Sega Genesis Sound Accuracy?
 

I'm looking into buying a Genesis for line-in recordings, but I heard that different versions have different sound chips. I've seen 3 different Genesis systems and the Nomad, which one should I get for the best sound quality? Additionally, what kind of adapters would I need to connect it to my PC?

As far as connecting it to your PC, you should just need a dual 1/8" stereo cable that you can plug into your Genesis' headphone port.

I suppose you could get fancy and do a stereo-to-L/R RCA cable or something, but with the kind of sound you're dealing with, I doubt it'll matter much. For all the love I have for Genesis music, I must admit that its audio capabilities weren't all that much to write home about. Composers just did damn fine work with them.

As for different sound boards in different models, I have no clue on that one. You might try Wikipedia or Classicgaming, but aside from that, I'm not going to be able to provide much help. Sorry, Charlie.

http://www.protoman.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=227

Protoman is your friend.

Jeez. I knew that the Genesis and all its variations were complicated when it came to audio output but I didn't know it was that deep...

You've been told wrong; all versions of the Genesis are using the same sound chip. They would have to by necessity, or it would break compatibility with various (maybe even all) games. To make a long explanation short, the Genesis 1, 2, 3, and Nomad will all sound identical.

The Protoman article suggests that older Mega Drives might have more noise on the line than the later ones, though. That's a consideration if you're going to be doing line-in rips. From all appearances, you'll get the least amount of noise from a Nomad.

If you're going to use the headphone jack, you just need a simple male-to-male headphone plug. Out of the Genesis, into your sound card. If you use the A/V plugs, you'll need a RCA to 1/8" headphone adapter.

Well it depends on what you prefer. The Megadrive 2/Nomad may had clearer sound output, but the MD1 headphone jack added a bit of lowpass and noise - which IMO made it sound more masculine, better sounding on bigger systems.

Here's a file I recorded from the MD1 headphone jack years ago. I manually added a lot of volume to it (with sndrec32 !!!), which is more responsible for the hiss then the actual game output.

edit: I just checked the 50% headphone jack sample from that site - my own recordings sounded NOTHING like that. Whoever made that recording used some insanely horrific cable for it. Or something else which added the hiss. But believe me, the Megadrive 1 headphone jack sounds nothing like the samples there.

I did some MD1 vs MD2 recordings and the MD1 sounded best.

Here are the files (ogg):
jesper_kyd_datarum_md1md2.zip

Using the haedphone out of the MD1 highest volume.

MD1 is the only one with the actual YM2612 soundchip, afaik the later ones use some sort of emulation... like in MD2 it's the 315-5660 that generate the sound, at least on my MD2, but i heard rumors the soundquality was updated in MD2 later?

But listening to the Protoman recording it seems Nomad has the best soundquality and i'm not talking about background noise but the "YM2612" quality even it probably is "emulated".

Alright, I planned on getting the Genesis 1 since I'm not too fond of the idea of paying 100 to play games I'm capable of pirating, but I managed to get the Nomad + Genesis 2 + several (crap) games for less than 100 (guess nobody wanted 2 versions of the same console).

I got a few more questions: Is there any sort of flashcart available for the genesis? If so, would I get accurate sound by using a Flavio's GYM Player rom (or something similar if it exists) with inserted GYMs?

Isn't GYM inaccurate under any circumstance ? =/

GYM's a useless log format. Use VGM instead (that's also a log format, but the timing's a lot better).