The rigs we've created for chipsynth MD's emulation.
plgDavid3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2023
demo · intermediate · evergreen · 2022–2023 on HN
A Plogue developer shows the custom electronic test rigs built to measure the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis sound chip (YM2612) for the chipsynth MD emulation. It covers the years of testing and reverse engineering needed to reproduce the chip's quirks accurately.
Recommended in threads on chip emulation as a look at how hard it is to emulate vintage sound hardware accurately.
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3 comments from Hacker News
I have the Chipsynth MD, which is a Sega Mega Drive (aka Genesis) based synth from Plogue and it's one of my favorite plug-in synths. It's pretty remarkable how much it nails the sounds from those games. This video shows some insight into the development process: ▶ this video
chipsynth MD is a musician-targeted emulator of the MegaDrive's sound chips; one of the authors goes into the difficulty of recreating things at ▶ this video (From memory: they sourced a variant of the sound chip with digital output, characterized the DAC that way, then built a test suite to compare emulator behavior with a real chip)
I'm an FM junkie and own various pieces of gear based on old yamaha FM chips, as well as actual yamaha FM keyboards. I think the various emulations out there are actually pretty good, and I have to admit I'd probably have a tough time with blind A/B tests. Probably the most noticeable (and sought after) out of the "lo-fi" effects is the ladder distortion effect on the old Sega megadrive YM2612 chips. I own a MegaFM synth with one of those and I do love the sound. I'm not sure if most emulators actually try to emulate it, but the plogue chipsynth MD plugin does. The creator has a really cool video on it ▶ this video .