Forums

Sega Master System / Mark III / Game Gear
SG-1000 / SC-3000 / SF-7000 / OMV
Home - Forums - Games - Scans - Maps - Cheats - Credits
Music - Videos - Development - Hacks - Translations - Homebrew

View topic - Dumping PSG+FM VGM at the same time?

Reply to topic
Author Message
  • Joined: 27 Oct 2020
  • Posts: 7
Reply with quote
Dumping PSG+FM VGM at the same time?
Post Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:58 pm
Hi all,

I'm wondering if there's any way at all to rip both the PSG and FM soundtracks of a game at the same time. Any hack that would force Fusion to play both together perhaps?

This is in the interest of saving time when ripping/trimming, and making sure both VGMs are perfectly in sync.

Many thanks.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 16 May 2002
  • Posts: 1355
  • Location: italy
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:15 pm
It's not the emulator's fault, most (all?) games just disable the PSG output altogether if they detect that FM is available, aside from the Space Harrier thing from the Japanese Bios I don't recall any other song which uses PSG and FM at the same time, mainly because it's often unsupported by the hardware itself.

Recommended read.

edit: on second thought, maybe you meant to dump two separate VGMs at the same time, as if you were running two separate instances of the game at the same time, one with FM and one without. Well, no, that's not easily possible, either. If you hack the game to run two sound engines at the same time, you would likely slow it down and make inconsistent rips. You could hack the emulator itself to actually run two games at the same time, but that would require an emulator with an open source, so Fusion wouldn't be an option (Dega would, but that would come with another slew of issues, though).

The complexity of your suggestion far outweighs the potential benefits, at least in my opinion.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 27 Oct 2020
  • Posts: 7
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 4:11 pm
Fair enough, thank you for your response!

Given that it's so easy to switch between PSG and FM on Fusion, without even reloading the ROM I believe, I thought that maybe there would be some hack to allow for both to be played simultaneously.

I also noticed that most, if not all of the MS VGMs available on SMSP for games which have both PSG and FM soundtracks sync perfectly if you play them together. Obviously this is due to the great commitment to precision from the rippers, but it made me think that maybe there would be a way to somehow capture all channels at the same time.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 16 May 2002
  • Posts: 1355
  • Location: italy
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 5:39 pm
By the way, I'm sorry if my previous reply sounded unnecessarily harsh, that wasn't my intention, reading it again a few hours later made me realise I could have worded it better.

Yes, it is theoretically possible to do what you're suggesting, but be aware that it's not as easy as you think, in fact I think it would be way harder to set it up rather than working on two separate vgm packs, but hey, I'd be glad to be proven wrong.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 27 Oct 2020
  • Posts: 7
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 7:00 pm
I actually didn't read it with harsh tone at all!

Yeah makes sense. I will have to dump them separately then, and familiarise myself more with the trimming process.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 01 Feb 2014
  • Posts: 844
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 8:32 am
gaetan wrote
it's so easy to switch between PSG and FM on Fusion, without even reloading the ROM I believe


Are you sure about this? I don't use Fusion due to its inaccuracy and being generally outdated, but I can't imagine that working.

The only way this was possible was if the game was sending data to both the PSG and the FM chip all the time. I don't think any game would have that many cpu cycles per frame to spare and waste on a soundchip not present in the machine it's running on.

The only other way for this to work would be if Fusion ran the same ROM on two virtual machines simultaneously, but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense either.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 27 Oct 2020
  • Posts: 7
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:39 pm
Kagesan wrote
gaetan wrote
it's so easy to switch between PSG and FM on Fusion, without even reloading the ROM I believe


Are you sure about this? I don't use Fusion due to its inaccuracy and being generally outdated, but I can't imagine that working.

The only way this was possible was if the game was sending data to both the PSG and the FM chip all the time. I don't think any game would have that many cpu cycles per frame to spare and waste on a soundchip not present in the machine it's running on.

The only other way for this to work would be if Fusion ran the same ROM on two virtual machines simultaneously, but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense either.

Ok no you're right, just tried again and it doesn't work without resetting the game.

May I ask if you have other emulators to recommend for VGM dumping, if you don't use Fusion?
  View user's profile Send private message
Reply to topic



Back to the top of this page

Back to SMS Power!