Arachno Music Packs

It has been requested to put this into a separate thread after being initially intended for Plutonia only, so here it is.

This is about music packs for Doom and various addons, rendered with the Arachno soundfont through the BASSMIDI plugin of AIMP3, normalized with Audacity and compressed to OGG (for ingame usage) or MP3 (for listening, with ID3v2 tags).

More packs might happen, be sure to check for updates from time to time. :)

OGG quality: 128 kbps CBR stereo
MP3 quality: 256 kbps CBR stereo

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LAST UPDATE: June 6, 2014
New primary download links (Rapidshare -> Mega)
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MEGA:
Arachno soundtracks for Doom/Doom II & addons (PK3/OGG)
Arachno soundtracks for Doom/Doom II & addons (ZIP/MP3)

MIRRORS:
DOOM (PK3/OGG, 75 MB)
DOOM II (PK3/OGG, 150 MB)
TNT Evilution (PK3/OGG, 34 MB)
Plutonia (PK3/OGG, 75 MB)
Plutonia 2 (PK3/OGG, 76 MB)
Plutonia Revisited (PK3/OGG, 59 MB)
Chex Quest 3 (PK3/OGG, 51 MB)
Hell to Pay (PK3/OGG, 77 MB)
Perdition's Gate (PK3/OGG, 85 MB)
Icarus: Alien Vanguard (PK3/OGG, 103 MB)

DOOM (ZIP/MP3, 100 MB)
DOOM II (ZIP/MP3, 141 MB)
TNT Evilution (ZIP/MP3, 54 MB)
Plutonia (ZIP/MP3, 166 MB)
Plutonia Bonus Tracks (ZIP/MP3, 24.6 MB)
Plutonia 2 (ZIP/MP3, 166 MB)
Plutonia Revisited (ZIP/MP3, 129 MB)
Chex Quest 3 (ZIP/MP3, 86 MB)
Hell to Pay/Perdition's Gate (ZIP/MP3, 92 MB)
Icarus: Alien Vanguard (ZIP/MP3, 176 MB)

Thanks, easily accessable and not too offtopic!

Just to make this "official"

I request:
Heretic
Hexen
Strife
HacX
Icarus (which you are totally NOT doing anytime soon)
Eternal Doom (not planned at all)

I cant think of many others that I would request that your not already doing or have planned, aside from the obvious TNT2 once its eventually released. Any other big classics with a unique soundtrack? I know AV used tracks from all over the place with very few originals, so that one is out.

Vile Flesh
Memento Mori 1&2
Requiem
2002 ADO
Hell Revealed II
Whispers of Satan
Reverie
Community Chest 3&4
Batman Doom
Daedalus

I never got to hear Daedulus' soundrack. Similar in style to the other Team TNT soundtracks?

Icarus soundtrack already finished and added. Sorry for being that fast. :P

I don't know how much of the tracks listed above I can do, but it will certainly take a while.

BTW, it seems that the Icarus tracks are where the Arachno soundfont really shines, at least most of the time.

Sounds good (literally?), Ive been itching to replay Icarus for over a year. I dont even remember the music anymore sadly, but that just means this'll sound even newer.

seems like a neverending job. don't trying to be an ass or something but wouldn't it be easier for the user to just invest the time and configure his system correctly so that it can play midis with this soundfont? in the end nightfright has to convert every doom midi soundtrack in existence xD
I for myself use virtualmidisynth (another implementation of bassaudio) which works great under windows 8 and prior versions. besides arachno the SC-55 one by patch93 is another great soundfont.

These packs are still significantly inferior to any real remixes you can download out there, such as those from Ransu or Sycraft (my favorite are the Doom/Doom II tracks by Per Kristian - too bad the soundtracks are still not complete), just to name a few of them. It's also not too difficult to download and setup this soundfont to use with your preferred Doom port.

Anyway, for completion purposes, I guess I will still do Heretic and Hexen at least, even though I can already tell you they don't really sound THAT great with Arachno. Maybe that is due to the nature of the MIDIs, but you always have this problem with soundfonts. One is rarely perfect for everything.

At the end of the day, it's still a good demonstration of what soundfonts can do and where their limits are. I still think Arachno is a very good soundfont in general, and you save a lot of disk space if you do NOT use these digitized tracks, but native MIDI rendered through a good soundfont of your choice. Whether that's Arachno or something else is completely up to you, of course. ^^

I assume HacX and Strife sound better than those two, given the natures of those games.

NightFright said:

These packs are still significantly inferior to any real remixes you can download out there

I've only listened to some of the Evilution songs so far, but they mostly sound good to me. Soundfonts are hit-or-miss, but Arachno is pretty accurate from what I can tell. Give Chorium a try if Arachno (or any other soundfont) doesn't do a particular song justice. If you enjoy the music enough, it's worth mixing and matching.

I appreciate the idea of a separate thread, many thanks!

I'll follow both anyway, to be sure to keep my website updated with all your music packs (although you'll always be much faster than me!)

Ragnor said:

Just to make this "official"

I request:

Icarus (which you are totally NOT doing anytime soon)

NightFright said:

Icarus soundtrack already finished and added. Sorry for being that fast. :P

Hehehe ^^
NightFright, faster than Sonic the Hedgehog!

NightFright said:

BTW, it seems that the Icarus tracks are where the Arachno soundfont really shines, at least most of the time.

Thanks ;)

Maybe because the Icarus soundtrack uses many "pad" synth sounds and effects (i.e. Star Theme, Crystal, Fantasia...) which are instruments on which I heavily focused when I built Arachno SoundFont, because it's the instrument section on which you can best express your creativity, as they only have to sound deep, synthesized and original, rather than trying to mimic a real instrument.

If you listen to the original Icarus MP3 remastered tracks released by the original composers (don't remember where I got them from - maybe on David Shaw's "Tolwyn" website), these instruments also sound cool and original on their respective level tracks.

Sp00kyFox said:

seems like a neverending job. don't trying to be an ass or something but wouldn't it be easier for the user to just invest the time and configure his system correctly so that it can play midis with this soundfont? in the end nightfright has to convert every doom midi soundtrack in existence xD
I for myself use virtualmidisynth (another implementation of bassaudio) which works great under windows 8 and prior versions. besides arachno the SC-55 one by patch93 is another great soundfont.

You're totally right ;)

But, you know, despite the fact that I built Arachno SoundFont on a Sound Blaster Live!, that I own an enhanced PCI-Express X-Fi card from Auzentech and built a dedicated PC with 4 Sound Blaster cards (X-Fi XtremeGamer, Audigy 2, Sound Blaster Live! and AudioPCI 128), and despite the fact I installed every software SoundFont synth I could ever find (including BASSMIDI Driver, CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth and SynthFont) to listen to MIDI files with SoundFonts, I still downloaded all the music packs from NightFright, as MP3/OGG files are much easier to use outside of your computer ;)

NightFright said:

Anyway, for completion purposes, I guess I will still do Heretic and Hexen at least, even though I can already tell you they don't really sound THAT great with Arachno. Maybe that is due to the nature of the MIDIs, but you always have this problem with soundfonts. One is rarely perfect for everything.

I second that!

Trying to tweak Arachno SoundFont to sound good with Heretic was a real pain. It sounds OK, but not as much as I wished overall.

Mostly because of the synth strings (an instrument meant to be generic on every MIDI) which often sound flat on Heretic's tracks, with every SoundFont I could try, compared to the FM/OPL-3/AdLib soundtracks that most of us used to play the game with.

Megalyth said:

I've only listened to some of the Evilution songs so far, but they mostly sound good to me. Soundfonts are hit-or-miss, but Arachno is pretty accurate from what I can tell.

Thanks!

That Hexen track that was in one of the Plutonia trackpacks sounded perfectly fine. Or did that one have sort of special processing on it?

It was done like all the others and will most likely be 100% identical when being released along with the other Hexen tracks. It will take longer however since it has a lot more tracks than regular Doom/Doom II (even though many sound quite similar). :P

Ive always loved the Hexen music, both midi and CD versions, used to put my PSX disc into the CD player and play its soundtrack through it (yay redbook)

Just a quick reply to mention that I'll update the Arachno SoundFont website within the next few hours, to cover all the new music packs released by NightFright in January.

All packs will be listed in a single page, and each one will have its own page with additional information, such as game data, track lists (with their composers), links to YouTube videos if available, etc.

This layout will give an extra amount of visibility for each pack, and should make them easier to find on Google than on a single forum thread.

I'll try to provide download links for each pack, as I should be able to host all the files on my Free.fr web hosting mirror, and I'll also add those given by NightFright himself.

It'll not be a fast download server for most users (unless located in France or foreign European countries), but it should help spreading the contents without having to rely on ad or subscription-powered services, which can be difficult to reach for some users (although most of them will remain faster).

I'll come back here when everything will be ready!

Saxophone guitars are preventing me from using this soundfont, much like others.

Despite volume issues I like CGM3 though.

So I had time to listen to Icarus in full, and yeah, that one IS really good with this soundfont. I also recognised a few tunes, so its not ENTIRELY forgotten yet.

Are the rest of the IWADs still planned?

the only real problem i have with this soundfont as of now is that the standard drumkit is too "deep" and makes a lot of songs sound weird to me (try D_RUNNIN as an example, which uses the acoustic bass drum a lot in the intro that sounds off with Arachno). i feel it'd sound better if it was more mid-range than low-range. other than that, most of the instruments in this pack sounds fairly good together.

Doomhuntress said:

the only real problem i have with this soundfont as of now is that the standard drumkit is too "deep" and makes a lot of songs sound weird to me (try D_RUNNIN as an example, which uses the acoustic bass drum a lot in the intro that sounds off with Arachno). i feel it'd sound better if it was more mid-range than low-range. other than that, most of the instruments in this pack sounds fairly good together.

I was close to mention that somebody already reported this on the other thread... until I found that YOU already reported this on the other thread... :)

To be honest, I never wanted to change this bass drum as I simply loved its sound the first time I heard it (I had a subwoofer most of the time). But yeah, I must admit that it sounds too quiet on some tracks like Running From Evil ;)

I remember that I already tried to make it louder, but it led to some fairly audible clipping and distortion on the Sound Blaster Live! I had back then, so I kept it as-is.

I may try to layer it with a more standard, punchier sound, but I'll have to find which one. I'd not want it to sound too weird.

Oh, and BTW... I love your "Rise" unused track from the Plutonia bonus tracks pack ;)

Ragnor said:

Are the rest of the IWADs still planned?

Heretic and Hexen are basically done, but adding the ID3 tags to the MP3s is painful since there are much more tracks than for other games, and I have less time than before. I hope to be able to release them at some point before February.
HacX and Strife will definitely not happen before February, but they will be released for completion purposes (even though they are most likely less spectacular).

Well, the Arachno SoundFont Game Music Packs page is now up-to-date: http://www.arachnosoft.com/main/soundfont.php?music-packs

Besides the above list, there's now a single page for each music pack:
Arachno SoundFont Duke Nukem 3D Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont DOOM Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont DOOM II: Hell on Earth Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont TNT: Evilution (Final DOOM) Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont Plutonia Experiment (Final DOOM) Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont Plutonia Revisited Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont Plutonia 2 Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont Icarus: Alien Vanguard Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont Hell To Pay/Perdition's Gate Music Pack
Arachno SoundFont Chex Quest Music Pack

Phew... adding all the game/music metadata (track list, game info, etc.) and updating the whole page layout actually asked me much more time than I thought!

I still have to link all the download links I added, to those you gave on this thread. But, until then, the files can be downloaded from my Free.fr mirror, and, of course, from this thread, as I also mentioned it on the music packs' pages.

I hope all the links will work, and that I did not make any mistake when referencing them (lots of chance to confuse them with all the OGG/PK3/ZIP/MP3 variants ^^): http://www.arachnosoft.com/main/download.php?category=music-packs

Have fun, and thanks for listening!

NightFright said:

Heretic and Hexen are basically done, but adding the ID3 tags to the MP3s is painful since there are much more tracks than for other games, and I have less time than before. I hope to be able to release them at some point before February.
HacX and Strife will definitely not happen before February, but they will be released for completion purposes (even though they are most likely less spectacular).

Nice, thanks!

Take your time... I'll add any new stuff as soon as possible!

Any updates on this?

Seems like Speedyshare has decided to fuck over all nonpaying users, cant download anything there now without Premium. Thank god Arachnosoft has hosted them, otherwise I'd be out of luck, realised today I had forgotten to get the .ogg version of Icarus

You're welcome ;)

Feel free to tell me if your downloads were successful.

As my Free.fr account is the only one providing enough space to host all the files, I couldn't host them elsewhere.

And I know that files hosted by this French ISP are difficult to reach outside of France.

It downloaded fine, just took a while :}

Thanks again for hosting them!

I will eventually finish this. I am just in my Quake phase again, and for some reason I am unable to switch between games. :)

Cool. Been getting the itch to play Strife again.

Hello guys and girls!

Some great news for Duke Nukem 3D MIDI enthusiasts: Lee Jackson released the full extended version of the famous "Grabbag" theme from Duke Nukem 3D on his website, a few hours ago!

More info on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/leejacksonaudiocommunity (you'll find the links here)

This is the exact same MIDI file which had been used back in 1996, to record the MP3 version of the Atomic Edition CD (using a Roland SC-88 module).

So, you can now enjoy this extended soundtrack on your favorite MIDI synth, nearly 20 years after its initial release!

Ultimate Doomer already recorded it with Arachno SoundFont and released it on YouTube: http://www.arachnosoft.com/main/arrangements.php?id=ultimatedoomer-duke3d-grabbag-extended-full-version&category=users&from=arrangements&type=youtube

Big thanks go to Lee Jackson who listened to his fans, and to Ultimate Doomer who pointed this out!

NightFright, I thought you may want to consider adding a recording of this extended MIDI version to the existing Arachno Duke Nukem 3D Music Pack... :)

Enjoy!

Zandronum and Timidity++ with the arachnofont here :-)

Pretty good!

VGA said:

Zandronum and Timidity++ with the arachnofont here :-)

Pretty good!

Thanks :)

any reason why the electric and acoustic snare are the same on the electronic and standard drumkits in the soundfonts (as well as the acoustic kick and bass drum on the standard, i believe)? seeing as how these specific samples sound very different in GM, it'd make sense for them to be different in this soundfont, no? other than that, all the drumkits are actually pretty good in this soundfont. my pet-peeve is still how deep and bassy the standard kit is, but the other ones are pretty awesome.