Has anyone else ever noticed that NES music sounds terrible with headphones on?
Hmmm, except the absence of the natural damping of a room there's no great difference between speakers and headphones.
Granted I only listened to two games and I have some serious headphones, but I didn't hear any difference between my speakers and my headphones.
When I was writing music with Nerdtracker 2 I was using headphones some of the time. I do remember especially if you have a single channel doing something by itself it can be painful to listen to.
My old IBM PS/1 had a headphone jack for the PC speaker. Had a volume control, was pretty nice actually with a select few programs.
I remember wearing headphones experimenting with the square waves, not really sure of what I was doing or how certain things would effect the sound... Yeah, not a good idea! I ended up with some obnoxious tones in my ear that actually made me feel weird to listen to. After a while, I concluded there were health risks involved if I didn't take off my headphones
.
But besides that, I have listened to NSFs with headphones, and I agree they sound pretty bad. One reason NES music might sound horrible on headphones is the complete lack of bass. It seems like all songs just have no power or meaning behind them, like there's a bunch of sound missing from what's heard. And I don't know, I just feel so awkwardly embraced by mathematics when I hear NES music on headphones; it just sounds so calculated and unnatural. If that makes any sense...
I didn't notice any significant differences than with speakers... I don't think there is a total lack of bass either, but there is definitely a lot of harmonics in the square & noise waves.
I also used to use a lot headphones with the GBA, of which a lot of games makes heavy use of old GB PSG channels. But now I tend to hardly use headphones anymore because of health risks.
I found most video game music formats to be a LOT easier to listen to on my PSP (via GameMusicGear MX) after cranking up the bass and lowering the mid-range in the equalizer. Most early "bleepy" NES tunes are still pretty painful, though.
Bregalad wrote:
health risks
?
Pulse wave music has lots of high frequency harmonics, which I suppose could cause hearing damage if listened to at high volume for long periods of time. I definitely notice a weird warbling effect if I listen to such music for a while, then stop and hear normal sounds.
I don't have any issues with listening to nes music with earphones. No problem with bass too. For nsf players, I always use a filter to make it sound more like a real nes. Without that, the sound is too crisp and feel less accurate to me.
The only nsf I had issue with is Crystalis because of the sample used always pop or something and was annoying for the ear.
I listen to nes music almost everyday and earphone was the only way. Maybe I'm just used to it. I'm using canal earphones with seems to have an emphasis on bass so maybe this is why it's sound ok.
Does music with a Sunsoft-style DPCM bass sound any better through headphones?
i think the 2a03 is capable of good bass, especially from the Triangle waveform. though even with a straight Triangle wave on its own, there's still some odd high-frequency content in there somewhere that can really grate on your ears after a while. the other channels aren't any better in their regard to outputting high frequencies, and the DPCM channel can get pretty nasty due to sample aliasing. the problem is that there's no filtering capabilities in the 2a03, which always leaves the highs blasting.
there's not much of any way around it on the hardware, but it can be fine-tuned to some degree using external EQ. as for headphones, (i'm not sure what you have now, but) you try another set with a flatter frequency response or even bass-enhancement.
the Game Boy is similar, sometimes it just starts to hurt your ears after a while.
jbuonacc wrote:
the problem is that there's no filtering capabilities in the 2a03, which always leaves the highs blasting.
The way it's
supposed to work is that the RF modulator filters the high frequencies, or (if you're on an AV Famicom or a frontloader) your cheap television set's cheap speakers filter the high frequencies.
Quote:
the Game Boy is similar, sometimes it just starts to hurt your ears after a while.
Once, while trying to figure out why I couldn't hear bass in the music engine I was writing for
TOD, I analyzed the frequency response of my GBA's speaker by playing a song that just turned on the noise channel. The internal speaker's response was close to a 3rd-order Butterworth band-pass filter with corners at about 800 Hz and 10000 Hz; headphones fared better.
The problem with using the triangle wave as bass is that it's almost inaudible when you start playing low pitches. But I will agree, this is what you'd want to use for bass (I always have square melodies and triangular bass lines). I guess using the DCM for bass is also an option. I've heard some pretty good bass come out of that on Nerd Tracker...
tepples wrote:
jbuonacc wrote:
the problem is that there's no filtering capabilities in the 2a03, which always leaves the highs blasting.
The way it's
supposed to work is that the RF modulator filters the high frequencies, or (if you're on an AV Famicom or a frontloader) your cheap television set's cheap speakers filter the high frequencies.
well, i was talking more about a dedicated lo/band/hi-pass filter like found on the SID chip.
I've never had a problem with NSFs through headphones. In fact, the NSF player for Moonshell on the DS separates each sound channel for a stereo effect and adds a small echo, making NSFs sound fantastic.
I have Sennhenser foldable headphones, and those have rather pronounced bass. I hear a pop every time a square wave turns on or off. But Sunsoft-style DMC bass seems to muffle it a lot.
Celius wrote:
The problem with using the triangle wave as bass is that it's almost inaudible when you start playing low pitches. But I will agree, this is what you'd want to use for bass (I always have square melodies and triangular bass lines). I guess using the DCM for bass is also an option. I've heard some pretty good bass come out of that on Nerd Tracker...
Yeah, the DPCM can work pretty good for bass. I had a lot of songs that had the triangle+DPCM both playing the same thing (except drums would interrupt the triangle, or in a couple songs, the DPCM).
For me it worked out pretty well to use headphones when writing music, I could hear it a lot better. I'd assume there's always going to be someone who has speakers 100X better than what I'm using, heheh, and that's where you want it to sound good. Seems like I recall being pretty happy with the triangle channel alone for bass, with headphones at least, but it's been a while since I've done any sound stuff really..
Recca is one example, where they muted the triangle channel by setting it to the lowest frequency rather than silence it. Haha, I think kevtris had fixed that "bug" when the NSF was ripped. That's a pretty extreme example, but shows how bad the problem can be if you can't hear properly.
I guess lots of commercial Nintendo games were written with TV speakers in mind. I don't listen to much of that anymore because, yeah, it's ear-piercing. And yeah, I notice slight tics or pops on any heavy volume changes or long fades if there's only one channel playing.
The stuff I wrote/covered on nsf was all done on headphones, with a nice pair of headphones in mind.
tepples wrote:
Does music with a Sunsoft-style DPCM bass sound any better through headphones?
For me, their DPCM samples tend to sound a lot better with headphones...I've always been a sucker for clarity and usually, even on tracked songs, tend to kill any filters...mabye it's just somthing about noise from the compression that I like...Then again I've personally found that using stereoizer and bandpass effects on the square-waves tend to help quite a bit to prevent that harmonic ringing that goes straight to your head...that and listening at lower levels on better headphones(of course).
- All my NES playtime was using a famiclone. That means switched duty cycles - when I hear the "correct" sound, it was all "wrong".
Anyway, I believe the 50% duty cycle is responsible for some uncomfortable tunes with headphones.
- General approach: I love NES music.
and mm10 music too.
blargg wrote:
Pulse wave music has lots of high frequency harmonics, which I suppose could cause hearing damage if listened to at high volume for long periods of time. I definitely notice a weird warbling effect if I listen to such music for a while, then stop and hear normal sounds.
Well I'd imagine square waves being able to harm your ears since it pushes your eardrums really fast back in forth.
On topic: It sounds fine to me when I listen to it with my nice stereo bass headphones.
I think nsf's sound pretty awesome with the Notso Fatso plugin for Winamp.
Celius wrote:
I remember wearing headphones experimenting with the square waves, not really sure of what I was doing or how certain things would effect the sound... Yeah, not a good idea! I ended up with some obnoxious tones in my ear that actually made me feel weird to listen to. After a while, I concluded there were health risks involved if I didn't take off my headphones
.
But besides that, I have listened to NSFs with headphones, and I agree they sound pretty bad. One reason NES music might sound horrible on headphones is the complete lack of bass. It seems like all songs just have no power or meaning behind them, like there's a bunch of sound missing from what's heard. And I don't know, I just feel so awkwardly embraced by mathematics when I hear NES music on headphones; it just sounds so calculated and unnatural. If that makes any sense...
I agree, very 'tin-ney' sound and no bass
I've listened to nsfs with headphones in many different players, as well as the NES directly through a mixer, and I've never really noticed it sounding bad. I mean I think I understand some of the complaints mentioned here (not bassy 'enough', etc), but perhaps I've just been used to the sound and it hasn't really bothered me.
I do have a set of earbuds that it sounds really muffled through, but that's all music and not just NES music. Everything sounds fine to me through these-
I use headphones for virtually all of my NSF to MP3 converting. I think it's the best way to check for clarity.
I don't listen to it blaringly loud though.
...
Except for Follin Bros. tracks.