CRT-4

Nine consoles, four tracks, for the M-VAVE FM-1

A four-track groovebox that plays the sound chips of nine game consoles and home computers. Choose a console and you play it: its drums and sixteen of its sounds, made the way its chip made them, with its own echo or reverb, while the whole screen dresses as the console, with a scene of its time that moves with the music. Each console keeps a song of its own: 16-step patterns, chains, chords and punch-in effects.

CRT-4's screen on the NES: a side-scroller, Pip jumping on the kick

CRT-4's screen on the SNES: an airship over a turning world map

CRT-4's screen on the PlayStation: a race through a neon tunnel

The consoles

Atari 2600	The TIA's dividers and polynomial counters, its notes only near the scale. Buzz, Drone, Siren, Laser, Engine.
C64	The SID (6581 or 8580): combined waveforms, ring, sync, its filter; 4-bit digis. PWM leads, filter basses, ring bells.
NES	The 2A03 and the Famicom's VRC6, FDS, N163 and 5B. The triangle bass, DMC bass, arpeggios, an echo lead.
PC Engine	Six 5-bit wavetables, the LFO, DDA drums; the CD-ROM's ADPCM strings, choir and guitar.
Genesis	The YM2612's four operators and its gritty DAC, the SN76489. Slap and house basses, E.Piano, a screaming lead, an orchestra hit.
Game Boy	Two pulses, the 4-bit wave channel, the noise; hard left and right. Wave basses, a wobble, a ping-pong echo, speech.
SNES	BRR samples at 32 kHz, the Gaussian interpolation, the echo and its FIR. Strings, choir, slap bass, flute, harp.
PlayStation	SPU ADPCM at 44.1 kHz and its reverb's kinds; a sliced breakbeat. Reese, space pad, gothic organ, Rhodes, sitar.
N64	ADPCM mixed at 22 kHz, its rooms, echo, chorus and flange. Tuba, marimba, ocarina, accordion, steel drum.

Two kits and sixteen sounds a console, a song a console; on the 2600, the C64, the NES and the Game Boy a chord plays as an arpeggio, as their music did. No recordings: every sample is made by the program in the source, in the console's own format. Sixteen patterns, chains of up to 64; sixteen chords and chains of them; effects held or written onto the steps; parameter locks, ratchets, slides and swing; writing live or step by step. Nine demo songs.

To go back to the official firmware, use the installer's "Back to the stock firmware", or M-VAVE's updater, M-UPGRADE, from m-vave.com/download. M-VAVE and FM-1 are trademarks of their owners, as are the consoles' names. CRT-4 is independent: it is not affiliated with M-VAVE or the makers of the consoles and chips its sounds are modelled on, and its music, samples and art are its own.