hello! I recently picked up a sega genesis (model 1) at a yard sale down the street from me. $50, two controllers, seemingly great condition, just needed to dust it off and clean it up a little. I was pretty excited, I've been wanting to get one for a few years now. I got a mega everdrive pro in the hopes of being able to render even the largest of .vgms... as well as play games of course. if you have any Cool Genesis Game Recommendations I'm all ears. I've pretty much just played sonic and shining force lol.

anyway, now that I have all that set up, I'm finding that the sound is pretty blown out. I wasn't really expecting the .vgm chip mixing/gain settings to apply on a physical machine, but what I'd like to ask is, how normal is that? and what steps do hardware renderists take, if any, to mitigate that, if it's unavoidable? I've tried both the everdrive .vgm player and the deadfish .vgm-to-rom tool and they seem to have the same overall volume and same intense level of distortion. I did some experimenting with one of my own tunes and I had to lower the YM2612 channel volumes down into the 40-50 range (from the mid 70s with 7F being max) for it to start to sound non-distorted... nearly inaudible in vgmplay on pc, and of course that low the patches themselves start to sound different. all of this when there's zero distortion in vgmplay for the original tune, even if I raise the .vgm gain to 1.0.

the audio from games, in comparison, seems loud but only somewhat crunchy - the patches themselves don't seem to be distorting on their own but there's definitely a strong aliasing/bitcrush-like hiss on both the AV output and the headphone jack output.

I've never owned a genesis before so I have no idea how normal any of this is. is that just the way that it be, or is there perhaps an issue with the YM2612 inside? can I do anything about that, like clean it up? I'm not really experienced with console mods or electronics but I'd give it a try if it meant receiving clean audio from the thing I bought for chiptune reasons first and foremost 🙃

A couple things to think about.

First of all, there's multiple sources of clipping to consider. One is inside the sound chip which is probably not a factor here. Another is the volume slider - mine is at around 50%.

The final one is the actual amplifier design itself. Within the Model 1 there are actually ten circuit board variants, and they all have slightly different amps. Some of them sound kinda bad.

How to tell them apart:
https://consolemods.org/wiki/Genesis:Motherboard_Differences#Model_1

Comparison:
https://consolemods.org/wiki/Genesis:Audio_Output_Comparison


Also, use the headphone jack. It's the only way to get stereo.

also also, play rocket knight adventures

oh man, I had no idea the weeds were this deep, that's really unfortunate.

I have board revision VA7, for which "The audio fidelity was noticeably changed compared to all previous model 1 revisions, making it less desirable as a result. This is due to Sega using an inadequate amplifier circuit". which I guess means I should be hunting down a different system. how disappointing, thanks for the info though. all I knew was that people favored the model 1 for sound so I was excited I found a model 1.

Congrats on the Genesis!

Yes, from my experience usually the emulated audio from vgmplay doesn't clip but on my Model 1 (VA6?) most .vgms end up clipping unless I lower the volume slider (around 7-8/10 on average but depends on the track of course). This is also recommended by The 16-bit Audiophile Project's recording guidelines

- ideally you record at the highest volume it goes without clipping to maximize SNR.

yes Rocket Knight Adventures! and Dynamite Headdy. I got the USA release. The Adventures of Batman and Robin plays great to me and the soundtrack's unreal. iirc Jesper Kyd wrote his own custom drivers to get the most out of the sgen's audio? and it's been cool to see The Ooze make the rounds on bsky. if I ever make a game I'd love to have it end up like The Ooze. mb the one sgen game I never really beat. Alien 3 was hard for me and really rewarding when I finally beat the game. ofc all the Sonics and Mortal Kombats and Street Fighter too. Jurassic Park's great; I liked the Rampage Edition sequel even more. NBA Hangtime rules! Castlevania: Bloodlines too. and both Toejam & Earl and definitely the sequel Panic on Funkotron! both are great. I know I'm probs leaving a lot out, and yes I have no clue on the audio part of the post, but this should be at least a start

(edit at around 12:43am mountain time: start with The Ooze! everyone's mileage may vary but this feels to me, more than all the others, even the Sonics, like a game that could only exist on Sega Genesis. and it's just really cool)

dami, if you wanna dig into hardware mods, you have some options.

You can change some components and put a new amp right in place of the old one: https://consolemods.org/wiki/Genesis:Audio_Circuit_Mod#Procedure_(VA7_Model_1)

Or you can do the 'triple bypass' mod. (it's called that because it does audio and video in one mod, but you can skip the audio part. People used to make audio-only boards but I think they're extinct now.) https://retrorgb.com/genesistriplebypass.html

But for the price of these options you could probably get another Genesis if you look around/wait for a deal. I have a Model 2 whose amp blew up but I haven't bothered to fix it because I can just get another one for $30 if I really want to.

mmm, yep, I suspect the best option for me is to simply look for a different console now that I know more about what to be on the lookout for... both price-wise and experience-wise - I've never even handled a soldering iron before, so the 'triple bypass' for example being labeled an "expert-only mod" is likely bad news for me, even if it sounds killer. :p

I've seen quite a few genesis machines around over the last couple years, so I guess I'll do some shopping and see what I can find here and there! in the meantime, thank y'all for the game recommendations and the wealth of info - this system is almost completely new to me so I'm glad to be learning from experts. 8)

some games im trying to remember (I might keep editing here for adding more): Undeadline, New Zealand Story, Outrun, Super Hang On, Viewpoint, Midnight Resistance, Sunset Riders, Snow Bros, Rugby World Cup 95, Atomic Runner, Gods, Flashback, Syndicate, Lotus Turbo Challenge, Marble Madness, Super Monaco GP, Super Volleyball, Lightening Force, Lion King, James Pond (2 and 3), Shadow of the Beast, Musha Aleste, Pit Fighter, Out of this World, Pac Mania...
homebrew developers like Mojon Twins released some interesting games
there is a homebrew remake of Q-Bert I enjoyed a lot playing
talking about homebrew remakes, attempts like Windjammers and Metal Slug seems interesting - Xevious as well
pouet.net has some interesting demoscene prods as well
btw if people made cross-compiling experiences like using sgdk, marsdev, secondbasic, etc., im curious about! :)

It also could be clipping within the patch, which imo is desirable and why genesis with a ym2612 stands out as an fm synth to me (along with a very distinct ladder effect. I know a few games deliberately take advantage of the clipping, and I have used the effect a few times myself for channel 3 ext mode. It's easy to avoid if you keep TL of carriers lower especially with algorithms 4-7 that have multiple carriers outputting the sound.

If games sound fine, I'm gonna say someone wasn't careful with TL values in their patches - as game composers generally either used patches made by someone who tested them (gems, i.e.), or they tested the sound on hardware at least a little bit before release. or they didn't and it sounded like "genesis music" lol.

as for rendering, I have my genesis into a mixer with the headphone jack cranked to lessen effects of background noise. I would say it's a bit higher than what most computers expect for line level, about 1.5-2x volume that of what my game boys are at least.

Easy way to check, if you change system in furnace, it has an option for YM2612 (9 bit DAC with distortion), and that's accurate to what you'd expect the "standard" of model 1s to sound like

*oh also if you wanna send/link the vgms I can try to build em into another vgm player, it could be a problem there. some players are... not good. I've had the most luck with SGDK project file

On the topic of vgm players: The XGM2 driver in SGDK (I think this is the one you're referring to?) is pretty solid but it has its own set of limitations - it only does up to 13.3kHz sample rate for PCM and I think only supports standard 60Hz frames for playback (no custom tick rates/"overclock").

By comparison, the 16bap version of the Deadfish Shitware player (linked within the page I linked earlier) seems to be the most feature capable with arbitrary PCM playback rates and tick rates but sometimes unreliable - sometimes frame pacing is inconsistent, sometimes PCM playback clicks for whatever reason.

It would be cool to make a better vgm player/driver with none of the issues mentioned here, but those issues haven't bothered me enough to actually go and do it myself yet. MegaPCM

seems like a promising start.