I know the vibra16 cards had opl3's but the newer cards used an E-mu clone called the CQM. The only other sb cards that used an opl3 were the sb pro2 and ct1600 series. Earlier series sb cards used the opl2. Those were all isa cards too. The pci cards used ensoniq and later E-mu chips.
This video really needs more side by side A/B comparison without cuts. EDIT: well that blew up more than expected. Keep replies positive folks. It's not because it would have been a better sell for the RetroWave that it makes the video necessarily bad. I still enjoyed it, and you can still kinda get some comparisons by jumping around clips. Filming is hard, and getting good sound capture is complicated. Sometimes, not everything can be saved in the edit.
Yeah, by the time they played the second clips I wasn't sure what was different besides, maybe, a bit wider stereo. I guess I'm getting older or something, but back-to-back sound would really have been nice.
The capture made it a bit difficult to do this adequately since I had very few clean A (and long enough) clips. Bit of an oversight to have had the audio sync going on the same track as the laptop audio. All the Retro wave audio was clean since it was recorded separately. If this wasn't a SC I'd normally ask for a recap.
@@AlexPotvin yeah, I figured it had to be done kinda quick. It's just sad because it doesn't sell the RetroWave as much as it deserves. The sound of those hardware synths is always really unique.
I absolutely love this era of music generation, really cool to see it making a come back! The early FM chips can be easily misused for DIY sound production too which is super fun.
The Secret of Monkey Island had amazing music, no matter which sound device you had (PC speaker, PC Jr/Tandy 1000, Creative Music System/Game Blaster, Ad Lib, MT-32/LAPC-1/CM-32). They pushed each device to its limits. Except the Roland units of course, which always sounded amazing.
SAM (software automatic mouth) on the Apple II (I built a card) and the SiD chip (became ensoniq) where more interesting... Though, then again, Yamaha buying the license from the developer at Stanford was pure class... And expanded on the Ideas.... After all, Even the NED Synclavier was just that... Thats really where Fairlight trumped them all.... Blah Blah Blah.. Yep, Yamaha brought FM to the masses... As did that fk prick comany "Creative Labs".... GM , wave table address style samples, then into Win... etc etc... And Creative Bought Ensoniq , after seeing its soundscape ISA card, with actually onboard DSP , but it was its implementation of buss dresses using PCI.. Yeh... Imm Angry.... The Windows consumer gave Creativelabs a reason to destroy companies that pioneered music tech. In the end, Analog is analog, Digital is digital..... But no matter the platform, even with just FM, music generally had more finesse than most the production that they call music today. TX7 FTW! (The 12bit convertor is just GOLD... Dexd comes closer than any, and its free....) Ah fk... I was doing music then, still am... so , just sharing what is my thing. BTW... Midi and Phones..... Thomas Dolby took the MIDI standard and implemented on Phones... Midi is that GENERAL MIDI is not midi... but a standard of sorts.... To deep to explain (I'm sure you know) after a few beers... But, Its a PC , gaming channel for most part...... But hey, I won't hold it against them
A fantastic companion video to this is "Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit" by Ahoy. It's a masterclass of a retrospective view of trackers, and is full of amazing music from that age.
Before that video I always wondered why cracks, keygens, etc had that kind of music. Never would have guessed that cracking groups emerged from music groups.
I really like how Linus mentioned that he would love to review this on the Wan Show a few weeks back and it's being reviewed by Anthony now on Short Circuit with an affiliate link!! It's very impressive to see how fast and how smooth everyone is working at LMG, and it's amazing to find out that this piece of hardware was brought into light by literally just talking about it for a short period on a podcast.
As someone who started gaming in the 80's and 90's, and who also basically cracked every piece of software I owned as a teenager, this video definitively strikes a nostalgic note.
Demo scene at LANs... okay... Pretty sure demos were released on discs and more was used on Amiga given the raw power of the Amiga in the 80s... I mean DOS and IBM compatibles were weak compared to micros... So many fakes on here just chucking out words they think fit. Demo scene... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. As I said pretty damned sure the Demo scene was more to do with micro market and linked to things like Amiga and ST.... Okay. Mind you doesn't help when Anthony gets it all wrong himself.
The nostalgia and memories. I owned the adlib first but switched to Sound Blaster and used Creative cards ever since. The adlib was really nice though.
You know I thought wavetable midi break in the 90s was absolutely incredible. But listening back now, the Yamaha FM stuff sounds much more pleasant to my ears, whereas the sample stuff just sounds naff these days.
1:40 Knowing how FM synthesis and just digital signal processing in general works, I can confirm that Anthony's description of "basically magic" is accurate
To this day there are video game sounds and old game music that I remembering sounding completely different to what I see here on youtube and other games I've gotten to work through dos box or something else today. Glad to know I'm not crazy.
You also have to remember that speakers were worse back then, too, and they added their own sound signature. Even if the waveforms are 100% the same, you might not get the same exact nostalgia without having actually old multimedia speakers. You have to have the old chips and the old speakers. There are channels on UA-cam who show off actually old PC hardware, and you'll find that those sounds are 100% accurate.
but also keep in mind that your hearing changes as you get older, there are some frequencies that your ear can't even hear anymore, but young ears can.
The main issue is that old computers relied a LOT more on peripherals for processing, so you could have a quantifiably different experience using your computer based on the peripherals you bought. If you had a less-than-common text terminal, some programs would literally not display correctly because they would not know the control sequence that the terminal used. If you had a less-than-common CRT, it may not have the required resolution and refresh rate combo to run a game correctly. If you had a less-than-common or shitty sound card you could actually end up with measurably different sound output to a quality one. Interoperability is a modern phenomenon, and that's why backwards compatibility does not mean authenticity.
@@thebaker8637 Shame I don't remember what hardware was on my dad's computer back then. Was too young to know anything other than we had a sound blaster and a pentium. No idea what generation or what kind. But I do remember having a turbo button on the front of the case that actually controlled the clock speed. I remember a few games that were unplayable if you had the turbo button on.
Props to the sound technician and editor in this episode... I mean, I would done the same setup as them, but, the differences are obvious for the demostrative porpuses and also is a crystal clear recording/mixing that doesn't lose objective in video, digital and YT compression. A FAN OF YOU GUYS, hope you someday can read this. ❤
tbh Anthony gets half of the stuff wrong and all I can think is "man, LGR would be laughing!" like the demo scene being in DOS IBM compats and not on Micros such as the Amiga! AMAZING!!!! Even down to the really wrong statement he makes about audio in NA and about them being more "professional" CUBASE was for Amiga and Atari and is one of the most used programs for music over last 30 years!!! These video is so funny with how much it gets wrong.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA It's actually cringy. I had to stop the video when he claimed trackers and demo scene was PC in early 90s... Made me laugh but so incorrect its untrue. Like me suggesting Harriet Tubman was a hispanic news reported from CNN in the late 80s.
@@razerow3391 I feel like there's a language barrier or something here, because I didn't say or even imply any of that. I was talking about the state of *PC* audio at that time, not computers in general (the Amiga had wavetable in the 80s and never had OPL). I certainly didn't say that North America was "more professional", just that the industry there (broadly) didn't develop chiptunes because there was a heavier focus on MIDI, which was *seen* as "more professional". Europe and Japan had a chiptune culture thanks to the success of the C64 and MSX etc, and consequently most of the games with 'proper' chiptune music were developed outside of North America. Also, I... Never actually made reference to the demoscene? I mentioned keygen music, which was definitely a PC thing. Just because I didn't mention something else doesn't mean I think it was all the PC.
Most motherboards don't have a speaker. It's usually up to your case, or you can buy a separate speaker yourself and plug it into the front IO headers.
Okay so I'm thinking to myself right now, "I'd there anything in computing or IT or just tech Anthony isn't good at" and "Where does he store all that knowledge"? He's just the coolest on set! Great work, Anthony!☺☺☺☺☺👌👌👌👌
TYRIAN!! That was my first ever game! I didn't even understand most of it (I was like 7, probably, and didn't understand english). I love you so much for bringing it back, Anthony! Keygen music is BALLER BTW.
Hell I remember wanting to pick something like that in the games and couldn't understand why it wouldn't work. The emulation (not the retrowave) still is awesome, but the retrowave seems more authentic. Thanks for the video!
Honestly to me the sound difference is like the emulator is soft clipping or something, while to Retrowave is clean and natural. Can definitely tell they aren't the same.
Back in the days of antiquity, I remember nearly falling off my perch when one of the games I started up detected the Roland Sound Canvas card plugged into one of the ISA slots (that's how long ago :), and the music quality was outstanding… as to be expected.
Audiohile: It's magic gold plated... Anthony: The specific imperfections and personal setups are all different and add great atmosphere and personality to the sound... Thanks for being so amazing Anthony, by enjoying the audio and experience, and really understanding it and not faking through it. :)
The keygen song Anthony plays is called Paradox Keygen 3 by Dubmood if anyone is interested. Always loved the sound of FM synth, probably because I had a Mega Drive and always thought it sounded better than the SNES for the arcade style games I played (Xeno Crisis which came out somewhat recently shows what the YM2612 can really do), although I managed to dodge most of the awful sounding MD games like Marble Madness - which would have maybe soured my opinion a little if I'd heard it in the 90s. I picked up an MT32 Pi hat (and an SC-55 sound font) and I think I'll pick one of these up too.
If you want a lot of music to carry around on your phone, it's a pretty space-efficient way of getting it. A huge chunk of tracker modules are under a meg, so you can easily fit several thousand into a couple of gig. Finding software to play ones with FM instruments is a bit of a problem, though. Most formats don't support FM instruments and in the few that do, they're not widely used, so support is rare. Especially for hybrid files that contain both FM and sampled instruments. I've found that when it comes to S3M files, player programs fall into one of four categories when it comes to FM instruments: 1. Refuse to play outright if FM instruments are used. 2. Only plays the sampled instruments (may or may not complain about the presence of the FM ones). 3. Only plays the FM instruments. 4. Actually plays a hybrid file properly. The only programs I've encountered that fall into that last category are Scream Tracker 3 (which you'd use to create them in the first place, so no surprises there), some old versions of XMP for Android (which didn't do that great a job on the FM implementation and later removed it entirely, grr...), and to my surprise when I tried it, VLC Media Player. I never expected it to play S3M files at all, let alone ones with FM instruments.
Two seconds in and Anthony made my day, got a chuckle out of me and got me to pause the video, smash like and comment this out. Linus, whatever you're paying this man and the editors, it's not enough.
I'd love to go to an art installation with Turbo Kid playing through this sound card, just because it can be done. Even if I just stood by the installation for 10 minutes in a really long line up. ua-cam.com/video/AFlZ6pVtnv0/v-deo.html
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER does some really cool hand made oscillators and synths. Great channel for getting into how music is made down to the very waveform, and making your own oscillators.
Piping midi from a computer through my daughter's Yamaha PSR-275 gives me the same fidelity as the best retro soundcards I've used. There are a few that actually use a higher end direct cousin of the OPL-3 and OPL-2 that are sometimes harvested for chiptune projects.
Cool hardware. The best example I can think of from my past is the game Descent. The sound library they used allowed them to patch instruments and there were a few game tracks that used them. They sound very different from the general MIDI instrument sets. It's one of the things that ruins the nostalgia when I decide to fire up a source port and play a little for old time's sake.
Speaking of soundcards of the 1990s, I wonder what result this would give on the PC version of Sonic 3&Knuckles. Different soundcards (with different sounding chips) give different results on the same exact game. I was a kid playing it on PC and it sounded strange compared to Sonic Mega Collection Plus.
Man!! I feel like I'm being transported back to the 1980s and 1990s again!! I spent a lot of time on my dad's 386/486 at that time. And later in my teenager years, the time spent on Quake and Doom. It was glorious!
This is pretty legit, I want to see if I can run this myself now. I gotta say, anytime Anthony is running the show on a video I find myself enjoying it because he gives tech insight, history, how to, why, and generally stuff I care about in addition to new tech go brrrrrrrrr. Keep it up man, you're my favorite dude at LTT
Anthony making sound effects always makes my day! Pretty impressive and noticeable differences with this device and really find this era of VGM interesting. How much work goes into making a decent game soundtrack back in the 80's and 90's?
Anthony strikes this beautiful balance of being the guy who knows way more than you but isn’t covetous, he’s excited to share parts of the world many of us didn’t even know about.
Anthony! Thank you so much for validating with a game like Cybersphere (or in your case CYBPLUS). As a kid, I remember trying to mail order for that game from the order page and never being able to get a hold of Clay to get that game. I remember telling my friends that you could hear differences between cards like the SB16, Clone, and the AWE64 which I still believe is the greatest sound card ever made! 2022 has sucked so far, thank you LMG for giving me some much needed nostalgia!
While I don't have a desire to go back to that soundscape, this was a really fun blast back to my misbegotten youth of Commodore 64. It's kind of amazing how much I smiled hearing it.
One of the best OPL3 pieces IMHO was Dune's soundtrack. It was intended for this chip and its composer later extended it into its own 'spice opera' ua-cam.com/video/gUfGyfbzl9k/v-deo.html
Not gonna lie, This feels like the retro equivalent of audiophile snake oil (AKA "its for the _experience_ !") to me. Do I just not get it? Likely. But I know how the math of computer audio works, and this doesn't make sense to me as a product from that perspective.
If you can't hear what a huge difference it made to even the small audio they played, you probably don't need this. Personally it was night and day. *shrug*
It's the difference between an analog knob and a digital one, both change values while turning, but there are some quirks in the analog Resistors that would have to be purposely added in to make both perform identically. For things like the impossible Date bug in Excel, we add quirks back in because of genuine usage. But, since pure MIDI music hasn't been mainstream relevant for quite a while, the way that MIDI is emulated today is damn near the same as the 90s, meaning that if there's a specific set of MIDI reproduction you want to do, it isn't a thriving field in terms of emulation. It's like how Emulating faults like CRT artifacting, even on a 4K TV, is imperfect. The same goes for audio, in that even if we made a SPICE simulation of all the chips and circuits of the time, the output still would need real world fuzzing manually added, which makes it sometimes easier to just get a real CRT, old Gameboy, or in this case Sound Chip. An echo in Audacity is made with algorithms, while a chip like this might literally make echo with a looped set of transistors. The timing and execution of each bass tweak and vibrato function on the actual chip adds up in differences if you spent years listening to it
"The best part of being PC gamer is that you can play any pc game every created" The worst part is that isn't true, at all. On modern PC is much easier running PS1 game than PC game from that era.
We're getting there. WINE/Proton compatibility can be surprisingly good sometimes. Max Payne is a (pardon the pun) huge pain to get working properly on modern versions of Windows, but if you're on Linux, just telling Steam to run it with Proton is enough (though you do have aspect ratio issues, which is forgivable, given the age of the game). Other old games, not so much. Tex Murphy Overseer is notoriously hard to get working on Windows, and it doesn't fare any better with Proton.
In the 90s I got way into making tracker music. I put together a heap of songs of the years and in 1997 I sent them in to the national youth radio station and ended up getting an interview on air. I used a Mac IIsi and a program called 'meditor'.
I'm not much of a retro gamer, but I absolutely love Anthony's passion for it. It's so cool to see a side of PC gaming that is normally nowhere on my radar.
love the opl3, my favourite sound chip to write for, even if adlib tracker 2 is not the easiest thing to work with heh. got this device a few months ago, it's awesome and so convenient, especially since old hardware is so temperamental. i seriously didn't expect this to be covered by you guys!
@@xXDragonWarrior3872Xx here's a playlist of some renders i've done: ua-cam.com/video/YqxJCu_WFuA/v-deo.html i'm missing one track from the list for now, at least for more developed stuff
When he *ahem* talked about Key Gens and Cracks, that unlocked a memory I had back when I’d go to LAN Parties all the time in the 00s. I KNEW I recognized those melodies
Key gen music / tracker music are so cool... I love this kind of music. BTW, this video earned my subscription: your narration & precise description is great. I wish I have professors like you when I went to collage.. they all explained so bad LOL!!!!
Those OPL chips used FM Synthesis, and are distant cousins to Yamaha's famous DX7 synthesizer, using in things like the Miami Vice theme, among thousands of other songs..
Oh memories, tracker music ♥ Me and some friends used to send around a 3.5 floppy disk with a tracker song, and just add to it, making it longer and more weird each time.
I remember that the first sound card I ever bought, didn't even had a headphone jack. It was to be connected to the internal speaker of your computer. Later on the Soundblaster cards came out and you started to be able to buy a PC with a soundcard preinstalled. Biggest fun you could have was playing Wolfenstein or Doom with 4.0 surround stereo as the soundcard had a double stereo headphone jack to also give you the possibility of stereo back speakers.
OMG THANK YOU I used to play Commander Keen all the time on my granddad's PC as a kid but never knew what I was doing. Since then I never could remember what it was called
The sound difference is crazy, when you showed that key gen music it took me back decades. It’s really crispy and it’s just so good sounding.
I forgot key gens had music! Really brought me back
I was admittedly listening on my crappy laptop speakers but I couldn't hear a difference at all. Maybe I need to try headphones.
@@matthewlozy1140 The channel Ahoy recently put out an incredible video about trackers and keygens if you want another trip to the past.
@@zerorig that's awesome will check it out, thank you!
I know the vibra16 cards had opl3's but the newer cards used an E-mu clone called the CQM. The only other sb cards that used an opl3 were the sb pro2 and ct1600 series. Earlier series sb cards used the opl2. Those were all isa cards too. The pci cards used ensoniq and later E-mu chips.
This video really needs more side by side A/B comparison without cuts.
EDIT: well that blew up more than expected. Keep replies positive folks. It's not because it would have been a better sell for the RetroWave that it makes the video necessarily bad. I still enjoyed it, and you can still kinda get some comparisons by jumping around clips. Filming is hard, and getting good sound capture is complicated. Sometimes, not everything can be saved in the edit.
Came here to post the same thing.
I was really disappointed that Anthony would talk over when previewing the sound.
It's ShortCircuit
Yeah, by the time they played the second clips I wasn't sure what was different besides, maybe, a bit wider stereo. I guess I'm getting older or something, but back-to-back sound would really have been nice.
The capture made it a bit difficult to do this adequately since I had very few clean A (and long enough) clips. Bit of an oversight to have had the audio sync going on the same track as the laptop audio. All the Retro wave audio was clean since it was recorded separately.
If this wasn't a SC I'd normally ask for a recap.
@@AlexPotvin yeah, I figured it had to be done kinda quick. It's just sad because it doesn't sell the RetroWave as much as it deserves. The sound of those hardware synths is always really unique.
I absolutely love this era of music generation, really cool to see it making a come back! The early FM chips can be easily misused for DIY sound production too which is super fun.
Love you Angus!
The Secret of Monkey Island had amazing music, no matter which sound device you had (PC speaker, PC Jr/Tandy 1000, Creative Music System/Game Blaster, Ad Lib, MT-32/LAPC-1/CM-32). They pushed each device to its limits. Except the Roland units of course, which always sounded amazing.
Did you hear that tracker music at around 9mins? That sounded more like a SID chip than FM!
SAM (software automatic mouth) on the Apple II (I built a card) and the SiD chip (became ensoniq) where more interesting... Though, then again, Yamaha buying the license from the developer at Stanford was pure class... And expanded on the Ideas.... After all, Even the NED Synclavier was just that... Thats really where Fairlight trumped them all....
Blah Blah Blah..
Yep, Yamaha brought FM to the masses... As did that fk prick comany "Creative Labs".... GM , wave table address style samples, then into Win... etc etc...
And Creative Bought Ensoniq , after seeing its soundscape ISA card, with actually onboard DSP , but it was its implementation of buss dresses using PCI..
Yeh... Imm Angry....
The Windows consumer gave Creativelabs a reason to destroy companies that pioneered music tech.
In the end, Analog is analog, Digital is digital..... But no matter the platform, even with just FM, music generally had more finesse than most the production that they call music today.
TX7 FTW! (The 12bit convertor is just GOLD... Dexd comes closer than any, and its free....)
Ah fk... I was doing music then, still am... so , just sharing what is my thing.
BTW... Midi and Phones.....
Thomas Dolby took the MIDI standard and implemented on Phones... Midi is that GENERAL MIDI is not midi... but a standard of sorts.... To deep to explain (I'm sure you know) after a few beers... But, Its a PC , gaming channel for most part...... But hey, I won't hold it against them
A fantastic companion video to this is "Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit" by Ahoy.
It's a masterclass of a retrospective view of trackers, and is full of amazing music from that age.
Link: ua-cam.com/video/roBkg-iPrbw/v-deo.html
Can confirm.
Those Bunny Girlss also have a great video on trackers.
That's been in my recommendations consistently for the last week and I don't know why. Perhaps I should trust the algorithm after all....
Before that video I always wondered why cracks, keygens, etc had that kind of music. Never would have guessed that cracking groups emerged from music groups.
I really like how Linus mentioned that he would love to review this on the Wan Show a few weeks back and it's being reviewed by Anthony now on Short Circuit with an affiliate link!! It's very impressive to see how fast and how smooth everyone is working at LMG, and it's amazing to find out that this piece of hardware was brought into light by literally just talking about it for a short period on a podcast.
As someone who started gaming in the 80's and 90's, and who also basically cracked every piece of software I owned as a teenager, this video definitively strikes a nostalgic note.
The tracker music really brings me back to the demo scene at LAN parties.
I'll have to fire up State of the Art 1&2 soon :)
Demo scene at LANs... okay...
Pretty sure demos were released on discs and more was used on Amiga given the raw power of the Amiga in the 80s...
I mean DOS and IBM compatibles were weak compared to micros...
So many fakes on here just chucking out words they think fit. Demo scene... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. As I said pretty damned sure the Demo scene was more to do with micro market and linked to things like Amiga and ST.... Okay.
Mind you doesn't help when Anthony gets it all wrong himself.
@@razerow3391 People compete in demo coding at LAN events even to this day. Idk what you're arguing.
I remember having SoundBlaster sound cards with "wavetable" audio. It was amazing in the 90's. 😎
The nostalgia and memories. I owned the adlib first but switched to Sound Blaster and used Creative cards ever since. The adlib was really nice though.
Ugh I think you meant it was "radical" or "xtreme" in the 90s, those were the technical terms of the day IIRC
On Soundblaster AWE you could even add memory extensions for midi soundbanks.
You know I thought wavetable midi break in the 90s was absolutely incredible.
But listening back now, the Yamaha FM stuff sounds much more pleasant to my ears, whereas the sample stuff just sounds naff these days.
So you know how Duke Nukem sound like with AWE 32…
1:40 Knowing how FM synthesis and just digital signal processing in general works, I can confirm that Anthony's description of "basically magic" is accurate
as the owner of an SY77, which has "advanced" FM, you're absolutely right. i'm still figuring the damn thing out nearly 8 years later
To this day there are video game sounds and old game music that I remembering sounding completely different to what I see here on youtube and other games I've gotten to work through dos box or something else today. Glad to know I'm not crazy.
You also have to remember that speakers were worse back then, too, and they added their own sound signature. Even if the waveforms are 100% the same, you might not get the same exact nostalgia without having actually old multimedia speakers. You have to have the old chips and the old speakers. There are channels on UA-cam who show off actually old PC hardware, and you'll find that those sounds are 100% accurate.
@@sohotimhot752 go away porn bot
but also keep in mind that your hearing changes as you get older, there are some frequencies that your ear can't even hear anymore, but young ears can.
The main issue is that old computers relied a LOT more on peripherals for processing, so you could have a quantifiably different experience using your computer based on the peripherals you bought. If you had a less-than-common text terminal, some programs would literally not display correctly because they would not know the control sequence that the terminal used. If you had a less-than-common CRT, it may not have the required resolution and refresh rate combo to run a game correctly. If you had a less-than-common or shitty sound card you could actually end up with measurably different sound output to a quality one. Interoperability is a modern phenomenon, and that's why backwards compatibility does not mean authenticity.
@@thebaker8637 Shame I don't remember what hardware was on my dad's computer back then. Was too young to know anything other than we had a sound blaster and a pentium. No idea what generation or what kind. But I do remember having a turbo button on the front of the case that actually controlled the clock speed. I remember a few games that were unplayable if you had the turbo button on.
Props to the sound technician and editor in this episode... I mean, I would done the same setup as them, but, the differences are obvious for the demostrative porpuses and also is a crystal clear recording/mixing that doesn't lose objective in video, digital and YT compression. A FAN OF YOU GUYS, hope you someday can read this. ❤
Neat project! Also cool to see some of Clint's footage in here, he is always very invested in the retro audio stuff!
tbh Anthony gets half of the stuff wrong and all I can think is "man, LGR would be laughing!" like the demo scene being in DOS IBM compats and not on Micros such as the Amiga! AMAZING!!!!
Even down to the really wrong statement he makes about audio in NA and about them being more "professional" CUBASE was for Amiga and Atari and is one of the most used programs for music over last 30 years!!!
These video is so funny with how much it gets wrong.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
It's actually cringy. I had to stop the video when he claimed trackers and demo scene was PC in early 90s... Made me laugh but so incorrect its untrue. Like me suggesting Harriet Tubman was a hispanic news reported from CNN in the late 80s.
@@razerow3391 I feel like there's a language barrier or something here, because I didn't say or even imply any of that. I was talking about the state of *PC* audio at that time, not computers in general (the Amiga had wavetable in the 80s and never had OPL).
I certainly didn't say that North America was "more professional", just that the industry there (broadly) didn't develop chiptunes because there was a heavier focus on MIDI, which was *seen* as "more professional". Europe and Japan had a chiptune culture thanks to the success of the C64 and MSX etc, and consequently most of the games with 'proper' chiptune music were developed outside of North America.
Also, I... Never actually made reference to the demoscene? I mentioned keygen music, which was definitely a PC thing. Just because I didn't mention something else doesn't mean I think it was all the PC.
@@emily-young Holy Crap, its the man himself! I really appreciate your work Anthony, you're wonderful!
This reminds me I need to enable the power on beep sound when booting up the PC. Don't know why it's disabled on modern motherboards.
It was great for diagnosing motherboard issues. Certain bleep patterns told you what the motherboard was complaining about.
@@Ancientreapers Nowadays a lot of motherboard just have number screens instead. Much easier and less prone to searching for the wrong error tbh.
@@Esablaka why not both ?
Most motherboards don't have a speaker. It's usually up to your case, or you can buy a separate speaker yourself and plug it into the front IO headers.
@@suppar8066 I find it annoying as hell, idk
Okay so I'm thinking to myself right now, "I'd there anything in computing or IT or just tech Anthony isn't good at" and "Where does he store all that knowledge"? He's just the coolest on set! Great work, Anthony!☺☺☺☺☺👌👌👌👌
TYRIAN!! That was my first ever game! I didn't even understand most of it (I was like 7, probably, and didn't understand english). I love you so much for bringing it back, Anthony! Keygen music is BALLER BTW.
Ahh I love chiptunes so much, thank you for covering this LMG & Anthony!
5:10 Roland MT-32 is as far from wavetable synthesis as his self-esteem is from reality LOL 😂
Descent is one of those less obscure games that really works nice on OPL3. Being techno helps a lot.
Hell I remember wanting to pick something like that in the games and couldn't understand why it wouldn't work.
The emulation (not the retrowave) still is awesome, but the retrowave seems more authentic.
Thanks for the video!
Oh gosh. The nostalgia of some of these, hearing them the way I first did back then. Ahhhh. Love it!!
Thank you for the great info, Anthony!!!
Love it! Retro games brought back so much joy. Thanks for putting this together ❤️
What’s the odds that those switches that they didn’t know what they do are the solution for the lack of certain notes? ;)
Honestly to me the sound difference is like the emulator is soft clipping or something, while to Retrowave is clean and natural. Can definitely tell they aren't the same.
Retro Tech with Anthony deserves its own channel.
I didn't even know I was interested in this. Then I saw Anthony. Now I'm getting one of these for myself!
Back in the days of antiquity, I remember nearly falling off my perch when one of the games I started up detected the Roland Sound Canvas card plugged into one of the ISA slots (that's how long ago :), and the music quality was outstanding… as to be expected.
Audiohile: It's magic gold plated...
Anthony: The specific imperfections and personal setups are all different and add great atmosphere and personality to the sound...
Thanks for being so amazing Anthony, by enjoying the audio and experience, and really understanding it and not faking through it. :)
That first category are better referred to as "Audiophools".
The keygen song Anthony plays is called Paradox Keygen 3 by Dubmood if anyone is interested.
Always loved the sound of FM synth, probably because I had a Mega Drive and always thought it sounded better than the SNES for the arcade style games I played (Xeno Crisis which came out somewhat recently shows what the YM2612 can really do), although I managed to dodge most of the awful sounding MD games like Marble Madness - which would have maybe soured my opinion a little if I'd heard it in the 90s. I picked up an MT32 Pi hat (and an SC-55 sound font) and I think I'll pick one of these up too.
Thanks a lot for the title my dude!
That swirl at the start was perfect. Well done editor!
I love Anthony’s Retro Time. As a musician I greatly enjoyed this.
TIL I'm super into Tracker music. Thank you for giving me the vocab word I needed to search for this kind of tunes.
If you want a lot of music to carry around on your phone, it's a pretty space-efficient way of getting it. A huge chunk of tracker modules are under a meg, so you can easily fit several thousand into a couple of gig. Finding software to play ones with FM instruments is a bit of a problem, though. Most formats don't support FM instruments and in the few that do, they're not widely used, so support is rare. Especially for hybrid files that contain both FM and sampled instruments.
I've found that when it comes to S3M files, player programs fall into one of four categories when it comes to FM instruments:
1. Refuse to play outright if FM instruments are used.
2. Only plays the sampled instruments (may or may not complain about the presence of the FM ones).
3. Only plays the FM instruments.
4. Actually plays a hybrid file properly.
The only programs I've encountered that fall into that last category are Scream Tracker 3 (which you'd use to create them in the first place, so no surprises there), some old versions of XMP for Android (which didn't do that great a job on the FM implementation and later removed it entirely, grr...), and to my surprise when I tried it, VLC Media Player. I never expected it to play S3M files at all, let alone ones with FM instruments.
Hearing the full sound brought a big smile to my face. Night and day difference.
Two seconds in and Anthony made my day, got a chuckle out of me and got me to pause the video, smash like and comment this out. Linus, whatever you're paying this man and the editors, it's not enough.
1:10 "Sound Blaster" I hope it comes with the talking parrot. I kinda miss my Sound Blaster parrot. Yarrrrrr! 😁
"I'm a talking parrot.....please talk to me!"
@@fuelvolts "ooooo don't touch me" 😁 I remember that one from the parrot.
After watching this I just want a soundtrack of this kind of music. Also, do the LTT Intro in this!!!
I'd love to go to an art installation with Turbo Kid playing through this sound card, just because it can be done. Even if I just stood by the installation for 10 minutes in a really long line up. ua-cam.com/video/AFlZ6pVtnv0/v-deo.html
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER does some really cool hand made oscillators and synths. Great channel for getting into how music is made down to the very waveform, and making your own oscillators.
I've been watching and studying tech for 10 years and this might be the best/nerdiest video ever.
Thanks Anthony!
Piping midi from a computer through my daughter's Yamaha PSR-275 gives me the same fidelity as the best retro soundcards I've used.
There are a few that actually use a higher end direct cousin of the OPL-3 and OPL-2 that are sometimes harvested for chiptune projects.
Cool hardware. The best example I can think of from my past is the game Descent. The sound library they used allowed them to patch instruments and there were a few game tracks that used them. They sound very different from the general MIDI instrument sets. It's one of the things that ruins the nostalgia when I decide to fire up a source port and play a little for old time's sake.
Descent is my all time favourite game from my childhood. Still have the floppies. Couldn’t agree more regarding the audio.
Just leaving a comment to let y'all know that I'm still clicking on every 'Retro Anthony' video, love it!
Side note on the chair in the ad. Rollerblade wheels are a game changer for office chairs. So much quieter.
Speaking of soundcards of the 1990s, I wonder what result this would give on the PC version of Sonic 3&Knuckles. Different soundcards (with different sounding chips) give different results on the same exact game. I was a kid playing it on PC and it sounded strange compared to Sonic Mega Collection Plus.
Not just PC games but every game console game ever made. Even other computers like the TI 99/4a etc... Anything is possible on the PC.
And THIS...is why the term...PC Master Race...aka..PCMR was created.
@@motoryzen PC Master Race was created to make fun of people like you, but dumb people are also typically oblivious so y'all adopted it unironically.
Man!! I feel like I'm being transported back to the 1980s and 1990s again!! I spent a lot of time on my dad's 386/486 at that time. And later in my teenager years, the time spent on Quake and Doom. It was glorious!
This is pretty legit, I want to see if I can run this myself now.
I gotta say, anytime Anthony is running the show on a video I find myself enjoying it because he gives tech insight, history, how to, why, and generally stuff I care about in addition to new tech go brrrrrrrrr. Keep it up man, you're my favorite dude at LTT
Anthony making sound effects always makes my day! Pretty impressive and noticeable differences with this device and really find this era of VGM interesting. How much work goes into making a decent game soundtrack back in the 80's and 90's?
Neat product, but this video really just needed a section of side-by-side comparisons without changing games or talking between them.
Yeah, this whole video made no effort at all to showcase the difference.. what a mess.
Anthony strikes this beautiful balance of being the guy who knows way more than you but isn’t covetous, he’s excited to share parts of the world many of us didn’t even know about.
Soon as you busted this out I was thinking back to playing duke3d. This makes my childhood happy.
There's a synth module by ALM called Akemie's Castle that uses this very chip, i think. It's my favorite oscillator!
I'd pay good money to have something like this with a SID audio chip replication.
I was thinking the same thing
Arm sid is close for sound. Maybe there is a way to make an interface. There are also some FPGA sid reproductions.
@@amadensor Honestly it has admittedly been a while, if we have some solid FPGA SID reproductions now it'll solve me so many problems.
@@amadensor There is even a sound difference you can hear between the early and later model SID chips.
Anthony! Thank you so much for validating with a game like Cybersphere (or in your case CYBPLUS). As a kid, I remember trying to mail order for that game from the order page and never being able to get a hold of Clay to get that game. I remember telling my friends that you could hear differences between cards like the SB16, Clone, and the AWE64 which I still believe is the greatest sound card ever made!
2022 has sucked so far, thank you LMG for giving me some much needed nostalgia!
Great review, the sound took me back to the early 90s all over again. Love Anthony presenting
(8:34) The Ahoy channel recently did an amazing retrospective of trackers in a video titled _Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit._ 😎
they also did a amazing video on cracktros
@@frogz Sure we're not talking about the same video? 😉😎
@@CybershamanX not really lol, I'm addicted to them all
This guy is already on another level, but this hardware is cool AF. cheers for Anthony! you always make us idiots a bit smarter :D
Inspiring episode! Anthony explained the artistic aspect of old technologies in an elegant way. I love Anthony's script.
Anthony you are a God
Thanks for walking me through my childhood
Keygen soundtrack flashback/nostalgia 🖤
Hopefully this can somehow prompt an Anthony / LGR collaboration
Very yes
I would never, ever, spend a single cent on anything like that BUT I would watch these video forever, just loved it
While I don't have a desire to go back to that soundscape, this was a really fun blast back to my misbegotten youth of Commodore 64. It's kind of amazing how much I smiled hearing it.
It's certainly a taste that's tough to satiate today if you don't have the technical know-how.
One of the best OPL3 pieces IMHO was Dune's soundtrack. It was intended for this chip and its composer later extended it into its own 'spice opera'
ua-cam.com/video/gUfGyfbzl9k/v-deo.html
I wonder If LTT is ever gonna release a Music related channel
This episode is great. Andy, very cool content. Love it, will definately get this.
This is the most LGR video I've seen here so far. Great stuff!
Not gonna lie, This feels like the retro equivalent of audiophile snake oil (AKA "its for the _experience_ !") to me. Do I just not get it? Likely. But I know how the math of computer audio works, and this doesn't make sense to me as a product from that perspective.
If you can't hear what a huge difference it made to even the small audio they played, you probably don't need this. Personally it was night and day. *shrug*
It's the difference between an analog knob and a digital one, both change values while turning, but there are some quirks in the analog Resistors that would have to be purposely added in to make both perform identically.
For things like the impossible Date bug in Excel, we add quirks back in because of genuine usage. But, since pure MIDI music hasn't been mainstream relevant for quite a while, the way that MIDI is emulated today is damn near the same as the 90s, meaning that if there's a specific set of MIDI reproduction you want to do, it isn't a thriving field in terms of emulation. It's like how Emulating faults like CRT artifacting, even on a 4K TV, is imperfect. The same goes for audio, in that even if we made a SPICE simulation of all the chips and circuits of the time, the output still would need real world fuzzing manually added, which makes it sometimes easier to just get a real CRT, old Gameboy, or in this case Sound Chip. An echo in Audacity is made with algorithms, while a chip like this might literally make echo with a looped set of transistors. The timing and execution of each bass tweak and vibrato function on the actual chip adds up in differences if you spent years listening to it
@@rherydrevins Great explanation
"The best part of being PC gamer is that you can play any pc game every created"
The worst part is that isn't true, at all. On modern PC is much easier running PS1 game than PC game from that era.
We're getting there. WINE/Proton compatibility can be surprisingly good sometimes. Max Payne is a (pardon the pun) huge pain to get working properly on modern versions of Windows, but if you're on Linux, just telling Steam to run it with Proton is enough (though you do have aspect ratio issues, which is forgivable, given the age of the game).
Other old games, not so much. Tex Murphy Overseer is notoriously hard to get working on Windows, and it doesn't fare any better with Proton.
I could listen to Anthony speak forever about anything.
I had a C-64 and then an Amiga.... trackers ruled the world. Trackers started (and still I use them) to kickstart my music making...
Pin this comment if you support the king Anthony!
I always love the retro-related Anthony videos!
When he says purists he means nerds. NNEERRRDDSSSSSS. Shoutout for the Adventure cameo. The plover room. Such sweet memories.
In the 90s I got way into making tracker music. I put together a heap of songs of the years and in 1997 I sent them in to the national youth radio station and ended up getting an interview on air. I used a Mac IIsi and a program called 'meditor'.
This is the content we are looking for thank you Anthony!
I'm not much of a retro gamer, but I absolutely love Anthony's passion for it. It's so cool to see a side of PC gaming that is normally nowhere on my radar.
love the opl3, my favourite sound chip to write for, even if adlib tracker 2 is not the easiest thing to work with heh. got this device a few months ago, it's awesome and so convenient, especially since old hardware is so temperamental. i seriously didn't expect this to be covered by you guys!
Link to your content, even if we don't have a proper opl3 to listen with!
@@xXDragonWarrior3872Xx here's a playlist of some renders i've done: ua-cam.com/video/YqxJCu_WFuA/v-deo.html i'm missing one track from the list for now, at least for more developed stuff
I don't normally comment but this one speaks to my heart. Thanks for the info guys, this is pretty dang cool.
I think the tech music and audio (old-new) would be sick and I want to learn more please. Great video Anthony!!!
These kinds of topics might not get super high views, but for the people who do like them, they are true gems. 🙏
When he *ahem* talked about Key Gens and Cracks, that unlocked a memory I had back when I’d go to LAN Parties all the time in the 00s. I KNEW I recognized those melodies
Some of those sound bits bring back good memories
Key gen music / tracker music are so cool... I love this kind of music.
BTW, this video earned my subscription: your narration & precise description is great. I wish I have professors like you when I went to collage.. they all explained so bad LOL!!!!
I love these more in-depth Short Circuit videos.
Those OPL chips used FM Synthesis, and are distant cousins to Yamaha's famous DX7 synthesizer, using in things like the Miami Vice theme, among thousands of other songs..
Oh memories, tracker music ♥
Me and some friends used to send around a 3.5 floppy disk with a tracker song, and just add to it, making it longer and more weird each time.
the "SUBSCRIBE" ending was the cherry on top :)
The title says OLP3 and it cannot unsee it now
I remember that the first sound card I ever bought, didn't even had a headphone jack. It was to be connected to the internal speaker of your computer. Later on the Soundblaster cards came out and you started to be able to buy a PC with a soundcard preinstalled. Biggest fun you could have was playing Wolfenstein or Doom with 4.0 surround stereo as the soundcard had a double stereo headphone jack to also give you the possibility of stereo back speakers.
Anthony going Bwwwa-buh-bwaa Bwwwa-buh-bwaa (duke3d) is the sound bite I didn't know I needed
OMG THANK YOU I used to play Commander Keen all the time on my granddad's PC as a kid but never knew what I was doing. Since then I never could remember what it was called
Anthony once again saves the day by delivering a non-trivial vid from the LTT group. Nice. +1
I remember having OPL2 & OPL3 SF/X cards back in the day. Now, listening to the chip tunes, it reminds of the the MOD music from the old CBM Amiga
It seems like an impact from playing nes, snes and etc. As a tube sound this one has something alive and I get why you're trying to bring it back
Short Circuit with Anthony makes my day.
the era of FM Synthesis up to Trackers, I was not born to those years, but it feels nostalgia.
The music is giving me fond memories of the cracking group days and their activators/keygens 😂
This is so incredibly niche, but i love it!
It combines my love for trackers, chiptune and old hardware
Tyrian 2000 was an amazing game. Still play it today quite often.
Oh man, an Adlib... I totally forgot about them. And as soon as you said that, I remembers 3DFX and Gravis Ultrasound! Gosh, I feel old.
This dude is so fucking cool. His knowledge on things are so damn extensive it's almost unbelievable.
Great Retro vibes and memories came back, NERD ALERT and I like it. Thanks Anthony. Retro greetings from fellow Nerd in Belgium.