SPC700
The
SONY SPC700 is the 8-bit sound chip used in the Super Famicom, a Japanese
video game console. The SONY SPC700 chip is also present in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SuperNES, or SNES, for short), the North American and European versions of the Super Famicom. The said chip is part of the Super Famicom/SNES' sound module. The SPC700 chip was very advanced for its time (1991) and may in some ways be said to rival today's wavetable synthesizer sound cards.
The SPC700 was the first sound chip to produce digital stereo sound. The chip and its companion 16-bit DSP were developed and manufactured by SONY, the company behind the PlayStation. Inside the Super Famicom/SNES the SPC700 is located above the DSP, on the left side of the sound module. The sound chip is connected to 64KB RAM embedded on a circuit board, and runs at 2.048 MHz. It is composed of six internal registers, and can execute 256 opcodes.
The SPC700's companion DSP operates similarly to modern wavetable sound cards, such as Sound Blaster Audigy. It is capable of churning out 8 simultaneous ADPCM voices at any relevant pitch and volume. Programs can be developed for the SPC700 and DSP in much the same way that programs are written for PCss or Macss that play music via their sound cards. The emulation-related sound format name .SPC comes from the name of this sound chip.
External Links
- SNESAmp Site
- SPC700 Documentation
