Of course the way was being clever using only 8 voices which had to be shared with in-game sound effects and be max 64k. With SPC usually the same dev tended to reuse the same samples over and over in different soundtracks. Woudn't surprise me if same game devs reused most if not all their sample librairies.

An N64 was many times faster & more modern than a SNES so doing fully software music and sound was much less of an issue. So the N64 'sound' is really a carry over from SPC-style composers I'd say.

All music loaded from ROM, started playback as requested and sfx were done in hardware, requested by the main CPU to the SPC700. SNES had a dedicated CPU, logic and DAC (SPC700) which were bascally a hardware tracker. N64 is a bit 'new' for me but iirc the N64 was the first fully software audio consoles, at least for nintendo. This is actually the main reason I love the filter stepping of slow envelopes on the filter of the prophet 600 brings me close to that eerie but pretty sound. I'm not interested in 80s chiptune sounds, just these more musical 90s stuff. I have no idea how to go about doing this, and though there is lots of info in regards to this soundtrack online, I cant find much useful info on how it was originally created or how to make that kind of music in this day and age.

whether it be hacking an n64 and playing it with MIDI, using ancient software that they originally used to compose it, or however people would recommend imitating the ways they originally produced it. If anyone has any ideas on how to get those sounds, info would be much appreciated! I know they were composed by Koji Kondo using the internal synthesizer in the n64, but cant seem to find any info on how to go about doing this myself, haha! I have all the samples, but would prefer to find some way to replicate the synthesis quality of the sounds used to make the soundtracks to the spirit temple (that opening Egyptian horn, my god!!) forest temple, shadow temple etc. I'm such a sucker for the temple music from Ocarina of Time. I've always looking for something that I can use to get a sound reminiscent of the 90s games such as n64.

Best n 64 emulator for mac reddit