Quote: Today we're showing off a little-known aspect of MAME: the fact that the MESS merger enabled full emulation of the Taito/Ensoniq Sound System. This was a subsystem integrated into a number of mid-90s Taito games that was the entire guts of a $2500 Ensoniq SD-1 synthesizer placed onto an arcade board. There's 32-voice polyphony and a sophisticated programmable effects processor to sweeten the sounds.
You might think that hardware like this was dramatic overkill for a game like Arkanoid Returns, but Taito's in-house sound team Zuntata definitely accepted the challenge with this wonderful piece of synth-pop that references the AY-3-8910 bleeps of the original machine.
MAME 0.225 includes a completely new core audio system (not the emulation, but the core mixing and resampling) created by Aaron Giles which offers higher-quality mixing and resampling and also allows us to easily identify cases where things were too loud and causing digital distortion. This particular sound system was plagued with pops and other minor distortion in previous versions of MAME; for 0.225 we've been able to fix the problem so the result is the great sound quality you hear here.
>but Taito's in-house sound team Zuntata definitely accepted the challenge with this >wonderful piece of synth-pop that references the AY-3-8910 bleeps of the original machine.
And that is just the tune up piece itself. I am already envisioning how good it will be in case Vertexer ever gets in. MAME is ready to take on any musical composition that the Zuntata group throws in MAME's direction.
There is no way anyone would want to not upgrade unless they have an extremely outdated system and still have to kick outdated system every now and then to run/jump start old version of MAME.
The memorable MAME versions imo .36 final, .106 with Aaron's video output rendering rewrite, and maybe .225 might make the memorable version update list with the audio resampling overhaul, Vas artwork update and also Votrax speech near perfection in Qbert.
Going back to audio output topic, I'd like to believe if the Synthaxe could ever be preserved/emulated in the future it will sound great in MAME.
btw: Aaron's great coding work somewhat reminds me of Vinnie Colaiuta's drumming style of 'spontaneous boffo'. It comes out of nowhere and leaves the impression with witnesses with thoughts of ..."what the hell was that we heard and 'DAMN....OMG'.
It would be wonderful for the same to happen for Gorf and Wizard of Wor, completing the popular Arcade Votrax trilogy. Arguably, it's a quadrilogy that needs to be completed, if Gottlieb's Reactor is included.
> > Votrax speech near perfection in > > Qbert. > > It would be wonderful for the same to happen for Gorf and Wizard of Wor, completing > the popular Arcade Votrax trilogy. Arguably, it's a quadrilogy that needs to be > completed, if Gottlieb's Reactor is included.
Yes, it would be peachy to finally be able to get rid of MAME .180.
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I have officially retired from sucking at everything I do. Life is much easier now.
> Noob question: this improves music/sounds of all games in MAME or just a few ones?
It should remove 90%+ of pops and crackles and distortion you may have heard as MAME attempted to mix down audio (sound effects and music) into mono or stereo in all games in MAME. There's a limiter now that prevents drivers from overdriving the mixer (which causes digital distortion and pops). We've started fixing drivers not to do it at all, but that won't be a quick process.
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R. Belmont: MAME show-off: Arkanoid Returns music (09-13-2020)
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