FM Sound Unit
- Overview
- Games
FM Sound Unit is part of the category Sound Hardware Supported.
The FM Sound Unit is an add-on for the Sega Mark III console. It features a Yamaha YM2413 sound chip which is an OPL2 FM synthesizer chip featuring the ability to play up to 9 mono channels of sound. It is a cost reduced version of the popular YM3812 and as such is more limited in features in order to reduce the number of internal registers. Due to this, the YM2413 can only store one user defined instrument with all of the others being predefined, the number of available waveforms is reduced to two, only 15 levels of volume for each channel are available, and there are changes to how sounds are mixed together for output.
Use of the Yamaha YM2413 was only available in Japan. Initially it was available with the use of the FM Sound Unit add-on for the orginal Sega Mark III console and later was also built into the Japanese Sega Master System console so the add-on wasn't needed. A PSG (Programmable Sound Generator; in the case of the Master System, this was a TI SN76489) was built in to all versions of the console and could also be used at the same time as FM sounds. Outside of Japan, only the PSG was available for sound. When supported, the FM Sound Unit/YM2413 provided much higher quality sound compared to the PSG.