR OFF with 16 amplification, stereo seperation 50, echo feedback -50, channel stereo HQ.

What sounds closer to the original sound SNESAMP or ZSNES, answering my own question? SNESAMP does when set to "like the SNES" but as said Cubic is "better"

Another important thing to note is that although I thought SF2 and SFT:turbo were exactly the same sounding I was wrong. SF2 beats the turbo edition. They have made a slight arrangement that sounds whiny and inferior to the original title.

On another note. Yes Champions edition, alpha and all the poor sequels that followed are without doubt terrible arrangements in game and music. I have no time for them

(actually on the 16 amplification thing....I set to 16 because that is what the real SNES uses, supposedly distortion free. In SNESAMP I am assuming this is the amplification setting in Decibels?)

EDIT: No 16 decibel amplification does distort, esp on the capcom sound....so what should I do, set to no amplification and normalise after recording?

zsnes (btw i'm too stupid to learn the name of the emulator) <<<was just checking whether that infamous filter of yours works when saying ZSNES in lower case letters....and it does;)

Post by **pagefault** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:00 am

There are some bugs in the ZSNES SPC core but I have made a lot of changes to it since the last WIP was released. Fixes a lot of bugs and many noises and sounds are much clearer now. Whenever that gets released I think you will notice a difference from what ZSNES has right now.

seiferalmasy · Post by **seiferalmasy** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:02 am

I wasn't knocking ZSNES as an emulator

everyone knows that overall along with Kega Fusion it is the greatest single emulator ever created.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:03 am

pagefault wrote:There are some bugs in the ZSNES SPC core but I have made a lot of changes to it since the last WIP was released. Fixes a lot of bugs and many noises and sounds are much clearer now. Whenever that gets released I think you will notice a difference from what ZSNES has right now.

That may be the day I will bow down to pagefault and kiss his feet.... ok.. maybe not the latter.

Post by **pagefault** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 5:11 am

These are all basic bugfixes that should have been done a long time ago.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 5:55 am

True, but it takes someone highly talented to fix these bugs given the nature of ZSNES and the difficulty of debugging the S-DSP.

I'm really impressed with how rapidly ZSNES development is moving along as of late, keep up the good work :D

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:09 am

seiferalmasy wrote: EDIT: No 16 decibel amplification does distort, esp on the capcom sound....so what should I do, set to no amplification and normalise after recording?

i use between the recomended settings... which is to be precise... 7.5

Mark7 · Post by **Mark7** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 8:50 am

I set my to 0dB. If you play some really loud games like UN Squadron it distorts at 7.5dB. And there exist even louder games than UN Squadron...

There's nothing wrong when music is a little softer. It really won't affect the soundquality. Distortion or clipping however, will affect the quality a great deal.

Besides you can set snesamp to 32bit, export the 32bit wav and feed that to a good mp3 encoder (lame) directly.

btw. i never noticed the differences between SF2 and SF2T... i only know they use a different snare sample. Can you tell me what the differences are?

seiferalmasy · Post by **seiferalmasy** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 9:41 am

Mark7 wrote:btw. i never noticed the differences between SF2 and SF2T... i only know they use a different snare sample. Can you tell me what the differences are?

Well from first observations. The sound is different, i'd need to upload you a sample for you to understand....it sounds worse then SF2. Also the volume is much lower when played through SNESAMP, and distortion happens with it even set to 0dB.

I will check this again and give you a link sometime soon, but so far looks like SF2 is better (though becasue you can play as the bosses in turbo you have 1 (or more?) musics in that version due to boss endings.

ZSNES board

ZSNES Vs SNESAMP

Re: SNES WINS NO CONTEST

Re: SNES WINS NO CONTEST