Original, full quality Doom 1,2 soundtrack

Kobalt2k7 said:

http://kobalt2k7.sitesled.com/DoomMus/D_E1M9.ogg

Argh, it's the attack of the broken song! (Drum track comes in early: See D_E3M9 for how it should be)

Kobalt2k7 said:

http://kobalt2k7.sitesled.com/DoomMus/D_E1M8.ogg

Wait, so the 2nd note of the opening was supposed to be a synth drum and not a plucked violin like my old sound card played it?

Nice recordings, though. Quality is spot on.

TheDarkArchon said:
Argh, it's the attack of the broken song! (Drum track comes in early: See D_E3M9 for how it should be)

Quite interesting. Now that you mention it, I can see the lumps are slightly different, and not of the same size.

D_E1M7.ogg and D_E1M9.ogg both have the percussion start earlier than they're supposed to. On E1M7, it's supposed to start around 0:13. On E1M9, it's supposed to start around 0:03. This error occurs in the equivalent MIDIs available at Doomworld, and I wonder if you based the recordings on those. It must be caused by an issue related to QMUS2MID (used to convert those, judging from the track information,) as conversions I made of the same songs with MUS2MIDI (the same program used by XWE) don't exhibit this bug. (If you want to use it, be sure to add -t160 at the command line to preserve the tempo of the originals.)

If you intend to do the Evilution songs as well, this also occurs with the TNT05 (0:15), TNT14 (0:09,) TNT20 (0:07), and TNT22 (0:05) MIDIs at the Doom Depot, so don't use those.

In any case, nice recordings! You've got some very good quality there. Keep it up!

Hmm. Can someone post a correct copy of the MIDIs?

Kobalt2k7 said:

Hmm. Can someone post a correct copy of the MIDIs?

The correct copies of the MIDIs, and more, can be found here.

Thanks!

Most of the Final Doom MIDIs still sound like crap. It'd be nice if someone from that particular Team TNT would show up and tell us what synth they used. =P

I'll start these this weekend. This time, I'll create two versions. A standard version and another that, with loop points, can be looped cleanly.

For that matter, do any current Doom ports support looping audio tracks at specific times?

The Green Herring said:
D_E1M7.ogg and D_E1M9.ogg both have the percussion start earlier than they're supposed to.

Incidentally, those are the only tracks that have two versions within the IWAD. D_E1M9 and D_E3M9 are not identical, even though they are the same song. Likewise, D_E1M7 and D_E2M5 are different from D_E3M5. Maybe that's not what's causing issues here, though.

Also, I'll record any of the other Doom based games if you want. You just have to provide the correct MIDIs (I'm lazy!).

No guarantee that they were composed on the same hardware, but they all are General MIDI songs none-the-less. Heretic, Hexen, HacX are examples that come to mind.

Kobalt2k7, of course *IT IS*. I mean in some cases even software synthesizer much better than recorded tracks. Can you use that tracks with vanilla oriented ports like prboom & chocolate? No, you can't. I mean this.

p.s. Bobby's DooM Music CD sounds not like Roland but like Yamaha AWM2 chip. And DB50XG much close to that CD.

The DB50XG is close to the CD? Maybe so, I haven't heard the CD. However, it's hard for a 1993 game's music to be composed on hardware that didn't exist until 1994 (MU-80) and 1995 (DB50-XG).

It's possible that he liked the Yamaha board better and made his CD from it, but that's not what the songs were composed on.

The only choices for General MIDI wave-based synthesis at the time were the Roland boards and the Creative Waveblaster. (Just for reference, the waveblaster can be emulated by any Live, Audigy, or X-Fi card by loading the old AWE GM/GS.sbk banks. It's not very good.)

So what if the tracks can't be used by Vanilla Doom? That wasn't my intention with the project. My intention was to provide more up-to-date recordings of what's on the Doomworld music page. People are certainly welcome to use them in ports that support recorded audio if they wish.

Someone will have to post some examples from the CD. All I could find (through Google) are:

http://www.sawtoothdistortion.com/evolutionaryprototype/

Which is just a RAP-10 bathed in an ass load of reverb, and:

http://www.mysterx.info/music/Bobby_Prince_(for_Doom_II)_-_Map05.mp3

Which is the song played, unmodified, on a Roland SC-88Pro.

-edit-

http://www.amazon.com/Doom-Music-Bobby-Prince/dp/B00000I6WY

The CD is no more than the Roland RAP-10 recording with lots of reverb on all tracks and SFX added to E1M1.

DOOM CD Music sounds similar to AWM2, not DOOM game itself ofcourse.
Where you get information that these DOOM midies composed originally on RAP-10 or other Roland equipment with identical ROM? Prince say that somewhere in interviews? Just interesting. I searching for it sometime ago.

You know what? I don't know for sure. I'm going on best odds here in that the existing Doomworld recordings are from a SCC-1
and that the industry gold standard for MIDI at the time and for several years prior (MT-32) was Roland.

RoTT, Duke3D, Warcraft 2, and a number of other games were all composed with Roland. Not only that, most companies producing sample based synthesizers attempted to copy Roland, not come up with their own sound. Ensoniq, Creative, Orchid, and others all attempted to clone the sound of a Roland or marketed that theirs was "compatible" or "better." Terratec and Creative's highest waveblaster offering went so far as to use the DREAM chipset, which contained a licensed copy of the official Roland ROM.

Finally, it sounds good! No other hardware from the era sounds nearly as good as the Roland hardware with Doom music. Don't say XG because it didn't exist in 1993. XG's predecessor did not support General MIDI either.

I probably should have expected at least one dick to surface. I don't know what I can do to prove to you that the CD music is nothing more than a RAP-10 drowned in reverb.

-edit-

I forgot how much XG sucked ass until I installed it to disprove this. Unfortunately, S-YXG50 4 + Athlon Dual Core = Dropout when I try to record. Someone is certainly welcome to compare the two if they want. Quite frankly, the two (CD and XG) are completely different.

Kobalt2k7 said:
I probably should have expected at least one dick to surface.

That someone perceives something differently or disagrees, whether right or wrong, doesn't make them a "dick".

There may be some other comment somewhere, though there's this (which you may have seen):

On some wavetable synths, these "footsteps" last long enough that you begin to hear the richochet part of the gunshot. On the Roland Sound Canvas and the Yamaha MU-80, it does sound like many soldiers marching.

It's clear from that he used a Roland, and likely (also) the Yamaha (but for DOOM II, in '94). And, of course, they may also have tested the music on other cards to make sure it was decent enough.

The assessment to use the Roland as a "development time" gold standard for DOOM seems adequate to me (given the above evidence, especially). It seems reasonable to record the tracks thus regardless of whether someone may think some other card or software to be better for playback due to preference or under some circumstance.

I have the CD myself and can confirm your tracks are pretty similar to Bobby's.

I really can't tell a big difference between these .ogg and the midis.. and I just have generic onboard audio..

Those sound great! Although I'm with Id on Sandy's City, the Harpsichord makes that song.

I wish I could get a RAP-10 as a desktop unit synth. It really is a good sounding FM synth. Some of the bass and pads sound better than my TX81Z!

It's not an FM synth, it's a PCM Playback Synthesizer (often mislabled as "Wavetable" although it isn't a true wavetable).

There is a desktop version, called the SC-55. One is on Ebay right now: http://cgi.ebay.com/Roland-SC-55-MKII-Sound-Canvas-Synthesizer-Module-NR_W0QQitemZ300147319992QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item300147319992

I don't know who the seller is, but I do know what the synth is. =P

The desktop version is different in that it has more sounds. The SC-55 MKII has extra sounds, extra drumkits, and MT-32 patch emulations.

Higher Sound Canvas modules have many new sounds and effects, and are generally better, but sound vastly different from the SC-55 and RAP-10. All of the higher models do emulate the SC-55, but not exactly.

Totally awesome! I had no idea these MIDIs had such diverse and undertone sounds.

c.imp said:

Roland soft synthesizer series "Virtual Sound Canvas" aka VSC sounds like that too.

Not really. I once did give it a try, and the quality is even lower than on my Terratec Maestro 32.

In case you don't know, that Terratec card uses the Dream chipset which is a Sound Canvas clone. And in fact, the instruments sound identical to Roland's original. It has a weak DSP, though, which isn't even close to Roland's, thus reverb and chorus do sound rather artificial.

The Dream also has a weaker low-pass, so velocity and some patches are not the same. Synth Bass 2 and Synth Brass 1 are significantly different as an example.

Oooohhh... I must have.

I beg to differ, but I don't find these renditions any different from others I've seen so far, like e.g. Esselfortium's, or even what you get from your everyday Timidity/Microsoft Synth setup. Some of them sound halfway what you'd get with FM synthesis and generic Wavetable.

If the principle behind them was to be as close as possible to the original midis and the equipment used by the original composers...well...then I guess that's really as good as it gets, with any instrument set. If someone wants more "colored" or "richer" soundind remixed, there are plenty to choose from.

All in all, I think the classic FM Soundblaster/Adlib sound did a good job in getting close to the "intended" sound and feeling of the original soundtrack, at least for Doom (mostly thanks to the unusually high-quality FM timbres used).

Excellent stuff - I hope you keep up the good work.

Could you possibly release these songs in the MP3 format, so that they could be used in all MP3 players (including mine)?

EDIT: And by MP3 players I mean the devices, not software.

Or even release FLAC versions so people can re-encode it to whatever format is necessary :P

MikeRS said:

Or even release FLAC versions so people can re-encode it to whatever format is necessary :P

Seconded.

I haven't forgotten about recording. Right now, all of priorities are devoted to finding a job and finishing school.

Now, I have to dig up this thread, as I have something for your ears.

I got myself a Roland Sound Canvas SC-155. It is basically a SC-55 in a different housing and more knobs and sliders. Same wavetable, same GS engine. And definitely better noise ratio than a SCC1.
I recorded the MIDI files (that link from this thread) through a M-Audio Delta-44, which has 24 bit ADCs providing a decent quality. They are certainly better than the DACs on those old Roland devices, thus more than adequate.
It is mastered in Adobe Audition for CD quality. Nothing beefed up, of course, as the whole point is giving the pure sound of the original tracks to people who don't own one of those Roland devices.
Have an example in FLAC format (4'20", 27.0 MB): http://www.sendspace.com/file/t2k3sf

Linguica said:

I would host them on Doomworld, those MP2s are horribly out of date.

Would you host them as FLAC? I also could provide them as Ogg Vorbis or MP3 if you like, which I would encode directly from a 24 bit master then, ie. the encoder sees no shaped noise.

Thanks for the mp3.
Hey... I still have my RAP10 lying around somewhere - used to be in my old P60 - sounded great.

I would love to have these flacs.

LogicDeLuxe said:

Now, I have to dig up this thread, as I have something for your ears.

I got myself a Roland Sound Canvas SC-155. It is basically a SC-55 in a different housing and more knobs and sliders. Same wavetable, same GS engine. And definitely better noise ratio than a SCC1.
I recorded the MIDI files (that link from this thread) through a M-Audio Delta-44, which has 24 bit ADCs providing a decent quality. They are certainly better than the DACs on those old Roland devices, thus more than adequate.
It is mastered in Adobe Audition for CD quality. Nothing beefed up, of course, as the whole point is giving the pure sound of the original tracks to people who don't own one of those Roland devices.
Have an example in FLAC format (4'20", 27.0 MB): http://www.sendspace.com/file/t2k3sf
Would you host them as FLAC? I also could provide them as Ogg Vorbis or MP3 if you like, which I would encode directly from a 24 bit master then, ie. the encoder sees no shaped noise.

Wow - sounds great!