Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 Hi, Many have lamented the somewhat thin sound on the Atari7800 (without the pokey-exceptions). So, I 1) hooked up the Atari7800 sound to a Marshall el-guitar-Amp, 2) put on clean channel with high output on clean-gain, treble, middle and bass 3) put on higest FX-output 4) set FX to Chromatic 5) Reverb level highest 6) started with 0 volume so I didn´t blow myself through the room So, what did happen... I felt the normal A7800 music and sound-effects all improved by at least 50% I recorded mp4s for Double Dragon Scrapyard Dog Dark Chambers I would like to share these when I find out how-to. And I believe that all the sound of A7800 can be improved by appr. 50% by adding a unit that runs all sound through a mixer giving high treble, bass, middle with high chromatic and reverb. OK... may be oversimplified... But I had fun trying it out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlidellMan Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 I know one of my friends did something similar with a 2600, a vintage amp, and various guitar pedals. Too bad that he didn't record footage of that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 49 minutes ago, SlidellMan said: I know one of my friends did something similar with a 2600, a vintage amp, and various guitar pedals. Too bad that he didn't record footage of that. Do you know how to insert an mp4 here, or must I put it out on YouTube and then link, or something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mord Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 Worse case scenario you can zip them all up and upload the zip file I'd assume. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 (edited) Edited July 28, 2019 by Giles N Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 Listen to this^ (pictures just to give an impression, not to bore). Better? Is the same sound-filtering improving 1) music 2) sound-effects? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 Just now, Giles N said: Better? Better 1)music quality 2)sound quality ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linndrum Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 Chromatic is the tuner is it not? Never heard of an effect called Chromatic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 2 hours ago, Linndrum said: Chromatic is the tuner is it not? Never heard of an effect called Chromatic Perhaps I worded it wrong. What do you think of the difference in sound from the originals? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 (edited) Under my Digital FX category, I can set it to: Chr/Dly, Dly, Chr or Flg. Then cranck up the level of the chosen FX. And Reverb is separate. I kind of just supposed Chr = chromatic. I never bothered to check that, I just have a feeling of what it sounds like. Edited July 28, 2019 by Giles N Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 I think what I’ll try next is buy one of these (appr.35$) and hook my Atari 7800 sound to or through one of these. May be the easiest solution to improve the sound on all non-Pokey games... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 28, 2019 Author Share Posted July 28, 2019 Would anyway like feedback on whether or not people feel the sound-examples from Double Dragon Scrapyard Dog Dark Chsmbers were an improvement, and if yes, to what degree... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 Of the examples you posted I think Dark Chambers is the best, but in my opinion none of them are really improved, just different. There's something of a 'distant' quality to the audio, possibly caused by the reverb that I think it could do without. I think the reason Dark Chambers is the better example is that the effects are somewhat enhancing the bass. My instinct would be to remove the reverb or filter that's making it seem 'distant', add some distortion, and then ramp up the bass to try and eek out any hint of a bassy sound the system might produce. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 I find goimg thru a surround sound system with the powered bass box cranked up some helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linndrum Posted July 29, 2019 Share Posted July 29, 2019 Chorus! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted July 29, 2019 Share Posted July 29, 2019 Flange and some wah with desert falcon. Someone try er out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 29, 2019 Share Posted July 29, 2019 Yeah, on a guitar effects pedal or processor, “CHR” will be ”Chorus.” Basically you’re just doubling the sound, often with a tiny bit of phase delay or reverb effect to make it sound more like two voices instead of one. So really, this is not at all 7800-specific. You could hook up any system you want to your amp and get the same sound effects. You could also connect your 7800 through a real home theater AVR and add in all kinds of digital effects, bass boosting, reverb and sound environment modeling, etc. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linndrum Posted July 29, 2019 Share Posted July 29, 2019 13 hours ago, Jinks said: Flange and some wah with desert falcon. Someone try er out. I have a fancy auto-wah pedal, I bet that would be interesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 29, 2019 Author Share Posted July 29, 2019 (edited) 11 hours ago, DrVenkman said: Yeah, on a guitar effects pedal or processor, “CHR” will be ”Chorus.” Basically you’re just doubling the sound, often with a tiny bit of phase delay or reverb effect to make it sound more like two voices instead of one. So really, this is not at all 7800-specific. You could hook up any system you want to your amp and get the same sound effects. You could also connect your 7800 through a real home theater AVR and add in all kinds of digital effects, bass boosting, reverb and sound environment modeling, etc. I knew it wasn’t 7800-specific as to ‘method’, but I hear many feel that the sound is thin or not very high-quality (as it competed against NES and C64), the system, and I wanted to see if an easily obtainable external device could make both music and sound-effects more chuncky overall without having to ‘fine-tune’ for every-game; that is using same setting for everything. One could envision that it would be better and more professional to ‘to just open it up and insert a KORG mini-synth-chip and then only do bit of reprogramming of all the games’. But that would not, at least, be the simple solution for the general layman-retro-gamer. Hooking up with an enormous Marshall Amp is not a simple and cheap solution, even though I myself felt Chorus + Reverb and giving Bass, Middle and Treble a boost on clean channel gave the music much less stiffness, and much, much more depth/musicality. So I’ll sometime try with one of these small cheap portable guitar-amps, so that effects can be added. All suggestions for simple, external devices which can improve upon both music and sound-effects with as few setting-changes as possible are of course welcome. And I appreciate all the input here. Edited July 29, 2019 by Giles N Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 29, 2019 Author Share Posted July 29, 2019 19 hours ago, Jinks said: Flange and some wah with desert falcon. Someone try er out. I might be onto that sometime... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 29, 2019 Author Share Posted July 29, 2019 6 hours ago, Linndrum said: I have a fancy auto-wah pedal, I bet that would be interesting Just let it out man! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted July 31, 2019 Share Posted July 31, 2019 On 7/29/2019 at 10:38 AM, Linndrum said: I have a fancy auto-wah pedal, I bet that would be interesting Like a old cry baby wah? I have a boss T-wah from early 80s somewhere also a rack effects unit for my bass.. but do not have the skills to upload to u tube with a video or whatever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giles N Posted July 31, 2019 Author Share Posted July 31, 2019 1 hour ago, Jinks said: Like a old cry baby wah? I have a boss T-wah from early 80s somewhere also a rack effects unit for my bass.. but do not have the skills to upload to u tube with a video or whatever. I manually recorded a PC emulation (I have the org.carts. & hardware), with my iPad, using sound recording close to the Amp. Then I inserted the audio-file into Garage-band. From there I exported it to iMovies, added pictures along with the sound-file. Then I stored it as video on my phone. Went to my YouTube channel, and from there chose to upload it from my iPhone (which took 5-10 minutes). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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