The SONY SPC700 is the 8-bit sound chip designed by Ken Kutaragi and used in the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console together with a digital signal processor (DSP). The SPC700 and its companion 16-bit DSP were developed and manufactured by Sony, who subsequently entered the video game console industry with their PlayStation brand. The SPC700 chip was very advanced for its time (1990) and in some ways may be said to rival today's wavetable synthesizer sound cards. Integrated circuit of Atmel Diopsis 740 System on Chip showing memory blocks, logic and input/output pads around the periphery Microchips with a transparent window, showing the integrated circuit inside. ... Ken Kutaragi (久夛良木 健 Kutaragi Ken, born August 8, 1950) former Chairman and chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), the video game division of Sony Corporation until his retirement. ... This article should be merged with Super Nintendo Entertainment System The Super Famicom design differed from that of the American SNES, though the controllers are almost the same. ... The Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super NES (also called SNES and Super Nintendo) was a 16-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia, and Brazil between 1990 and 1993. ... “Game console” redirects here. ... A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor designed specifically for digital signal processing, generally in real-time. ... Sony Corporation ) is a Japanese multinational corporation and one of the worlds largest media conglomerates with revenue of $66. ... The Sony PlayStation ) is a video game console of the 32/64-bit era, first produced by Sony Computer Entertainment in the mid-1990s. ... Year 1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar). ... Wavetable synthesis is used in digital musical instruments (synthesizers) to produce natural tone-like sounds. ... A sound card (also known as an audio card) is a computer expansion card that can input and output sound under control of computer programs. ...

Inside the Super Famicom/SNES the SPC700 is located above the DSP, on the left side of the sound module. The sound chip contains 64KB internal RAM, and runs at 1.024 MHz. It has six internal registers, and can execute 256 opcodes. SPC700 sound samples are stored in RAM in compressed (BRR) format. The SPC700 instruction set is quite similar to that of the 6502 CPU family, but includes additional instructions, including XCN (eXChange Nibble), which swaps the upper and lower 4-bit portions of the 8-bit accumulator, and an 8-by-8-to-16-bit multiply instruction. Look up RAM, Ram, ram in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A megahertz (MHz) is one million (106) hertz, a measure of frequency. ... In computer architecture, a processor register is a small amount of very fast computer memory used to speed the execution of computer programs by providing quick access to frequently used values—typically, these values are involved in multiple expression evaluations occurring within a small region on the program. ... Microprocessors perform operations using binary bits (on/off/1or0). ... This article is about reusing existing sound recordings in creating new works. ... “Source coding” redirects here. ... Bit Rate Reduction, or BRR, also called Bit Rate Reduced, is a name given to an audio compression method used to compress audio or video data on many modern computer systems. ... The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by MOS Technology in 1975. ... A nibble (or less commonly but more accurately, nybble) is the computing term for a four-bit aggregation, or half an octet (an octet being an 8-bit byte). ...

The SPC700's companion DSP operates similarly to modern wavetable sound cards, such as Sound Blaster Audigy. It is capable of producing 8 simultaneous voices at any relevant pitch and volume. It has support for voice panning, ADSR envelope control, echo with filtering (via a programmable 8-tap FIR), and using noise as sound source (useful for certain sound effects such as wind). It generates 16-bit stereo audio output at a sample rate of 32 kHz. Communications between the SPC700 and the DSP is carried out via memory-mapped I/O. Wavetable synthesis is used in digital musical instruments (synthesizers) to produce natural tone-like sounds. ... The Sound Blaster logo The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was for many years the de facto standard for audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, before PC audio became commoditized, and backward-compatibility became less of a feature. ... Panning, a horizontal motion in an image display or capture. ... An ADSR envelope is a parameter used in synthesizers, including those that produce sound by subtractive synthesis, to control the sound produced. ... In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo (plural echoes) is a reflection of sound, arriving at the listener some time after the direct sound. ... An audio filter is a type of filter used for processing sound signals. ... A finite impulse response (FIR) filter is a type of a digital filter. ... Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of movies, video games, music, or other media. ... In computer science, 16-bit is an adjective used to describe integers that are at most two bytes wide, or to describe CPU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. ... Label for 2. ... The sampling frequency or sampling rate defines the number of samples per second taken from a continuous signal to make a discrete signal. ... A kilohertz (kHz) is a unit of frequency equal to 1,000 hertz (1,000 cycles per second). ... Memory-mapped I/O (MMIO) and port I/O (also called port-mapped I/O or PMIO) are two complementary methods of performing input/output between the CPU and I/O devices in a computer. ...

The SPC700 operates in a somewhat unconventional manner for a sound chip. The main SNES CPU transfers blocks of data containing commands and sound samples to the SPC700 internal memory. These commands are machine code programs, and are developed for the SPC700 in much the same way that programs are written for PCs or Macs. As such, the SPC700 can be considered as a coprocessor dedicated for sound on the SNES/Super Famicom. This is one area where the Game Boy Advance is lacking in comparison to the SNES as it merely has a basic PCM converter; its ARM7 CPU has to do much of the audio processing. A personal computer (PC) is a computer whose price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... “GBA” redirects here. ...

The emulation-related sound format name .SPC comes from the name of this sound chip. An SPC700 sound file (or SPC) is a type of video game music file consisting of a copy of a program and music data from RAM used by the SPC700 sound chip on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super Famicom (though such data is usually obtained from a console...

See also

• SPC700 sound format

An SPC700 sound file (or SPC) is a type of video game music file consisting of a copy of a program and music data from RAM used by the SPC700 sound chip on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super Famicom (though such data are usually obtained from a console...

External links

• A tutorial on using the SPC700 for the SNES is available on Wikibooks
• SNESAmp Site
• SPC700 Documentation
• SPC700 APU Manual