The Genesis version sounds horrible!Originally Posted by pepharytheworm
This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. When emulating certain realistic instruments (guitar being the absolute biggest offender), the Genesis suffers big-time. You want guitar samples, you gotta go with the SNES. What's most surprising is that the organ track sounds better on the SNES than the Genesis, which is just lazy programming on behalf of whoever did the music for the Genesis. FM synthesis excels at organ sounds as its architecture lends itself to it quite well.
And I'll say this for the SNES: it must have been much easier to program music for. No borrowing pre-programmed patches from past projects; crispy GM samples ready to go! By 90s standards, a lot of the organic sounds were downright serviceable. But for me, there were two significant downsides to it, and these are precisely why I generally prefer the sound of the Genesis over the SNES:
Sparse (if any) multisampling. Multisampling means you record several samples of a sound at several pitches, and in the gaps between these samples you either speed up the nearest sample or slow it down, depending on what note is played. If the original multisamples are too far apart, playing notes in between results in an unnatural sound that suffers from the "chipmunk effect" that we're all so familiar with. Pitch your voice up or down and you either get that high pitched chipmunk sound or a ridiculously beefy slow-mo effect. Not pretty when applied to horns or strings, or, certainly worst of all, guitar.
My other issue is that because the SNES relied almost entirely on its wavetable for music, the same samples were used ad nauseum for all of its games: Like the guitar, bass and drums of Rock n Roll Racing? Well, get ready to enjoy the identical sounds in Uniracers, Star Fox, Mega Man X, X2, X3, Battletoads/Double Dragon, Biker Mice from Mars, Desert Strike, and dozens of others.
Certainly the Genesis was guilty of this as well; developers using the same sound "engine" for multiple projects, and not always to great effect. But because Genesis music is programmed "from scratch", I find the mixes to be more even, and less abrasive, despite the metallic properties of FM synthesis. Amp envelopes were almost always more varied on the Genesis which resulted in more fluid music without the staccato jolts found in so many of the more "rockin'" SNES tracks. Developers who bothered to massage the Genesis' four operators were able to elicit wonderful filter sweeps, giving uniqueness and motion to sounds that could evolve and change over time.
Nowadays, what I notice most between the two platforms is bass. Anyone who has heard the original Streets of Rage's Stealthy Steps with their subwoofer cranked knows the Genesis to be the business when it comes to 16-bit bass. Tight, punchy kick drums for rock and pop, but completely capable of distorted electro drums as well (like the bonus stage from Cool Spot, which to me is what that track was always supposed to sound like).
Both killer systems, each with lots of great music, but my heart and ears will always belong to the Genesis.
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