Recreating Game Boy Sounds with the Web Audio API: Fourier Series vs. Wave Shaper
2025-04-07
While building a web-based Game Boy style music tracker, the author encountered the challenge of faithfully recreating the iconic Game Boy square wave sounds. Game Boy's pulse channels supported variable duty cycles, but the Web Audio API's OscillatorNode only provides a 50% duty cycle square wave. The article explores two solutions: generating a custom waveform using the Fourier series and shaping a sawtooth wave with a WaveShaperNode. The Fourier series approach offers higher accuracy but is computationally expensive; the WaveShaperNode method is simpler but might introduce some noise. The author ultimately prefers the WaveShaperNode approach for its simplicity and its ability to produce a more authentic Game Boy sound.
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Sound Synthesis