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Nintendo DS's unique sound - Why DS games sound chaming

Jubenhimer

Member
The Nintendo DS is now 18 years old. Nintendo. Co. Ltd.'s Odd twin-screened handheld was far ahead of its time when it released back in 2004. Featuring full 3D graphics, touch input, built-in mic, local wireless, and online multiplayer through built-in wi-fi. Though it had a rocky start, the DS eventually sold over 154 million units worldwide, making it the second best selling game system of all time. The console completely changed the industry by appealing to a then undeserved "non-gamer" audience with games like Nintendogs, Brain Age, and others that even your grandma can enjoy. In many ways, the DS was the tablet, before the tablet, on top of being a really strong gamer's machine as well with hits like Mario Kart DS, Ace Attorney, Pokemon, and The World Ends With You.

But for as forward-thinking and innovative as the DS was, the platform also had a very distinct "retro" appeal as well. That can be chalked up to its abundance of low-poly 3D and sprite-based games, strengths in genres like platformers and RPGs, or its cheaper development costs allowing studios to create AAA games, without the sheer costs of home console AAA development. But I think where this is most apparent, was in the DS's sound capabilities.

While plenty of DS games used fairly compressed digital music (such as the Guitar Hero games), there were also plenty of games that programed midi music onto its speakers. In an era where home consoles were well into HD, theater quality sound and music, the DS was one of the last consoles to keep that chip-tune spirit alive with its very simple sound tech, while also having improvements such as increased storage space allowing for things like voice acting, audio samples, or the aforementioned compression. Many of the console's games boasted melodies that feel distinctly nostalgic, yet at home in its era as well, like something between the SNES' sound and what modern home consoles were delivering.

Here's some samples:










And unlike the Game Boy Advance's scratchy, muffled sound, the DS' music always sounded crisp and clean. I feel this combination of retro sound design and modern enhancements gave DS games a sound entirely their own. It's hard to explain, but you can almost instantly tell when a game's music sounds like a DS game, it's very much unlike any other console.

The Nintendo DS was a console that represented the future, but in a lot of ways, it was also a product of its era. A time when completely custom hardware with quirks was common in game systems, and I feel that the sound of DS games best represents that.
 
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CamHostage

Member
Interesting, because I thought this post was going to be about the DS's "Surround Sound" system. The few games that used it had a pretty cool sound sphere (I think it even had dual speakers on the front for the effect,) but for whatever reason it never really caught on as a feature promoted or used abundantly on the platform.

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/nintendo-ds-surround-sound.71941/

Different story, but there was some hope for a time that PSP would also have its own virtual surround effects via Dolby Headphone technology, but that ultimately only worked in a few UMD Movies.
 
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kanjobazooie

Mouse Ball Fetishist
Amen to that. The DS oozed charm like I ooze diarrhea after taco bell.

Pheonix Wright is basically a GBA game btw.
giphy.gif
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Yup. Let’s be honest, even the GB sounded better than the GBA in retrospect. Even original soundtrack releases of GBA games sound bad. The DS was a much better system. I miss the creativity it allowed with its low resolution and dual screens. And yeah, some of those soundtracks. Phoenix Wright is still burned into my brain, and those Castlevanias had some real bangers too.
 

Jubenhimer

Member
Yup. Let’s be honest, even the GB sounded better than the GBA in retrospect. Even original soundtrack releases of GBA games sound bad. The DS was a much better system. I miss the creativity it allowed with its low resolution and dual screens. And yeah, some of those soundtracks. Phoenix Wright is still burned into my brain, and those Castlevanias had some real bangers too.
You also have to remember that the GBA basically didn't have a sound chip. It was mostly done in software on the CPU, so resources had to allocated to sound in most games. The DS repurposed the GBA CPU into an I/O chip, which allowed it better sound.
 

Saber

Member
Theres also Yu gi oh 2010 and Glory of Heracles. Pokemon Black, alongside Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia are my favorite ost of all time.

I don't think it has to do with DS, but with sheer talent and interest to make something impressive with a rather limited plataform.
 
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Astral Dog

Member
The Castlevania games were, of course masterpieces in the sound department

Capcom pushed some catchy tunes with the Megaman ZX/Starforce series

Square Enix did wonders with that thing as well,with their FF Remakes, Kingdom Hearts games and
the Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles Ring of Fates and Echoes of Time are underrated.


 
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Astral Dog

Member
Set standard low
Slightly rise standard
Makings of a classic
Win.
Its like,the DS actual hardware outside of its unique features isn't anything special, but what makes it a good platform is the unique software that incentived game developers, at low cost. It was a pretty innovative system with TONS of classic titles if you were willing to try it out.

There were games that simply looked better and sounded better than GBA, there were also 3D games, and many others that wouldn't be possible to release on the previous generation because of the stylus controls and dual screen.
 

Bakkus

Member
Yup. Let’s be honest, even the GB sounded better than the GBA in retrospect. Even original soundtrack releases of GBA games sound bad. The DS was a much better system. I miss the creativity it allowed with its low resolution and dual screens. And yeah, some of those soundtracks. Phoenix Wright is still burned into my brain, and those Castlevanias had some real bangers too.
GBA still has songs that hold up in spite of their extreme limitations, but I wont post them as this thread is about the DS.

 
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lachesis

Member
GBA still reigns my all time favorite - but my biggest gripe was its grinding sound. Even on the boot up - it felt so rough. Many music also felt the same way.
Unlike more clear-feeling SNES sound or that synth like sound of Genesis/MD - it just felt really cheap.

And I agree - that DS has such charming sound. It was biggest thing that I noticed about DS - such jump from GBA, felt really refreshing.
 

AREYOUOKAY?

Member
GBA still has songs that hold up in spite of their extreme limitations, but I wont post them as this thread is about the DS.


Well if you won't I will and I'll also go with some Zelda.







Like the Genesis it's a matter of who does the music. Only the most skilled can make the most use of it.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
GBA still has songs that hold up in spite of their extreme limitations
The problem isn’t the composition. The NES had some extreme technical limitations, yet it paved the way for game music until the era of digitized orchestra soundtracks because some people composed stuff on it that still beggars belief.
No, the problem is that even the best composition on the GBA just sounds bad. If you listen to the official soundtrack CD for Castlevania CotM + HoD, the music sounds bad straight from the CD somehow. Golden Sun had an amazing soundtrack, but even when ripped straight from the game and remastered by fans, you can still hear it’s not the best quality it could be.
 

Drell

Member
DS has some excellent soundtracks for sure. And the GBA had a very rough sampled audio thanks to the fact everything was done on the main CPU and that it couldn't be better than 8 bit sample quality thanks to a limited DAC.

But DS wasn't that better in sound quality, actually. Nintendo repurposed the ARM7 of the GBA. It is now twice as fast and act as an IO chip that does the sound part too. I read that Nintendo actually blackboxed the chip. You can't program it like the ARM9 that you have full access to.

So, in this configuration, Nintendo allowed 16 channels of 16bit bit samples at 32Khz. That's a little bit worse than the PSX or Saturn. But still, it "sounds" like a SNES on steroids without the limitations lf the 64KBs of RAM that the SPC700 had. And it looks like you can do a lot with this.

But the big problem of the DS sounds isn't in anything I said earlier. The real culprit here, just like the GBA, is the DAC. It is limited to 10 freaking bits sample audio with no interpolation at all. I don't know what Nintendo were thinking back then when they did this, but for me, who didn't know why it was like this, the DS sounded very bad from day one.

I mean, listen to Mario 64 DS as an example. It's simple if you consider it was an 8 MB N64 game. But yet, everything sounds worse than the original game. Mario's voice is distorded, just like Bowser's laugh. It's crunchy as fuck thanks to that cheap DAC. I remember hearing this next to the PSP that had cristal clear audio and thinking: "How can they sell such a 'toyish' hardware when their competitor is this advanced?".

But then everything isn't bad as well. I wonder how devs went around this limitation but some games like guitar hero or rhythm heaven go around, using full streamed audio and don't have any issue of bad sampling quality, contrarly to a lot of DS games that have this "crunchy" quality on the sound effects. I also noticed Chrono Trigger, an SNES port, doesn't suffer from this in its soundtrack at all. But then you have Kirby Super Star Ultra that has every compressed SFX of the SNES originals sounding very rough. I'm also thinking about the Castlevania trilogy which has awesome compositions by Michiru Yamane. But again, from music to SFX, everything sounds distorded to my ears.

Well these are some example I got off of my head but I guess you guys played this console more than me since I never owned one. I thought that the PSX style 3d and weak sound were reasons to skip Nintendo's handhelds until the 3ds which fixed everything to my tastes.
 

cireza

Member
Quality was very poor honestly. Reminds me of the SNES, which was pretty bad.
People tend to associate sound quality with the quality of the compositions, but these are strictly unrelated.
DS could have sounded much better.

The MegaDrive had a much cleaner and fuller sound than the DS (and SNES as well by the way), and this is a 1988 console.
 
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