PinSound Drop-in Replacement Boards

[jaredmorgs]

Jeff Strong told me about this site.

What these guys are doing with their drop-in replacement board is *very* interesting. Their system is such that you can load custom .wav files from a USB, which is then orchestrated with the MPU and called when required.

The cool thing is that you could retrofit your Twilight Zone with Flipper Fidelity speakers, and run lines for 2.1 audio with this system.

The results for Pinsound Pinball Twilight Zone: http://youtu.be/ANTcwlksxcw

I understand that being heavily controlled by what WMS will let TPA release would make taking the custom twilight zone sounds and inserting them into TPA impossible.

Let me emphasise that: Im-poss-i-ble.

But the HD soundtrack these guys have produced might give us a taste of what The Twilight Zone would have sounded like if it was built in time for the Digital Compression System (DCS).

Pretty. Frickin'. Amazing.

 

[Shaneus]

Yeah, but I've found a lot of their stuff seems to use sounds they've recorded themselves. The voices *and* music they have up for TAF just sound weird.

By some weird coincidence, this thread which just popped up is far more in my taste of how I like my pinball machines sounding

 

[jaredmorgs]

Yeah, but I've found a lot of their stuff seems to use sounds they've recorded themselves. The voices *and* music they have up for TAF just sound weird.

By some weird coincidence, this thread which just popped up is far more in my taste of how I like my pinball machines sounding

Some of their stuff sounds strange. Unfamiliar would be a better description, perhaps?

The fact you can roll in HD soundtracks and original voice files is the best of both worlds IMO.

 

[Shaneus]

True, and it's definitely a neat idea as it's basically ColorDMD but for sound. But IMO the games fit a certain aesthetic that ColorDMDs keep when going to colour by keeping the dots, but with music and sounds, if they've been re-recorded (vs. being "cleaned up") then I think something will be lost more than gained.

 

[Richard B]

Addams Family sounds awful. They replaced Raul and Angelica with poor substitutes. The best potential use is AC/DC, where if you get tired of the standard songs, you could swap them out for new ones (they had one running at the expo that replaced War Machine and Rock and Roll Train with Big Balls and Shoot to Thrill, respectively, and Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be with Have a Drink on Me (which was a dumb sub). You could even replace the entire soundtrack. Hendrix? Rush? Perhaps themed music, like classic rock, best of metal - the possibilities are endless.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Addams Family sounds awful. They replaced Raul and Angelica with poor substitutes. The best potential use is AC/DC, where if you get tired of the standard songs, you could swap them out for new ones (they had one running at the expo that replaced War Machine and Rock and Roll Train with Big Balls and Shoot to Thrill, respectively, and Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be with Have a Drink on Me (which was a dumb sub). You could even replace the entire soundtrack. Hendrix? Rush? Perhaps themed music, like classic rock, best of metal - the possibilities are endless.

I can't deny that The Addams Family sounds akin to what FarSight had to do in the early PHOF days (before they correctly licensed the tables).

But as an audio pedant, I think the HD soundtracks (Twilight Zone, to my ears at least, sounds amazing) add just as much freshness to a table as LEDs add to the overall look of the game.

Admittedly, the way this particular musician has interpreted the OST may not be to everyone's ears. Imagine as folks get more accomplished at the art of soundtrack remastering, they might be able to get closer to the compositions as they were in game, but modernize it with non-midi instruments. This is only the beginning...

I do agree that for those folks that want to customize the audio in general, this board system offers a tremendous amount of flexibility, and might even resurrect some old games that had broken soundboards.

And that can only be a good thing.

Another thing that is really nice is that the team behind the system will guarantee to open source *everything* about the project if they are in a position not to support it in the future. And that is what makes me very kindly disposed to this project.

 

[Shaneus]

Addams Family sounds awful. They replaced Raul and Angelica with poor substitutes. The best potential use is AC/DC, where if you get tired of the standard songs, you could swap them out for new ones (they had one running at the expo that replaced War Machine and Rock and Roll Train with Big Balls and Shoot to Thrill, respectively, and Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be with Have a Drink on Me (which was a dumb sub). You could even replace the entire soundtrack. Hendrix? Rush? Perhaps themed music, like classic rock, best of metal - the possibilities are endless.

This can be done already with Stern SAM games (from WPT onwards) as there's a user-developed ROM editor which allows users to change basically anything in the game they want... graphics, sound, text etc. for free, no extra hardware required. I know of a few people (via Pinside) who have replaced songs in Metallica. And it's likely that's what you saw at Expo as well (unless it was definitely the PinSound guys).