High quality original Doom sfx - updated 01-08-10

Hi forum!

I am a hobby musician and sound editor and have edited/changed sound effects to most of the games I’ve played, just for fun. I’ve never changed the sounds in Doom though, as they are just too much a part of the game and by changing them the spirit of Doom would be lost. Being sampled at only 11 kHz, the quality of the Doom sounds is quite bad, so I have over the past couple of years tried to gather/remake as many as possible of the original Doom sounds in high quality. Many of them are as known from the Sound Ideas library.

Some of the sounds will probably never be properly recreated or found as they are recorded by Bobby Prince and not stock sound effects. I was a bit puzzled when I heard the “At Doom's Gate” track on Bobby Prince’s CD – doesn’t even Bobby Prince have high quality versions of the sounds?

Finding the Doom sounds proved to be difficult and time consuming; a sound effect can be a tiny little part hidden within an audio track and it can have a different frequency, be time stretched and also reversed. Bobby Prince obviously used a lot of time stretching to shorten many of the sounds, probably to save some space.

I’ve found all the weapon sounds except the plasma rifle which may be the only Doom sound that actually could need a replacement. The shotguns were a bit problematic; the regular shotgun sound is a modified version of the explosion and the super shotgun is the same sound with a big boom added on top. I managed to make some fairly good replicas. The chainsaw sounds are spot-on identical. All doors/plats sounds are found except the “out of menu” switch sound.
A lot of the monster sounds still remains but all possessed human sounds are found and all imp sounds except the idle sound – that one is really strange. It may be a purring cat, but I’ve not found it.
So far I’ve recreated 64 of the original 107 Doom sounds, more or less accurately. It’s an ongoing quest which still will take a lot of time and work.

I’ve recorded a test on how Doomsday sounds with my current sound pack (and music) while playing Doom 2 at map 18 - The Courtyard:
http://home.online.no/~per-kr/Stuff/pk_doom_sfx-music_-_the_courtyard.mp3


As a big fan of Bobby Prince, I have made a few versions of his music from Doom, Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D which can be found here:
http://www.perkristian.net/game_music.shtml

The sound pack is now available here:
http://www.perkristian.net/game_doom-sfx.shtml

It's just a small download, but it makes a big difference!

Enjoy!

This is pretty good! Any idea when this "hi-res sounds" WAD will be finished?

Wow, sounds amazing. Great work finding/recreating these.

Indeed, very cool.

Wow. This is what Doom has needed since 1993. Now to get Bobby Prince to cough up those special sounds...

You've done some really amazing renditions of the original music. Seriously, I like it. Awesome stuff! :)

I particularly love your e1m8 track out of all the ones I've listened to so far.

EDIT: Happened across your Descent Level 1 track, which sounds beastly. I played the balls off of Descent, it's cool to hear that track in such quality. :D

Absolutely amazing! I always dreamed of hearing the original-quality sounds Prince used for Doom, but I never thought I would get to hear them in Doom! Fucking super mad props to you! Keep at it man! I hope you are fully able to recreate the whole deal.

And welcome to Doomworld.

Cool stuff - appreciated

Thanks for the comments guys!

It'll probably not be so long before I release the sound pack, the high quality sounds blends quite nicely together with the old ones. Although I was hoping to at least get all mechanical sounds ready, like; spider mastermind walk and death, but I cannot find anything similar anywhere. I'll make an article about the Doom sounds on my website and put the WAD up there.
The sounds are 32kHz/8bit WAV files - there is no audible difference to 32kHz vs 44.1kHz and many of the sound are at different, often lower frequency than 44.1kHz in the first place.

I worked on a similar sound pack for Duke Nukem 3D, but there was no interest for it at the 3D Realms forum so I gave it up.

Xenaero:
I am very glad you like my music, thanks a lot! I put a lot of work in each track trying to make them unique and sounding less MIDIish :-)

I'm sorry but these reworkings of the Doom tunes are not good.





















They are superb! These are a really welcome and original twist on old, familiar pieces of music. They are certainly amongst my favourite remixes of the Doom music. Great stuff and please keep doing it.

[edit] and I love the humming on E1M7 - one of my favourite Doom tunes. [/edit]

Pretty damn good, both the music and high quality sounds.
I can't wait to hear The Demons from Adrian's Pen (E2M2), it, along with E1M7, E1M8, and E3M3 are among my favorite tracks in all of doom.

groovy

This is wonderful. Thank you.

[edit] Having had a good listen to many of the tracks now, they are, for the most part, amazingly orchestrated, and the sound is fantastic. Especially enjoyed the remix to MAP07, very powerful.

The sound fx link (from 'the courtyard') you posted is amazing, have been listening to it for the last few hours while I have been map editing. Perfect for that! Only thing is that whenever I loaded up the map to test it, the original Doom2 sounds sound kinda flat and 2-dimensional by comparison. Which speaks very well of the quality of your work, even if it is temporarily ruining my Dooming experience... But I was blown away by the crispness and the clarity of the sounds.

I did notice there is a sound at 2:16-2:17 that sounded out of place, like the sound of an electrical malfunction sound or something.


Anyway, great work. Very, very impressive. I love what I have heard so far. There is a richness and a vibrancy that make these great to listen to.

MOAR!!

This is amazing and I would love to hear more!

These sound replacements make Doom sound much more "alive." I like it!

perkristian said:
As a big fan of Bobby Prince, I have made a few versions of his music from Doom, Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D which can be found here:
http://www.perkristian.net/gamemusic.shtml

I've only checked the DOOM tracks yet, but some of these sound really good, especially the "Dark Halls" and "Demons on the Prey" versions.

doesn’t even Bobby Prince have high quality versions of the sounds?

I'm guessing he worked them directly into their necessary forms. Likewise many graphics may not have had higher definition originals, as everything had to be made to look good at a low resolution.

Wowzers, these are amazing! I can't wait to hear more.

Yay finally high quality sounds that are faithful and not shameless Quake2/Quake3/Doom3 rips! I've been doing the same to Quake on and off as well, personally. Still the same Sound Ideas library used.

you should also ask romero for a high quality icon of sin sight noise, i think CoolEdit 1.31 was used to flange it


p.s. perquake rules

This is some good shit right here. Love those sparkling highs.

Thanks again for all the replies!
I'll definitively make more Doom music, hopefully one day I will have all the tracks done...

Kyka:
The strange sound you hear at 2:16 is actually the monster pain sound, it's a Doomsday bug which causes this staggering effect. It also happens at 1:07. Another bug is that sometimes the random pitch effect gets a little out of hand - I kinda like this, as it adds more randomness to the gaming experience, the monster sounds can in some cases be pretty scary. This bug is only in the beta 4 version of Doomsday, beta 5 don't work so well with my sound pack.


leileilol:
Thanks for the PerQuake comment ;-) Those were the days!

I've used Cool Edit 95 to edit my sounds. I once tried to make a new Icon of Sin sound, but couldn't get the same flange effect, gotta find Cool Edit 1.31 - thanks for the tip!

Level 2 music sounds sweet, as always. Can't wait to listen to a remixed level 6 music... IF it also lasts 7 minutes, just like its original.

Whoa the soundfx sound amazing! Very true to their original sounds, and much clearer without the additional noise that the original soundfx had. Chaingun sounds so much better too. If you can make a good plasma gun sound though I'll be swept off my feet.

perkristian said:
Another bug is that sometimes the random pitch effect gets a little out of hand - I kinda like this, as it adds more randomness to the gaming experience, the monster sounds can in some cases be pretty scary. This bug is only in the beta 4 version of Doomsday, beta 5 don't work so well with my sound pack.

I have a similar issue with Beta5. I found it was caused by having 3d sound on.

It does only seem to happen on some computers. For instance I didn't get the bug on my previous computer.

A nice surprise. I'm more interested in the remixed music, but the sound effects are a treat too. Did you manage to find the archvile noises? I always found them to be unusual compared to the rest of the sound effects.

Use3D said:

A nice surprise. I'm more interested in the remixed music, but the sound effects are a treat too. Did you manage to find the archvile noises? I always found them to be unusual compared to the rest of the sound effects.

The Archvile sounds are unique. I remember reading somewhere that Bobby Prince said he made those sounds from samples of a little girl crying and saying "Why?"

This is amazing stuff right here. Best of luck on getting the remaining ~40 remastered/remade! Also, agreeing with everyone saying the new music is awesome.

Wow, this is awesome. So far through I have only listened to "Deep into the code" from ultimate doom and "Streets" fra DN3D, but they simply rocks. :D

Keep on doing the good work!

That is actually very good! These new, hi-quality sounds sound much fresher and more lively than the current ones, and I must say I'm very impressed. Likewise with the music, too!

Ironically, I was doing a very similar project of recreating the Doom sounds with the original sound library it came from. As a matter of fact, I was a bit annoyed that I didn't post about it earlier, but still. Maybe we can work together, like I can help you with the sounds or you can help me with the sounds. Does that sound like a good idea?

I like them.

This is what Doom should have sounded like when it was first released.

Also, someone should combine this with a proper Doom remake based on id Tech 5/Unreal 3 and it would be complete win.