SNES Audio Unit As Stand-Alone Player

An anonymous reader writes "Raphael Assénat successfully turned the SNES' audio processing unit into a stand alone unit which can be controlled through a parallel port, allowing people to play SNES music separate from games and the SNES' main unit. Elsewhere there is also a tutorial about adding S/PDIF digital sound output to the SNES."

Comments

usefulness?

[dermusikman]

i think that's very cool. i love to see new efforts being drawn on retro hardware.

but i do wonder why one would bother building a parallel port unit to play the music when there are software emulators doing that work for us already?
if it were truly *standalone*, then it would be a fun, useful way to incorporate it into music projects or just have fun - but as it's tied to the computer already, why not just use the software?

don't know

[Apreche]

For things like the commodore audio chip you can't get exactly the same sounds without the real hardware. But for SNES I think that zsnes + roms + alsa does a pretty faithful rendition of the sound. And if I fiddle with the sound options you could argue that however unfaithful the sound becomes, it is actually superior in quality to that of just an SNES.

That's one thing the SNES did have over the Genesis. The sound quality was vastly superior. I remember the "echoy" cave noises in super mario world, that was something else.

Re:overrated

[Pacifix]

because it's innovative, techy and causes other techs to laugh. It's a "because it's there" kinda thing.