.WAVs from various oldschool sound chips

It's a fact: there are no boundaries on the amount of samples one needs to own in order to compose electronic music. We're always hungry for samples. Lucky for us the Internet have no boundaries at all and today, during a hyperspace travel on the outer rim of the galaxy, I stumbled upon this great blog from SEBASTIAN TOMCZAK, full of samples of old soundchips.

I have created a set of samples that have been recorded directly from an Atari POKEY chip. I have created all of the sounds myself on the hardware (as in, these are not sounds or samples recorded from games or demo programs). The output from the sound chip has been recorded directly.

This sample pack contains the drum sounds from the YM2413 sound chip, when configured as recommend by Yamaha in the application manual. The audio has been recorded directly from hardware.

1. Sega Master System YM2413 Preset Instruments
2. Sega Master System YM2413 Drums
3. Sega Master System SN76489
4. Sega Mega Drive YM2612
5. SPo256-AL2 Speech Chip Allophones
6. Atari POKEY Noise
7. Atari 2600 TIA

Timemachine - Vintage sampler Emulator

I'm not new on using an old sampler as a distortion unit so this plugin got my attention when I discovered it.



The sound obviously is totally different as a real old-school sampler really shakes the speakers but if taken as simple distortion unit it can be useful.

At very high gain values it's quite raw convincing, especially on percussive material.

TimeMachine is a VST plugin that provides accurate reproduction of the characteristic sound of vintage samplers, such as the Commodore 64, or older Akai samplers. The (virtual) sampling rate can be varied, as well as the number of bits used for digital representation. furthermore, aliasing distortion can be generated individually for AD and DA conversion.

Find it here

Commodore 64 background noise synth

This kit is obtained by mapping on a Kontakt program a sampled background noise of a SID 6581, the sound chip of the mighty Commodore 64.



The result, quite surprising, is a harmonic sound that resembles a synthesizer.

Must be said that the pre-amp circuitry of the Commodore 64 is responsible for the fat sound but it's nice to obtain instruments from signals that weren't meant to produce useful sounds.

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