ADDiCT wrote:That comment of mine came across a little harsh, probably. I was just nitpicking - in principle, leileilol was right, but using strange terminology. I think TFMX allows for a mixture of FM and digital sounds. The format was developed very early in the Amiga's lifecycle, so it kinda falls between pure FM synth, and the sample-based mods.
Oh, and FM music was great on the SNES and the Mega Drive, too! The SNES sound chip can produce some really cool and atmospheric sounds.
TFMX was an extension to the OctaMed MOD format which split the 4 channels 22khz to 8 channels and added fx and simple synth. It didn't add true YM or OPL FM (which is modelled on analog waveforms) but a sort of limited, integer driven (CPU) synthesis (ie chipTunes). However, Turrican's music was entirely sample driven and was only in 4 channels (albeit a lower sample rate than 22khz) as they had had to allow other channels for soundeffects - environmental like the wind on level 1 and specific like the weapons, enemies and "One Up!" sample.
SNES didn't use FM. It used a digital sampler with limited wavetable synthesis, which was limited by extremely small sample space but used very cleverly nonetheless. SuperTurrican, for example, used a more
extensive version of the Hulsbeck TFMX MOD music (more channels) that was reedited to use the hardware reverb and chorus effects. The 16bit console that did use FM synthesis was the Sega Genesis (Megadrive) which used the Yamaha 2612 FM synth and the Zilog Z80 for sampled effects.
Also, the Dune : Spice Opera soundtrack used the Adlib Gold soundcard (professionally mixed via a mixing desk) which was also supported in the Dune CD ROM edition. Adlib Gold used the OPL3 in stereo and an addirional 12bit PCM stereo sampler which is why the Spice Opera / Dune CD soundtrack sounded so damn good. Even better than the MT32 soundtrack. Dune Amiga, the initial Cryo release sampled the Adlib Gold instruments and so it sounded closer to Spice Opera than the PC's 3.5" FDD FM soundtrack for the Adlib / SB / SB Pro. Meanwhile GUS owners who were lucky enough to get Dune CD to work with MEGA-EM (emulated MT32) got a pretty nice version that sounded better than the adlib but still worse than Adlib Gold.
Anyway, some of the best FM stuff is in SID - Knucklebusters by Rob Hubbard - Wizball by Martin Galway but there are heaps of nice Amiga chiptunes too. Lots of Sega Megadrive music was great too, including Vectorman 1 and 2 and the well known SNATCHER's in game tunes (most cinematics were CD Audio).
