Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by soprano1 »

https://soundcloud.com/retrogameaudio/the-sharp-x68000
VGM podcast about the music specs of various game machines, this episode seems appropriate for this topic. There is an old episode for the MD/GEN here:
https://soundcloud.com/retrogameaudio/the-sega-genesis
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by FinalBaton »

Streets Of Rage 2 OST is up :P I've also re-arranged the tracks for this one, so that they play in the same order as they do in the game. And I've pushed all of the included remixes/unused tracks at the very end. For your listening pleasure. Let's party!
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soundcloud (better quality) https://soundcloud.com/finalbaton/stree ... odel-1-va2
youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_zzjCxUps
Last edited by FinalBaton on Wed Mar 29, 2017 5:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Great uploads FinalBaton. Crystalline sound, been putting them on in the background and revisiting these great osts through them.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Squire Grooktook wrote:Great uploads FinalBaton. Crystalline sound, been putting them on in the background and revisiting these great osts through them.
Thanks bud :mrgreen: Happy that you like 'em.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by Shoryukev »

Checking out the SOR2 upload now, sounds good! What are you guys using to capture this stuff? I have some decent studio equipment I use to record my guitar stuff, listening to this is kinda making me want to record some OSTs :mrgreen:
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Shoryukev wrote:Checking out the SOR2 upload now, sounds good! What are you guys using to capture this stuff? I have some decent studio equipment I use to record my guitar stuff, listening to this is kinda making me want to record some OSTs :mrgreen:
Make sure to pick the soundcloud uploads links, they sound even better than the youtube ones!

I don't use anything special. just my video capture card's audio ports. (it'd be better with a dedicated audio capture device I guess, but I can't bother to buy one.) It sounds great through mine(USB3HDCAP) so I'm not feeling the urge to upgrade. I capture at 16 bit audio depth and 48kHz sample rate @1500kbps, which is a bit better than CD quality and does the job perfectly fine.

In the case of the Genesis though, perhaps the most important factor is too pick up a good machine :mrgreen:
In my book the VA2 is the best sounding, hands down. The VA3 sounds tight too, but it has a less exciting sound. More muffled and less bombastic bass and not as sweet-sounding mids. VA2 is not perfect : every once in a while you'll get a click or pop over sounds that are recorded loudly, but this happens so rarely that it's hardly a problem. I still pick VA2 over VA3 any day of the week.
The Mega Amp from Ace also sounds great and is apparently functionnally equivalent to a VA2 when the filter is turned on. This is what Dustin O'Dell has been using lately.
I prefer to go with original hardware. So a stock VA2 is what I have.
Last edited by FinalBaton on Wed Mar 29, 2017 7:03 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by Shoryukev »

I think it sounds good too (went straight for the soundcloud, youtube compression is the devil LOL). Not much point in recapturing stuff that's already available but I might try recording some stuff for myself to compare. I'm not sure what revision my Genesis is (all I know is pre-tmss model 1) but it was recapped about 2-3 years ago....kinda curious how it stacks up. I get some farty noises on some of the loud sound effects in Bloodlines with the headphone slider all the way up so I'm not sure it's the best audio revision.

EDIT: Maybe mine is a VA2 if you're getting that kind of stuff over loud sounds too.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by FinalBaton »

You can check yourself what version you have : it's etched on the motherboard!

What I did to prevent the occasional distortion is to reduce the gain prior to sending the audio to my amp/capture card.
So I have the console's volume slider all the way up, but on my Extron switcher I reduced the gain a bit below unity-gain. That fixes things up.

Also note that headphones plugged straight in will sound horrible no matter what.That's because the console actually doesn't have a headphone driver. So it's not optimized for that. An amp/receiver works fine however.

It might be a good idea also to shoot some De-Oxit in the headphone plug and then insert+remove a cable in/out a couple times. That will scrape away what corrosion and dirt there might be in there. Same with the volume slider, shoot some de-oxit on it(get inside the console preferably) and move the slider a bunch.
This can't hurt.

But ultimately, the root of the problem is that the gain on the pre-amp is too hot. So that's why some people mod the console to bypass the pre-amp section (volume slider) entirely, and make direct out connections on the back of the console. I couldn't tell you exactly how it is done however.

For me, reducing the gain prior to sending it to my amp(but with the console's volume slider at 100%) worked great in the end. so I won't mod (I'm not particularly fond of modding these old consoles myself)
Last edited by FinalBaton on Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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I need to do that. I never opened it when I got it because it was s-video modded and I didn't want to mess with the wires added....but I use RGB now so I don't really care if I botch the s-video wires lol. Might have to crack it open tonight and take a look (and snip that composite video lead lol).

16 bit/48khz is good, definitely nothing wrong there. I was just curious about the setup you were using, I've been wanting to record gameplay footage but need to get a capture card myself. I think my audio interface lets me do 24bit/96khz, but I usually just go 24bit/44.1 cuz the files are already huge as it is when I'm demoing my songs lol.

Hmm okay, I assumed it was the signal coming out of the console that was clipping and making the noise. I can just turn the preamp gain on my interface down when I try recording a sample.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by Shoryukev »

That's kinda funny the headphone jack isn't actually setup for headphones. I always kinda assumed it was line-level since plugging headphones into it didn't sound very good...but it's good to get clarification on that lol.

Definitely a good idea to try and clean the slider and the jack. Dealing with mixing boards and stuff over the years I've grown to kinda hate faders in general....they collect dust very easily.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Shoryukev wrote:Hmm okay, I assumed it was the signal coming out of the console that was clipping
It is! but by reducing the gain prior to your amp receiving it, the amp will now see something that's closer to line level audio

(maybe I'm misunderstanding you here? when you say "coming out of the console", do you mean "prior to the reaching the pre-amp circuit?
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Shoryukev wrote:That's kinda funny the headphone jack isn't actually setup for headphones.
Agreed, lol. that's some weird engineering on Sega's part
Shoryukev wrote: Definitely a good idea to try and clean the slider and the jack. Dealing with mixing boards and stuff over the years I've grown to kinda hate faders in general....they collect dust very easily.
Man let me tell you something : De-Oxit is a gift from the gods, haha. It helped me fix so many problems with crackling/non-working jacks on guitar and basses, and on amps, and on mixers, you name it. It's a life saver, I call it "miracle in a can"
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Shoryukev wrote:16 bit/48khz is good, definitely nothing wrong there.I think my audio interface lets me do 24bit/96khz, but I usually just go 24bit/44.1 cuz the files are already huge as it is when I'm demoing my songs lol.
Yeah the file size is definitely something I consider! not just for "storage on my PC" reasons, but also because bigger files than that really make the compositing of the AVI end product and the uploading a pain in the ass!

24/96 files are just humongous, lol
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

Post by Shoryukev »

I think I just misunderstood why the farty sounds were happening. I thought the clipping was happening in the preamp circuit of the genesis, but it sounds more like the signal coming out of the console is just hot and it causes my amp/TV/whatever to distort. Since you're able to reduce the gain with your extron unit and get rid of the problem that's probably what's going on.

I'll check out the de-oxit, I've just been using compressed air for that kind of stuff.

Haha yeah I'm pretty new to video editing but exporting a finished project takes forever when your files are big. I usually try to hang onto session files but sometimes it's a pain, at least storage is cheap these days.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Shoryukev wrote:I'll check out the de-oxit, I've just been using compressed air for that kind of stuff.
DEFINITELY do. You'll thank me later :wink: It also works great on pots, so when an amp's dial is scratchy this will generally fix that right up
Shoryukev wrote: Hmm okay, I assumed it was the signal coming out of the console that was clipping and making the noise. I can just turn the preamp gain on my interface down when I try recording a sample.
Yep that should work fine and dandy. All that's left to do after that is to augment the volume in software to compensate, since the decrease in sensitivity translates into a little bit of output loss, even thought they're not the same thing.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Drumroll please.................it's a VA3. Not sure if that's good or bad, was hoping to see VA2 in there lol. At least I confirmed the re-cap job, lots of shiny new capacitors inside. :mrgreen:
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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As I understand it, board revisions from VA2 to VA6 are all "good." They all vary slightly when it comes to filtering and such - some will have warmer output, others will be more crisp - but not of them have any inherent problems. It'll just come to down to how the listener likes it. Things get slightly prickly with very late VA6 revisions, but the real danger is the dreaded VA7.

There's also the crackly headphone audio issue with VA1s and 2s, but IIRC that was only really a problem with Japanese Mega Drives. I was lucky enough to land a VA1 back when I dropped money on a boxed jMD, so that was a nasty surprise. :S
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Heavy Viper wrote:As I understand it, board revisions from VA2 to VA6 are all "good." They all vary slightly when it comes to filtering and such - some will have warmer output, others will be more crisp - but not of them have any inherent problems. It'll just come to down to how the listener likes it. Things get slightly prickly with very late VA6 revisions, but the real danger is the dreaded VA7.

There's also the crackly headphone audio issue with VA1s and 2s, but IIRC that was only really a problem with Japanese Mega Drives. I was lucky enough to land a VA1 back when I dropped money on a boxed jMD, so that was a nasty surprise. :S
VA2 as it's own sound, and VA3 to VA6 (all sound the same) have their own sound as well

Oh, didn't know some later VA6 had the dreaded audio just like the VA7! did you see any mention of that in Ace's thread or something? or is it personal experience? http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread ... m-bad-ones
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Shoryukev wrote:Drumroll please.................it's a VA3. Not sure if that's good or bad, was hoping to see VA2 in there lol. At least I confirmed the re-cap job, lots of shiny new capacitors inside. :mrgreen:
VA3 is great kev. It's the standard Genny sound for many people. I just happen to prefer the VA2. VA3 sounds super tight, but has a somewhat "polite" sound compared to the bombastic, highly dynamic sound of the VA2.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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FinalBaton wrote:Oh, didn't know some later VA6 had the dreaded audio just like the VA7! did you see any mention of that in Ace's thread or something? or is it personal experience? http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread ... m-bad-ones
It's been a while since I've gone through that thread, but I do recall reading talk about the VA6 revision's design changing slightly as time went on, with the community giving them names like 'VA6.5' and 'VA6.8.' I believe the main thing was the EXT port on the back being removed, but whether or not there were major changes to the sound circuitry isn't something I can say for sure. Given most of the MD1s I own have VA6 boards, it's a bit of a point of interest for me, though personally I've never heard a bad VA6.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Heavy Viper wrote:It's been a while since I've gone through that thread, but I do recall reading talk about the VA6 revision's design changing slightly as time went on, with the community giving them names like 'VA6.5' and 'VA6.8.' I believe the main thing was the EXT port on the back being removed, but whether or not there were major changes to the sound circuitry isn't something I can say for sure. Given most of the MD1s I own have VA6 boards, it's a bit of a point of interest for me, though personally I've never heard a bad VA6.
Gotcha. Ace seems to think that the 6.5 and 6.8 have the exact same sound as the VA6 though (see original post in the thread). Maybe he added that after the last time you visited the thread
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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I have uploaded my Phantasy Star IV OST capture 8)

https://soundcloud.com/finalbaton/phant ... odel-1-va2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyZHo6KcMtg&t=2074s

I really encourage you to listen to this one with good headphones, as it makes excellent use of stereo separation on most of it's tracks.

Enjoy, and happy weekend everyone!
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Superbly done - the subtleties of Motavia's haunting overworld theme come through beautifully! I'd forgotten just how good this OST is.

...actually Mota's map BGM is a bit Ennio Morricone-esque, now that I'm hearing it again for the first time in a while. Impressive how they got that wistful sound out of the MD. Wonder if the resemblance was deliberate, the placidly arid surroundings definitely suggest the classic Leone Westerns. edit: and aww hell yeah, overworld battle BGM just blew up. edit2: fuckin Behind The Circuit, aww hell yes it's been too long. Techno stomp, Gothic madness. edit3: Image @ 42mi50s edit4: Laughter's surpassingly brilliant evil cool needs no reiterating, but I'd somehow completely forgotten Ooze and it blew my goddamn mind. Metal as fuck. Image
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Yes good catch! The motavian overworld theme is indeed a clear Moriconne nod. What better for a world covered by deserts!
I have kinda discovered(well, re-discovered) this OST while ripping it. I knew it was good, but I didn't knew it was that good. It's truly fucking excellent and has shot up in my rankings right uo there with Yamane-sensei's work.




I could talk for an hour about this one! Here's what stands out for me :

-"Suspicion" evokes just that feeling, and so well.right on the money, while being badass and cyberpunk as fuck
-"Meet them head-on!" (battle music) as you said is a superb rocker. But what takes the cake is that it also manages an (disgusting)organic feel as well as a (menacing)robotic feel in it's sound. Can't get more Cyborg-ish than that! "Organic Beat" also nails that same disgusting bio-mechanical feeling
-The robot-rock/new wave of "Behind the Circuit" and "Machine Center" would make Gary Numan proud. Catchy robotic synths that you can dance to if you want, eh?
-"Fal" (AKA "Ryka) is so bittersweet that it successfully rattles me, haha.
-"Pain" is the aural embodiement of emotional pain. It stabs right at the heart with a pickaxe. Like the precise moment when your heart breaks. This one never fails to move me with it's icy synths
-"PS1 Dungeon arrange 2" is straight fire. Not a new tune of course, but props need to be given to the deep, lush and dynamic sound found here.
-The landrover theme ("Landmaster AXV 25") legit sounds like a shmup tune and is pretty damn good too.
-"The Black Blood" (intro to Zio fight and, by default, to "Laughter") is a superb ambient work that sets the table for "Laughter" so damn well. Menacing and eerie, you can feel the frost creeping in and chilling your ankles.
-"Laughter" is of course prime evil rocker of epic proportion and rage! I don't think I need to convince you on this one :mrgreen:
-"Red Alert" is so cool, I can hardly think of a better "Oh shit, something just went terribly wrong over there" BGM
-"Dezolis Town 1" reminds me in it's chord progressions and soulful, sad tones of some early Radiohead songs (from the Bends or OK Computer maybe?). Whose influence for those songs are The Beattles I think (I've read an interview where Tohm Yorke mentions devouring the Beatle book that details their recording productions). "Rykros Field" also gives me that same feel, although down-tuned a whole bunch
-"Gumbious Temple" is strangely and seductively off-key, something that the second credited composer for the game, who uses the pen name Gaki-Chan, pulls off really well on this tracks.
-The stacatto, poppy(almost tropical) yet strange harmonies of "Tower" are great fun, I find it really pleasant. Gotta mention it since it's another one from Gaki Chan
-"Abyss" does a great job of introducing Ooze, just like The Black Blood does with Laughter. Abyss is not quite as icy as Black Blood, but it has great mildly dissonant harmonies, making it sound pretty damn menacing. And yep, you guessed it : Gaki Chan wrote this one (I prefer the songs from the other guy/gal, I got to give some props to Gaki Chan when possible).
-And Finally : "Ooze". First of all : what a fucking menacing intro to that one. The drums of hell are beating while ominous, dark choirs envelop the party. And then, the creeping death(had to use that one, it was too fitting :mrgreen: ) is unleashed. Holy fuck :O

So here. Sorry for the wall 'o text :oops: I know this might seem like a lot of "highlights" but actually this just represents 1/3 of the soundtrack! :lol: so it's not that much of it in reality. That OST is HUGE :shock:
Last edited by FinalBaton on Sun Apr 30, 2017 7:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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Lagrange Point OST. Amazing FM sounds on the FC. :P
Baton, thanks for the PSIV rip.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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upload is now on youtube as well. and I've re-uploaded it on soundcloud too(was missing a track). both links are in my last post now

I've also added the track listing (that thing was like writing a whole book, holy cow. lol), with engrish 100% intact

Image

yeah baby! That's what I'm talking about!
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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soprano1 wrote: Baton, thanks for the PSIV rip.
No problem!


On another note, I think I'll have to ditch the soundcloud platform : you can only have 3 hours of music accessible at any given time, unless you pay :( that sucks

Anyone know of another good 'audio player'-type site for uploading uncompressed wav files that is free?

EDIT : Is there a way to disable downloads on Bandcamp? not that I don't want people on here to dl them; I'll gladly give people here a download link to the rips. It's just that I don't want some random people to upload my rips on their site and sell them or something
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but people should check out the FMPSG doujin albums. They are on the 22nd album already. They contain original tracks, as well as remixed tracks from both games and anime.
Here's the vgmdb link: http://vgmdb.net/org/407
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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https://www.polygon.com/features/2017/6 ... ness-owner
Very interesting feature by Polygon on Yuzo Koshiro, this seems the most adequate topic to post on.
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Re: Pc-98/Fm Synth music recommendations?

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http://bc.s3m.us/album/tree-of-knowledge
Worth the bump, some great music here.
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