Yeah, in honest truth, Sega Genesis is like a basic pack of legos, and SNES is like those professional lego kits. SNES is objectively better and has much more room to develop music for - but in the end, it's the artist's skill that will dictate the best use of each piece.
In other words, the tools don't make the artisan.
Now that this has been made clear, let's get back on topic - Rock music on Genesis. As proved here, Genesis can make good rock music as seen in Time Trax. But it's an unreleased and the 'one of a kind' game composed by veteran chiptune artist Tim Follin (he is famous for composing NES games Silver Surfer, Solstice, and - guess what - SNES game Rock n' Roll Racing). There are no other game with such guitar instrument/modulation quality and this makes me believe it is extremely hard to program the synth.
Let's break up the channels for both game consoles!
* SEGA GENESIS
** Channels: A B C D E f 1 2 3 IV
Total: 10 channels
A B C D E: YM 2612 channels. These five channels behave identically to each other - they're the main core of Genesis music. Each channel has 4 ADSR oscillators that when combined, produce complex sounds.
f: YM 2612/DAC channel. This channel is also part of the YM 2612 and acts identically to the channels ABCDE. But it can also reproduce DAC sampling. Basically, it can playback short .wav sounds, such as voice, drums and effects. However, the quality is really low. You can use only DAC or YM 2612 at a time, using both at the same time is forbidden.
1 2 3: PSG oscillators. These three channels are square waves locked to 50% duty cycling (you can found those in full use in Master System games). As they're primitive and rough compared to YM 2612, they're often used as backing chords in Genesis music.
IV: PSG noise oscillator. This is also part of the channels 123, but it produces white noise instead of square waves. It is used as percussion in some games. It has a limitation that it cannot reach its full range if all PSG channels are being used at the same time.
Other data: YM 2612 channels can be panned left or right for stereo music. However, it's either full left, middle, or full right, with no smooth transition between panning.
The "SEGA" choir in Sonic the Hedgehog is a DAC sample and it took up 1/8th of the cartridge space.
* SNES
** Channels: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Total: 8 channels
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8: SPC700 channels. They are identical and allows for polyphony. Usually though, games would use up to 6 channels for music and relegate the other two for sound effects. As they are sample-based, they can reproduce voice, drums, instruments and even groups of instruments (chords) at once. It can reproduce samples up to 44khz od frequency, but 32khz is often used to lower file size, giving them a muffled-ish sound.
Other data: SPC700 allows stereo surround music, and can smoothly transition from left to right.
Tales of Phantasia has a sung music with full-fledged lyrics, in addition to in-game voice samples for attacks and battle cries. This kind of stuff wasn't more common in the SNES because of space constraints. Namco managed to do it thanks to their own-developed Flexible Voice Driver, which could compress voice just enough to fit in a 48 megabit cartridge.
In other words, the tools don't make the artisan.
Now that this has been made clear, let's get back on topic - Rock music on Genesis. As proved here, Genesis can make good rock music as seen in Time Trax. But it's an unreleased and the 'one of a kind' game composed by veteran chiptune artist Tim Follin (he is famous for composing NES games Silver Surfer, Solstice, and - guess what - SNES game Rock n' Roll Racing). There are no other game with such guitar instrument/modulation quality and this makes me believe it is extremely hard to program the synth.
Let's break up the channels for both game consoles!
* SEGA GENESIS
** Channels: A B C D E f 1 2 3 IV
Total: 10 channels
A B C D E: YM 2612 channels. These five channels behave identically to each other - they're the main core of Genesis music. Each channel has 4 ADSR oscillators that when combined, produce complex sounds.
f: YM 2612/DAC channel. This channel is also part of the YM 2612 and acts identically to the channels ABCDE. But it can also reproduce DAC sampling. Basically, it can playback short .wav sounds, such as voice, drums and effects. However, the quality is really low. You can use only DAC or YM 2612 at a time, using both at the same time is forbidden.
1 2 3: PSG oscillators. These three channels are square waves locked to 50% duty cycling (you can found those in full use in Master System games). As they're primitive and rough compared to YM 2612, they're often used as backing chords in Genesis music.
IV: PSG noise oscillator. This is also part of the channels 123, but it produces white noise instead of square waves. It is used as percussion in some games. It has a limitation that it cannot reach its full range if all PSG channels are being used at the same time.
Other data: YM 2612 channels can be panned left or right for stereo music. However, it's either full left, middle, or full right, with no smooth transition between panning.
The "SEGA" choir in Sonic the Hedgehog is a DAC sample and it took up 1/8th of the cartridge space.
* SNES
** Channels: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Total: 8 channels
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8: SPC700 channels. They are identical and allows for polyphony. Usually though, games would use up to 6 channels for music and relegate the other two for sound effects. As they are sample-based, they can reproduce voice, drums, instruments and even groups of instruments (chords) at once. It can reproduce samples up to 44khz od frequency, but 32khz is often used to lower file size, giving them a muffled-ish sound.
Other data: SPC700 allows stereo surround music, and can smoothly transition from left to right.
Tales of Phantasia has a sung music with full-fledged lyrics, in addition to in-game voice samples for attacks and battle cries. This kind of stuff wasn't more common in the SNES because of space constraints. Namco managed to do it thanks to their own-developed Flexible Voice Driver, which could compress voice just enough to fit in a 48 megabit cartridge.
![[Image: deT1vCJ.png]](http://i.imgur.com/deT1vCJ.png)