RemasterSFX in WAD format

Ive been using RemasterSFX for awhile now and I noticed recently, there are actually some ports that dont support .pk3. And then I noticed to my surprise that because the sounds are in 32khz format, even if you drop them into a .wad there are audio glitches that happen because those ports may not be set up to handle that odd playback format. Sometimes it sounds pretty rad with slow motion sound effects that feel like they're full of testosterone. But thats not the reason that we play with them.

TLDR - The point of this file is being able to extend the Remaster effects to other ports where it wont play. It will also load properly during demo playback and recording, which could be important if you make videos.

What I did was take the sound effects from the .pk3 and resample them to 22500hz at 8bit. I did a few minor tweaks to make sure they came out sounding just about the same as before. I played with these in PRBoom+ and they sounded just fine. Im not sure of it but they will probably even work in vanilla/chocolate too. There was an old sound pack called tronic which was sampled at 22.5 and designed to run in vanilla so thats where I learned this trick.

https://hostb.org/D30

So the obvious disclaimer besides credit (which goes to the person who made remasterSFX), is that the sounds are not at the same quality as the remaster pack. They are in native doom sound format in the wad file. But thats still a whole lot better than the original washy 11250hz sound effects by a large margin, and I think only an audiophile is going to notice a difference. The only way to get these files to convert to doom sound format, or to play properly in some ports involves extracting the .wav files and altering them.

Notes: I did add my own personal touches to it.
 

It is not enough just to convert sounds with a frequency of 44 kHz to 22 kHz. Sounds become beefy and deaf as the high-frequency component is strongly cutoff. Also the difference between sounds very noticeable. As a result the sound worse than the original Doom. Owners of good hearing, subwoofers and headphones will not appreciate it. I suggest to use filters or at least the equalizer.

41 minutes ago, Doomenator said:

It is not enough just to convert sounds with a frequency of 44 kHz to 22 kHz. . . . Owners of good hearing, subwoofers and headphones will not appreciate it.

Actually the remasterSFX sounds were in 32000hz and 8bit so they were already at the bottom of the barrel of what could be considered acceptable. I often do conversions of my music whether I download it or for large compilations from 44khz down to 32khz to save disk space and the program I use for it does such a good job I notice a change, but not a decrease in overall "quality" because they get a different kind of grit to them to make up for the loss of range. Human ears cant hear beyond 22-25khz frequency so one half above that just about fills in any interpolative gaps between.

I imagine alot of the sources for those sounds which were meticulously pieced together were at varying levels of quality.

So, point of fact, they most certainly are not at 44kHz and they never were. They are 32Khz.

This is, though, the reason why they wont play properly in some ports.

PrBoom+ also doesnt even accept pk3 files. And its used alot for demo stuff, and demos being played back ingame are used to make videos of the gameplay. Ive gotten interested in making demos lately, and its what spurred this on because I wanted the sound effects while I was demoing. I copied the sound effects into a wad and discovered that they played like mud. Existing as wav format causes ports to play the sounds with some kind of built in filtering or assumptions (ie, "its either at 11.25 - 22.5 - or 44khz") which causes the 32Khz sounds to come out distorted because they're being played at a rate some sizeable percentage off.

Im not sure about the limitations of Doom Sound Format but I know 32khz is definitely not on the list of whats compatable. And they absolutely must be 8bit. I havent tried converting sounds to 44Khz at 8bit because it just seems really odd and counterproductive to do that, but CD audio quality (44/16) will Not Go. And if the sounds are going to have to be converted, might as well go for the win and see if they can be made vanilla compatable.

I play the game with headphones on a laptop. Earbuds actually.

Thats it. I dont have external speakers. And its been that way for more than a decade for me.

Even after doing this conversion these are still higher pitched, more dynamic, and more defined than the originals. I notice barely any difference between these and the remasterSFX.pk3, and I made sure to tweak some of the sounds just so that they wouldn't have much difference.

In my opinion, this sound pack is about 85% the quality overall of the remasterSFX pack. The remasterSFX pack, besides being a re-imagining of those sound effects with some interesting elements to them that the originals dont have (a priceless addition) are in my opinion 3 times as good to my ears as the originals are. I mean the plasma shot effect has so much added to it in the pack that it has a whole different dimension to it than the original.

Also, generally, I love beefy sounds, and hate high-frequency. Unless the sounds are supposed to be "tinney" in a particular game. But I also hate the wah-wah and washy sounding of the original effects that remind me of low quality bitrate mp3s. Just my own tastes I like stuff with "oompf" to it. But I did preserve the higher pitch as much as I could for these.

I love it and its achieved my purpose with it.

I may do a little experiment soon and see if 44khz at 8bit will convert into doom sound format.

But thank you for your feedback.