This is pretty silly, unless you've got the exact same setup, playback devices, amps, and speakers your never going to hear what was intended. Every combination of speaker and amps is going to sound different, you need to do some mixing of levels yourself to make it appropriate for your system. Just flatlining your EQ isnt giving you what was intended, there's no way to know the responses of the original systems unless documented somewhere.

kolano wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

kolano wrote:

Have an enhancement preference myself. […]
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Have an enhancement preference myself.

On the subject of enhancement, was happy to find HDNES and HiSMS today...
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9935
http://hisms.orgfree.com/
...NES / SMS emus that support tile replacement.

I ain't quite familiar with console emulators, but do they smooth the pixels well?

I'm not sure if those two do or not. They seem more focused on supporting "enhancement packs" of higher resolution graphics (i.e. tiles/sprites) for games. Many years back there was something similar for arcade titles, but I have lost track of what became of that.

I see. What console games come with enhancement packs, by the way?

The last time I tried console emulators was when I wanted to try the first Heavy Gear games. I don't think there are many console titles interest me, but I'm open to suggestions. 😀

Logistics wrote:

tl:dr BOTH

How often do you know the "artist" had anything to do with the actual recording hardware and it's settings? How often do you know that the "artist" or their recording engineer was any good at making recordings or had a specific sound in mind?

Honestly, I am one of those people who aspires to have their system configured flat so that you get that true representation of how the recording was made, as you mentioned earlier. BUT there is a line at which you have to stop forcing yourself to listen to it that way, just because someone thinks that's the way it should be. For example: I love Ronnie James Dio's music, but there are several songs which seem like they are VERY lacking in low-end so a bump-up of their bassy tones makes the recordings much more enjoyable, in my opinion. I don't know why they were recorded this way, but I also don't care because they sound broken to me. What's the point of a heavy-metal track if the heavy guitar-work sounds light and distortion-filled, but with no low-end? It's like playing a concert with 5-1/4" loudspeakers.

Well, to be honest, my Van Halen album is also very lacking in bass, although generally I leave it that way. I prefer to hear everything flat. Of course it's nowhere a 100% accurate representation of what the audio engineer intended, but at least it's an approximation of 80s rock - an 80s music in general, where the bass sounds lacking.

My Alicia Keys Unplugged album, on the other hand... bass heavy, and very warm indeed. Its warmth sounds almost like TV live music program (like MTV unplugged) that the speakers almost sound like a TV.

So I'll leave everything flat under any circumstances, because I'm interested to recognize the tonal balance difference of different eras. It's kinda interesting, y' know.

But hey, to each his own (taste).

Shagittarius wrote:

This is pretty silly, unless you've got the exact same setup, playback devices, amps, and speakers your never going to hear what was intended. Every combination of speaker and amps is going to sound different, you need to do some mixing of levels yourself to make it appropriate for your system. Just flatlining your EQ isnt giving you what was intended, there's no way to know the responses of the original systems unless documented somewhere.

Agree, though I found flatlining EQ gives me the most accurate tonality - despite its not a 100% representation of what the audio engineer intended.

I prefer fidelity in games. I want to experience them as I did/would have when they were released. I do enjoy messing around with enhancements, but I always wind up going back to fidelity. I'm hanging on to a CRT just for this reason.

It's pretty much 50/50.

-Down in the basement, I run an untouched audio signal out to whichever amp/speaker combination I have hooked up at the time. IMHO older equipment tends to sound best when you give them a flat audio signal to work with.

-For home theater, the audio processing built into the receiver can definitely improve the experience. The Audyssey calibration software built into many receivers does a fantastic job of "shaping" the audio so that it best matches the room layout. I also use Dolby PLIIx nearly all the time to upmix 5.1 (which unfortunately most Blu-rays still come with) to 7.1. Gotta put something through those (expensive) rear speakers! PLIIx is very good; it never sounds forced, unlike some of the stereo to surround upmixers I've heard in the past.

-When it comes to monitors for retro-gaming, I still prefer a giant flat-screen CRT for DOS and Win9x games. They just do a better job of displaying pixels the size of your fist than LCDs. 😀 There's also the ridiculous smoothness. LCDs may have come a long way since the early 2000s, but they still can't match a CRT's motion handling. Not even plasma can.

-For standard definition DVD playback, madVR does a great job of improving the video quality. It can make some DVDs look nearly as good as 720p television broadcasts.

I'm also about fidelity. Even when it comes to my own game I use modern technology to hit the "fidelity" of a 1998-2000 computer better instead of the more common bloom/ssao/normalmaps. 😀

leileilol wrote:

I'm also about fidelity. Even when it comes to my own game I use modern technology to hit the "fidelity" of a 1998-2000 computer better instead of the more common bloom/ssao/normalmaps. 😀

Interesting. So you optimize your games to run on early 2000 hardware to keep them from becoming resource hog, so it could run faster on modern machines, or is it pure artistic consideration?