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neubejiita

Timidity patches for Linux.

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Hello.

I am wondering what is the best timidity patches archive to download to get the best sounding music in Prboom+? I am currently downloading a 30MB archive from a FTP site, is this the best thing to get, or should I download a bigger archive?

And would it be used right away with timidity in prboom?

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eawpats is the best.

shompats is okay for some songs.

Everything else I've ever found, and I've tried a LOT of patches and soundfonts, is complete rubbish which I'd advise you not to bother with.

When playing the IWAD music, I actually have OGGs of the music played through a Roland Sound Canvas which I auto-load via the config file. I only use soundfonts for PWADs with music in them.

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Super Jamie said:

When playing the IWAD music, I actually have OGGs of the music played through a Roland Sound Canvas which I auto-load via the config file. I only use soundfonts for PWADs with music in them.


Does this work with PRBoom?

If it does... then hook us up bro. he he

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exp(x) said:
I second eawpats.

I support this motion. I feel that Timidity+eawpats is one of the better ways to listen to Doom's music, just behind an OPL3 and a Roland Sound Canvas.

And speaking of the Sound Canvas, LogicDeluxe made recordings with (I believe) an SC-155 available in this thread... (These are the ones that Super Jamie mentions in his post, but I'm not sure how to make them work in prboom.)

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exp(x) said:

I second eawpats. I tried a few others but switched back.

Thirded. I have the same experience: tried other patch sets, but eawpats is what I keep coming back to.

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Ability to play OGG and MP3 was added in PrBoom-Plus 2.4.8.3, as such it's upstream in current PrBoom and PrBoom-Plus.

Go to btjunkie.org and search for "doom flac", you'll find two ~450mb torrents with the Doom 1 and Doom 2 soundtracks. Download these.

Convert them to OGG, save them in your prboom folder. Down the bottom of your prboom.cfg is a Music section with level names and their corresponding soundtrack, change the entries like this:

mus_e1m1                  "d_e1m1.ogg"
or whatever your music files are called. There are entries for the Doom 1 and Doom 2 music.

Your port will now auto play the OGG files when it encounters an IWAD level :)

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Super Jamie said:

Your port will now auto play the OGG files when it encounters an IWAD level :)

I'd love to use those files, but they can't loop seamlessly.

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exp(x) said:

I'd love to use those files, but they can't loop seamlessly.

True but I never notice it. I'd much rather hear the songs in their entirety with perfect synth reproduction than with imperfect MIDI patches.

Especially with the bugged instrument in eawpats which causes music to go "BEEEEEEEE" endlessly. Listen to MAP05 with eawpats, it starts about 1:05 I think. Definitely before 1:30.

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Super Jamie said:

True but I never notice it. I'd much rather hear the songs in their entirety with perfect synth reproduction than with imperfect MIDI patches.

Especially with the bugged instrument in eawpats which causes music to go "BEEEEEEEE" endlessly. Listen to MAP05 with eawpats, it starts about 1:05 I think. Definitely before 1:30.

MAP05 at 1:15 to be precise and goemon as well as freepats are also (less) screwy.

Super Jamie recommended Shompats and they have worked great for me on Vista to get around this bug to allow independent volume adjustment again. Though I need to go in a turn down an annoyingly loud instrument played on MAP06 of Speed of Doom.

exp(x) said:

I'd love to use those files, but they can't loop seamlessly.

A little off the topic of Linix but oddly enough on my laptop using the Vista midi it freezes the game for half a second to loop where as Timidity/GUS patches do not and I haven't bothered with the mp3s.

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HackNeyed said:

Though I need to go in a turn down an annoyingly loud instrument played on MAP06 of Speed of Doom.

I believe you can tweak individual instrument volumes with the timidity.cfg?

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I've never heard of eawpats being converted to SF2, or even an application to convert patches to SF2, only the other way around with unsf.

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Super Jamie said:

I believe you can tweak individual instrument volumes with the timidity.cfg?


Yes. For Shompats the timidity.cfg links to other .cfg files where individual tweaking can be done and that is what I plan to do after I rip the midi from the wad and run it through timidity++ to identify the offending instrument volume.

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Cool. Post a code fix here when you're done!

Feel free to find the dodgy beeping instrument in eawpats while you're there ;)

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Super Jamie said:

I've never heard of eawpats being converted to SF2, or even an application to convert patches to SF2, only the other way around with unsf.

Awave Studio can do it. Here's the patches from gravis.cfg in eawpats (except snarerol.pat and highq.pat - I couldn't figure out where those fit in). I was too lazy to include the stuff from gsdrums.cfg and gssfx.cfg. I also didn't do any volume adjustments or anything.

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Super Jamie said:

Cool. Post a code fix here when you're done!

Feel free to find the dodgy beeping instrument in eawpats while you're there ;)


The quick and easy fix for Shompats is to open the default.cfg and locate the line “95 sweeper” and add amp=10.

95 sweeper amp=10

Now not so loud but still an annoying sound. So, alternatively download eawpats and copy sweeper.pat from it overwriting the one with Shompats and set amp=20 or there about. Also can be done with freepats and 095_Sweep_Pad.pat by renaming the file to sweeper.pat or the config line to “95 095_Sweep_Pad amp=20”

To fix eawpats for MAP05 of Doom II and MAP02 of Deus Vult (at the 0:39 mark) is quite simple and easy to find once I started looking into the configs because timidity++ gave no help in finding the offending instrument since it would not play it. ;)

In the gravis.cfg just comment out these 2 lines with a # symbol.

#71 whistle1 pan=59 note=60 keep=loop keep=env
#72 whistle2 pan=59 note=60 keep=loop keep=env

Interesting note I found here stating:

keep={loop|env}
By default, percussion instruments have their loop and
envelope information stripped. Strangely shaped envelopes
are removed automatically from melodic instruments as
well. keep can be used to prevent stripping envelope or
loop data. For example, the Short and Long Whistle per-
cussion instruments (General Midi numbers 71 and 72) need
to have `keep=loop keep=env' specified in the configura-
tion file.


Removing “keep=loop” from them makes them sound like a normal sports whistle again if you like that sort of thing though why the instrument is even played at all in Doom ports where it does not belong is beyond me and probability a question for someone who knows mus or midi to mus code.

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Wow, awesome work!

The whistle sound is pretty hilarious on its own. At first I thought it was something being used/abused as a percussion instrument like the marching gunshot in MAP31, but considering timidity doesn't play it and I just found there's nothing like it in ZDoom OPL emulation, apparently not.

You could probably refer this back to the dude who wrote the Mus2Mid code which PrB+ uses now, unless entryway's 2.5.0.7 fix does the right thing to fix it for all PWADs with whistle instruments - or rather what the mus2mid is interpreting as a whistle instrument - in them?

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Super Jamie said:

unless entryway's 2.5.0.7 fix does the right thing to fix it for all PWADs


No, unfortunately it does not. Despite entryway's work and patients fixing MAP05 of Doom II, MAP02 of Deus Vult (at the 0:39 mark) is still screwed unless you comment out the whistles. It appears MAP05 was a very targeted workaround.

I'll admit that the Banshee cry stems from a misconfiguration in eawpats however once that is corrected by removing "keep=loop" eawpats becomes only as broken as goemon and freepats because the mus to midi code still plays the whistles for no apparent reason.

So users have a broad workaround and entryway could implement a similar workaround in PrBoom+ by deactivating those instruments. It isn't right but it works until the root of the issue can be addressed.

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