The Hearts of the Super Nintendo

I don't understand why Nintendo decided to give the APU a dedicated clock crystal.

Was it that important to have an exactly 32000 Hz sample rate? They could have used a divide-by-21 to get within 0.2%, which would have been more accurate than that ceramic resonator. Or keep the existing divider and run resample all the audio to 27.97 KHz, which IMO would have been acceptable.

(2024) At the time (218 points, 56 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39891317

Recent related repost: The Super Nintendo Cartridges (2024) (171 points, 30 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906161

..At it's time (548 points, 153 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40111274

Blast from the past. Love content like this (tech porn). Well done.