Nintendo 64 Architecture: Powerful and Complicated! by Rodrigo Copetti

Author:Rodrigo Copetti [Copetti, Rodrigo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Computers, Advanced Computing, Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Architecture, Computer Science, Application Software, Computer Graphics
ISBN: 9798201690434
Amazon: B0B6RKHFQ4
Goodreads: 62908905
Published: 2019-09-14T14:30:00+00:00

6 Audio

Before we go into the details, let’s define the two endpoints of the N64’s audio sub-system:

Our starting point is the cartridge ROM, it contains data that only the CPU can interpret.

The ending point is the Digital-to-Analog converter or ‘DAC’, which only understands waveform data.

Now, how do we connect both ends? Consoles normally include a dedicated audio chip that does the work for us. Unfortunately, the Nintendo 64 doesn’t have such dedicated chip, so this task is distributed across these components:

The main CPU: Transfers the audio data from the game’s ROM to RAM, then it initialises Audio Lists to be used by the RSP.

The RSP: With the use of even more microcode, it interprets the audio lists previously stored in RAM and performs the required operations to the audio data which, for example, can include: Uncompressing ADPCM samples and applying effects.

Sequencing and mixing MIDI data using audio banks stored in RAM as well.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.