Originally posted by: zi
NO. don't do that, at least with my stuff. it would sound weird, especially since i have pulse 1 as the lead and the 2 as a backup or secondary. some echo effects run the same track down both pulses but offset, which might sound cool split, but i dont think the chipset was developed for stereo, nor was the creation of music in games or homebrews.
mono through both speakers is nice. hell, bump up the bass (triangle) track for a more robust sound!!!
When Brad Smith created MOON8, he made the Famitracker files for Side A and Side B available on his website rainwarrior.ca, and I did the whole "split stereo" thing and made a stereo mix CD out of it. It sounded pretty badass. A lot of times Brad Smith created an "echo" effect using the Pulse 0 and Pulse 1 channels, so Pulse 0 (left channel) was the primary melody, and Pulse 1 (right channel) was the echo. Other times when the music called for chords or multiple notes played simultaneously, he used dithering of the audio, and the resulting cornocopia was especially trippy through the speakers.
I do agree with you on one front, triangle and PCM should never be panned, because these provide the vast majority of the bassline effects in chiptune music, which needs as much woofer as possible...
Also there's an Atari hardware mod (similar to the NES hardware mod) to separate the two 2600 channels from the TIA into left and right discrete audio, but since a lot of developers used one channel for melody and one for explosions and sound effects, the effect was less than desirable, but it depended on the game.
I think stereo mods on any system designed solely for monaral audio depend largely on how developers chose to design their game as to whether the separation sounds good or not.