I wonder how much that would add to the cost of the machine (to build) in terms of adding that functionality? Serious 'wonder', no sarcasm. Although now that I think of it, if they were going to add hardware to just handle panning the sound etc; it might make more sense to just add in stereo support outright.

They would need another audio amp to do it right. The costs would be minimal. But they would need a board spin. They could do it using the two amps they have but it would require wiring the cabinet speaker in with the backbox. They could do it neatly with a dvc cabinet speaker but I've never seen a dvc speaker efficient enough to run on a shared 18 watt amp.

Agreed in regards to stereo, but according to Wikipedia, I believe you are mistaken:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio

"This stream of audio frames, as a whole, is then subjected to CIRC encoding, which segments and rearranges the data and expands it with parity bits in a way that allows occasional read errors to be detected and corrected. CIRC encoding also interleaves the audio frames throughout the disc over several consecutive frames so that the information will be more resistant to burst errors. Therefore, a physical frame on the disc will actually contain information from multiple logical audio frames. This process adds 64 bits of error correction data to each frame. After this, 8 bits of subcode or subchannel data are added to each of these encoded frames, which is used for control and addressing when playing the CD."

I've treaded this path a few times - ultimately the cost of going stereo and upgrading the sound quality is marginal at best. The actual 'tech' and implementation is cheap and easy from the point of parts, pieces, and stereo audio data.

The real life issues imo are:

a) redesigning boardsets and standard wiring is laborous mid-platform. The SAM system is basically a commodity at this point - redesigning the boards and wiring is more than just the cost of amps and speakers

b) IMO the average person won't care or know - pinsiders might, average joe player won't. The stereo separation vs the distance from the listener is minimal so only hard panned L + R signals are going to stand out as stereo to anyone but an audiophile. In addition, with full high quality samples in stereo, if it's poorly implemented with crap amps, crossovers, filters, and speakers (as I'd assume we'd get) Stern runs the risk of creating distracting comb filtering or other phase effects, especially if the machines are in a corner or other less-than-ideal acoustic spaces.

There's a reason a great deal of bars, clubs, concerts etc. sum to mono, or predominantly mono - it compensates for poor to average acoustic equipment, oddly shaped acoustic spaces, and prevents the listener from hearing different sound from location to location.

With all the issues we have in the pinball industry with late code and late machine delivery, stereo sound is very low on my list personally.

All correct. But none of that is a form of compression. It's more a light form of parity. Its a weak form of error correction (not data compression) allowing for 2352 bytes per sector and nowhere near as aggressive as the standard data error correction used with say mode 1 data written at 2048 bytes per sector. I never said there was no error correction. I said it wasn't the same as the ECC used for data disks. Again, (while interesting) this has absolutely nothing to do with audio compression which is a way to shrink the audio file so it takes up less space on the media, requiring it to be decompressed on playback by a codec. Nor does any of this have to do with pinball.

For $5G and up you think Stern could give us stereo??

Agreed, I was originally clarifying Part_3's comment about whether or not CD audio is compressed. I may not have explained it well, but I was trying to point that audio CD's do not have compression and actually consume more space for error correction. Also agreed - Redbook Audio is a total aside to the topic at hand But since it was mentioned, I thought it was important to clarify that point.

Actual audio compression, though, could have merit for pinball. I'm curious, for instance, if Sterm uses any sort of compression (lossless or otherwise) on the audio. FLAC is an open source codec, isn't very computationally expensive, and can provide decent compression. I'm surprised FLAC hasn't caught on in more spaces, but I could see it's value to something like a pinball machine. Of course, I suppose a lossy codec would provide far better storage efficiency at a marginal loss in quality.

But I guess to the point Purpledrilmonkey made, there is something to be said for not having to make considerable changes to board sets.

The sam system board set does not have the flash for it. Maybe in the next board set.

For all intents and purposes, the sound system was the same in DE/Sega/Stern from 1991 (Batman) to 2005 (NASCAR). That was the run for BSMT2000 and its emulated replacement.

The things that changed during that period were driven more by parts availability and cost rather than technology advancement.

Change in amps from MB3730 to TDA2030 (availability)
Doubling of sound ROM space (Whitestar)
Removal of third amp (cost)
Change from BSMT2000 to Xylinx emulation (availability)

For the most part the rest of the sound circuitry was the same. The processing power and code space for sound never changed during that period. And it took them a while to get the emulation of the TMS320 correct.

viperrwk

The AC/DC songs may be real, but the samples have been doctored to accommodate the incredibly lousy audio setup. When I purchased my NIB AC/DC Premium in 2012, I was so disappointed in the audio that I contacted David Thiel and had a long, interesting chat. Great guy...unfortunately he has to work without the limits of the hardware Stern ships.

I upgraded my audio after reading markmon's thread on the topic (and it improved things), but without better software samples and stereo, there are limits to how good it will sound.

Man, if only the Stern pins sounded as good as my RFM does…just awesome.

1. Listening to a nice Metallica or ACDC with a Sub turned up really loud I have the following observations.

-that sounds great.
-it's too damn loud ( I am an old fuddy duddy).

2. Listening to a game like IM, Tron or Star Trek cranked up with a Sub I think the following.

-Why?

3. One thing I never think.

-is that stereo or mono?

My .02

Sure, and maybe spend more than 2-5$ for the incredibly cheap Chinese speakers? Was working on my LOTR recently and noticed how much better the speakers sounded (loud, magnets were considerably larger). Also incredible how much louder it gets. My LOTR set on "3" is as loud as my TRON on "30". Sure, they re-calibrated with the new platform, but they also seem to have gotten MUCH wimpier in terms of volume. When I play my MET, it's set close to the limit (on 50 iirc). When set @ 20 or so, you can barely hear it. Really bizarre calibration…

I don't mind upgrading to better speakers, but until the core audio hardware is respectable, there are limits to what the speaker upgrade will do for you.

I thought I had heard one time that when they switched to emulation, the BSMT was 'improved' slightly to allow for 16-bit samples. Just an 'aside', which may or may not be accurate. pinball_keefer?

Wish I could tell you that but nobody is legally allowed to post SAM game ROMs.

The TMS320C1X/BSMT2000 is a 16-bit fixed-point DSP. It's possible floating point was added into the emulation but I'm not sure how or why you would do that and stay code compatible. TI had a floating point DSP in the TMS320C3X which Stern could have used (BSMT3000) but the path they took with the Xylinx looks more like a compatibility choice than a sound quality choice.

viperrwk

Iirc it was around the time that LOTR came out that the sound improvement happened /possible changes to the way they handled the BSMT. Anyone ever notice LOTR sounds a bit smoother than previous games? I also seem to remember that there was an extra rom required in pinmame at the time to make the sound work correctly, U8 maybe? Maybe I am misremembering all of this or getting it mixed up, but I remember asking Keith why it sounded nicer and I thought he mentioned something along the lines of an improvement being made.

Not saying there wasn't some type of improvement but there wasn't a significant change to the sound system which would have made a huge difference (the DAC and the amps were the same.) Certainly there could have been changes to the BSMT code itself or the ADPCM - dunno. Always a tricky thing to make something better and keep it compatible with what went before. Keith would be the guy to make it happen though!

viperrwk

_{Post edited by viperrwk : amplified the point}

Some tracks are using a proprietary ADPCM format. This format has a fixed 4x compression rate.

Yeah, that's all I meant - a modification to the BSMT emulation code to allow for better quality samples.

A french company has done it ! It's not cheap, and you have to like the new orchestration, but it's still backward compatible and bring a new dimension to old pinballs sound!

http://www.pinsound.org

Example on a TZ:

#t=69

I didn't have anything to do with the sound programming, but yeah, "CPU/Sound Board II" (referred to internally as the "interim" board between bsmt whitestar and sam) had 2 modes of operation. One was backwards compatibility with all Stern games (and presumably any previous games that were mono-only, but I'm not sure which game that started on offhand), and the other was the new operation with better samples. T3 was actually the first game shipped with the interim board, but questions as to whether it would be ready or not caused its sound to be designed as if still on BSMT whitestar. LOTR was the first game to take full advantage of the new sound capabilities. Obviously sam improved on those further since it had more storage space. An interim board should minimally work in every game from SX on, but I'm sure many of the late-model Segas would also be fine.

RFM does sound killer, and you can make out the stereo separation. The speakers are higher and closer to the player than regular pins.

I was absolutely impressed with how AC/DC sounded out of the box. For me it's perfectly clear and loud. I haven't changed the stock speakers at all. I know a guy who said "this is the worst sounding game I've ever heard!!!" ...he put a massive subwoofer system inside of it...says "check this out" - THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD - "Isn't it great!?!?!" ....NOW it was the worst sounding pinball I'd ever heard. You couldn't hear the music or lyrics...just insane distorted bass. Hey, to each their own, I guess....lol

Thanks for the info Keith.

That's a shame - one of there reasons I sold T3 was the horrible music. Now, I don't have a problem with "video gamey" music as long as the compositions are good....and with Chris Granner behind the T3 music, I was a bit stumped as to why the tunes weren't catchy, despite the hardware. Was the hardware responsible for messing up what could have been better music, or was this just a rare miss?

In fact, Stern pinballs that are based on SAM boards ARE stereo :
- The audio DAC is a PCM1755 and it supports stereo
- The SAM pcb has 2 channels on the J10 connector; each one is driving a different speaker
See schematics below.

So, I guess we could enable stereo... it's just a question of software.
Do you think it would be interesting to add this feature with Pinball Browser ?

AudioSch.png
AudioPanel.png

That's impressive, but yikes it's $366 for for the WPC-S replacement. It looks like they've listened compatible machines, but not necessarily ones with enhanced sound (STTNG for instance). But, man those videos are indeed impressive!

I just watched the Addams one...OOOPH....I'll take the original sound all day long.

Another way to look at the whole sound thing is; even if the sound was true Stereo (which MP3s are not), and some great sample rate like 96khz 24bit, the music and effects would still have to be compressed in dynamic range so that the sounds would stand out in a noisy location (like a bar or arcade).

Pinball music is compressed or "stepped on" to make the quiet passages louder. Otherwise you might not hear any of the subtle parts at all. Then the songs and sounds are EQed to maximize the sound coming from $2 speakers.

Back in the day, 45s were compressed kind of the same way so they would stand out when played on a jukebox. Otherwise softer passages would be perceived as "dead air" in a noisy bar. The louder your song was, the more it might stand out and be noticed by bar patrons. The song "Whip It" by DEVO was so short in length and thus could be cut so "hot" on vinyl that it was often the loudest song in the jukebox by far - fans loved it. The 45 is much louder and more distorted than the 33 album cut of the same song.

Yes, that one sounded amazingly bad. Sounds like the board is a really cool idea, but the re-orchestrations of the sounds are mediocre to poor.

Just a thought...If they asked 100 people and more than half agreed to up that to $5.5G or something, then maybe they would consider adding stereo, a basically pointless feature. Even though it is inexpensive: every single screw, washer, 5 inches of wire, and any labor to design, any software coding to produce, is in the bottom line.

I see you largely like/collect pre-90's pins. For these pins, I agree stereo is pointless. When you purchase a 5-7k rock-and-roll pin, it's reasonable to expect modern audio. It's also easy for you to defend Stern's cost cutting when you are on the sidelines. If you were to spend this kind of $$ on a pin, you might be more demanding.

You cant expect a 30 year old sound feature in a 8k music toy.....

I am not hardly on the sidelines, I was looking at it from that perspective because I am employed in production in a modern electronics company. Many times I have scratched my head and said "Why did they leave this or that out the design" and all the while thinking how much better the product would be or whatever.
...then I get my answer.

The pointless comment is because the speakers are darn near next to each other in a pin, now if you are talking about headphones, or external 'extension' speakers I could see there could be a big difference. You can't tell me you can really hear well the center channel and stereo imaging between speakers that are around 5 feet away only around 2 1/2 feet apart. The importance of proper speaker placement can't be overemphasized in stereo. Having the table in front of you also distorts the imaging and the frequencies by offering a point of early reflection. Then you are going to put these games in places not great for listening, well....that's what I mean by pointless.

I hear you, but the fact is Pinball 2000 audio puts modern Sterns to shame (and the speakers appear closer together). You can still hear the separation and the imaging of planes flying from side to side. It just rocks…it's one of the big reasons I keep it in my collection. The audio dramatically enhances the game. Since many of the targets are virtual, you could argue the fidelity of the audio is even more important. That's really enough "proof" for me…15 year old technology that better than what I'm getting in a 7k Stern.

In my car, I have speakers much closer than BB speakers and the audio is world class…actually better than most home audio systems. Companies like Bose, B&O, Marc Levinson have all figured this out. While I'm not expecting Stern to invest a lot of R&D in systems like this, at least spend a few more bucks to improve the audio. If Stern's audio BOM was increased by $25, it would improve the audio greatly. Audio technology has become dirt cheap.

btw, spent 20 years at a small consumer electronics company named Apple…I know all about making tradeoffs when developing products.

Which is why I have a powered subwoofer on my F-14 Tomcat

I just think the money would be better spent on higher power/higher quality amps and speakers, rather than stereo. It's your money your spending on the pin, so yeah by all means complain they should throw it in for free. I'm sure at some meeting of the minds they decided it wasn't worth the effort, would not increase sales. Guess we will see if anything has changed with the next game released.

(This is a bit off topic, but):

Most MP3s use joint-stereo, true, but MP3s and many other lossy formats do support true independent channels with some even supporting 5.1 and all that (I think MP3 does by an extension to the original standard). Joint-stereo is just a lot more common. I haven't really looked into the differences, so I'll admit I could be totally wrong, but I /think/ joint-stereo uses more of a mid/side type of approach. In practice, MP3s still have fairly good stereo separation. Better than vinyl to my ears (though I regard the latter as superior, or at least more fun).

And on that note, with old 45's at least they used analog pipelines. Modern digital mastering pushes dynamic range compression way WAAAY too much in my opinion and far further than an analog compressor could do. I suspect a good reason why is because digital compressors, at least software ones, can do look-ahead.

Case and point, listen to Adele's 21 and then listen to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Granted, the latter was recorded at Sound City on glorious analog hardware. Even so, it's my favorite album on vinyl, partly because it sounds pretty dynamic and wonderfully analog. It's a shame too since I think Adele, and many other artists' would sound SOOO much better if they just kept some sense of dynamics. These days, your phone can easily do software dynamic range compression for cases where you might actually want it (like in a noisy car) so there really isn't a great need for such over the top dynamic range compression.

It's the loudness war, been raging for years.

Most Ford vehicles have a "comp" button to compress dynamic range on their stereos. Good for listening to classical music and some talk shows.

ford_.jpg

Agreed. Unfortunately, to the human ear louder = better in the short term. Even an audiophile or audio engineer has to consciously A/B sound at equal decibel levels as the knee jerk reaction when listening to a mix or audio track is -0.1 dB sounds better than -6 dB, even if it's not true. It's enough to get someone to buy it, so brickwall limit it and sell sell sell!

My fav sound engineering gif:

Loudness_Race_Graph_1_10.gif

I can and will tell you that. Not when playing on location, but if it's the lone game turned on, sure, how couldn't you hear the difference? I liked the stereo effects on my old Data East Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Cool post. But the two channels, I believe, are separated for backbox and cabinet. There are only two amps on the board.

But are you really listening to stereo? I'm not making this up, this is a property of a stereo sound field. For a stereo image based on music content you must have separation between the left and right speakers. You must have open space in the middle. Without it you are listening to summed mono.

"Stereo in one sense of the word is designed to trick the human auditory system and eliminate our ability to localize. How does this work? Take two speakers and space them a sufficient distance apart. The source can be either stereo or mono for the effect to work. The position of the listener forms a triangle with the two speakers. Ideally the listener would be 1.5 times the distance away as compared to the distance the speakers are apart. Once you are listening from double the distance or farther than the distance the speakers are apart then the information collapses to mono. So to have stereo you have to be in the middle, and you have to be no farther than 20 feet away if the speakers are 10 feet apart. In this scenario the sound can be heard from the space in between the speakers rather than from just two distinct sources. This alters your perception. This stereo image is rather fragile. You have to be facing the speakers. You have to be very close to the middle position so that the distance from the two sound sources are near equal and so that the amplitude is near equal. You have to be a precise distance away. Turn around, sit off to the side, sit too close or too far away and the contrived stereo image collapses."

That's an interesting read but yes, there were stereo effects. I'm not sure what the point of writing all that out was, I understand the importance of speaker placement and room acoustics.

The game had parts where if you hit targets on the left field, sounds would come out of the matrixed center and left speaker, and if you hit the right, out of the matrixed center and right speaker. I could hear the effect.

But that's my point - that is not stereo that you are describing. That's panning. A mono signal that is panned somewhere between the two channels does not have the requisite phase information to be a stereo signal, although there can be a level difference between the two channels that simulates a position difference, it's a simulation.

This is why your home stereo system has a "sweet spot" between the two loudspeakers, where the level differences and arrival time differences are small enough that the stereo image and localization are both maintained. This sweet spot is limited to a fairly small area between the two loudspeakers and when a listener is outside that area, the image collapses.

I've noticed that Stereo is noticeable on pinball speakers. I'm working on a project with small tweeters at the edge of the speaker panel (outer edges); I think the tweets are a major contributing factor in creating the image more clearly. Sure, it's not 'audiophile grade' perfect stereo, but it's pretty good and definitely noticeable. I can hear a drumset the way it is recorded; for example with the hi-hats on the right, a crash on the right, toms going from right to left, a ride and crash on the left, etc...

We're talking about pinball here; it doesn't have to be perfect; much like your car stereo doesn't have to sound perfect since it's in a crappy environment to begin with. People still like having stereo sound in their cars though despite sitting in the completely wrong spot for optimal stereo imaging; why not on a pinball machine. This is 2014!

Yeah, I don't get it. For the price of NIB games these days, we should at the very least get these games in stereo and awesome sound.

Well, then don't buy it and tell them why.

Here's a great demonstration about the loudness war...

Is the next Stern release going to have stereo?
Are you going to NOT buy it if it doesn't?