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Intellivision Stereo? ECS?


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Can anyone that has done the stereo hardware modification on the Inty say how it works, or if it sounds remarkably different from the mono output? Just wondering if AY-3-8910 channel 0+1 come out of the "left" and 2 comes out of the right, for example? And how does stereo sound with the ECS? Also, would it be worth it if jzIntv had stereo output?

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I think for a stereo mod to be worthwhile, you'd need a game written to take advantage of it properly.  Otherwise, you'd just get weird separation on sound effects and music.

 

For example, Space Patrol would have its baseline on one speaker and its drums on the other, while most of the sound effects randomly hopped between the two.

 

A proper stereo game would likely treat the two PSGs as a 3-channel system, with different volume settings on the two PSGs to position sounds more subtly.

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I commented on something like this elsewhere not many months ago. The horror example is the Amiga with its 4 channel DMA sound, split as two channels on the left and two channels on the right. If you use stereo speakers reasonably close to eachother, it can be fine but if you listen to modules through headphones or speakers set wide apart, it sounds so weird. Just like intvnut explains, depending on how the programmer/musician used the sound chip you might end up with bass in one ear and drums in the other, and sometimes a melody that wanders across the two, not to mention sound effects.

 

I think a modern solution would require a mixer that perhaps mixes one channel 75/25, one channel 50/50 and the third channel 25/75. You would still get spatial stereo effects, but not as bad as with 100/0, 50/50, 0/100. Or of course if you can mix all three 50/50 but then again that is the same as taking the mono output and split into two identical channels so no stereo at all.

 

I don't know how anyone have modified their existing Intellivision in regards of this, or why one would do it in the first place. I fully get composite, S-Video, RGB modifications to get a clearer picture, but splitting the sound in any way generally won't make it sound better.

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If someone moved the two PSGs into an add-on board that had a programmable analog mixer, that could be interesting.  (And, the default, of course, should be to mix all channels on both speakers at full.)

 

The PSG actually has 3 analog outputs, one for each channel.  With both PSGs present and a programmable analog mixer, you could do some nice stereo positioning across the 6 channels as part of sound effect or music generation.  If they were granular enough, you could even have sound effects whose apparent stereo position tracks with the position of objects on the screen.

 

That said, the Mockingboard for the Apple ][ had two PSGs with one wired to left channel, and one wired to right channel.  As I said previously, you'd treat that as a 3-channel system and program different volume levels in the two PSGs to place sound effects between the two speakers.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/9/2019 at 7:55 PM, intvnut said:

If someone moved the two PSGs into an add-on board that had a programmable analog mixer, that could be interesting.  (And, the default, of course, should be to mix all channels on both speakers at full.)

 

The PSG actually has 3 analog outputs, one for each channel.  With both PSGs present and a programmable analog mixer, you could do some nice stereo positioning across the 6 channels as part of sound effect or music generation.  If they were granular enough, you could even have sound effects whose apparent stereo position tracks with the position of objects on the screen.

 

That said, the Mockingboard for the Apple ][ had two PSGs with one wired to left channel, and one wired to right channel.  As I said previously, you'd treat that as a 3-channel system and program different volume levels in the two PSGs to place sound effects between the two speakers.

 

I think that this is one of things that could be solved reasonably only in emulation.... Amico! @Tommy Tallarico, would you consider adding a PSG mixer control panel section for classic emulation, letting the user assign an audio mixer percentage of left or right audio channel? If this feature was added, and a Word was POKEd into memory stating the channel mixing levels, then future classic games could take advantage of it, but at minimum all titles could get a stereo treatment. 

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 years later...

Bumping this... We ended up supporting ECS sound in Argon, and we also support stereo in that we pan the various channels (main + additional ECS) across the left/right spectrum algorithmically. They are not hard right/left, which as others pointed out, would be jarring. Sounds really nice with headphones or a good stereo setup. In the future, we plan to make it such that games can dynamically set the panning at run-time if they use our SDK.

 

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I wonder if a small add-on with a Raspberry Pi Pico could emulate several AY sound chips and provide separate stereo sound on its own RCA jacks.

 

We might need to design something like the Aquarius Mini-Expander for the Inty with all the potential plugin add-ons out there. I'm thinking something that could accommodate five or six top-down plugin modules like the ECS Program Exapnder, but with different features:

 

1. Intellivoice

2. USB interface

3. Stereo sound

 

Edited by JohnPCAE
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11 hours ago, Zendocon said:

Given that Melody Blaster uses the Intellivision sound chip for the left hand and the ECS sound chip for the right hand, that game would benefit from having respective left/right sound channels.

I am trying to picture in my head how it does this?

As you could have both hands on either end of the keyboard.  Or play more than 3 notes with one hand.  Is it first 3 keys are right and next 3 are left?  Or should I say Console and ESC respectively?

 

Do I have to dig this out now to try it.. LOL  I guess you can tell by raising / lowering the ESC volume while playing.  Then you can tell first 3 or last 3 or location.  Left 3 vs right 3. 

 

Someone please test this! ;)

 

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1 hour ago, 1980gamer said:

I am trying to picture in my head how it does this?

As you could have both hands on either end of the keyboard.  Or play more than 3 notes with one hand.  Is it first 3 keys are right and next 3 are left?  Or should I say Console and ESC respectively?

 

Do I have to dig this out now to try it.. LOL  I guess you can tell by raising / lowering the ESC volume while playing.  Then you can tell first 3 or last 3 or location.  Left 3 vs right 3. 

 

Someone please test this! ;)

Having hacked Melody Blaster and changed all the tunes, I can tell you for certain that this is the case.  3 sound channels are dedicated to the left hand, and 3 sound channels are dedicated to the right hand.

 

I'm pretty sure the console handles the left, and the ECS handles the right.  Yes, using the ECS volume dial should make testing a cinch.

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8 hours ago, 1980gamer said:

I am trying to picture in my head how it does this?

As you could have both hands on either end of the keyboard.  Or play more than 3 notes with one hand.  Is it first 3 keys are right and next 3 are left?  Or should I say Console and ESC respectively?

 

Do I have to dig this out now to try it.. LOL  I guess you can tell by raising / lowering the ESC volume while playing.  Then you can tell first 3 or last 3 or location.  Left 3 vs right 3. 

 

Someone please test this! ;)

 

I'm thinking it splits the piano keys down the middle, left side, right side.

 

Edit:

After testing this it looks like it depends which Melody Blaster play mode you are using.  If the computer plays alone, it's left hand going to the master component and right hand going to the ecs.  If you're playing alone, the first three notes goes to the master component and and the next three go to the ecs.  If it's set to "play right" or "play left" modes your notes go to one and the computer's notes go to the other.

Edited by mr_me
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2 hours ago, mr_me said:

I'm thinking it splits the piano keys down the middle, left side, right side.

 

Edit:

After testing this it looks like it depends which Melody Blaster play mode you are using.  If the computer plays alone, it's left hand going to the master component and right hand going to the ecs.  If you're playing alone, the first three notes goes to the master component and and the next three go to the ecs.  If it's set to "play right" or "play left" modes your notes go to one and the computer's notes go to the other.

This is logical. 

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