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TIA sound abnormalities


Thomas Jentzsch

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While improving the sound emulation in Stella, we got some better insight into the TIA's sound generation.

 

One important finding is, that the TIA volume is not linear (by far). E.g. a volume value of 56 is exactly 50% as loud as a value of 15. The higher the volume, the more it gets compressed.

 

While this is good to know if you want to control the volume, this seems like no major problem. But the non-linearity affects both channels combined. This means that the combined volume of both channels is compressed too. E.g. a combined volume value of 10 is exactly 50% as loud as a combined value of 30, a volume of 15 is exactly 2/3 as loud as 30. And then the fun begins.

 

Usually, if you combine e.g. two sinus waves of different frequencies, the resulting wave will look pretty wild. But it will still only contain the two original sinus waves. But doing the same with the TIA will add additional artifacts. This is because the amplitudes of both waves influence each other. If e.g. one wave is a full peak (volume = 15) the other wave at full peak would only add 50% of what it would add if played alone. And if you combine non-sinus waves, the effects are even stronger.

 

The higher the combined volume, the more noticeable this becomes. I yet have to see an analysis (e.g. a Fourier transformation) of the the resulting waves, but I am pretty sure that additional frequencies are added which result from the hefty volume compression. You can clearly hear those as distortions.

 

E.g. Ms. Pac-Man and E.T. sound pretty distorted on real hardware. This is because both games combine both channels at maximum volume value (15). And there the volume compression strikes most. If the volume values are reduced to e.g. 6 (= 50%), the distortions are much reduced.

 

Rule of thumb:

When you create sounds and especially music and want to avoid those distortions, reduce the volume. If you want to create unique, distorted effects, use high volumes.

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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E.g. Ms. Pac-Man and E.T. sound pretty distorted on real hardware. This is because both games combine both channels at maximum volume value (15). And there the volume compression strikes most. If the volume values are reduced to e.g. 5, the distortions are much reduced.

 

The games with the most grating sound under the 7800 are the Nintendo ports; all of which sound like the volume is cranked way up when compared to most other titles.

 

Wondering how much less dissonant those games would be if the volume was reduced by 1/3 as well.

:ponder:

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Here is Ms. Pac-Man with the volumes of the tunes reduced by 25% (volume 10) and 50% (volume 6). On real hardware (or in Stellerator and soon Stella too) you can hear the difference.

Ms. Pac-Man (1982) (Atari) (volume 10).a26

Ms. Pac-Man (1982) (Atari) (volume 6).a26

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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Excuse my ignorance, but what is Stellerator? It popped up several times in the past weeks, but all I can find is Stellarator, an emulator that according to its GitHub page has no audio...?

https://6502ts.github.io/stellerator/

 

The developer is the same who helped improving the Stella TIA emulation lately.

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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Google gave me https://github.com/dpiponi/Stellarator(note the "a" instead of the "e" in the name), where it says "There is no audio yet.." so I was confused. :)

 

 

:) An slightly unfortunate name collision. The emulator you found is written in Haskell and (from what I know) a work in progress --- there is a thread by the dev somewhere on this forum.

 

My emulator is a web based (written in TypeScript, a statically typed superset of JavaScript) emulator called 6502.ts --- you can find the GitHub link in my sig. It was (is) meant to eventually support more 6502 based target platforms, therefore the name. Stellerator is the name of the user-facing frontend for the VCS implementation. In hindsight, I might have chosen a slightly more descriptive and google-friendly name, but that's how it goes :P

Edited by DirtyHairy
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I tried Stellerator with some of my demos, and I'm quite impressed. I don't have the latest version of Stella installed at the moment so the comparison is unfair, but right now Stellerator looks and sounds more like a VCS connected to a real TV. This is great!

 

Thanks a lot! The next thing I'll Stellarator-wise do is a embeddable version that can be used to embed games and demos in other websites.

 

Thanks to DirtyHairy since version 5.0 Stella has the same, all new TIA core as Stellarator. Except for sound which is currently implemented.

 

 

I should also add that I don't think that, without I my involvement in Stella, I would have managed to take 6502.ts to the point where it currently stands in terms of accuracy. The TIA and RIOT implementations of the two emulators have evolved together over the last year, and they're almost identical at this point.

Edited by DirtyHairy
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After doing the maths, the equation that governs the nonlinear mixing of the two channels is simple enough:

 

post-47984-0-22274900-1510777103.gif

The values in this equation are:

  • v_out: the volume after mixing the channels (normalized between 0 and 1)
  • v_in: the added volume of the two channels before mixing (between 0 and 30)
  • v_max = 30: the maximum added volume
  • R_0 = 30, R_1 = 1: two characteristic resistances of the mixing circuit (actual unit in the circuit is kOhms)

The first factor is just the added volume of the two channels normalized to 1, and the second factor is a nonlinear volume boost that becomes smaller with increasing volume, effectively compressing the signal. So, as Thomas says, there is not "hard" transition between linearity and compression.

Edited by DirtyHairy
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Sounds much like the POKEY, where there are 64 total volume levels across all channels, but if you exceed 32 you start getting distortion/artifacting. I'm guessing the TIA has a similar cut-off point

I was about to say that probably all sound chips from the early years suffer this kind of compression/distortion to some degree. I know personally from the VIC-I chip in the VIC-20 that if you set the global volume to maximum 15 (it doesn't have any per-channel volume registers), you can safely use one or perhaps two of the voices without distortion. Once you are using all three square waves and in particular also add the white noise, you will certainly want to lower the volume to 8-10 or so. I haven't done the math or scientific studies on the output sound wave but I very well recognize what is mentioned here about the TIA and POKEY.

 

I have too little experience of the AY and SN chips yet to determine if they have similar issues, though I wouldn't be surprised if they do. It seems perhaps the generation starting with SID and onwards is better at putting out maximum volume without terrible compression and distortion of the sound (though there are people who don't like its sound anyway, but that is another matter).

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True, but I think it would be more appropriate if this wiki would not be coupled to Stella, but part of atariage, where anyone with a atariage account can edit it.

 

I agree. This is (and should be) general 2600 knowledge, editable by anyone having experience with the hardware. Stella (and Stellerator) may be the test bed for it, but everyone (other emulator authors, ROM developers, etc) should be able to use it.

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