Audio Filters - good way to soften hard chip tunes?

General
#1

Hello all,

I am a proud owner of a real atari 7800, which I play with RF on my old tube tv. Using emulation I can get a much crisper picture, obviously, which is nice, but one thing I find the real thing does better is audio. The RF signal distorts the audio quite a bit, but for 2600 games that is actually a good thing. The sounds coming out of the 2600 are sharp and harsh, and need some of that distortion to soften them and make it sound right.

I was wondering if it is possible to add some sound filters in retroarch to achieve the same thing. I have played around with some of the audio filters that are available, and nothing seems to have much effect. Any suggestions? Thank you.

#2

There is no distortion dsp (though that’s a good suggestion), but you might try playing with the low-passCPS filter dsp to chop off some of the harsh top-end. It’s designed specifically for the CPS arcade system, but I suspect it will help with this, as well.

#3

I set the sample rate to 2k from 4.8k, set the audio quality to lowest, and used a High Dampen filter. I then set the Audio gain to -2 which just makes it quieter. The dampening effect is subtle but noticeable.

It is better. Compared to the real thing though, RF makes the sound more like it is coming through over radio. Kind of static signal quality, I guess. Torching the audio quality in retroarch makes it sound scratchy. Mostly because all I did was lower the sampling rate. I think it is a bit of an improvement, but it would be nice if there was a audio filter available specifically for that kind of thing.

Basically any pre NES home console would also benefit, or at least sound more authentic, with an RF audio filter. While I am at it, an RF shader config would be cool too :). There is a difference in the way color comes across and how noise effects the image between NTSC composite and RF, to the point where I think RF is only marginally blurrier compared to composite, but definitely has a different set of characteristics.

1 Like
#4

I would like to see a RF shader as well.

I’m waiting the new @solid12345 shader pack.

#5

theyre not actually talking about shaders here…

#6

Is it possible to use audio filters on macOS (High Sierra) at all?

I tried few different versions of RetroArch and there is no audio_filters.

I just wanted to do a high-cut above 3-4 kHz – sounds more realistic with 8bit games :slight_smile:

#7

You might want to try Viper

http://vipersaudio.com/blog/?page_id=59