WEBVTT 00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:05.010 - It's sort of retro time, but not really. One of the best things about being a PC gamer, 00:00:05.010 --> 00:00:08.350 is that you can basically run any PC game you want 00:00:08.350 --> 00:00:13.220 all the way back to the very beginning of PC gaming. But there is a problem. 00:00:13.220 --> 00:00:16.610 There've been a couple of technological shifts 00:00:16.610 --> 00:00:22.500 over the course of the lifespan of the PC. We've gone from having like a monochrome display 00:00:22.500 --> 00:00:27.397 with a beeper to having CD audio and 256 Colors to, 00:00:27.397 --> 00:00:31.010 well 3D accelerated glory that we have today 00:00:31.010 --> 00:00:34.210 with full surround sound, with Dolby Atmos and everything. 00:00:34.210 --> 00:00:38.990 But there were some steps along the way that were pretty significant and lasted a long time. 00:00:38.990 --> 00:00:42.550 That is what this is for. 00:00:42.550 --> 00:00:47.780 This little guy right here is called the retro wave by Pseudo Maker or Pseudo Maker, 00:00:47.780 --> 00:00:52.690 I don't know how they actually pronounce it, I saved Pseudo. So if you say Pseudo, then I don't know, it's on you. 00:00:52.690 --> 00:00:56.520 What this is is a little Raspberry-Pi hat kind of thing 00:00:56.520 --> 00:00:59.530 that you can plug into well, a Raspberry-Pi or any other kind 00:00:59.530 --> 00:01:02.680 of single board computer. And I don't know if you can see that, 00:01:02.680 --> 00:01:07.200 but right there is a Yamaha YMF 262. 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:12.640 That is what is otherwise called the OPL3, which was commonly used on the soundblaster cards 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:19.100 back in the 1990s and also the Ad-Lib Gold. It was also the successor to a earlier format 00:01:19.100 --> 00:01:22.411 called the OPL2, which I don't remember, the 3812, 00:01:22.411 --> 00:01:26.190 YM3812 is what that one was. So why are those chips important? 00:01:26.190 --> 00:01:31.190 Unlike modern sound chips or really anything since these, 00:01:31.270 --> 00:01:36.720 these actually generate the sound on the chip. What the computer is doing is sending the chip commands 00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:40.818 to generate a wave form and then change it in ways 00:01:40.818 --> 00:01:45.180 that are basically magic but it sounds unlike anything else 00:01:45.180 --> 00:01:49.830 that I think exists still, and there are emulators you can get for these, 00:01:49.830 --> 00:01:54.630 but they don't sound quite as good. Now, we know pretty much everything there is to know 00:01:54.630 --> 00:01:59.610 about the sound chip here, how it generates sound, what it should look like, what it should sound like. 00:01:59.610 --> 00:02:04.890 But there's a question that you have to ask yourself, even if you know exactly what the wave forms 00:02:04.890 --> 00:02:10.390 that this should spit out look like, nobody got those but their original hardware, everybody had sound blasters, 00:02:10.390 --> 00:02:14.430 pro audio spectrums, they had knockoffs 00:02:14.430 --> 00:02:17.630 and these all had different amplifier circuits. 00:02:17.630 --> 00:02:21.580 So who's to say what amplifier circuit sounds accurate 00:02:21.580 --> 00:02:25.840 and for that matter, the amplifier is going to subtly change all of the wave forms 00:02:25.840 --> 00:02:31.100 that come out of this, no matter what it is. So if you're just straight up using the output of this 00:02:31.100 --> 00:02:34.490 to generate sound, then you're kind of missing a little bit of the tonality 00:02:34.490 --> 00:02:38.470 that used to come with those older chips. And that's where this comes in. 00:02:38.470 --> 00:02:45.710 I happen to have another piece of the puzzle. This, don't mind the bend, is the PotatoPiLight, 00:02:46.040 --> 00:02:49.260 currently discontinued as a result of parts shortages. 00:02:49.260 --> 00:02:53.630 What this does is it takes this and accepts it 00:02:53.630 --> 00:02:57.100 like so to create a little sandwich, then I can plug this here, 00:02:57.100 --> 00:03:00.240 type A connector directly into a computer. 00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:04.580 This has firmer on it that basically sets it up as nothing more than a serial port. 00:03:04.580 --> 00:03:08.460 So any software on your computer can access that to send and receive data. 00:03:08.460 --> 00:03:11.640 What we're doing is we're just sending commands to this here, chip, 00:03:11.640 --> 00:03:15.470 and we get to listen to the output through this here, headphone jack. 00:03:15.470 --> 00:03:18.520 We have an op amp here and we have some capacitors. 00:03:18.520 --> 00:03:22.960 I think there are two different types of capacitors you can ask for when you purchase these. 00:03:22.960 --> 00:03:26.170 This I think is just the default, which is supposed to give a warmer sound. 00:03:26.170 --> 00:03:29.320 So I guess it's time to plug it in, 00:03:29.320 --> 00:03:32.653 but first it's time to talk to you about our sponsor, Secret Lab. 00:03:32.653 --> 00:03:36.530 Thanks to Secret Lab for sponsoring today's video. 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So first things first, let's go to device manager. 00:04:02.230 --> 00:04:06.280 And if we go down to ports here, we will see that we have a USB serial device. 00:04:06.280 --> 00:04:10.840 And if we go into the details here and go down to bus reported device description, 00:04:10.840 --> 00:04:14.230 we will see retro wave USB adapter. That's how we know that this serial port 00:04:14.230 --> 00:04:18.570 is in fact the port we need to use, that is COM3. I've already set it up, but I'll show you how it goes. 00:04:18.570 --> 00:04:24.040 I've got DOSBox-X here. That is a special version of DOSBox that can use this. 00:04:24.040 --> 00:04:30.060 I'm currently in the emulator configuration. So this has the nuked OPL emulator currently running. 00:04:30.060 --> 00:04:34.130 That's what we're going to compare against. The nuked OPL emulator is probably the more accurate 00:04:34.130 --> 00:04:37.200 of the emulators available. Basically, all you need to do is, 00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:41.290 under soundblaster just change OPL MEU to a retro wave, OPL3 00:04:41.290 --> 00:04:44.770 and you're good to go. That COM3 that we saw earlier, 00:04:44.770 --> 00:04:48.370 this will change depending on what your computer assigns it, but it's COM3 for me. 00:04:48.370 --> 00:04:54.500 Now ,you might be thinking, hey, Anthony, this is a lot of setup for 30 FM synthesis, 00:04:54.500 --> 00:04:59.280 like Duke Nukem 3D or whatever. And you would be right if you were talking about that. 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:04.870 Generally speaking, they were actually written with a very different type of music in mind, middy. 00:05:04.870 --> 00:05:08.560 That, generally speaking, was written with the MT-32 00:05:08.560 --> 00:05:11.810 by Roland or some other wave table synthesis in mind. 00:05:11.810 --> 00:05:16.560 So what that is basically recordings of instruments that are just played back at different pitches and volumes. 00:05:16.560 --> 00:05:20.790 This is generating it all on here. All the implementations for those older games 00:05:20.790 --> 00:05:25.910 and for Windows and what have you, tried to emulate wave table with this thing, 00:05:25.910 --> 00:05:31.820 they would create a default patch set that sort of sounded okay for most middy 00:05:31.820 --> 00:05:35.370 and they just kind of left it at that. So I'll show you what that sounds like now. 00:05:35.370 --> 00:05:38.850 So let me just go into, let's do duke 3D, 00:05:38.850 --> 00:05:44.245 sound set up music card, soundblaster, yup. (video game music) 00:05:45.270 --> 00:05:49.490 It's not bad, but it is mostly just farts. 00:05:49.490 --> 00:05:53.940 Like you think, Sega Genesis, you think like all this kind of crunchy stupid crap. 00:05:53.940 --> 00:05:58.057 I'll go ahead and switch it over to the retro wave now and you can kind of hear what that sounds like. 00:06:00.590 --> 00:06:05.440 What you're hearing right now is the actual genuine waves 00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:08.650 coming out of this card. It's not actually pre-rendered in any way. 00:06:08.650 --> 00:06:12.440 It is digital, but it's not digitized. So let's just get out of this. 00:06:12.440 --> 00:06:15.750 There are other ways of using this chip 00:06:15.750 --> 00:06:19.185 other than the middy way. And that is through what is called a tracker. 00:06:19.185 --> 00:06:24.720 (video game music) So there are games out there that this kind of middy 00:06:24.720 --> 00:06:28.110 is only accessible via this kind of emulation. 00:06:28.110 --> 00:06:32.730 You're not gonna be able to get wave table or anything for this game. It's all through the OPL chip. 00:06:32.730 --> 00:06:35.643 So let's switch over to the retro wave here. 00:06:36.610 --> 00:06:41.428 The soundstage in the OPL3 on the real one is a little wider and it's a lot warmer. 00:06:41.428 --> 00:06:44.345 (video game music) 00:06:47.190 --> 00:06:50.890 It sounds smoother. It sounds less crunchy, you know? 00:06:50.890 --> 00:06:55.370 So you would've seen something like this maybe not. I don't think there were actually OPL keyboards, 00:06:55.370 --> 00:07:00.720 but there were similar keyboards on the market and that's kind of what digital pianos and stuff 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:06.180 or electric panels were for a little while. If you've heard modern electronic music, 00:07:06.180 --> 00:07:09.830 maybe even like dubstep, I'm not entirely sure if that's using something like this, 00:07:09.830 --> 00:07:13.440 but it's very similar in terms of how it's generating those sounds. 00:07:13.440 --> 00:07:19.280 And in fact, there are some steppy kind of sounds that you can get with this that we'll get to momentarily. 00:07:19.280 --> 00:07:23.210 Obviously again, not all games used it like this. 00:07:23.210 --> 00:07:27.220 A lot of it was very underutilized. It's kind of like how there are some second Genesis games, 00:07:27.220 --> 00:07:31.248 like Thunderforce IV that sound amazing. And then there are some games that sound like- 00:07:31.248 --> 00:07:35.220 (makes bass noise) That's why people say it sounds like farts. 00:07:35.220 --> 00:07:38.730 It actually does sound like farts. It can sound real good. You just got to put the work in. 00:07:38.730 --> 00:07:42.280 Anyway, let's get out of this. There's something I wanted to kind of highlight here 00:07:42.280 --> 00:07:45.740 and that's that not everything works with this 00:07:45.740 --> 00:07:51.100 for some reason. Something is up with the interface here. There's some songs that just use the OPL 00:07:51.100 --> 00:07:55.590 in ways that apparently this was not designed for. Like, I think with one of these, 00:07:55.590 --> 00:07:59.510 that doesn't sound quite right I think it's two, or it might be one and I don't know why? 00:07:59.510 --> 00:08:03.861 I don't have another one to test to see if that's actually a problem. So let me see if this is the one. 00:08:03.861 --> 00:08:09.460 (video game music) Yeah, so right here, there should be more notes playing, 00:08:09.460 --> 00:08:14.966 but there's not. Let me stop this here and switch over to the emulator. 00:08:14.966 --> 00:08:20.340 (video game music) So it works fine on the emulator, 00:08:20.340 --> 00:08:24.710 but not so much on the retro wave. And unfortunately that's just how some of them are, 00:08:24.710 --> 00:08:28.040 not a lot is like that though, which is thankful. 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:31.240 So let's switch it over to the actual music player now 00:08:31.240 --> 00:08:35.440 because people actually have been making music on these things for a long time. 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:41.330 In fact, this is kind of late in that era, but it was kept alive by people who do key gins 00:08:41.330 --> 00:08:46.382 and other such crack things. (video game music) 00:08:47.910 --> 00:08:51.590 Okay, so this is back into the emulator section now. 00:08:51.590 --> 00:08:56.460 Let's see, the one that is sort of distributed with the command player for Linux for this thing, 00:08:56.460 --> 00:09:00.010 is this rendition of a key gen or other crack trow 00:09:00.010 --> 00:09:03.717 kind of thing. (video game music) 00:09:13.350 --> 00:09:17.758 That's what this sounds like on the emulator. Here goes the retro wave. 00:09:17.758 --> 00:09:21.591 (retro wave video game music) 00:09:33.040 --> 00:09:37.440 As far as making old game sound good again, it really depends on the game you're talking about. 00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:40.900 So games that took full advantage of the OPL, like Tyrian 2000, 00:09:40.900 --> 00:09:44.510 the examples that you'll find are usually by European or Japanese developers, 00:09:44.510 --> 00:09:49.840 because they had a kind of thriving chiptune scene at that time whereas in the US was more of a middy thing, 00:09:49.840 --> 00:09:52.930 people were kind of transitioning over to like professional audio. 00:09:52.930 --> 00:09:57.548 It really depends on the game you're talking about, if you're talking about like Duke Nukem 3d, and you might get a little bit of a fuller 00:09:57.548 --> 00:10:01.940 (mimics video game music) kind of thing, but it's still not going to sound as good 00:10:01.940 --> 00:10:05.460 as it was intended to sound on the MT-32 or Sound Canvas. 00:10:05.460 --> 00:10:11.465 I think that this with its output circuitry and with its versatility in terms of how you can connect it 00:10:11.465 --> 00:10:15.830 to basically whatever you want, it makes it really good for people who want to make music. 00:10:15.830 --> 00:10:21.310 And yeah, people who missed out on this generation of music and who are just now understanding 00:10:21.310 --> 00:10:25.880 that this is the thing, like in a lot of ways, it was a lot better than anything that was being produced 00:10:25.880 --> 00:10:29.540 by middy at that time, it just wasn't as realistic and people were after realism 00:10:29.540 --> 00:10:34.610 in the '90s, they wanted that 3D. They wanted that, oh, this sounds like an actual trumpet or close to it. 00:10:34.610 --> 00:10:37.966 The good news is it only costs 40 bucks. So without the, oh yeah, 00:10:37.966 --> 00:10:41.760 (offscreen laughter) that's even worse than it was before. 00:10:41.760 --> 00:10:45.880 Folding tech is the new thing. So for 40 bucks, you get this module here. 00:10:45.880 --> 00:10:50.090 That includes everything that's on this module, you get the amplifier circuit, 00:10:50.090 --> 00:10:55.090 you get the YMF262 and that can just slot directly in onto, 00:10:55.960 --> 00:11:00.370 hang on, what are these switches? I don't think they're documented. 00:11:01.740 --> 00:11:05.410 Right, so you get everything you have here. This will plug directly into a Raspberry-Pi 00:11:05.410 --> 00:11:11.400 or like a spring single board computer, like an Orange Pi or a LattePanda, or what have you. 00:11:11.400 --> 00:11:16.120 It'll work pretty much right out of the box, for, how much is the Pico? 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:21.150 Well, you can't buy this anymore, but the PotatoPiPico24 is $29. 00:11:21.150 --> 00:11:24.690 So for a total of like 70 bucks, you get the whole package. 00:11:24.690 --> 00:11:29.850 So how much is this (inaudible) worth it to you? How much is having an authentic synthesizer worth it to you? 00:11:29.850 --> 00:11:33.410 If you do play games that do take advantage of it, it's going to sound a lot better. 00:11:33.410 --> 00:11:36.740 And if you listen to tracker music in any kind of way, 00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:39.800 it is the definitive way to listen. 00:11:39.800 --> 00:11:45.360 It's obviously not for everybody. This is for the purest, plain and simple. 00:11:45.360 --> 00:11:51.110 But ShortCircuit is for everything. Literally, like we just unboxed like a $1,600 keyboard. 00:11:51.110 --> 00:11:58.330 Wow, we wasted a lot of money around here and we unbox cars and we, we unboxed an iMac once, 00:11:58.460 --> 00:12:00.523 that was fun, an old one. Subscribe.