NES Setup
Nintendo Entertainment System Setup
By Dr Dist
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As the name suggests, this setup is designed to accurately reproduce the sound of the Nintendo Entertainment System sound chip. Like most video game consoles of the same era, it’s mostly capable of outputting primitive synth sounds, such as the very common raw square/pulse waves and low-resolution digital noise (and this is what we like those old consoles for, don’t we ?).
However, the NES has one particular feature you won’t find on any other console : the 4 Bit triangle wave which rather fails at sounding like a real triangle, especially when played at low frequencies (as a matter of fact, this wave was often used for basslines in NES music). This is obviously caused by the low resolution that makes the wave look heavily pixelated (each period is divided into 32 steps), thus generating a stronger harmonic content. The reason I’ve chosen to create samples for it is simply because it makes things a lot easier. Generating such a deformed triangle wave with a synth is possible, but rather tedious since it requires either extra oscillators or a bit crusher effect on a regular triangle with very precise settings.
There’s a dedicated Thor for noise in the RNS setup, it uses the Sample & Hold noise type which is perfectly suitable for oldschool 8 Bit sounds (typically used for sound effects or percussions). The rate parameter is mapped to the keyboard so you can easily change its tone, you can also tweak the Mod Envelope settings for more possibilities. The setup also features a lo-fi sample playback Combinator with variable samplerate, Bit-depth and pseudo-antialias filtering/dithering. Just load any sample you want in the NN19 and there you go !
If you want to make this setup sound as authentic as possible, you should take some of the NES limitations into consideration. Here are a few tips and tricks to do so (keep in mind that you’re not forced to follow these instructions word for word, you might want to use this setup in a more creative way) :
- There are three Subtractors in the RNS setup, each showing the three possible fixed pulse width values, but only two of them should play at the same time with the same pulse width value (see the Castlevania demo for a better understanding of how it works). The same thing probably goes for the Amp Envelope ADSR settings, although I’m not entirely sure about this.
- Avoid using filters or LFOs for PWM, otherwise it will sound more like the Commodore 64′s SID chip, which is a lot more sophisticated and not really comparable to the NES sound chip.
- The NES sound chip only supports a total of five monophonic channels for both music and sound effects (2x pulse, triangle, noise and PCM playback), so it’s not possible to make big complex chords with it. Back in the 80s, the common walkaround in video game music was to replace chords with very fast arpeggios, so the RPG-8 might come handy in some situations. Use fast rates from 1/16T to 1/128 to recreate that typical 8 Bit feel.
- An extensive use of portamento, vibrato and pitch-bending is always welcome. You can freely change the pitch settings on the devices to your liking. Remember that pitch is controlled by the Thor device in the PCM playback combi.
Enjoy !
(6 votes, average: 4.17 out of 5)
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The files don’t load in Reason. I’m using Reason 3.0 and get an error message that it’s a bad file format and cannot be loaded.
Who’s the @$$ who rated this 1 star? This is an amazing setup, thank you for sharing!
spot on
Amazing package, something I’ve been trying to scratch together myself for awhile. I love that you’ve gone into some technical detail regarding pulse width, triangle, limitations, etc. Thanks!
Absolutely brilliant! The .RNS file is perfect. Thanks a mil!!