As far as I understand, the SNES has no digital synthesizer in it and it's a straight up sampling synth. And that the samples are loaded into the ram from the cartridge. Well that brings me onto this: what in the world did these companies use as the initial sound sources?
Did they use regular, commercial synthesizers like old Korg, Roland, and Yamaha synths? I'm guessing if that holds true, that they probably also used drum modules from Alesis, Roland, etc. Or, they might have even made their own drum samples.
If they did use all that I listed above, it would most likely be pretty hard to tell what they used since 1) the sound has gone through major down conversion and quality loss, and 2) the sounds were sampled and chopped into very tiny snippets which are looped by the sampler synth.
Does anyone have any idea about what kind of gear was used as far as the original sound sources for SNES games?
SNES Synth Info
Re: SNES Synth Info
Interesting post. Particularly when we have bands that are programming modern soft-synths to sound like old analogue/FM tones!
The FM (Frequency Modulation synthesis) series of Synths were the core source for composers during the 8 bit era. The Yamaha DX-7 was the most commonly used synth but was more common with the SEGA Genesis.
But as you've mentioned the SNES' SPC700 audio processor could handle samples but they were incredibly short, resulting in slowed down samples. I believe the Yamaha SY85 the most popular (Yamaha's sample-based synth of the 90's).
Hope this helps
The FM (Frequency Modulation synthesis) series of Synths were the core source for composers during the 8 bit era. The Yamaha DX-7 was the most commonly used synth but was more common with the SEGA Genesis.
But as you've mentioned the SNES' SPC700 audio processor could handle samples but they were incredibly short, resulting in slowed down samples. I believe the Yamaha SY85 the most popular (Yamaha's sample-based synth of the 90's).
Hope this helps