From my understanding, jsr is going for authenticity. Trying to make a tracker that resembles the real thing as close as possible. This way, you have the same limitations as the composers did back when this chip was first being used. That includes carefully using the N163 expansion the best way possible. Any other way, would not be authentic, and would be cheating, per se.
Now, am I a fan of the 15khz hiss? No way. Would I like an option to disable it? Probably. However, it would not be the authentic experience. If jsr were to "correct this issue", he might as well correct the "popping" bug with certain frequencies on the 2A03.
Some of these imperfections give the Famicom its quirks. Pretend you were a developer for this console in the '80s-'90s, and work around/with them. That's what I usually end up doing.
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Point is, we can try to get as close to composing music with the chip without straying too far from the source. We are already far enough away from how they did things, by using a tracker in the 21st century, probably with computers more powerful than what was used back then. Why would jsr go even further away than necessary?
By that point, you might as well use soundfonts, or other waveform editors, like the one PXTone uses, or NESVSTi, even. But if you play the "correct" sounding version of a chip, you won't get the actual sound, the same as what you'd hear on a real system.
The point of this tracker, is to see how you'd compose the music on this system.
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The point of the tracker is kind of subjective, but the tracker itself is clearly objective.
I really don't see what all the fuss is about; the chip is flawed. Sure, it sounds better without the hissing, but that's what it does. If you don't like it, then you don't like the chip. Why be so insistent on living in this fantasy?
I wonder how many people would be complaining about this today if the hiss was implemented when N163 was first introduced...
Edit - Whoops! Chips and bugs are not synonymous.
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JSR has my respect no matter what choices he makes. I'm just happy I get to use this amazing program. I hate the hiss too, I'd love an option to turn it on/off, but I also think the whole point of Famitracker is to get as close to the original as possible, the original hisses, therefore this is correct behavior in Famitracker.
I have been experimenting with the treble filtering in the configuration, and it seems that if you set the damping to -90 dB and the frequency to 20hz, it does a pretty good job filtering the hiss away, but this also affects all other channels, making it sound like FamiTracker is running at 22khz.
Maybe we can add a separate treble filter for the N163 only, so we can save our ears and have hardware accuracy at the same time?
Someone else said that if you switch the sample rate to 22050 the hiss disappears. It is true, I tested it, but the sound quality goes down. I think NESdev had a thread which had the settings you have to put in FamiTracker to lower the hiss.
Since this mess of an argument has come up again, I'll just come in and place my vote for hardware accuracy over composer convenience. As mentioned earlier, it's like the 2A03 frequency register clicking, but way more in-your-face. One of the purposes I ascribe to FamiTracker is the "NSF Button" - that is, that anything I write in here can run on hardware if I have the right equipment. As such, I'd like to hear what it would sound like on hardware as I'm writing it. If that means that 7-8ch N163 is intolerable, so be it. I'll avoid it then. Whether or not some option is put in to dodge the multiplexer hiss, I'll lean towards authenticity.
