Single Cell Software

it seems the sega had four operators for each of its voices, where caustic's fmsynth only has three. you could do it in modular though. i wonder if you could automate the process somehow by reverse engineering a tracker format and also the modular format.

so i tried recreating one of the default instruments from deflemask in modular and ran into a few problems. first is that each operator in the genesis chip has its own adsr envelope so it's sometimes hard just to get everything you need to fit into one modular patch. in certain situations you can get away with a decay envelope or using an fm pair module instead of a waveform generator module or whatever so most stuff should fit. also, tuning each operator works differently in caustic than it does on the genesis. the genesis takes a fundamental frequency and lets you multiply it by a different integer for each operator, following the harmonic series. whereas caustic specifies octave/semitone/cent offsets in equal temperament, so you have to figure that whole mess out. fm synthesis is highly dependent on the volumes of each operator, and they act in frustratingly interdependent ways, so it takes a *lot* of tinkering to get it sounding similar enough. finally, the first operator on the genesis chip can feedback onto itself. modular waveform generators can do that too, but it's, like, different, and i don't know why. in caustic the feedback sounds more or less stable depending on which note is being played, which sounds quite natural, and super not like a genesis.

caustic file is deflemask's built in "aquanet" instrument then my attempt at recreating it.