Questions About the Sound Capability of the Atari 2600

[Questions About the Sound Capability of the Atari 2600]

13 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

MiniDig has links to useful Atari 2600 information, such as Eckhard Stolberg's Frequency/Waveform Guide in the Docs section.

 

The page it links to is gone, but you can use Wayback Machine to retrieve it.

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20161018144537/http://home.arcor.de/estolberg/texts/freqform.txt

 

I copied the contents into TextEdit on my Mac. If you're on Windows the formatting of the tables might be messed up if you open with Notepad, if so try using WordPad.

 

freqform.txt 19.07 kB · 1 download

Ill check that out. You made the legendary Medieval Mayhem? Really!?

[Questions About the Sound Capability of the Atari 2600]

13 hours ago, Jstick said:

@Captain Jack You might also want to check out the "Berzerk VE" hack which adds speech to the game on regular hardware.

Thanks! Will do!

[Questions About the Sound Capability of the Atari 2600]

Hi! I've been working on a video that chronicles the development of video game console sound capabilities, I had a few questions regarding the Atari 2600 as the documentation on its audio hardware is much harder to come by than, say, the SNES. I thought who better to ask than people who actually make Atari games. All I know at this point it that the TIA generates "two channels of one-bit sound. Each channel provides for 32 pitch values and 16 possible bit sequences. There is a 4 bit volume control." (Wikipedia) 

 

From this available info I have a few questions:

 

Because it has "32 pitch values" this means it can play 32 different "notes" correct?

 

If it has "two channels of one-bit sound" why do games like Pitfall 2 have music? I heard about extra chips?

 

Later on in the Wikipedia Article for the TIA it states that the Atari can generate "pulse and noise output" is that any similar to the pulse and noise channels the NES has? (I'm guessing so). 

 

And lastly, why are is so much of the music found in Atari games completely out of tune? 

 

 

Thanks in advance, even if you only know a moderate amount of information about the subject I would appreciate an attempted answer, the video I am making is for a general viewer who isn't particularly tech savvy so I will be simplifying it anyway. I've also been reading Racing The Beam looking for possible answers. Not a programmer in the slightest.

[Atari Age Homebrew Roms?]

Just wondering if there is a romset that contains of some of the new roms I see around this site. I'm sure that not all developers like putting their games (for obvious reasons) up online but there has to be a couple right?