The Nintendo Gigaleak of July 24, 2020

[lincolnic]

So it wasn't a case that the track was uncompressed and it was compressed to fit in memory, the new "uncompressed" version is the first time it has appeared in that form and it never sounded like that to the composer.

Yeah, exactly this. When you're working under such heavy limitations like the SNES's RAM capacity, the only way to do it is to write with the compressed sound, otherwise you're going to be in for some nasty surprises when your track goes in the game.

 

[Violentvixen]

Interesting. So would you have a composition tool that only played the compressed sounds? Or do you choose certain sounds to compress (like the strings shown in the previous post) and others not to?

 

[Phantoon]

As I understand it, each sample would have a specific file size it had to be, so the full sample they otherwise used had to be reduced to a smaller file size, by doing things like a lower sampling rate, cutting out bits of the wave form (if I recall correctly it's the attack - the front bit of the wave form that gives each instrument its distinctive sound, the decay and sustain are less important) so they may leave that alone compared to the rest of it. They'd often have very short samples and down pitch them to make them longer. So they results is that the SNES samples may not sound much like the originals. They'd use the SNES versions while composing.

Here's Dave Wise talking a little about how he did it:

You can download SNES GSS from this link and try it for yourself, there's a short guide here

 

[Violentvixen]

Got it, and thank you for the video and links I'll check those out later.

So it sounds like rather than "Super Mario World Restored" the project should have been named "Super Mario World Uncompressed"? Very cool stuff still.

 

[lincolnic]

Here's Dave Wise talking a little about how he did it:

Is there a specific timestamp we should be looking for in that video? I clicked in but it seems like it starts in the middle of a random conversation.

So would you have a composition tool that only played the compressed sounds? Or do you choose certain sounds to compress (like the strings shown in the previous post) and others not to?

I don't know exactly what program(s?) SNES composers would've been using, but they'd almost certainly have to be using the actual hardware for playback since there probably wouldn't have been another way to hear it as it would sound in-game. Every sound would definitely have to be compressed, take a look at this screenshot from the GSS guide Phantoon linked:

The yellow bit is the instrument samples, which comes in at a whopping 54 kB for all of them. For comparison, a minute of uncompressed CD-quality audio is about 5 MB for one channel, or 10 MB for stereo. One second of uncompressed mono audio is about 88 kB. The SNES audio system only had 64 kB of RAM to work with, so when you consider the amount of compression going on it's kind of a miracle any of it sounds like music at all!

Now that I think a little harder about it, it makes sense that the reverb on the original samples would've been lost when they got compressed that much -- they must've had to severely truncate the samples, which means any reverb tails would almost certainly be among the first information to go.

 

[Phantoon]

I clicked in but it seems like it starts in the middle of a random conversation.

Sorry, stupid YouTube stuck a timestamp I didn't notice. It's from 8 minutes on.

If I understand correctly a small portion of the 64kb had to be free for the SNES to run the music, so yeah, they didn't even have 64kb. The programmers back then did some dark wizardry, basically.

 

[lincolnic]

If I understand correctly a small portion of the 64kb had to be free for the SNES to run the music, so yeah, they didn't even have 64kb. The programmers back then did some dark wizardry, basically.

Yep, the GSS guide recommends leaving 600-1200 bytes free so it can actually run. (I was 100% going to mess around with the program, but it's PC-only and I'm on a Mac. Boo.)

 

[lincolnic]

One really interesting thing I learned from that David Wise interview was that the SNES takes 4-bit samples and somehow upgrades them to 16-bit. The more I learn the more I'm convinced that the SNES audio chip was basically just magic.

That information comes while he's in the process of explaining that these SNES music "restoration" projects are somewhat misleading, because he was never working with those uncompressed samples in the first place. Maybe we should think of them more as "alternate universe" versions instead.

 

[Violentvixen]

Thank you for that video! That's also interesting that he says they might have updated version of these tracks this April or May.

Also I totally saw this interview before when someone on here was talking about Ice Mine/Antarctica song a couple months ago, but apparently this part didn't click with me back then.

 

[Kazin]

Even if these were never intended to be what these songs were supposed to sound like in-game, this is an interesting exercise nonetheless. I hope they find the original samples for more games...

 

[Phantoon]

It does have some very pleasing results for some games. The Jammin' Sam Miller versions of DKC1-3 tunes are lovely! Other games don't fare so well.