Hi All,

I know we already have the various QSound players but does anyone know if it is possible to use the emulated hardware as a synthesiser, to make it play new tunes? My reason for wanting to do this is that the Capcom arcade games feature a wide range of high-quality samples that I've yet to find on any conventional keyboard setups and would be ideal for producing CD-based backing tracks for my own games (when I finally get round to developing them).

My emulation skills are fairly poor at the moment (some basic Z80 stuff so far) so I would also like to find out if anybody has written any tutorials or could give any advice on how the CPS II boards output the music, how the sounds/samples are organised, etc.

Many Thanks,

dodginess

> Hi All,
>
> I know we already have the various QSound players but does anyone know if it is
> possible to use the emulated hardware as a synthesiser, to make it play new
> tunes?

In principle, yes, assuming you mean just QSound, QSound hardware is essentially an 8-bit sample player. The samples are PCM, and it should be fairly easy to grab the start/end/loop points and samplerates from an emulator.

> My reason for wanting to do this is that the Capcom arcade games feature
> a wide range of high-quality samples that I've yet to find on any conventional
> keyboard setups and would be ideal for producing CD-based backing tracks for my
> own games (when I finally get round to developing them).

Eh? It's just 8 bits, the hardware runs at 24KHz. The Fairlight samplers from the early 80s were already more advanced than that. Anyway, if you insist, add some printf() statements to an emulator, extract the samples you want, and import them in your PC sampler of choice. I'd have a really good look at the software synths and sample libraries available on PC before resorting to that, though, free or otherwise, samplers, too.

> My emulation skills are fairly poor at the moment (some basic Z80 stuff so far)
> so I would also like to find out if anybody has written any tutorials or could
> give any advice on how the CPS II boards output the music, how the
> sounds/samples are organised, etc.

See above.

Thanks for the advice - my comment about 'high quality' was to do with the production values rather than sample rates - it's very difficult to get a half-decent slap bass sample that works all the way up the keyboard (if you know what I mean!) as most software sythesisers use different samples at set intervals which doesn't sound particularly realistic or seamless.

> > Hi All,
> >
> > I know we already have the various QSound players but does anyone know if it
> is
> > possible to use the emulated hardware as a synthesiser, to make it play new
> > tunes?
>
> In principle, yes, assuming you mean just QSound, QSound hardware is essentially
> an 8-bit sample player. The samples are PCM, and it should be fairly easy to
> grab the start/end/loop points and samplerates from an emulator.
>
> > My reason for wanting to do this is that the Capcom arcade games feature
> > a wide range of high-quality samples that I've yet to find on any conventional
> > keyboard setups and would be ideal for producing CD-based backing tracks for
> my
> > own games (when I finally get round to developing them).
>
> Eh? It's just 8 bits, the hardware runs at 24KHz. The Fairlight samplers from
> the early 80s were already more advanced than that. Anyway, if you insist, add
> some printf() statements to an emulator, extract the samples you want, and
> import them in your PC sampler of choice. I'd have a really good look at the
> software synths and sample libraries available on PC before resorting to that,
> though, free or otherwise, samplers, too.
>
> > My emulation skills are fairly poor at the moment (some basic Z80 stuff so
> far)
> > so I would also like to find out if anybody has written any tutorials or could
> > give any advice on how the CPS II boards output the music, how the
> > sounds/samples are organised, etc.
>
> See above.
>

> Thanks for the advice - my comment about 'high quality' was to do with the
> production values rather than sample rates - it's very difficult to get a
> half-decent slap bass sample that works all the way up the keyboard (if you know
> what I mean!) as most software sythesisers use different samples at set
> intervals which doesn't sound particularly realistic or seamless.

Yes, the QSound samples do sound quite good, though that is in part due to a fairly high samplerate and enough memory. However (dumbing thigns down so my point will be clearer), they are nowhere near the quality of modern sample libraries -- the larger ones tend to have samples for each note on each string at multiple velocities, with ghost notes and slides etc. thrown in. Given an insane amount of MIDI programming, they can sound indistinguishable from a real player. Quite another issue is that a slap bass isn't supposed to sound good outside the small range of 1.5-2 octaves or so real bass players use -- it doesn't usually sound good outside of that range on a real bass, either (unless you're Michael Manring or Victor Wooten ofcourse, but creatures like those don't count). That point is moot if you're after a synthesizer sound ofcourse, but the current batch of software synths do provide very high quality sounds (including a number of free ones).