Silent DPCM Samples

[Whole Wheatley]

I was playing around with DPCM (as you do) when I discovered that if you import a .wav with nothing but silence and lower the pitch, it creates a very faint square-like tone. I also imported it with lowest quality, if that has anything to do with it.

This doesn't really have any practical use, I just thought it was cool.

(Note: I wasn't exactly sure where to put this since it isn't necessarily a song.)

[Lum]

It's technically just DPCM artifacts, but it's impressive that you managed to make a song with it!

BTW, you can actually cut the sample down to only 17 bytes (the smallest size FT will allow) and it still works. If you had a really quiet song it could potentially function as a melodic tone for very little space.

[rainwarrior]

DPCM has 1 bit samples, so at each sample the choice is either up or down. "Silence" ends up alternating up/down every sample by trying to maintain a steady level.

Samples can loop; you could make a 17 byte sample with a hex editor with all $55 or $AA bytes and just loop it.

This table might help understand the pitched you can play with this: http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/APU_DMC#Pitch_table

[Xyz]

Open up your instrument. Open the DPCM tab. Click Edit. That slider next to Play, move it to the right.

Oh would you look at that; it's a square wave.