Great comparison between Mega Drive - Genesis RGB output.

[Ikaruga11]

Which model of the Genesis has the best picture/sound?

I can only speak of ones I've seen of course, but I've got zero complaints about the sound and RGB PQ on mine (after I severed the trace to pin 6 of the CXA of course). Mine is an original Hi-Def with expansion EXT intact, and the board revision is a VA3. VA2 is the very earliest, and have the best sound provided the game doesn't drive the sound too loud, if the game is too loud, the sound gets pretty awful. On my VA3, the sound is a little more filtered, and the gain has been lowered to prevent games from overloading the sound into a static mess.

Thanks

What serial numbers should I look out for?

[Einzelherz]

Largely subjective question, asked objectively?

Follow up question with ridiculous premise?

Another question, likely completely unrelated?

[Ikaruga11]

Largely subjective question, asked objectively?

Follow up question with ridiculous premise?

Another question, likely completely unrelated?

Kill yourself.

[Einzelherz]

Misdirected immature anger.

[FBX]

Which model of the Genesis has the best picture/sound?

I can only speak of ones I've seen of course, but I've got zero complaints about the sound and RGB PQ on mine (after I severed the trace to pin 6 of the CXA of course). Mine is an original Hi-Def with expansion EXT intact, and the board revision is a VA3. VA2 is the very earliest, and have the best sound provided the game doesn't drive the sound too loud, if the game is too loud, the sound gets pretty awful. On my VA3, the sound is a little more filtered, and the gain has been lowered to prevent games from overloading the sound into a static mess.

Thanks

What serial numbers should I look out for?

Update on this: I dug out my original launch Genesis (I bought myself back in 1989). I popped it open and confirmed it's a VA2. So next I hooked up and recorded the VA3 and VA2 using the same cables and sound capture hardware in my computer. Upon playback and listening very carefully, I could only just BARELY hear the difference in filtering levels. The VA2 has very slightly less high frequency filtering. At first I couldn't really hear a difference between the two, but after switching back and forth at certain snare drum sections of songs, I started to hear the slight difference in filtering. It's one of those things where you wouldn't notice unless someone pointed it out, and even then you really have to listen on a good pair of headphones to pick it up.

RGB tests showed the VA2 was suffering from the exact same issue as the VA3 with the CXA oscillator coupling over into the blue line. I loaded up Artemio's Color Bar test pattern, and plain as day it showed jail bars on the blue channel, while the red and green channels were solid.

Okay so as far as serial numbers go, I've not done the research on the ranges you could expect each revision to fall in. I've only done that for SNES and Neo Geo. However, there's a pretty interesting study of this here:

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread ... m-bad-ones

-FBX

[FBX]

I uploaded a Thunder Force III track ripped from my VA2 and VA3 to show the difference in filter levels in case anyone wanted to hear for themselves:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/Seg ... %20VA3.zip

-FBX

[FinalBaton]

It's not a world of difference between the sound of the VA2 and the VA3, but the difference is there. But then again I'm really anal about this stuff, I love picking up subtleties in sound, I've been a musician for nearly twenty years and I research the sound of guitar amps and pedals like crazy for example.

I have both a VA2 and a VA3 here and I can say that there's definitely a difference. The VA2 has sweeter(more present an warmer) mids and clearer highs, and has basses that are less percusive than the VA3 but that have as much presence.

The VA3 is largely considered to be the "reference" Genesis sound and for good reasons. It sounds clean and tight and extremely well balanced. But the VA2 has a more invlolving dound. More musical. And to my ears it is even better balanced than the VA3, especially on the mids.

Both sound excellent though, and it's pretty much a matter of preference. Although for me (and others), the VA2 is the superior one

There's an easy, mod-less way to eliminate the crunchy sounds that can sometime pop up on the VA2 : it's to reduce the sensitivity(aka "gain") of the signal before sending it to you amplifier/receiver/TV. You can use either a mixing board to do this, or some switchers like the ones from Extron let you adjust each input's sensitivity individually.

[FBX]

Yeah the track I ripped really demonstrated the differences well. I can hear the filtering differences the most in that track. Of the two, I would prefer the VA2, but only after listening closely on my Sony studio headphones. Just playing games for fun on my display, it's not going to be noticed.

[ApolloBoy]

My Japanese Mega Drive has a VA1 board and has a lot of the same audio issues as the VA2 board including overdriven audio. I modded it with RCA jacks coming from the CXA1034 preamp, and I get nice and clean audio as a result.

[FinalBaton]

Just playing games for fun on my display, it's not going to be noticed.

I agree about that

My Japanese Mega Drive has a VA1 board and has a lot of the same audio issues as the VA2 board including overdriven audio. I modded it with RCA jacks coming from the CXA1034 preamp, and I get nice and clean audio as a result.

That's a really nice mod ApolloBoy! Mind sharing how you did it? (I'm guessing that it was a bit more complex than just soldering wires from the chip to the RCA jacks: there must be a capacitor or two between them and there's the matter of grounding it all (I'm a n00b to electronics so that's why I'd like a run through, even though this is a very basic mod))

[Ryoandr]

It's already been documented, and you can see it in the image I posted. The oscillator is physically right next to the blue line, so it couples over to it.

It's a block diagram. It's probably close to how the actual die is, but it's not an accurate representation.

[FBX]

It's already been documented, and you can see it in the image I posted. The oscillator is physically right next to the blue line, so it couples over to it.

It's a block diagram. It's probably close to how the actual die is, but it's not an accurate representation.

My fault for not being specific, but I wasn't referring to the block diagram as documentation of the issue. That's just there to show you relative assignments of each pin. What I meant by being 'documented' is this issue had been discussed by electrical engineers before. I believe Voultar even discussed it as being the case.

[FBX]

I photoshopped a pic I took of the underside of my VA2 Genesis to highlight where I sever the trace to pin 6. I found it's a lot less messy to do the small trace cut here than clipping or lifting legs:

Spoiler

I go a step further and solder shielded wires to the trace cut and the via at the end, and hook the wires up to a toggle switch where I can reactivate the color signal for composite video as needed.

-FBX

[FBX]

One more update on the results of the trace cut:

I cut and peeled away almost 4 mm of trace at the spot I marked in the previous image:



When the rest of my supplies arrive from Amazon, I'll then tack wires to the trace cut on the left and the via on the right in order to rig up my toggle switch.

For now, here are actual 3x integer screengrabs of my VA2's RGB output after the trace cut:









Frikken gorgeous RGB! In fact, it's the clearest and sharpest RGB I've seen out of any system. Hands down. So in my opinion, if you want the best stock sound and stock RGB, get a VA2 Genesis and do the trace cut method in my pics.

[FinalBaton]

That looks friggin immaculate FBX

[Bratwurst]

Instead of cutting the trace, couldn't you just remove the yellow jumper / cap or the 103 resistor instead? A pair of tweezer irons would make short work of any small 2-point surface mount stuff, and you benefit from killing the signal even closer to the source.

[speedlolita]

Instead of cutting the trace, couldn't you just remove the yellow jumper / cap or the 103 resistor instead? A pair of tweezer irons would make short work of any small 2-point surface mount stuff, and you benefit from killing the signal even closer to the source.

Totally reversible too.

Not that a small trace cut on a 30 year old video game console is that much of a tragedy mind you.

[FBX]

Instead of cutting the trace, couldn't you just remove the yellow jumper / cap or the 103 resistor instead? A pair of tweezer irons would make short work of any small 2-point surface mount stuff, and you benefit from killing the signal even closer to the source.

It could be done your way, but I'd have to wire that resistor to the toggle switch, where as my method just tacks wires to the trace cut without messing with the resistor. Your way would probably be perfectly fine for those that don't want a toggle option for the chroma subcarrier. If that yellow part is just a passive jumper, then I could see just desoldering that. However, I don't think being closer to the CXA is important here, and if there's any validity to the claim of doing it from the VDP side of the trace producing better results, then where I'm doing it is pretty much optimal (ease of access and proximity to the VDP).

[Gunstar]

Awesome pics, FBX! I have a Va2 and Va5 that need a jailbar fix so that's super helpful.

[Ikaruga11]

One more update on the results of the trace cut:

I cut and peeled away almost 4 mm of trace at the spot I marked in the previous image:

Frikken gorgeous RGB! In fact, it's the clearest and sharpest RGB I've seen out of any system. Hands down. So in my opinion, if you want the best stock sound and stock RGB, get a VA2 Genesis and do the trace cut method in my pics.

You're amazing, FBX. That's looks just as sharp and clean as an emulator.

Thank you

[Einzelherz]

Awesome pics, FBX! I have a Va2 and Va5 that need a jailbar fix so that's super helpful.

The trace thing was for jailbars? Thanks for mentioning it cause I kept rereading and couldn't figure out why screenshots were posted for an audio fix.

[bateman82]

These kinds of tests always irk me. How many of each identical mobo model presented were tested? Were they all recapped? Did they all use the same cabling? Etc.

Because in this hobby group one person makes a claim and more often than not it becomes repeated as gospel and just argh.

This is a good point

It's still cool that these people did this test. but yeah it could have been more rigourous

That's for sure, but for people like me who is getting a little bit tired of mod (i'm getting old ahah) it's easier to read than the incredibly long thread on Sega-16 http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread ... m-bad-ones

I think it's worth a mention in one of the RetroRGB podcast (great work man!).

Actually Bob already covered this on the podcast back in July: https://youtu.be/XWCIj1q_Kq0?t=609

It's a very interesting comparison indeed, but I do agree with others that I wish it was a little bit more thorough and had more information about the models beyond surface observations.
Still, it was enough for me to cancel the Japanese Mega Drive 1 that I was in the process of buying when I saw this in July.

Sometimes I skip an episode, it's my fault
Best wishes to Bob and his new project on indiegogo!




Anyone here has a Jvc X'eye?

I'd like to know:

1)is it possible to play Master System rom from the everdrive?

2)I'd like to play my japanese mega cd games, which bios do I have to launch from the everdrive?

[tjstogy]

LMAO

Nail on the head.

Largely subjective question, asked objectively?

Follow up question with ridiculous premise?

Another question, likely completely unrelated?

[FBX]

Awesome pics, FBX! I have a Va2 and Va5 that need a jailbar fix so that's super helpful.

The trace thing was for jailbars? Thanks for mentioning it cause I kept rereading and couldn't figure out why screenshots were posted for an audio fix.

The thread was about both video and audio quality on various Genesis revisions in terms of the write-up that was posted. I just took issue (as did others) that article didn't go through the right way of doing it by checking 'under the hood' so to speak. In this case, their jail bars fixed console didn't appear as an impressive jump in quality, whereas mine is night and day difference. I thought to post how I do mine in case it might somehow be that my method produces better results than snipping pin 6 on the CXA for example (which is likely how their console was modded). I've now done my method to a VA2 and a VA3, and both went to crystal clear RGB after the trace cut.

[FBX]

My new toggle switches arrived in the mail today, so I've started soldering work on the trace cuts. I scraped 1 mm of trace near the via so I could get a larger contact surface area to solder to. And let me tell you the 0.4mm conical soldering tip came in real handy for this tiny stuff! I had to use a large magnifying glass just to see what I was doing. Thankfully I didn't have much trouble getting them tacked:



I'm also going to do a stereo audio mod with RCA jacks in the back of the unit (the case already has a toggle hole drilled in it from 23 years ago, so I don't feel bad about adding more cut-mods to this one). I'll post the complete wrap-up soon, with likely a video on it.

-FBX

[Johnpv]

FBX are those screengrabs from the system going into a Framemeister? (just curious, they do look awesome!) What kind of capture device are you using?

[FBX]

FBX are those screengrabs from the system going into a Framemeister? (just curious, they do look awesome!) What kind of capture device are you using?

Unfortunately as I'm sure you know the Framemeister adds in all sorts of noise, so what I did was take multiple captures of the same screens and applied a filtering process called 'neat video'. What it does is remove animated noise between frames and leaves the stationary objects intact. The resulting final output image is effectively what the frame looked like before the Framemeister mucked it up. Stuff like jail bars remain intact because they are stationary, so I know I'm only removing the noise caused by the Framemeister itself. Its boils down to a noise-cancellation process that retains the underlying RGB image. Granted, it's not an ideal setup, and I want to switch to the OSSC as soon as possible so I can get noise-free screen grabs to begin with. Unfortunately mine won't ship until October.


-FBX

[Gunstar]

Just cut the trace on a Japanese Va2 and it worked out great, no more jail bars. Thanks, FBX.

[LK4O4]

Anyone here has a Jvc X'eye?

I'd like to know:

1)is it possible to play Master System rom from the everdrive?

2)I'd like to play my japanese mega cd games, which bios do I have to launch from the everdrive?

I would also like to know about the state of region-locking and Everdrive compatibility on the both the Wondermega and the X'eye if anyone knows.

[Syntax]

Anyone decaped a CXA1145 ? Would be nice to see the exact root of the problem.

It's already been documented, and you can see it in the image I posted. The oscillator is physically right next to the blue line, so it couples over to it.

Has anyone actually cut and moved the blue signal line away from the oscillator to confirm this?