Packs that need work. [May 4th, 2018]

[ValleyBell]

IIRC Kega Fusion 3.54 had issues with the DAC speed and VGM initialization.
However, the current version, Fusion 3.64 seems fine and that's what I still use for MegaDrive logging.
All other emulators that feature VGM logging (Gens/GS, MAME) are worse.

There may be additional issues caused by bad start/loop/end points when trimming VGMs.

And there is VGMTool2 r5, which was used for trimming most VGMs on Project2612.
It does "trimming" by just removing any delays, so all YM2612 messages that were supposed to be trimmed off end up VGM sample 0. The more accurate cores really don't like that. (I patched the MAME/Genesis Plus GX core to be a bit nicer to P2612 VGMs.)

vgm_trim from vgmrips removes the YM2612 data that gets trimmed off, so even though it requires more care when finding the "start sample", it creates cleaner VGMs that also work a lot better with the newer sound emulators.

[donluca]

Thank you so much for chiming in ValleyBell.

Also, my secret agents ( ) told me you've logged the recent Sonic 3 Prototype VGMs, but I don't see them on the front page or download page. Have I been fooled?

[ValleyBell]

Your information is not wrong, but I'm afraid it's inaccurate.
I made a "rip" of the Sonic 3 prototype music, but I logged those with SMPSPlay* instead of using an actual emulator. SMPSPlay sometimes behaves a bit different from the actual sound driver, so I'm afraid those rips don't qualify for Project2612.

*SMPSPlay is a reimplementation of the SMPS sound engine for PC

[ValleyBell]

The Sega Channel (Demo Cartridge #4) package is broken and plays no YM2612.
I'm pretty sure that happened when the v1.05 update was done.

You can find the (properly working) original v1.00 release here: http://vgmrips.net/misc/Sega_Channel.zip
The tags of the v1.05 archive would need to be merged with the v1.00 archive.

[donluca]

Your information is not wrong, but I'm afraid it's inaccurate.
I made a "rip" of the Sonic 3 prototype music, but I logged those with SMPSPlay* instead of using an actual emulator. SMPSPlay sometimes behaves a bit different from the actual sound driver, so I'm afraid those rips don't qualify for Project2612.

*SMPSPlay is a reimplementation of the SMPS sound engine for PC

Ahhh that explains why it won't play back in RYMCast or in our own custom VGM_Player on the Mega Drive. I had a contributor trying several things without success.

Out of curiosity, is SMSPlay more accurate? I remember someone mentioning that the Sonic 3 Prototype had something different from the final version, sound driver-wise, which wasn't correctly logged by current emulators.

[ValleyBell]

Many thanks to kuroshi for making a fixed Sega Channel pack by combining the old (working) version with the v1.10 tag updates.
http://vgmrips.net/misc/Sega%20Channel%20%28Demo%20Cartridge%20%234%29_v111.zip

I remember someone mentioning that the Sonic 3 Prototype had something different from the final version, sound driver-wise, which wasn't correctly logged by current emulators.

The S3 prototype sound driver has a few bugs related to playing sound effects.
The bugs occour in emulation and on real hardware as well, as they are programming errors. There are no differences that aren't "correctly logged by current emulators".

These days, there is only 1 thing regarding VGM logs that emulators sometimes get wrong: The playback frequency of PCM samples.
I think Fusion 3.64 gets that quite right. MAME gets it very wrong. I don't remember how off Gens/GS is.
Most other faults are related to the actual sound emulation that occours after the point where VGMs are logged.


In any case, SMPSPlay will always be less accurate than an actual log of the emulator, as it is a reimplementation that aims to support all variants of SMPS. And those can differ quite a lot, especially when it comes to inaudible details.
SMPSPlay's high-level emulation also isn't subject to certain limitations of the actual SMPS sound programs running on the MegaDrive hardware.
An example for this is that the PCM samples are a lot cleaner in SMPSPlay (and VGMs logged by it), as SMPSPlay doesn't have to pause the sample playback in order to process the music data. (Music and SFX processing takes a bit of time on the actual hardware. SMPSPlay doesn't have any sound program to emulate, so processing takes 0 time for the emulated sound chips.)

[donluca]

That's very interesting! I must admit I've never heard of SMPSPlay before.

Thanks for chiming in again, hopefully someone from the P2612 team will do a VGM rip of the Sonic 3 Prototype.

[ValleyBell]

Tafoid notified me that there are a few packs with packing issues.
They are noted as "bad dump" in MAME's hash/vgmplay.xml.

Regarding Project2612, the pack "Tel Tel Stadium" has uncompressed VGMs despite the VGZ file extension.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/f128d1d0c19060c66f12b053a5e3e76753ae553d

[andlabs]

Thank you for reviving the site. Now I need to go back and nitpick everything I will make a thread with all that later, but for now, have some minor urgent nits.

Also thank you to whoever dumped Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat. I was fearing that ROM would never escape the world of repro carts. (If that dump did come from one of the repro carts, then I guess we're still on the lookout for the original, though I have no reason to believe BeagleBoy hacked the ROM they released on the initial run of repro carts.)

Gyuwanburaa Jiko Chuushinha: Tracks 4-26 need to be identified and tagged accordingly. - Monkeymook [VERIFIED]

Gambler, not Gyuwanburaa

Also the Mean Bean Machine pack is totally mis-tagged. Final of Puyo Puyo wasn't by David Javelosa goddamnit (unless he arranged it, which I also find unlikely, but way more possible than the fact that a song that already existed before he allegedly wrote it).

Some Accolade games like Star Control 2 are still missing from the list of games not yet ripped. I could swear one Matt Furniss game was also missing but I don't remember what.

The Stage 1 theme of Time Trax appears to loop incorrectly for me — the voices corrupt at the loop point.

[RingoStarr39]

Hello everyone. ValleyBell was kind enough to accept me as a member.

I've noticed a couple of games VGM's that are ripped incorrectly.

Pac-Attack:
Track 2 "Menu Theme" doesn't loop correctly. It's supposed to play like this: https://youtu.be/zsTOpcBNzVw
Track 5 "Game Over" The first note on channel 1 is obviously wrong.
Track 8 "Stage Clear" Same as track 5.
Track 10 "Staff Credits" The first note on channel 5 is wrong.

Sonic Spinball:
There's nothing really incorrect about this pack but the decay of the last note of each song is clipped short.
For example, when played back on a YM2612 or with NukedOPN songs that don't loop end abruptly instead of the decay that happens normally in-game.