Sega Master System PSG Soundfonts

 

I've already briefly went over the sound capabilities of the Sega Master System in my previous post with the FM soundfonts so I'll try to be fairly brief here.  The PSG chip of the Master System was fairly outdated at the time of it's release being mainly used in old PC's and the Coleco Vision.  It had the same 5 channel limitation as the NES but lacks a triangle wave which may not seem limiting but the difference in capability is clear when listening to music from both systems.  I only mention the comparison as a reference for those not familiar with the Master System's sound.

Despite the relative limitations of the audio chip some pretty nice tunes can be made.  "Master of Darkness", "Robocop vs Terminator", & "Wonderboy III Dragon's Trap" all have pretty excellent soundtracks using only the PSG chip, they're pretty excellent games as well which never hurts. Little-scale has done a pretty excellent job of showing the capabilities of the system with the samples he provided that I used to make these soundfonts.  Their are "11 archetypes" of pulse sounds with 3 different types of amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, pitch bends & 2 basic pulse sounds with a release envelope.

To add flexibility to these sounds I offered both unlooped and looped versions of the modulated sounds.  Given the nature of the modulations & the relatively short sample lengths it wasn't really possible to get a standard sustained loop sound with them, but I was able to get loop sounds that are definitely useable with a basic LFO type sound.  I can't be sure you could get the sounds of the looped soundfonts off the hardware but I imagine so.  I also added two soundfonts to this pack created from a different sample pack little-scale provided that are really superb they're the Pulse HQ & Noise Bass HQ soundfonts.  Little-scale also provided various noise samples from the chip but besides the "Noise Bass HQ" I didn't include them because they weren't pitched chromatically and I dunno how useful random noise sounds would be.  Altogether the pack contains 14 different sounds with an additional 9 looped variations for 23 total soundfonts.

Surprisingly the PSG chip of the Master System/Genesis hasn't really received a whole lot of attention in the VST world.  Aly James is the only one that really made a proper full scale emulation of the chip(which I really need to pick up) and Plogue has it in their Chipsounds multi-emulation plug-in.  Their are a few freeware sort-of emulations & Genny has basic envelope editing of the PSG but from what I've seen their isn't really a free VST that mimics the capabilities of the original.  Aly James Lab's Super PSG synth is probably your best bet at making authentic Master System music with a computer as I believe it supports logging music to a format that the Master System can read.  I'll do another article in the future that goes over VST PSG emulations once I pick up Aly's synth and have time to play with it.

Download Links.

Sega Master System PSG Soundfonts 125 mb

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Sega Master System PSG Soundfont Bank 149 mb

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