Boosting the Supergun experience

[raiden]

with my cab-shaped cupboard and custom multi-plug solution for PCBs, I was pretty content already, but besides getting Sanwa parts there was one thing I always postponed until recently: sound. I knew PCBs are supposed to output directly to a speaker without any amplifier in between, and that doing otherwise can damage the soundchips in the long run. But my speakers were always attached to the amplifier, and I didn´t want to switch cables all the time, so I played with sound coming from the TV´s speakers for two years.
Last weekend, I finally got my act together and bought a spare pair of speakers for 10 Euro. Nothing fancy, but with a wooden case, that´s what I paid attention to. Rewiring the Supergun seemed easy, just put a pair of cinch sockets (the speakers came with cinch plugs) between audio+ and common ground. I used common ground because that´s what the TV demanded, it didn´t work with audio-. But then I found out that only 5 games worked that way, the other 3 refused to play sound. Yet I was completely blown away by the sound quality improvement. Sooo many details in there which I couldn´t hear before, every single enemy explosion, every pattern being fired caused a sound effect, all clearly discernable from another. Yesterday I fixed the whole setup to use audio-, and now all the games sound like this. I can now clearly hear the inferior sound quality of Cave games (DDP and Guwange in my case) compared to Psikyo, Seibu and Raizing hardware, still even Cave stuff sounds stunning. It´s so much of an improvement I can hardly bear it, the playing experience is incredibly more intense now. Playing in arcades, the speakers were always barely audible, and consoles with their generic soundchips often can´t compete either. Emulation has the same problem, even if graphics look 1:1, you just don´t get the same sound quality when all those channels that have a separate soundchip on a PCB get mixed and downgraded in something like DirectX.
So I´d like to encourage anybody playing with a Supergun through TV setup, invest the small amount of money and work needed for this operation, it´s more than worth it. The difference is bigger than that of picture quality via an antenna cable vs. RGB. Well, it probably depends on the kind of TV you´re using, if you´re using a cheap one like me, it´s that intense really. Even then, it helps to keep your PCBs alive, so don´t be lazy like me and wait for 2 years.
One example: some time ago a friend played RFJ on my setup and complained about the monotonous music. I somehow had to agree, the drumloop dominated so much it sometimes sounded just terribly dumb. But now, with all the added details I can hear, it´s actually a pretty cool soundtrack, the music is changing all the time really, only in nuances my TV speakers couldn´t transfer. And with the thick sound carped of all the effects it´s not boring at all anymore.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I've got one of the famous Matt's ("Da Man") produced Superguns which has outputs for hooking up external speakers upto 100 watts. I just have to adjust the arcade PCB's volume control and I'm in business! ^_~

Of course, it does sound better if you hook up a pair of stereo speakers directly to a arcade PCB if it supports stereo output: like the SP-1 mobo does, the original SNK MV-1 Neo-Geo mobo does, the Taito G-Net does, and even the CPS-2 does (if you use the optional Q-Sound chip board which gives three dimensional sound with just only two speaker setup). Yes, I realize there are other arcade motherboards such as the Sega Naomi 1 & 2 and the new Taito Type X that output in stereo as well.

I've noticed that on some the arcade PCBs (when I've hooked up the 100w speakers), the heat-sink and/or some IC chips tend to get quite warm...so sometimes, I just go with the internal arcade speakers that Matt installed internally on his custom-made Superguns and I don't get the warm heat-sink and/or IC chips problem.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~