Demo of what ESS ESFM is capable of (Songs from koolnESS ESFM Music Disk)

[@KF486]

0:00 essneuro 3:00 cielos esfumados 6:10 deadline 8:30 devil detective 11:22 experiment 14:33 second start 16:52 walk in the park 20:37 napalm loader rmx 22:21 x evil soul

[@GameBacardi]

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[@philscomputerlab]

@@GameBacardi Done!

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Now witness the fire power of this fully armed and operational ESS audio station!

[@tapekeep]

So, the backstory on my part: I made my track ("experiment") to test the waters on a recently added chip to Furnace, the idea was to scrap this and make something else, but that never happened and I just submitted this draft as the track for the ESFM contest. It barely got enough votes, but I was already surprised it got in the demos folder at all! Skipping some time: I got a DM out of absolutely nowhere by wbcbz7 saying "hey, there's this DOS demo I'm making and I want to know if it's fine to use your track!". I said "Yeah, go for it!" and, skip some more time, I was on the demoscene, the thing that I admired for more than a decade but never really considered getting into. I'm not technically proficient about how Furnace works, let alone the fine nuances of programming, so that was by all accounts a very welcome surprise, thanks wbcbz7!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks for sharing some info!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

It’s a good track, I like it

[@Zephemeros1]

your bassline sounds like 3d pinball space cadet! listening on my ES1869 right now

[@devjock]

The demoscene welc omes any and all. You should hook up with some groups needing musicians on pouet. Good FM musiq prod skills are in high demand. I give it 6 months and you'll be visiting EU demoparties if you keep making bangers like the one showcased here ;) Godspeed mate! edit: Don't let your dreams be dreams! There are coders who can't make music at all, and there are musicians that are eager to learn the coding ropes. Get in there! You'll make it big!

[@supercompman]

It's a damn shame this wasn't fully utilized back in the day! Everything about the sound screams 90s in the most fantastic way 😊

[@blakegriplingph]

I recall a PC belonging to one of my cousins having an ESS AudioDrive sound card back in the day. Seeing the AudioRack running was a sight to behold for my elementary-age self.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

A blessed Tuesday because Phil uploaded.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@MarcoGPUtuber Tuesday Bonus Video 🤗

[@Super123456789Kuba]

Crazy to think that it (ESFM) became a hidden gem from all of the sudden xD

[@shponglefan]

That sounds amazing! Going to have to download this to try out on my own ESS cards.

[@DPADFTW]

It sounds like a cross between the Sega Mega Drive hardware, YM2612 + PSG and Capcom's QSOUND. To me anyway. Just between them in quality, and it sounds sooooooo good! Thanks for the upload!

[@DPADFTW]

@@RWL2012 Okay??? And? I'm not subbed to him, and I don't know who that is. Have a good day though. EDIT: Honestly thought you were an A.I. for a second then.

[@Vanessaira-Retro]

Thank you for uploading this Phil!

[@ryanfowlow8034]

Sick! Never thought id get a banger like this from Phil. Side note my first retro PC build is almost complete thanks to you and your videos. Cheers.

[@philscomputerlab]

Very cool! Looking forward to the finished build!

[@Zephemeros1]

Thanks for the upload! Just slapped this on a floppy and ran it on my Pentium I 90Mhz w/ ES1869. Never thought anyone would release homebrew for this hardware, and I just happen to have it LOL. SOUNDS GREAT. The track "experiment" reminds me of the music from 3d pinball space cadet for some reason.

[@Wushu-viking]

The good old days of FM synth computer audio 👍

[@DominikGorączkowski-h8q]

So, I buy a computer with Ensoniq AudioPCI and Phil makes a video about it. A few days ago I bought ESS Audiodrive and Phil makes a video about it. I feel watched...

[@worroSfOretsevraH]

Please buy a Roland SCC-1 !

[@philscomputerlab]

Hehe. What's your next purchase 😅

[@DominikGorączkowski-h8q]

@@philscomputerlab well I'd love to buy some SFF 486 computer, but the prices got crazy lately.

[@carltonleboss]

That sounds impressively good for such an old chip.

[@StasM]

​@@RWL2012 thanks for the information, but probably no need to reply this to every comment.

[@retropuffer2986]

Very impressive.

[@Henk717]

Since your video I ran it on my own one, very fun music disk! But I hope there is also a more universal player out there. Furnace has more tracks than the ones he ported and I suspect these discoveries will attract more composers. But had I not known what I am listening to I would have thought this was one of many digi audio disks, not FM synth.

[@T3hBeowulf]

Wow... this is incredible. FM Synth made this? 🤯

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes 😁 Mind-blowing

[@shponglefan]

FM synthesis is capable some crazy good sounds with a decent chip. The Yamaha DX7 really showed off what FM could do in the 80s.

[@Romerco77]

I would say it is a mix of FM synthesis and samples. You can identify the samples because of the notoriously low sample rate they have in contrast with the FM

[@drzeissler]

Will test this on PCD-4G DX33 Formosa soon...thx Phil...great find.

[@thomasr.5443]

Definitely cool sound but I've heard YMF-262 tracks that were not much worse. Of course, less polyphony and only 8 waveforms, no true stereo (though smooth L/R panning is possible with volume adjusting workaround) but, what people made with adlib tracker 2 is partly insane as well. Me myself programmed a little sidescroller in BASIC with OPL2 music in OPL3 mode and without utilising 4OPs and it's already better than what most commercial games offered. But with all chips back then, they sadly weren't used to their full potential, quite opposite to the console market.

[@Henk717]

Yup, the adtracker2 stuff is way better than any game music I know off. This feels a step beyond that though.

[@philscomputerlab]

Do you have any examples I could listen to? Thanks!

[@Henk717]

@@philscomputerlab I assume he means stuff like this: Diode Milliampere - YMF262 (2014) [ FULL ALBUM ] Corridors of Time FM Goa by Carlos All of these are bundled with adtrack2 if you want to listen on real hardware, although the album one would just be the DIODEMA folder.

[@thomasr.5443]

​@@Henk717exactly. Though I think Diode-mA doesn't utilize 4OP mode. I think some time ago he wrote something like that. Also there is a remake of the Duke Nukem 3D title theme, "Grabbag" included in AT2 which is not as outstanding in it's entirety but the guitars are almost real. A good game example for real 4OP OPL3 music is Cybersphere for MS-DOS.

[@cesaru3619]

NOICE!, wait a second, is that a pirate warez intro??? Phil's Computer Crackz! 😀

[@logipilot]

This beats coeval synths! The drums are so good for "non-wavetable".

[@mesterak]

Happy Friday Phil!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you, 👍😊

[@whiskeyjuliet]

🤘

[@cmr2079]

I bought one of these cards as a cheaper alternative to SB back in the 90's. Still have it and the computer. I'm going to give this a whirl on the real deal later tonight. :D

[@Chriva]

That's it. The ESS goes into the main retro battlestation 😂

[@philscomputerlab]

Rightly so! Great cards.

[@Chriva]

@@philscomputerlab Do you know how the 1688 behaves with a sb live on the pci bus? Would be nice to still have the live card for w9x and xp stuff

[@philscomputerlab]

@@Chriva It's an ISA card, so shouldn't be a problem. Also, in 9x and XP, you can just disable it if you don't want to use it.

[@bruce_just_]

It’s Power level is over Nine THOOOUUUSSSAAANNND!!1!1!!!1!!1!1!

[@philscomputerlab]

Dragonball Z! Though I had to google that one 😅

[@UncommonKnowledge587]

I remember a demo I witnessed on the Amstrad CPC 464. It blew me away with what they could do, on extremely limited hardware. The Z80, at 4Mhz, and 64KB memory. I can't remember any details about the demo, though.

[@akapype]

I love the idea of a music disk featuring the entries of the competition ^_^ A bit sad that the bottom scroller is so tedious to read :-/

[@LaserAngel_e]

I definitely got a Mega Man X or Mega Man Zero vibe from these songs.

[@bauerns5er]

Awesome sound. Can't believe it isn't from a Tracker Tool. Some of the songs sound like they could have been in the Soundtrack for OMF 2097.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes, it can be easily mistaken for sample based tracker music, but it's actually FM. Amazing 😍

[@Romerco77]

It sounds just like any other mod tracker music, I don't understand what's with all the fuss 😅

[@philscomputerlab]

But it's using FM! Not a single sample...

[@Romerco77]

@@philscomputerlab I'm not so sure about that, I hear samples and FM.

[@youtubewzd2196]

I've seen the first video about these music demos and tried to run them in dosbos-x and dosbox-staging as they were supposed to have support for this card but all I got was garbled noise. Now I have at least an idea what they are supposed to sound like.

[@ZXSpectrumHotel]

What are some DOS games having advantage of ESSFM?

[@DominikGorączkowski-h8q]

@@ZXSpectrumHotel yes, some. Warcraft 2 for example.

[@ZXSpectrumHotel]

@@DominikGorączkowski-h8q What a pitty. I played WC2 for years not knowing that I'm the chosen :)

[@philscomputerlab]

I showcase a few games in my previous video!

[@2tailedfox711]

Phil! Any chance you might consider adding more/different patreon tiers?

[@philscomputerlab]

I don't have plans. You can pledge a custom amount if you wish, though!

[@drzeissler]

Formosa SC1630 plays music in some very old ea-titles (Kingsofthebeach), most other cards don't play it.