SNES has surround sound?

[winds]

I was just reading The Best in the Wonderful World of SNES RPGs and noticed that it claimed Star Ocean and Seiken Densetsu 3 both featured surround sound audio? How is this possible out of the snes?

[opticledilusi0n]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Surround

[Cronson]

Yeah, this was something I remember from my days playing SNES. Check out Super Turrican and Jurassic Park for games with Dolby Surround.

So here's my understanding. Dolby Surround is an analog technology where the receiver takes 2 channels (stereo sound) and processes them to 6 speakers (fronts, rears, center and sub). The front sound stage is stereo, the rear is mono and by choosing certain frequencies Dolby Surround sends the vocals to the center.

Thus, Dolby Surround can really take anything and make it "surround sound". BUT in the 90's (and again this is my understanding) when recording the sound for VHS, TV shows (the x-files used it) and as I mentioned these 2 games above, the engineers realized they could tinker with the recording and get more "enhanced" surround sound by some method (that I have no knowledge of).

Real surround sound, with individual encoding for each speaker and the sub, didn't happen until Dolby Digital and DTS. And to get real surround sound it has to be through optical, coaxial, or HDMI.

[winds]

Hmm okay, so if im understanding this right, that's taking the main stereo left and right channel of the snes, then the back speakers are simply the left and right channels summed to a mono signal, then the center speaker and sub are using an EQ to solo out the mids/lows respectfully?

Has anyone heard this before with the featured snes games? Does it greatly improve the experience?

[opticledilusi0n]

pretty much coding for 4 channels of sound if you have receiver that supports decoding it through 2 output channels.

you get left, right, center, rear (mono) and that's it

a receiver could fake the rear by mixing left and right and putting a slight delay and outputting through the rear (but that's just silly)

[BigTinz]

I can verify that Super Turrican and Castlevania 4 sound great like this.

[Cronson]

pretty much coding for 4 channels of sound if you have receiver that supports decoding it through 2 output channels.

you get left, right, center, rear (mono) and that's it

a receiver could fake the rear by mixing left and right and putting a slight delay and outputting through the rear (but that's just silly)

I think the way the receiver knows what to send to the rear speakers is based on when a sound is exclusively in the right or left speaker. I'm guessing that if anything is only in one speaker, it would create a surround effect when sent to the rears.

But yeah, those games that tried for Dolby Surround do sound really good. Get a newer receiver and some descent speakers and it'll sound awesome.

This would make a great article (and maybe its been done). I'd like to know which systems in the past have had excellent sound. Or better yet, how has sound evolved in gaming? Musicians and audiophiles know that older equipment can often have even better sound than the modern equivalent. So what about video game systems?

[Pulsar_t]

Real surround sound, with individual encoding for each speaker and the sub, didn't happen until Dolby Digital and DTS. And to get real surround sound it has to be through optical, coaxial, or HDMI.

I don't know where you got this from, but 'real' surround can be obtained in analog form as well. For example PC soundcards have been equipped with the technology for ages. Digital mostly serves to eliminate the signal to noise ratio factor of the equation (as well as eliminating cable clutter!)

I presume the SNES games were encoded in an early version of Dolby Pro Logic which 'fakes' surround sound depending on positional audio. It appears no further documentation is readily available however.

[Cronson]

Pulsar, yeah most audio starts as analog. And I had forgotten that computers often use multiple mini jack connections to carry the surround sound.

I just meant that for discrete home theater application its most likely got to be through one of those digital connections. Unless its like SACD or DVD-A. Yeah, I don't know, I think its just that Dolby Pro Logic or Dolby Surround is kind of misleading. Most people don't realize that its just the receiver doing all the work to mimic discrete surround sound.