PS1 Sound Chip Info

[thared33]

The PS1 began using full bandwidth music on the CDs as we all know, but it also has a sound chip that I (believe) is unnamed. The Genesis had a synthesizer or two and had a bit of sampling capabilities, and the SNES was a straight up sampling synth... so I'm wondering about the PS1. I looked online and couldn't find much info on it.

I'm positive that the PS1 had sampling synth capabilities, but did it have any sort of digital synthesizer in it as well like the Genesis did? I'm going to guess that like the SNES, the PS1 had no samples loaded into the PS1 itself, and that the samples that you are hearing played back are made by the company and are loaded into the PS1, from the game disc.

Is all of that info correct? Just wanted to clear up some of my confusion.

[d123456]

I do not have any details but before releasing the ps1, sony promised an extremely powerful synth build into the ps1 with this and that and more. It was an impressive read.

[Anapan]

This is what I could tell when I used to rip sounds from the games data files - most of the sound effects were samples (pcm wave files) which the game played like instruments. Even basic sounds were samples of square and sine waves and a short sequence/song was played using them. That's not to say that the PS1 doesn't have the capability to do FM synth, but the game programmers seemed to prefer rendering sound effects in the same way the sequenced music was done. I know the PS1 SPU can do a reverb effect on top of the sequenced music too.

[noiseredux]

they were just talking about this on the new Retronauts podcast... or arguing about it rather. So I wasn't clear on the answer.

[Anapan]

Even if the SPU chip on a PS1 doesn't support FM synthesis through function calls, the game program itself could be made to sequence simple waveforms to recreate the full effects of yamaha FM chips. Neill Corlett mentioned that his PSF player (basically a PS1 SPU emulator) doesn't recreate the pitch modulation perfectly but it's mostly used for sound effects.

[nextvolume]

Basically all you need to know about it:
http://psx.rules.org/spu.txt

It is not entirely correct but the best information you can find on the internet which is not emulator plugin sources. The sound chip in the PlayStation is often called Sound Synthesizer.