As you guys know I installed an NESRGB in my AV Famicom a few weeks ago and I’m ecstatic with the results. I also followed Voultar’s guide to mixing audio and expansion audio through the NESRGB on board amp which involves pulling the audio from the CPU pins, pulling a resistor leg up to the NESRGB board and taking a pin out of circuit.
My N8 Pro arrived yesterday so naturally the first game I wanted to test was Akumajou Densentsu and when it booted up I was happy to hear the expansion audio coming through loud and clear! exceptthe samples aren’t playing at the menu. When you press start and when you enter your name Dracula’s laugh does not play. I confirmed this with the built in NSF player. The samples are silent. Changing the audio levels doesn’t accomplish anything either.
As you can see from the video the odd thing is that in stage one for instance the drum samples still play - that said I don’t know enough about NES audio as to what the source is for each sample channel.
Here’s my install -
I know my soldering isn’t great but I checked for shorts and continuity and there aren’t any issues. That said at this point I’m not above undoing it to see if it works - the resistor will be easy enough to restore and I should be able to pull the pin back into circuit with some well-placed solder.
My other concern is that I obliterated a trace on the motherboard when I was desoldering the PPU but I followed the trace and confirmed continuity. Here’s a shot of my bodge job - those of you that know the Famicom may be able to tell me what it is I have potentially broken.
Anyway thanks for reading!
EDIT now I’m confused as I’ve seen versions online where the samples don’t play and I booted the rom up in FCEUX and they also didn’t play.
The fact that this isn’t working in the emulator either leads me to believe it is a software problem/bug and not something wrong with your mod install. I can try checking on my Analogue NT later. How do you access the sound test?
Edit: I fired it up on my NT and it sounded exactly like the video you posted. Do you have a video of what it should sound like?
Thanks for all of your troubleshooting help guys! I really appreciate it here it is playing at name entry. You’ve both given me faith in my install so maybe the video I watched is from a different rom revision or something.
Yeah, I’m really curious about this now myself. I need to put one of my expansion audio boards in my nesrgb and try this out. I’ll need to modify my cartridge converter too.
You would think though that with Akumajou Densetsu being a showpiece for the system we would have heard about it not working correctly with the NT/NT Mini by now …
I only really have experience with Castlevania III which is why I’m second guessing myself now.
The other thing too - my understanding is that the VRC6 isn’t used for sample audio. It’s for melody as it has two square wave channels and one sawtooth wave.
So the samples would still be playing through channel 5 on the stock NES sound chip. In the case of Akumajou Densetsu we know that’s working fine as all of the percussion plays.
That laugh is just part of the BGM. Leave it on the name input screen and it’ll happen as part of the loop. It’s a coincidence it happened at that moment in the video.
Oh man, I don’t wanna laugh but I have to laugh. At least you know it’s not any real issue!
Side note, just fired this up on my AV Famicom for a few levels and cranked the tunes since my family is out of the house for the evening. Such a banger soundtrack.
Yeah I did the same actually once I realised my mistake. The VRC6 emulation of the N8 Pro has improved quite a bit! It sounds a little thin in comparison but otherwise it’s pretty impressive!
I have not yet taken a family photo of my recent NES game gets, but today this really cool stick arrived and I just had to clean it up and take a glory shot:
