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I have known several Atari 8-bit demos that have twin Pokey audio, but I don't know if any C64 demos need twin SIDs and if they make a difference, because I don't see an option in VICE to enable stereo, nor have I heard any such demos on YouTube.

EDIT: Yes, it seems there are stereo options in VICE, but I don't know what "System" means as opposed to "Mono" or "Stereo".

Lastly, I was going to record a bunch of ZX Spectrum demos with Spectaculator and Bandicam, and the former has two stereo options (ABC and ACB) - should I pick one or the other or just go mono, like (as it says) a real Speccy?

Thank you for that, Saga. How about the Speccy demos?

On ZX, beeper is mono, and AY is stereo (one left channel, one middle channel, and one right channel).

On Spectrum it depends on where and when this demo was made.

Anything from about 1990-1995 is likely to be stereo-aware (i.e., not always well balanced in terms of the channels, but definitely made on a computer with a stereo mod); productions from the last 10-15 years are pretty much always stereo. Recent productions will even use tricks to imitate proper panning.

The specific channel layout is mostly geographic - demos from former USSR are almost exclusively ABC (this was used by most clones); demos from the rest of Europe are mostly ACB (this is how classic Spectrums were usually modded).

Just had a look at few .nfo files for the top ZX demos I've got, and of course none of them mention specifically what stereo configuration (if any) they use.

Oh well, guess it's down to mono then. I just want to record them.



Surely that's the Amstrad CPC? Spectaculator tells me that a real Spectrum generates AY sound in mono.

It's not the end of the world if you use the "wrong" stereo configuration.

For christsakes, please do not use mono. It is so much better in stereo, it hurts.

Also 3sid. :)

Crazy! ;)

Playing 3SID tracks in Vice the third SID is mixed central. (2SID is hard panned left and right) Personally I have Vice set to Mono because it's not fun on headphones and I'm really not sure any multi-sid tracks use the positional stuff. (we've not at least) Maybe there's a stereo sample demo out there I dunno.

I decided to record in ACB mode, as more countries used it than didn't.

What do you all think of OBS Studio for recording demos played in emulators or PC demos live? I recorded a whole bunch of ZX ones today, and the quality seems fine. There was a problem with audio on both WMP and VLC when I tried to use Handbrake to re-encode the files to make them smaller, but I don't think I need Handbrake at all now, it seems to have better results than the Nvidia Shadowplay/Share that I used to use, and far more options for resolution and framerate.

Did you miss my OBS Studio question? It's coming in quite useful for me in making videos.

Don't most emulators come with built-in video recording faciliites that should be far more reliable?

I've tried them, they're too fiddly to set up and most often the results are disappointing. I'd rather use an external encoder that can record the emulators' output.