I've always been fascinated when people were talking about the megadrive and SNES sound chips and their differences, and all the attempts to compare them. And there is a lot of talk about them, I guess because because it was such a close console race, and because the tech is interesting, (a yamaha synthesizer on a chip vs a sample based chip)

But this made me wonder why it's harder to find comparisons between the previous gen sound chips. I guess because the NES dominated everything, people assumed that that was what 8-bit sounds like.

But there is interesting hardware differences between the 8-bit systems sound chips too. Some 8-bit bleepers were better than others. I've read some about it and felt like sharing.

I think the worst ones of the mainstream chips were the SN76489 in the Sega Master System and the POKEY chip found in many Atari computers. What made them inferior was the lack of variety in waveforms. They could only produce square waves, which limits the sound somewhat. 

This is as got as it got with 2 POKEY chips utilized together to make stereo sound.

I think that the NES that we all know and love would fall under the above average category. It has four voices and a sample channel, which is a lot, and different waveforms, which add variety. But these waveforms are locked to each voice which reduces their versatility, which is the major disadvantage of the NES chip.

I think the SID chip found in the commodore 64 has to be the best 8-bit sound chip out there. It has only three voices, which is less than the NES. And a sample channel that only exists because of a funny hardware bug with the sound control register. But these three voices have one extremely important property. you can change their waveforms on the fly.

In practive this means that you can get many different instruments following different rythms on the same voice channel. Which made the c64 chip insaney versatile and made for very complex sounds and melodies.

I think there is a reason why so much sick stuff that sounded impossible was composed for the C64. Just listen to this.

This last one shows the powere of reprogrammable waveforms really well.

Any more hardware geeks on VGC who finds this stuff interesting?

Well, I love to listen to some chiptunes and I also think the C64 is an absolutely amazong piece of tech soundwise, even to this day! I'm not too much into the technical side of things though. All I can say while listening to the tracks you posted is, I loved the days in which developers actually made their very own tracks all by themselves. It made every game feel special. Just imagine Mega Man without the epic music!

Nowadays, too many studios just license some shitty music and call it a day. It's sad.

Oh, but sorry, I'm kinda missing the topic I guess. ^^

Yeah, what made chiptnes special also was that the melodies had to be memorable, because the hardware was limited.

If you want to know more how the tech works, this guy explains it really well.

I think the hardware is almost as fascinating as the software.

I find it pretty interesting, since I don't exactly know how 8 bit works :p

Do you want me to try and explain?

Reminds me of this C64 tune (Axel F):

https://youtu.be/NHAEuMBr1js?t=29s

I remember many years ago having a Acorn Risc PC which was an early type with 8bit sound and fitting the 16bit sound upgrade and being amazed with the improvement in fidelity. Also used to love the sounds of the super nintendo, seemed miles better than any other hardware I had at the time for sound quality.