Hudson Soft · 1987 · 1980s–1990s · 6 voices
Hudson Soft's HuC6280 integrated the PC Engine's CPU and a six-channel wavetable synthesiser on a single chip, producing a distinctive sound midway between the NES's synthesis and the SNES's sampling that was used with great skill by Hudson's internal composers.
The HuC6280 was a custom chip combining a modified 65C02 CPU with a programmable sound generator directly on the die. The PSG section provided six independent channels, each playing a user-definable 32-sample waveform stored in a 5-bit waveform RAM — effectively a wavetable synthesiser where composers could define the shape of each oscillator's waveform to approximate instruments or create unique timbres. Any channel could be switched to a direct D/A (DDA) mode for PCM sample playback, and two channels could also generate noise. The integration of CPU and audio on a single chip was an unusual and cost-effective design decision; it gave Hudson a platform with considerably richer audio than the NES at a comparably low system cost. The PC Engine's CD-ROM² add-on supplemented the HuC6280's synthesis with CD audio streaming, raising the platform's total audio capability to a level the SNES never matched, since its planned CD add-on was cancelled.