SNES Audio System Overview - SPC700 Series pt. 1

Ever wondered how the SNES's audio subsystem, the SPC700, produced all the beautiful music and sounds in all of those SNES classics? It's all explained right here.
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SPC700 & ARAM - SNES Features Pt. 10 - • SPC700 & ARAM - Super ...

[@MohammadAlmeqdadi]

These videos should not only be part of a real course regarding low level programming, but these are so well made, that they should really be part of a Nintendo or programming museum. Your work goes beyond excellence and is absolutely monumental. Can't wait for the rest of the series!

[@gabrote42]

Bump

[@KyleDavis328]

I definitely learned more about low level computing from this channel than I did my actual low level programming course at college.

[@canebro1]

@@KyleDavis328 Ditto!

[@Dr_Mel]

This makes me feel like programming back then was such a resource-constrained job that it forced a lot of organizational creativity, which is something I love to see.

[@stevenschiro1838]

Exactly, it’s art through adversity. It’s why I still play a lot of the games back then, while newer ones are forgotten quickly

[@jimmyhirr5773]

If I remember correctly, Super Mario Kart came from an attempt to create a follow-up to F-Zero.

[@stevenschiro1838]

@@jimmyhirr5773 I believe they wanted a 2 player fzero, but they realized the SNES couldn't handle it at the speed and size of the levels in F-Zero (something how mode 7 2 player could only be 1/4 of the size), so they came up with the idea of Kart racing instead, since the levels would be smaller and the speed would be slower. Pretty cool that the whole series is just because of that limitation

[@shinyhappyrem8728]

@@stevenschiro1838: F-Zero streams new tilemap data into VRAM during gameplay, just like a regular platformer. You can't do that for 2 players because one may be so slow that he's in a completely different area of the level. You'd have to switch to a top-down view like in F-1 Grand Prix, and halfway across the screen move the "camera" to the second player's section of the tilemap.

[@misterdeedeedee]

as with everything involved in humanity, limitation breeds creativity. if it didn't we literally wouldn't be here both physically and technologically.

[@HBMmaster]

welcome back! great educational value in this video as always

[@Nerizwith]

Of course we see jan Misali / Mr. Conlang man over here learning about the computer language.

[@Leadbraw]

I've seen u on two completely different vids in the past week now

[@demosmemebrewery9916]

toki.

[@masicbemester]

a surprise to be sure but a welcome one

[@TheChooseAName123]

Your SNES videos helped me greatly when I hacked the HD features into bsnes. It's quite possible I would not have been able to put bsnes-hd together without them. And I still use and enjoy them. Now you start focusing on audio in great detail which I look forward to for about half a dozen reasons. And, yes, one of them is discussions about "HD audio" via sample packs (like texture packs). Keep up the great work. All the best. Greetings from Germany.

[@shinyhappyrem8728]

↑ Dieser Kommentar müsste mal gepinnt werden :)

[@grn1]

I knew about resource mods for Dolphin but never thought there'd be similar mods for a SNES emulator (in retrospect it makes sense, I just never considered it). Keep up the good work.

[@TS6815]

So glad to see you're back! Hope you are doing okay and that everything's getting better for you -- the works you make for this little community might feel vestigial or like footnotes but they are all such a positive thing and we're glad you're still able to do it. And you're inspiring so many of us to learn more about computers and hardware. You're a great ambassador! Hang in there!

[@sovdee]

I second everything Tim said, and wanted to add that your videos have been a major reason in my decision to get a degree in computer engineering. Thank you for being such an inspiration!

[@mjdxp5688]

The SNES has some of my favorite sound capabilities of any console, SNES music always sounds amazing.

[@coolbrotherf127]

It sounds amazing in the popular games with quality developers working on them. There were some low quality SNES games that didn't use the sound chip well that sound like knives on a chalkboard instead of actual music.

[@douro20]

I could just imagine what they could have done with it if the sample memory wasn't limited to the SPC700's address space.

[@johneysupergd7796]

Likely theres a sound swapping trick to swap sound samples in & out on the fly to get around that 64KB limitation😁🙏🙏 This way we don’t have to cut sound samples in pieces and down sample them agressivaly and/or worry about the limited amount of samples we could store inside it no. Because with sound swapping we will have more freedom in what we wanna do on the snes. Star ocean and tales of phantasia does contain the flexible sound driver engine to allow playback of long voices. How cool is that??? And with that in mind it makes me curious how much better snes audio could be by using such sound engine. Imagine zelda 3,supermario allstars etc… with much better audio quality and all without an external soundchip at all, that would be cool🥲

[@Stitastic]

“And when the world needed him most, he returned”

[@nagi.desuuu]

yeah yeah...

[@steven_________7853]

Really missed this channel! My Masters project was to build a super nintendo on a Zynq FPGA. I got about 70% done with it, but had a working sound processor. The SPC700 was the coolest sound processor I've worked on in a along long time.

[@biggallcaps]

Oh boy more content that I barely understand because it's very in depth and complicated! I'm always excited to watch these so please keep doing them 😁

[@segfaultec4064]

I love that because of how clear your pronounciation is, youtube's autogenerated subtitles are nearly flawless. Great that your back, been looking forward to this!

[@subg9165]

except of course when youtube decides to forget the word "zero"

[@oxybrightdark8765]

I love that this has actual subtitles, non auto generated.

[@PuglyWont]

Wow, this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for! Thanks so much for making this series. Your graphics series are great, but I've tried to understand the SPC700 at a lower level on my own. (with only minor success) I make chiptune music, and I have math and some CS knowledge so I've wanted to make sense of the SPC700. Last year an audio plugin called chipsynth SFC was released that emulates the SPC700 exactly. You can see the registers for playing back an SPC in this. I tried to break apart some of the classic music I like and get into the fine detail of the timing of everything. I ran into an issue trying to understand the envelopes though. The ADSR makes sense, but the custom envelope settings with the Increase Linear, Decrease Linear...etc wasn't exactly clear. I was trying to make sense of the timings, but couldn't quit get it with Nintendo's documentation. I was able to make sense of the bit operations a little bit couldn't convert it to actual lengths of time. Your explanations of the timers completely cleared up my understanding of these. I can't wait to get to the rest... time to Patreon it up!

[@commandercross2638]

Words can't describe how glad I am to see this channel back. I may not fully get everything explained here but it sure is a joy learning about it

[@Portentous__]

I’ve never owned an SNES, but I find these videos incredibly interesting, and they’re partly the reason I’m so into tech stuff. Not only that, but the way you explain registers have helped me greatly in understanding assembly!

[@grn1]

Had a Genesis myself then an N64. I did get to play some ports on SNES games that were released on GBA (SMW, ALttP) and have used emulators (mostly virtual console) to play some of the games I missed like EarthBound.

[@michaelcalvin42]

I've always been fascinated by the SPC-700, ever since I was a child. In fact, several years ago, I built a jukebox to stream BRR files and upload SPC files to an SPC-700 module using an Arduino microcontroller. This video was so well put together that I had to subscribe. Keep up the good work! I look forward to the rest of this series.

[@nyanpasu64]

Fun fact: pitch modulation doesn't occur instead of the modulator being played normally, but in parallel. But people generally mute the modulator's mixing level because it usually sounds bad played together. Though this doesn't turn off pitch modulation, because it ignores the modulator's mixing level and only uses ADSR/GAIN.

[@jimmerjammy]

Finally! You are the epitome of low level programming creators

[@McCoy-00]

These videos are probably better than the documentation given to developers back in the 90s by Nintendo. Except you have the gift of hindsight and they had the gift of trying to make something out of all the specs.

[@newoldstock_]

Excellent! We've all been eagerly awaiting these. Thank you so much for your work.

[@Justin-TPG]

Another great, well constructed, explained and animated video! You have, ironically, an audio editing glitch at 8:55

[@undefined06855]

I wondered what that was

[@josemarques131]

Such an impressive and powerful complex videogame console to this day. Your work is mind blowing. Thank You!

[@Slamy4096]

You should mention as well, that the SNES had a huge disadvantage of loading times for soundtrack data. Some games stay on a black screen to shovel sound data to the SPC whenever the song is changed.

[@Midee]

Yep, though I assume most of this was from loading the actual samples. (and maybe sound effects too?)

[@Waccoon]

@@Midee Yeah, the dirty secret is that data was often compressed, so even cartridge-based consoles didn't have "instant" load times. Loading data into a port-mapped chip can often be pretty slow.

[@nickwallette6201]

It doesn’t take very long to load 32K.

[@shinyhappyrem8728]

Secret of Mana is especially annoying in that regard... thankfully there's a MSU1 patch.

[@lucianothewindowsfan]

Most N-SPC variants store few music at ARAM, which could be switched via input ports. Surprisingly, few N-SPC games (such as most of those using Nova's variant of the N-SPC) store *every song in ARAM(!).*

[@liamthoralexanderspencer4684]

Fun fact: in some revisions of the SNES the sound system is on a separate board that pops on to the motherboard like a internal cartridge!

[@MidnightMechanic]

This chip outperformed the Amigas. This thing was a beast. Remember, DKC's soundtrack was performed on this chipset!

[@TroyBlackford]

How David Wise replicated those lengthy, evolving Korg Wavestation, sounds with 64KB is still beyond me. And I've had it explained to me before hahaha. Truly genius, and a sign of the remarkability of this sound setup.

[@Slamy4096]

Concerning the number of audio channels, yes. But the Amiga has still the advantage of having all its chip ram available for sound samples. For complex instruments, 64 kB is sometimes not enough.

[@somethingoriginal1707]

@@Slamy4096 not to mention that some trackers could increase the number of channels from 4 to 8 at the cost of of some CPU cycles and reduced quality.

[@XanthinZarda]

And Plok. Without an addon chip.

[@bennyturbo]

Lol no it didn't, by a lot. Have you listened to some of h0ffman's tracks for example?

[@ClassicGameSessions]

Awesome, sitting down for a good watch - looking forward to this!

[@dancinninja]

I love this! I love these! I learn SO MUCH! Thank you!

[@zazaaji9833]

I am sooooo happy to see you're back.

[@ロズマリミルクシワル]

Though I don't know much about it, the SNES sound system is actually my favorite (comparing it to stuff like MID, MOD, XM, or IT). I'm glad you've been able to get to it. Your other videos have helped me gain a better grasp on how my favorite consoles work, in conjunction with dev manuals, and observation on my own. I'm hoping I can do a series similar to yours with the AGB, my favorite handheld. Sadly, its audio system is not as elegant as the SNES. It's just 4B buffer of 8b playback. My dad and I are actually dissecting a dead GAME BOY micro (the charging port is thrashed). Thankfully, it's ONLY AGB stuff. Every other AGB has not AGB stuff. Your videos have also helped me with the rendering in a game I'm making (I might also make an engine for FDS, SFC, CGB and AGB). Anyway. I love computers. I love your work. I'd love to do what you do, but for the AGB.

[@rashidisw]

Older SNES emulator do have feature where you can save the music as 8-channels .MOD file.

[@timpunny]

WOOOOOO! YEAAAAAH BABY! That's what I've been waiting for! That's what it's all about! Wooooo!

[@tf_d]

NO WAY THANK YOU SO MUCH I'VE BEEN NEEDING THIS!

[@cureabees9440]

I love your voice!! 🥺🥺And this video is just so well made, I love how clearly you explain everything. I don't really know much about programming but you sound very smart talking about it xD This is useful to me because I'm interested in the SPC700 for music production purposes... thank you

[@brightsideofmaths]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge here :)

[@nintendoloverin9567]

Glad to see another video! You're amazing!

[@johnadams6249]

big fan of your new video thumbnails!❤️

[@pp9043pp]

This are one of the more awesome videos that I've seen from audio. I would love to see the same but for the NES

[@crtxl]

This series will be awesome. Should cover parts of the SNES which are seldom talked. I hope he often has to 'f f f f' 😃

[@duncathan_salt]

Fantastic! I've been excited for this series for some time. Your work never ceases to impress and capture my awe and curiosity. :)

[@narayanbandodker5482]

8:53 editing error?

[@angeldude101]

I really hope the cartridge audio pins will be covered since from what I understand they basically allow bypassing most of the subsystem to stream in audio samples directly, allowing for things like the MSU-1.

[@RiverRiceRansom]

Yes!!! You’re back!

[@MaNameizJeff]

thanks so much for this series! I love the sound hardware from these 8 and 16 bit systems and snes was always one of my favorite. Can't wait for the other parts.

[@geovani60624]

if I had a channel like this one when I had more patience I would definitely make my own snes game

[@medvidekkrupicka1404]

Glad to see you back and still going strong! I really like your elaborate explanations and detailed knowledge of the topics you learn us. Thanks a lot!

[@ChadDoebelin]

glad you're back!

[@MrBillgonzo]

Yeaaaaaaaah! I've been waiting for this series! 🙌

[@trizgo_]

8:50 thought my ears were playing tricks on me

[@kasugaryuichi9767]

I missed these so much!

[@bitsaucetv]

Welcome back my man!

[@DAK0404]

You need to collab with Summoning Salt, the result would be phenomenal

[@WishMakers]

Oh good! I was beginning to wonder whether it was going to happen!! Thank you so much for making these, and welcome back!! Take it easy if you can!

[@cheapnoiseinthehouse5578]

Yes! I've been waiting for this.

[@Programancer]

Great video! It'd be interesting to see a list of tracks that can't be saved as .spc. The only one that I can think of off the top of my head is the intro theme from Tales of Phantasia, which has full lyrics and has (had?) issues being played in emulators.

[@DFX2KX]

I think some of the DKC games had songs like this, as well as potentially Super Star Wars from all the samples?

[@shinyhappyrem8728]

Earthworm Jim 2

[@smellyfishstiks]

OOOH I'm so looking forward to this

[@MrRahovart]

Welcome back!!

[@AltaVistaReserv]

Not that i understand much, but man is this interesting and calming video, thank you!

[@nickwallette6201]

Oooh, SPC time! I am HERE for this!

[@orbyfied]

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO these videos are so good theyre probably more addictive than crack im so excited for the series bro

[@ryansteele2111]

I truly love these videos.

[@yaseentwati7737]

Never clicked on a notification this fast Welcome back

[@JannisSicker]

after making two entire albums by programming the SPC, it's nice to finally see how it actually works 😅

[@desoft8b]

Thanks for the subtitles.

[@swapd0]

So SPC700 is almost a 6502 CPU, interesting.

[@possible-realities]

Would be interesting to know what are the differences to a regular 6502. The AY register thing definitely sounds like an addition, and the builtin memory mapped registers.

[@michaelcalvin42]

It's almost a complete superset of the 6502 (probably to save developer learning curve from those coming from the NES at least in part.) It has some new instructions like multiply, divide, and some 16-bit versions of some normal 6502 instructions.

[@Iceykitsune]

It Lives!

[@pannekook2000]

Welcome back! Love these videos as an amateur rom hacker

[@smartyhall]

Amazing video as always! Ironically, there seems to be a slight audio glitch just before the discussion of the DAC.

[@cheesecraft789]

Misread the beginning as scp700 and got really confused for a second

[@PC_Simo]

I was looking for an SCP-reference, like this 👍🏻.

[@lagia5]

YES, thank you for making this serires, i have been working on a SPC player, using the actual SPC from a dead SNES

[@Leadbraw]

Another banger!

[@Dhalin]

I think a lot of people who underestimate the SNES's soundsystem are people who played terrible emulators. I tried, for example, Snes9x once and it sounded terrible compared to the real thing. Before you go bashing the SNES for having a "bad" sound system, do us all (and yourself) a favor and grab BSNES and try it that way. You'll find that the SNES sounds simply amazing. Also, I really wish people would stop uploading game music on KZbin with bad emulators. Hate clicking on videos and hearing some butchered version because they captured it with said bad emulators.

[@MarioFanGamer659]

I will mention that SNES9x's sound driver did improve quite a bit in recent years so nowadays, the difference between SNES9x and BSNES's SPC700 + DSP emulation is much smaller nowadays than a couple years ago. That being said, ZSNES still (of course it still does, it hasn't been updated for years) has got these weird audio glitches and naturally isn't recommend for playing back sound.

[@Dhalin]

@@MarioFanGamer659 BSNES also has the Mode7 fix nowadays too, not sure if that was ever implemented in SNES9x that makes anything done in Mode7 look even better than it did on original hardware.

[@CrushedAsian255]

can't wait for the rest of the series!!!

[@The_Future_isnt_so_Bright]

Holy crap, the only other person too go into depth about how this works is David Wise. Yes, that David Wise from Rare.

[@triforcewielder8500]

Stay up brother! Glad you're back

[@jaysistar2711]

Yes! More videos on how the SNES works!

[@spaceguybob]

I always love these

[@randomnerd4600]

glad to see another snes related series, what are you going to cover next? maybe nes or gb?

[@shinyhappyrem8728]

For the GB there's "The Ultimate GB Talk" by Michael Steil.

[@randomnerd4600]

@@shinyhappyrem8728 yeah but i prefer this type of video, its easy to digest and split into parts

[@glenndoiron9317]

I don't know anything about the SPC700, but boy that overview (with the exception of linking the A & Y registers) looks a lot like a 6502 architecture.

[@alexmush672]

THE RETURN OF THE KING!

[@CH32mix]

Excelent video! i want to mention that the main theme of Chrono Trigger is one example of a song that doesn't fit in just one SPC file.

[@Dhalin]

Also, Dancing Mad (FF6) has to be split up as well, because it's actually 5 tracks that the game seamlessly weaves together in response to your gameplay.

[@VivienBihl]

Thank you so much for your amazing work.

[@whamer100]

yay new series! i missed this

[@wiibrewlover5923]

I'm not sure if you noticed, but your voice sounds like it almost disappears at 8:54. I'm not sure if you've noticed that during editing.

[@whatevermakesyouhappy5932]

Very interesting stuff.

[@justtestingmycurrentskills747]

He Returned

[@csgoyuri6413]

LET'S GOOOOOO I WAS BINGING YOUR VIDEOS AND I'M REALLY GLAD YOU RELEASED A NEW ONE

[@DaveAdams222]

Flashing Lights Warning at 05:15 . . . Stops at 07:04

[@Dhalin]

The SNES always had the best chiptune music back in the day. I really don't understand why people say that the Genesis music was oh-so-good, as there were a few games that were ported from the SNES to the Genesis and they always sounded much worse, and I've never heard a Genesis game that had anywhere near as good of sound as a SNES one. Now, sure, the Genesis had stuff like a CD player addon, and CD-based games, not denying that, but the 16bit Chiptune was way better on the SNES. The only thing the Genesis had over the SNES was CDDA via the CD player. But, that's kinda cheating, and it's very limited, like limited looping, no changing the music on the fly, seek/loading times, etc.

[@Gereon_]

amazing video as always :)

[@TroyBlackford]

I'm so thrilled about this video series! I'm no expert but I'm really into synthesis and sampling and very INTERESTED in this, so this is amazing for me. I had no idea the DSP had a Frequency Modulation capability! Wow. Modulating frequency by another sound is a very essential synthesis technique. Most of my Eurorack oscillators do it. You say it's unused: really curious what this could have opened up. FM'ing samples is highly unusual and probably awesome.

[@possible-realities]

I think I heard somewhere that the FM capability is used in the beginning of Chrono Trigger for the wind in the background when you are trying to escape from your cell after the trial. But I can't remember where I heard it...

[@TroyBlackford]

@@possible-realities Woah, fascinating! I'll check that out. Thanks for the tip!

[@Waccoon]

FM support wasn't used much back then, since most audio chips with that capability didn't have a ROM lookup table for a pure sine wave. Without a convenient source for a pure sine wave, FM isn't very useful. The Amiga supported FM for pairs of channels, but nobody used that feature. The Yamaha FM chip was truly revolutionary, since they used a differential encoder to store the sine wave in a very small ROM, which finally made FM practical.

[@CommodoreKulor]

@@Waccoon Both the Amiga and SNES had samplers though, which could store pure (enough) sine waves as regular samples. Pitch modulation more likely wasn't used on the Amiga very often because you only had 4 channels to begin with, and you'd end up sacrificing one to be the modulator for a carrier. It's the same issue on the SNES, but with 8 channels, it was more feasible to throw one out for FM effects every now and then -- and in fact, a lot of games did that for sound effects.

[@MrBizznessMan]

Can we possibly get a "Supecut" or just long video of all the SNES videos together?

[@wangledteb5671]

Hey at 8:00 when you're talking about using one voice to modulate the pitch of another voice... That's like, basic 2op FM, isn't it? I had no idea the SNES could do that, I thought that was more the Sega Genesis's department lol

[@knghtbrd]

I know nothing about the SPC700, but it sure sounds like a 6502 for some reason. A, X, Y, SP, PC, PS(W), zero page, page 01 is the stack page, etc. Suddenly I think I have some notions of how to program this thing. 😁

[@MarioFanGamer659]

Apparently, the instruction set is derived from the 6502, just formulated differently (and certain assembler do support a 6502-style SPC700 assembly) as well as new but also some missing opcodes.

[@anactualmotherbear]

Mmmm, gimme that sweet RGMEx

[@gudenau]

This series might get me to write a toy emulator for this.

[@benox50]

11:04 aaaah yes, when the game freeze for a moment

[@GoldNSilverLuigi]

Return of the king

[@UChS4Dq15wHu8vkvWsaLzvPg]

8:53

[@BeebFreeb]

this is an incredibly well made and informative video but... 8:54 ... E.

[@gabrielv.4358]

Nice!

[@Color-Theory]

yessssssss thank you

[@johneygd]

Pffff after waiting a nearly 2 years, we finally have a new video about the snes audio system, Next time it would be very interesting to know how exactly the snes converts those BRR samples back into 16bit and how everything is smooth out, Also for what i also do know is that it is possible to stream uncompressed 16bit audio directly into the snes audio dac by disabling echo writes,however this will involve most cpu power and workram,so there will be no power left to run a game.

[@olhoTron]

Nintendo designing the SNES sound: "woah, lets put this dedicated independent computer just for the audio" Nintendo designing the GBA sound: "lets just output PWM directly into the speaker, and the processing can be done on the main CPU too, nobody will notice"

[@intron9]

GBA's sound is just pwm? 🤔