MSU Possible on N64?

As I'm sure most of you know, the N64 forced devs to squash all of the audio files into almost nothing in order to fit on the 12-64 MB carts. The music & audio weren't created this way, but rather adapted (compressed) in order to fit the limitations of the cartridge.
The largest commercially released cartridge released was only 64 MB- however up to 256 MB can be addressed by the N64 memory. However, to get lossless quality audio tracks- one would need far more space than this.

The N64 audio hindrance has been explained by many developers, and is especially noticeable when N64 re-releases come out with their intended lossless audio intact.

Check out what Goldeneye (a 12 MB cart) was supposed to sound like: https://www.polygon.com/2015/7/10/8927959/goldeneye-n64-soundtrack

The Perfect Dark re-release on the X-Box One is a another prime example of what was hiding under the N64 cartridge's "hood".

Anyways, I understand that Byuu developed the MSU chip as an additional "special chip" similarly to those that devs had available on SNES cartridges with SuperFX, SA1, etc etc.

Unfortunately, I don't think any "special chips" were used for N64 cartridges, thus a different avenue might need to be taken to create something like MSU for N64, if even possible.

I wanted to post this to get some people smarter than me to ponder about it, and maybe someone will come up with something

tjstogy wrote:As I'm sure most of you know, the N64 forced devs to squash all of the audio files into almost nothing in order to fit on the 12-64 MB carts. The music & audio weren't created this way, but rather adapted (compressed) in order to fit the limitations of the cartridge.
The largest commercially released cartridge released was only 64 MB- however up to 256 MB can be addressed by the N64 memory. However, to get lossless quality audio tracks- one would need far more space than this.

The N64 audio hindrance has been explained by many developers, and is especially noticeable when N64 re-releases come out with their intended lossless audio intact.

Check out what Goldeneye (a 12 MB cart) was supposed to sound like: https://www.polygon.com/2015/7/10/8927959/goldeneye-n64-soundtrack

The Perfect Dark re-release on the X-Box One is a another prime example of what was hiding under the N64 cartridge's "hood".

Anyways, I understand that Byuu developed the MSU chip as an additional "special chip" similarly to those that devs had available on SNES cartridges with SuperFX, SA1, etc etc.

Unfortunately, I don't think any "special chips" were used for N64 cartridges, thus a different avenue might need to be taken to create something like MSU for N64, if even possible.

I wanted to post this to get some people smarter than me to ponder about it, and maybe someone will come up with something

Hello tjstogy, I really enjoy reading your post, but I think that it may not work quite as well as msu1. What I mean is that nintendo kinda broke the ground floor on the cd music/snes mixture and then just tossed it aside, Where someone with great codeing skills picked it up and made a what could of been chip. The N64 did not have that, it had the Double D add on that was to make the system the first for the big N to do online game play outside of Japan. So I do not know if you could do something lake msu1 for n64. In fact I do not know if any info on the n64 could be used as the groundwork for it. But again I could be worng and some one might make something for it. I really hope someone does because I love the N64 myself. Again great post, It was a sweet read:-D

@polargames and @tjstogy

there is an old tool that was able to replace N64 music with MP3's
but it only worked with one game and it worked best under windows XP, i contacted the creator of the tool years ago, but never got a reply -
the game is wwf No Mercy, the tool is called NMthinng.

one of the mods that uses it is this one:
RandyManFoo's No Mercy Overhaul 2.0

https://www.reddit.com/r/N64WrestlingGames/comments/13k2jb7/randymanfoos_no_mercy_overhaul_20_cpu_matches/

not only does the NMthing have the ability to inject music, it would also allow for the editing and saving of some of the ROM's read only information, unfortunately there is a process where you have to syncronise and find some addresses by making some ingame moves and after that the tool would work...

either way , i am far from ever becoming a coder,

originally i wanted to contact the programmer to ask if there was a way to hack the ROM to create more music "slots" so the game could feature 200 to 600 tunes...
and now that i found this SNES msu stuff, i believe that this NMthing program is  a good starting point.
 if anyone could take this NMthing program and make it work not only fo wwf nomercy, but for every other game too, that would be fantastic -

It would likely require a patch for every N64 game individually even in a best case scenario...

but that's not too different from the MSU1 chip.
the big difference that would spoil this for some people would be that it would only work via emulation..  part of the "cool" factor is having it work on real hardware after all.

rather than an external tool, it might be better to have a feature like this implemented in an n64 emulator.

Cubear wrote:.....
rather than an external tool, it might be better to have a feature like this implemented in an n64 emulator.

indeed, i do like original hardware, but unfortunately lack of space and other circumstances have forced me to rely on emulators more often.

that plus the fact that in the case of no mercy, the main appeal is that high res texture packs, gameshark hacks, and rom patches expand it way beyond what the n64 was capable of...
the n64 plugin community is a bit weird, N64 games look great in stereoscopic 3D but some games can't be projected well becasue they rely on open GL, and there has been no effort to try and release an stereoscopic plugin.....

that also means that high res texture packs can't be seen in stereo 3D

other rom hacks rely on a bigger virtual ram size and so the only way to play is emulation.

one thing i do recommend is to have a n64 to usb adapter, since the controller's mechanical presicion was one of the best things on the n64.

i have tried a bunch of times to request these features but was met with silence.
a bit related...
as far as the snes goes, there was an stereoscopic emulator out there too, but i cant find it anymore.....

i wish i could see the snes titles with enhanced music, stereo 3d projection of the parallax layers, and higher quality "retexturing"