Where can I get a soundcard that awesome?

I just listened to a few of the .mp2s of the Doom music, and I must know what modern sound cards perform this well with MIDI. I know the page lists what card was used, but what research I've done seems to suggest the card is neither modern nor available anymore.

I'm building a PC soon, and I'd like for Doom to sound as good on this PC as those .mp2s did. Do the high-end Sound Blasters do this well?

Soundblasters are like the Ford Cortina of sound cards, they aint special but get the job done, i just got a modernish one for my PC cause it had some awful korean one in (well thats what you get for buying a PC from Tescos!) and it works fine, so i'd go with one

What you could do is use a port such as ZDoom and integrate the MP2 files into it so that they play on the corresponding map. Simply copy the files to the Skins folder, then rename each file to the Lump name of the music file in the Doom wad.

I've done this myself and it works a treat - no flash soundcard needed!

outpost.com

Sound Blaster AWE64's rox my box, but it's ISA and that's dead now, so grab a SB Live!. I never messed with the Audigy's (was uninterested) so don't ask me that.

Trilinear said:

What you could do is use a port such as ZDoom and integrate the MP2 files into it so that they play on the corresponding map. Simply copy the files to the Skins folder, then rename each file to the Lump name of the music file in the Doom wad.

I've done this myself and it works a treat - no flash soundcard needed!

That sounds simple enough but how do I know the Lump name? I can't really change the sound card on this laptop so this is my only shot right now.

AtmaWeapon said:

That sounds simple enough but how do I know the Lump name? I can't really change the sound card on this laptop so this is my only shot right now.

Get yourself a WAD editing utility such as WinTex. Using this, you can browse through the Doom IWAD and find out the names of the music lump files.

In the original Doom, the names correspond to the map name that features them. For example, the first map has the music lump file name E1M1 and so on. Keep in mind though, that certain levels have the same music as another level, so you'll have to double click on each of the music files and listen to it to make sure you're overwriting it with the correct MP2.

In Doom2, the names are of the song titles themselves.

I think the MP2's were recorded with a Roland Sound Canvas, which was apparently what Bobby Prince made them on. RSC is about the sound equivalent of a Camaro - great for MIDI, but doesn't support the "heavy lifting" (ie. digital sounds).

Soundblaster AWE64 sounded pretty much exactly like Bobby Prince's masters. I've owned SBLive's and Audigy's since then and none of them seem to have the same wavetable as the AWE64, and therefore they just don't sound quite right. I guess Creative figured MIDI wasn't important anymore and so didn't give a crap.

Unless there's some tweaks out there I haven't tried to get the midi to sound perfect. But, I am ditching my Audigy anyway for a different card. Creative has pissed me off with their DooM 3 scandal, and I am showing them my disgust with my wallet.

Jomero - you tried using the 512kb GS.SF2 bank that came with the AWE64 drivers with the Live! card? It'll reproduce the old-school soundfont synth better. I hear yah.

But I like FM OPL2 BEST LOLZORS GO ADLIB

I haven't tried that, no. But, I will be owning a Turtle Beach card after today anyway. :-)

Some of those MP2s suck. Waltz of the Demons sounds absolutely horrible.

Anyway, on my card, (SB Audigy Auido [DF80] [???]) all the original MIDIs sound great. The MIDI device being used is SB Audigy Synth A, which is the same as (midiOut) Microsoft MIDI Mapper, and I think the same as (MCI) Microsoft MIDI Mapper. I pretty sure whoever did those MP2s, and Ashley Carr, were using (midiOut) Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth, which makes some of em, especially Waltz of the Demons, sound horrible.

I really wish a good MP2 of Waltz of the Demons would come out. :( This way I could have the original and the Kinkiness version play on the same track in jDoom. :/

I haven't used a Turtle Beach card in nearly a decade, with their Monte Carlo. Literally sent the system to hell every time a midi played within Windows. Also, the drivers were on soo many disks...

Well if you say it sounds horrible then go for it but I'm pretty sure since they were using a Roland SCC1 they were using some Roland MIDI interface. I am using Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth, and I promise you it sounds inferior to every one of those .mp2s.

I think Bobby Prince's original masters were recorded on a Mac, if I remember right. I'm pretty sure that's where the masters on the DooM Music cd came from.

AWE32's and 64's are the best for MIDI, and have been ever since. MIDI support is rather minimal right now, since the only thing soundcard manufacturers worry about nowadays is mixing and surround. There were some great 8MB and 16MB cards floating around for Soundfonts(aka The Greatest Invention Known To Man).

You want to talk about WaveTable? I'll bet the soundbank isn't even 2MB. And the drumkits are total crap. I remember having this one soundfont that had a realistic-sounding choir pad(a nice, haunting touch), and the electric guitar had plenty of grunge distortion-- not this GUNG-GUNG-GUNG shit they have now. I must have about ten demo tapes of electronica and techno stuff I did lying around somewhere...

Eh, rant over. Must get back to work.

gargoylol said:

Sound Blaster AWE64's rox my box, but it's ISA and that's dead now, so grab a SB Live!. I never messed with the Audigy's (was uninterested) so don't ask me that.

yes the AWE64 was the best for those DOS games. that card gave me by far the best music and sound. most newer cards use an emulation i am guessing. so it is hit or miss. i dont even get the greatness out of my SB live in DOS mode

if you build a classic gaming rig, put the extra effort into finding the soundblaster AWE 32/64 sound crads

I just replaced my Soundblaster Audigy LS with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Not only is it more powerful than the audigy, it uses up less processor resources and it only cost 36 bucks from newegg. On top of that, it has better utilities than the Audigy and it isn't as buggy as the Audigy (mine liked to make popping noises a lot for no good reason... sometimes I'd get it fixed, other times not).

Plus, the midi in doom sounds great on it. :-)

-Jomero

When the MP2's were made, they probably used an MP2-specific sound font during conversion. I don't think it's possible to recreate the MP2 sounds in a MIDI. Then again, it's just me.

Darkhaven said:

When the MP2's were made, they probably used an MP2-specific sound font during conversion. I don't think it's possible to recreate the MP2 sounds in a MIDI. Then again, it's just me.

I don't think it has anything to do with MP2 sound fonts. The music was produced on a Roland Sound Canvas (or something like that) then saved in MP2 format. The instruments used in the tracks would have been the Roland's. And from what I can hear, they sound pretty much identical to the proper masters on the Doom Music CD so the hardware used obviously is very good.

All the music is stored in the game as MIDI anyway, it's just played back via whatever MIDI hardware the PC has.

don't buy creative :(

Speaking of midi, I was browsing through Hammersound for good sound fonts yesterday, and I thought that sYnerGi was a decent one for Doom. Anyone else have some favorites?

I downloaded quite a few, including the massive Fluid (140MB) and SilverSpring (60MB), and I can safely state that bigger is not better. I thought that SilverSpring sounded fairly generic and boring, and Fluid was unbearably awful. The one I linked above is only 8MB, but I think it had a nice punch to it.

Nice to hear some comments about MIDI sounding good on non-Creative gaming cards, as I doubt I will buy from them in the future.

EDIT: Heh, I only listened to the Doom2 MIDI's with that soundfont earlier. It has some... "issues" with E1M1 :/

My first doom rig had a cheapo sound card. It was a good p133 system with 32mb of ram and supervga, but we needed good sound. So my dad went out and blew like $100 on an SB AWE64. The midi on that card sounded sooo glorious. I still have the card, boxed up, right next to my feet as we speak. Gonan try building myself a nice classic DOS gaming rig, so I can run all those cool oldschool DOS games like doom, strife, duke nukem, quake, etc. Problem is, its hard to find motherboards that have ISA slots. I'm looking for a nice pIII system with 128mb sdram and a nice agp voodoo 3dfx card. Then I can just pop my ISA AWE64 into it and enjoy classic doom gaming. Of course, I may load win95 or 98 onto it, but I may just leave it with dos on it and make it a dos-only pc...

Also to note, what is a soundfont? Is it another synth you can use in replacement for your gay-ass microsoft gs synth? I wish I could use some better midi sounnds. Please give input, because I really would like to do this if it is possible.

Jomero said:

I think Bobby Prince's original masters were recorded on a Mac, if I remember right. I'm pretty sure that's where the masters on the DooM Music cd came from.

I'm not sure if that's correct or not, but I wouldn't doubt it. The Mac port of Doom uses Quicktime's midi instruments for the music instead of sending it to the soundcard for synthesis, and it sounds basically the same as the mp2s here, minus the reverb and other stuff like that.