PCM Audio Quality vs Redbook Audio Quality In games

[KimagureMachibuse]

What are differences between PCM Audio of the PS1 and Sega Saturn and redbook cd audio of games as I do not see much comaprisons between the two audio types online and this is a question that very much intrigues me as i have played a few games with PCM Audio used for the game music and i mistakened it for redbook audio music for how clean and high quality they sound but i can confirm that the music from these games are using PCM Audio.

Mega CD PCM audio sounds quite different compared to redbook audio on the Sega Mega CD which is why its not apart of this question but would like to hear more insight of it if anyone knows more about the differences.

[it290]

The Saturn supports PCM audio playback at 16-bit 44100hz stereo, which is CD quality. PS1 is the same. So assuming the dev is using the highest quality mode there's no difference in sample quality vs. Redbook audio. The Mega CD on the other hand only supports 32khz samples but more significantly only has 64KB available in RAM to store them, so any samples loaded that way are likely to be significantly downsampled or quite short in length.

By the way, Redbook audio is also PCM audio, this just refers to the encoding type which is pretty much standard for all digital audio.

[ED-057]

They can play audio from the CD that is stored in a data track instead of an audio track. That audio may still be CD-quality, or it could be down-sampled or compressed (eg. ADPCM) to save space on the disc or make time for loading other data from the disc without interrupting the audio. For instance, Lunar 2 EB on Saturn uses 22KHz for most of its music.

[KimagureMachibuse]

The Saturn supports PCM audio playback at 16-bit 44100hz stereo, which is CD quality. PS1 is the same. So assuming the dev is using the highest quality mode there's no difference in sample quality vs. Redbook audio. The Mega CD on the other hand only supports 32khz samples but more significantly only has 64KB available in RAM to store them, so any samples loaded that way are likely to be significantly downsampled or quite short in length.

By the way, Redbook audio is also PCM audio, this just refers to the encoding type which is pretty much standard for all digital audio.

Glad you can clear this up for me as i was sure there was no difference on audio quality when it was highest quality audio of PCM or redbook cd audio now I also was not aware that PCM and Redbook where essencially the same

I can assume that storing the music tracks as redbook cd audio more common than for saturn games than ps1 im not sure what that reason was but you can correct me on that or if thats true or not