Moonsound

Moonsound is the name of a sound card released for the MSX home-computer system at the Tilburg computer fair in 1995. The name Moonsound originated from the software Moonblaster that was written for people to use this hardware plug-in synthesizer.

Moonsound is a sound-card produced for the MSX home-computer system. Based on the Yamaha YMF278 OPL4 sound chip, it is capable of 18 channels of FM sound as well as 24 channels of 12 and 16 bit sample-based synthesis. It arrived after the US branch of Microsoft abandoned the MSX system, focusing on the IBM PC. A 2 MB instrument ROM containing multisampled instruments was unusual for its time. From the factory it came equipped with one 128 kB SRAM chip for user samples.

It was designed by electronic engineer Henrik Gilvad and produced by Sunrise Swiss on a semi-hobby basis. Two generations were made. The first is a small size PCB without a box. Later, a larger size PCB which fit into an MSX cartridge was available. The later version had room for two sample SRAM chips resulting in 1 MB of compressed user samples.

Moonblaster is a software designed by Remco Schrijvers based on his time-step sequencer software for other MSX sound cards. Moonblaster came in two versions, one for FM and one for sample-based synthesis. Later on Marcel Delorme took over the software development.

Sound effects like chorus, delay and reverb are omitted due to cost, size and usability reasons. The Yamaha effect chip requires its own specialised memory and effect routing is basic. All 18 FM channels and 24 channels of sample-based sound shares the same effect setting. Creative step-time sequencer programmers made pseudo effects like chorus, reverb and delay by overdubbing or using dedicated channels to repeat notes with delay and stereo panning. This is effective but quickly reduces the musical complexity possible.

Moonsound version 1.0 had 1 socket for user sample RAM. Moonsound version 1.1 and 1.2 had 2 sockets for up to 1MB SRAM. Some hackers found out how to stack additional 2 SRAM chips resulting in 2MB of SRAM.

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