Ever thought about how many options are there for the music on ps1 hardware?

First, there is SPU wavetable music. It's the SNES audio chip on steroids (both were made by Ken Kutaragi). It has 8x more RAM and 2x more bits per sample than SNES. Usually reserved for games where ingame asset streaming is used, like FF and RE games which load backgrounds during gameplay. The best examples are RE2 and RE3 ingame music imo, hard to believe both are just tiny midi files.

Second, XA audio. Interleaved streaming audio originally used for video cutscenes. Interleaved means ps1 can stream XA audio and other data (video or assets) at the same time. Slightly less quality than CD audio but takes much less space. Most developers used it to pack as much quality music as posible while also leaving enough space for game assets. Examples are Tekken 2 and 3, Need for Speed 3 and 4, Gran Turismo 1 and 2, Ridge Racer Type 4. Resident Evil games used XA audio for spoken dialogue. Not many devs bothered with using the "interleaved" feature though, outside of video cutscenes. One famous example is real time intro in Tekken 3 where characters textures are streamed alongside the music.

Last, standard redbook CD audio. Highest quality but takes a lot of space leaving too little room for game assets. Was heavily used in early ps1 games. Coolest thing about it is that you can just put the game CD into a CD player instead of buying or downloading the soundtrack. Examples: Rage Racer and Destruction Derby 2.

>>11792619 (OP)
Aren't certain models of PS1 revered by audiophiles for superior CDDA playback?

>>11792625
That's simply because they were basically mid range SONY CD players. Those would be the early models, btw. The ones that overheated badly.

>>11792625
the first gen have rca stereo jacks on them and there are retards that think it makes a difference
audiophiles are self labelled retards though
when it came out "sound system enjoyers" liked it because it was a decent CD player with a TV display, which was novel and cool at the time
CD players were still competing with tape, so a lot bought it as their first CD player that can also play games
like a lot of people bought PS2 for the DVD player, and saw playing games was a bonus feature

Why would you even make a chat GTP post like this?

>>11792625
>>11792632
>>11792635
It was about the DAC, which is also the same DAC on the PU18 5501 (which is the best model of PS1)

>>11792635
I remember there being certain techniques like warming up the ps1 and turning it on its head for optimal sound quality back in like 2010, it was crazy. Audiophiles are like voodoo priests.

>>11792619 (OP)
XA has another party trick. You can have up to 8 "channels" at the same time. This was for Mario 64 style reactive music so you could have different versions of the same track and swap between them at the same position for the same result as you got in M64 like with going from land to water.

I suppose there's also a 4th option. You can stream any arbitrary format you want as mode1 data so long as you can decode it on the CPU. MP3 would be tough, but I'd never rule it out completely. There's always someone smart enough to reduce a complex spec down to just what you can achieve with lookup tables and integer math.

Also as an aside, there's another technical problem with redbook that XA was designed to sidestep and that's drive speed. Redbook audio required the drive to spin down to 1x speed and then back up to 2x for data meaning if you had to load at the end of a level it required a length speed change to get the new data, and then another to start playing audio again. XA let you keep spinning the disc at full speed which helps more than you'd think.

>>11792794
>warming up the ps1
audiophiles are notorious for believing nonsense about "warming up the electronics" and "burning in headphones/speakers". It's chinese whisper nonsense that comes from the distant past where valve amps literally required to be brought up to temperature before they'd even operate and this is why transistors were such a big improvement with their instant start nature.
For "burning in" equipment that's similarly stupid. The only truth to it was that if you were hand making your own speakers you probably weren't using the best of materials in the best way, and so you had to expect the audio characteristics to change as the wood dries out and the glue fully cures. But precision made equipment done in factories to well engineered designs are as good as they'll ever be off the production line. Any nonsense about how "it sounds better after $TIME of burnin" is just a psychological effect of you getting used to the new sound profile. If you record the waveform of your speakers out the box and again months later it should perfectly align. The only way that they wouldn't is if you damaged them by overdriving them with a cheap amp.

>>11792619 (OP)
>doesn't play Spotify
Pass

>>11792796
>Also as an aside, there's another technical problem with redbook that XA was designed to sidestep and that's drive speed. Redbook audio required the drive to spin down to 1x speed and then back up to 2x for data meaning if you had to load at the end of a level it required a length speed change to get the new data, and then another to start playing audio again. XA let you keep spinning the disc at full speed which helps more than you'd think.
its insane to think of developers considering gating their disc speed changes in level design and such. nowadays "devs" just pick a lego kit off the shelf, no idea about hardware at all

My Sega CD had really good disc audio playback. So did my Saturn. The PSX is generally said to be one of the best CD players ever made. I wonder what makes it the best?

>>11792619 (OP)
>Coolest thing about it is that you can just put the game CD into a CD player instead of buying or downloading the soundtrack. Examples: Rage Racer and Destruction Derby 2.

the Hot Wheels album was great!

>>11792635
>>11792625
i had a latter "dualshock" PSX set in 1999, but IIRC. the audio quality was not any better than my bro's portable CD Player. or my home's VCD Player. yes i know you USAians probably never saw a VCD player.

and about 2 yrs later, i bought a 2nd-hand Pentium-II rig just for schoolwork, and the audio quality for that was waaaay better than both of those. it was just a crappy HP rig made for /biz/.

>>11792780
Is it a demonstrably better DAC than like a Saturn, or an Xbox or a CD32 etc?

>>11792668
If AI can make more interesting threads than you then I'm all for it.

>>11792635
who didn't have a CD player by then?

are you a secondary?

>>11792794
>he doesn't bevel the edges of all of his CDs
>he doesn't demagnetize his CDs before each play
And I bet you think you're getting the best audio quality out of your discs.
lol. Just lol

>>11794286
>Demagnetizing CDs
Fucking dumbass. That shit completely throws the rotational velocidensity of the CD out of sync, even doing it once means your disc will be sounding like shit in 5 years tops.

>>11794286
>>11792794
Audiophiles are literal schizos who will throw all of their apparent intelligence and logic out the windows in their pursuit of justifying nonsensical and astronomically priced snakeoils.
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/39032-sotm-snh-10g-sotm’s-first-network-switch/page/6/#comment-995827

>>11794292
I converted all of my 128kb mp3s from YouTube into FLAC, and it pretty much fully restored all of the audio degradation. I could entirely new notes that you couldn't hear before, or was like an entirely new song.

>>11794404
Yes, but did it restore the warmth?
Also, has anybody tried blasting their disc games with a Xenon lightbulb in a Nespa optical disc finalizer? This sounds really promising
>Before the Nespa treatment, colors were 'nice'. Afterwards, colors became talkative as though they had a life of their own. The Nespa effects on this DVD were stunning. Because we had no clue what to expect, we'd set the Pro for 60 flashes. In the sound department, our 2.0 setup gained in intelligibility, a great thing when you don't like subtitles. Because the Nespa cleans up all manner of noise, another DVD became the entrée - Lord of the Rings. This movie has so much going on that watching it on even a bigger TV screen can be quite tiresome on your eyes. In the movie theatre, your eyes can wander over a large area but on a TV screen, all is compacted. After one of the discs was Nespa'd, the image was far more relaxing to view. Where blacks had been sort of dark grey before, they were much darker now. Instead of an expected increase in brilliance, the treated disc displayed a more even tonality, albeit with more detail. After a second 60 flashes, the image was even better. Blacks now were truly pitch black. What the effect of Nespa might be when high-resolution projectors are involved is beyond our scope to explore but it is likely to be substantial.
https://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/nanotech2/pro.html

>>11792625
PS1 was never "superior" for audio at any point in its lifetime, it's just hipster fuckheads wanting to look cool by using a video game console to play music instead of an actual Hi-Fi and a scam perpetuated by resellers trying to artificially inflate the aftermarket value just because there's something different with the early models.

>>11792635
Not the point.
>>11792780
This was the point.
>>11794603
You are basically right but it did actually have a good DAC for the time. It would not stand up now though and anyone reselling it on this point is a great evil.

>>11794256
I don't really know. Apparently it's a desired for the time, I found a 150+ page long thread that lasted years on diyAudio. https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/playstation-as-cd-player.31123/

I checked the thread and it appears it's a popular device for modification, people were sharing circuit diagrams and installing capacitors, hooking it up to amplifiers and doing a lot of work on it. The AK4309 VM is the DAC inside the console. I'm no audio guy, and between the audiophile side and the 4chan side I'm definitely in the middle - there's some truth to what they're saying but 4chan would prefer to focus on balancing rocks and 6" cables as a point of mockery rather than give them the time of day when they're talking about amplifiers and attenuating circuits with new capacitors.

The thread itself I linked to is a fun read, people sharing personal anecdotes and honing on in the particular sound qualities of the console, pulling out multimeters and I can appreciate that kind of passion. It seems most people don't feel it's "the best" but is worth checking out for the quality of its sound. I can appreciate that as an original hardware guy, I make the same arguments for why I'd rather use a real Sega Genesis or PlayStation over emulation - I consider their positions legitimate.

>>11792625
Yes, due to the DAC. PS has a weak output stage though so you'll often see people replace that.

>>11792635
It's not about the jacks you utter thirdie moron.

>>11794603
Nah it has a great, great DAC. It actually made its way into a couple super high end CD players of the time too. Where do you get your information, your ass? LOL

>>11793016
There were VCD players in the US but none of the big shots used VCD so it was mainly for imports and bootlegs. I saw them in flea markets and asian stores around the early 2000s

>>11794890
VCD players existed in the US ever since the CD-I came out, which of course was the first VCD player.

Only later did the format catch on in Asia.

>>11794743
There's certainly arguments for speaker quality, amp quality, etc, and some things to be learned when it comes to producing better audio output, it's just too bad the audiophile community became infested with lunatics who rattle on about literal, verifiable nonsense and magical thinking.

>>11792619 (OP)
SNES otaku music is cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXE3Pxylmb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDpRz5ocF4g

Dorts

>>11792619 (OP)
>It has 8x more RAM and 2x more bits per sample than SNES
what the fuck are you talking about, chatgpt? you are a fucking moron and it's a DISGRACE that mods on this useless board have sat back and gone:
> yep. chatgpt posts from detestable pedophiles is going to make /vr/ gain more traffic
the absolute state of this embarrassing board.

>>11794918
> since the CD-I came out, which of course was the first VCD player.

Doubt.jpeg

>>11795652
>Video CDs comply with the CD-i Bridge format, and are authored using tracks in CD-ROM XA mode
VCD is just Green Book and any Philips CD-i player with the MPEG decoder board can play VCDs. But not all "VCD" branded players can play back strictly Green Book discs.