My point was simply to illustrate how unfair of a comparison it was, not to comment on the hardware capabilities of those two systems.

The thing is, with FM sythesizers you always know it is an FM synthesizer. Nothing you can do will mask the sound of it. However, with a sampler it is significantly harder to know for sure a sampler is being used just from the sound.

Yes, I am aware. Again, I was merely illustrating that the comparison was not a fair one. But my point remains, FM synthesizer music is very prone to ear piercing shrieking, whereas the SNES tends to produce a softer, warmer sound. Yes, it can still shriek, but you really have to try with the correct note and sample combinations to do that. Even though the Genesis can output a better range of notes, it is easier for the notes to clash as well. Mostly you will find games from those times had the audio crunched into the midtones, and this is probably because CRT speakers werent very good and pushing the audio into the midtones produced a better sound.

Its obviously not a fair comparison, lol.

“If you connect a Nintendo Wii to a surround system and play a game that supports surround, it sounds way better than an Xbox Series X connected to a 1981 portable radio tv with a mono speaker.” Yeah, of course it will. But when considering the output capabilities of the audio systems of each, absolutely nobody is talking about this kind of scenario.

The comparison is assuming all things are equal, which includes the skill or knowledge of the sound programmer, speaker quality, etc. The Genesis can sound more crisp, but at the cost of being only capable of FM synthesizer music, which is extremely prone to sounding piercing or tinny. High pitch notes especially are susceptible to this. The Genesis is vastly easier to make it sound worse than the SNES, specifically because of the ability to have 8 channels of samples.

I am not sitting here saying that this sounds so much worse than this because its obvious. That is also not a fair comparison.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I love FM synthesizer music, Ryu Umemoto was a god on the PC98, not a single one of his entire composed library sounded bad. But in comparison to hardware capable of sample playback, that is already an unfair comparison right from the beginning.

Being debt free one of the few status symbols you cannot see. At that point, is it a status symbol if other people cannot see it?

I mean, I still agree though. Be debt free, seriously.

This is cool but the title of this article could not be more wrong.

The Genesis SPU is not capable of recreating the output of the SNES APU. The Genesis SPU was a programmable FM synthesizer, which is a completely different technology that is significantly more limited than the programmable sampler-like SNES APU. It is impossible for the Genesis to “perfectly recreate” anything from the SNES, unless the SNES soundtrack used samples of an FM synthesizer, in which case the other way around would be more accurate: that the SNES is recreating the Genesis. This did happen in some multiplat games that were made for the Genesis first. Even if somehow one could program the Genesis SPU to use only samples, there is only one channel capable of sample playback on the Genesis, whereas on the SNES, ALL 8 channels were capable of sample playback.

While it does not sound bad, in comparison to the SNES, the Genesis will lose every time. Its like comparing the NES to the SNES, the capability of the SNES APU (which was actually only slightly modified and then used for the PlayStation 1 SPU, both chips were designed by the same person, fun fact) just vastly outshines it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love FM synthesizer music. Games from the PC98 just sound wrong to me when played through generic MIDI or the Roland SC-88 Pro. But to say that the Genesis is perfectly recreating the music from a SNES game is just incorrect.

If this documentary doesn’t require the LEGO Island Documentary CD to be in the CD-ROM drive, then it is fake.

My hope: a cool new Ecco game like the final entry in the series.

Reality: Gambling simulator using environment conscious dolphins as a mascot.