Uncompressed & Unfiltered Sonic 3 & Knuckles OST project.

Spoiler: OLD

Please note that there is a slight background hiss coming from the synthesizer used to capture this music this is due to an internal interference, because the fact that its SUPER hard to get a hold of these types of devices with the YM2612 chip its likely I wont be able to ever get a capture of the music again. If anyone has a device that can play Midi OR .VGM files and contains the YM2612 chip and doesn't mind me borrowing it then please leave a comment and ill try to get back to you ASAP. I am SO close to recording the clearest tune of genesis games possible.

This is a personal project I've been working on for years "to get the clearest most pure capture of Sonic 3&K music as possible" and I've finally done it. This feat was only possible thanks to the documentation here https://www.smspower.org/maxim/Documents/YM2612 and various other contributions across the internet. Basically I took an oscilloscope and recorded the individual sine waves to painstakingly manually generate a Midi file containing all the notes of each tune. This was played back on a DAFM synth which was recorded using Creative Sound Blaster Z SE 5.1 & Audacity @ 88200hz.

What most people don't realize is that the music from the Sega Genesis "And Super Nintendo for that matter" is somewhat dithered because the hardware cannot produce the clearest sound, this leads to some notes either being muted out or blended with other tunes. This project was made to preserve the music as if you were hearing it straight from the studio itself, it does not get any clearer then this.

High quality headphones required.



I've garnered some interest in the retro hardware and emulation community and have been asked to do the original Sonic track. I don't think I really will because the absolute requirement of time dedicated to making this which is understated by the fact that I cant even talk about everything I did in order to do this "nothing Illegal I was just asked kindly yet firmly not to share my process for deconstructing Genesis music due to the fears of piracy from other more copywrite stringent games from important people..." and the hardware required to do it which doesn't belong to me. This is the reason why my video on Youtube is allowed to exist.

With that being said it took about 4 and a half hours, here's the Sonic 1 Special stage OST in perfect clarity. https://vocaroo.com/18Ym618vb71h

~Edited on 6-11-22

My new setup I'm able to record in much higher quality and now without hiss. This new method of recording is allot easier for me and faster. I'm going straight from oscilloscope to Digital over Optical. With my old recordings I wanted to preserve the Ladder effect the Genesis gives however I decided to record it unfiltered because I don't think many people have heard what the ACTUAL music sounds like. So some RGB mod people may know what im talking about but I discovered the Genesis does a decibel cut on all its audio for some reason. I think its to remove any background white noise and interference from the audio. Discovering this I disabled the decibel cut and laid sheets of ferrite over all that could induce static over the motherboard and it has netted some great results however its not particularly the safest thing to do.

The new recordings can be found here but I will re upload a Youtube video as soon as I have time and all the recordings completed As a reminder the purpose of this project was to record the clearest most accurate music from S3K possible using original hardware.

https://m.soundcloud.com/philip-mangione-1/tracks

 

Sound accuracy.

Ill check that out. That's much more reasonable then a $1000 80s synth of questionable life left.

In a fan of carpathia808 who has a series called Oscilloscope Deconstructed. This is close to the purest form of getting the Genesis music however there is a caveat. What I learned is that the Genesis CPU acts as the Synth and plays FM sound through the Sound chip. This dithers the notes on the same and in some cases multiple channels. Its somewhat constructible by muting the channels but it will never be 100% spot on. Its still pretty close though. So what do I mean by dither? Imagine the note is being muted and unmuted very fast like a switch between 2 notes. This is happening at the CPU frequency so 1 MHz = 1000000 1/s. 7.6 is the "Genesis frequency" x 1000000 1/s = 7600000 1 Per Second. Basically its insanely fast "and to think that modern CPUs make it look like dirt. But the hardware is only so limited so even after the note is played you get degradation by wiring and other factors. My project was to strip all the extra steps out of the equation and make the sound byte go through as little hoops as possible to play.

What makes this different then playing on a dedicated synth you ask? The genesis CPU is hardwired to dither it vs the option to do it in a dedi synth. PROBELM is that now you have to construct the whole score on different recordings and match the whole recording up because systematically the .VGM caters to the way the genesis does things and its just not plug and play anywhere else. It was just easier to compare the notes using a tuning tool then it was to purely play an Oscilloscope guesstimated tune and hope that its a perfect match to play on the original hardware without changing the actual tune.

I know that probably raises more questions then answers and I'm not all that great at explaining things however I hope that was at least interesting. If I explained from start to finish everything needed to generate music the way I do it it would be a VERY VERY long conversation and pretty technical too. Lets just say this project got me interested in reverse engineering where's I was oblivious before also another interesting note is that I do not know proper coding so I use 3ds max maxscript to do the heavy lifting. You would be surprised how versatile that scripting language is.

If anyone is interested in hearing what the audio would sound like passed though a modern sound card and not the Yamaha YM2612 that's quite limited here's some samples.
Sonic 2 Boss https://vocaroo.com/15aE1kk1zRCY
Hydrocity Act 1 https://vocaroo.com/152BJNmjMJPL

I'm going to invest in some audio equipment to get rid of the hiss. I still have it throughout my devices and I think its originating on both the Synth and the sound card.

 

You had me thinking I just did a diagnostic on the power supply and I found out it's faulty. It's actually loosing voltage on channels 1 3 and DAC giving me a ladder effect sometimes.

Because I'm stubborn I'm going to have to re-record this whole score now lol. But yeah I found another sound glitch on Icecap act 2 and on other on Mushroom Hill act 2....

I'll have to ditch the Synth and buy a whole model 1 Genesis, I'll visit a pawn shop or a flea market this weekend hopefully before my new hardware comes in. I am going to take a crack at recording over optical this time.

Lastly I have L&R backwards? I tested the channels on my Genesis through my TV and the stereo sound is coming through the same speakers.

 

Imma have to deep dive in the L&R issue I'll take your word on that. I think the truncation issue is my fault. I probably forgot to save it in 32bit WAV format for YouTube. Also I have an older outdated Sony Vegas. I record the audio from a DAFM synth but it has no idea where the beginning or end of each song is. I have to guesstimate this part. Lastly I should have been more clear. I said it doesn't get clearer then this. I'm talking into regards of ripping it from original hardware not the revision or anything newer.

 

OK Holey Christ you were onto something when you said something sounded off. I just bought a new model 1 on craigslist and immediately re-recorded using the new hardware and there is no more "hall??" effect. Seems that my old hardware was dying and I didn't notice it, I measured each pinout with varying levels of voltage and it never sagged. I'm excited to restart this whole project on Friday when my new Digital receiver arrives and I can finally record without hiss.

Here's the new sample.
https://vocaroo.com/1f0GnOOoxdFi
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DYBonpCpHhZJRr0dJduA4_IR_G1ukeXR/view?usp=sharing

*Edit~ Someone just sent me a bunch of VERY USEFUL .VGM rips. This will make my life 9001% easier so thank you for that.

 

I'll have to seriously check that out.

 

Im not 100% sure what the differences are between revisions of the Model 1 but I noticed that the new model I picked up says High Definition Graphics on the top where the old one was just blank and I have a Serial port on the back.

 

this is the greatest news to come home to after work with almost $800 worth of sound equipment somewhere in the concrete jungle

 

I did my first recording with the new sound equipment. Hiss is completely gone however I'm still learning how to use the new equipment so ill count this recording as a Demo I have to do more comparisons with the notes to ensure I'm not getting processing effects but I believe I may not be.
https://soundcloud.com/philip-mangi...d&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/philip-mangi...d&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Side note, I noticed my new model Sega has the YM3438 however its pretty much working the same as my old one. I don't see a difference really not even watching the wave forms except maybe its got a little bit more gain.

 

you are correct. I didn't notice it at first but they are vastly different after doing a few songs I started to really notice the difference after Marble Garden zone act 2 where there is allot of high, low, and mid sections of the song that play sharp notes. Its defiantly different and I didn't expect that.
https://vocaroo.com/141TIbOZLhlh

Side note is that I'm recording so clearly now you can see the individual bands to each note in the Spectrogram

 

I believe I have perfected the recording process now. Thanks to many people here I am able to finally get to complete this project. I have the completed recordings on Sound Cloud however I will be remaking a Youtube video as soon as all tracks are completed.

https://soundcloud.com/philip-mangione-1