Doom and Descent soundtrack = the same?

Hi there..

i was listing to some old Descent OST and in a few level songs i can hear very simulare patters that a bit off the song is the same in some Doom level's but just slowed down etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbthKR5lHHE&feature=related
Eg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbAiLqjZx_c&feature=related
Eg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFZKByNixcI&feature=related
Eg

and there is more!

So which one is The Angry Chair?

A lot of songs and tunes regardless of genres use the same underlying patterns, chords, bassline e.g. Pachelbel's Canon chord sequence appears in anything ranging from disco to metal.

Nothing new here, moving right along.

Maes said:

Nothing new here

Reminds me of a while ago when someone "discovered" that doom E1M1 and tons of other doom songs use a standard blues progression

Also, the modern synthetized(sp?) MIDI versions of the Descent soundtracks sound far better than their OPL counterparts. :|

printz said:

Also, the modern synthetized(sp?) MIDI versions of the Descent soundtracks sound far better than their OPL counterparts. :|

Please, please, PLEASE don't open up that can of worms again... among digital music and sound formats, MIDI is the most device dependent and one LESS supposed to sound like anything by design.

Unless you're the original artist or a professional musician recording the output of your equipment to tape/CD/DAT/MP3 after hand-picking every sample/setting each timbre to your artistic urges, or you restrict your audience to very specific sound cards or even people with your exact same equipment, there's simply no fucking way to make MIDI sound like you intended it to.

Those musicians actually tracking for Adlib had the advantage of knowing exactly how their end result would sound. Not the greatest, granted, but at least it was constant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbAiLqjZx_c&feature=related
Eg

I don't think "Head Like a Hole" was part of the actual Doom soundtrack

also which song in Doom is the 3rd link supposed to sound like? I'm not really hearing it.

Maes said:

Please, please, PLEASE don't open up that can of worms again... among digital music and sound formats, MIDI is the most device dependent and one LESS supposed to sound like anything by design.

Unless you're the original artist or a professional musician recording the output of your equipment to tape/CD/DAT/MP3 after hand-picking every sample/setting each timbre to your artistic urges, or you restrict your audience to very specific sound cards or even people with your exact same equipment, there's simply no fucking way to make MIDI sound like you intended it to.

Those musicians actually tracking for Adlib had the advantage of knowing exactly how their end result would sound. Not the greatest, granted, but at least it was constant.

Except that Descent's music was tracked on a high-end MIDI synthesizer and many details in it (like different songs having different kinds of percussion, such as a Roland TR-909 soundalike in the menu theme) are lost in Adlib.

MIDI output through a decent synth (not the piece of shit Windows one) may not be 100% consistent, but it sounds leagues better than the piece of shit that was the OPL2 chip. Even the Sega Genesis had a better music chip than the AdLib.

Too bad MOD music never really took off on the PC market, it was consistent and sounded better than most recorded soundtracks from the mid to late 90s. Unfortunately it reached maturity at a time when CD was the new lens flare and everyone was making damn sure you knew the game came on CD-ROM.

Woolie Wool said:

Even the Sega Genesis had a better music chip than the AdLib.

Yes and no. It used an FM chip more similar to the OPL3 in 4-op mode than the OPL2, but it had its own share of good and shitty soundtracks e.g. Doom on the 32X used the genesis' FM chip, with shitty timbres that made OPL2 sound good. BOdy Blows had a wonderful OPL2/Adlib soundtrack with speech synthesis etc. so it's pretty subjective and per-case.

Another World (aka Out of this World) managed to make music on PC speakers sound good. How's that for "per-case"?

Maes said:

Yes and no. It used an FM chip more similar to the OPL3 in 4-op mode than the OPL2, but it had its own share of good and shitty soundtracks e.g. Doom on the 32X used the genesis' FM chip, with shitty timbres that made OPL2 sound good. BOdy Blows had a wonderful OPL2/Adlib soundtrack with speech synthesis etc. so it's pretty subjective and per-case.

Of course, the 32X Doom soundtrack could have sounded a hell of a lot better. This is someone's remix of the soundtrack using the same hardware. Same song, same Genesis chip, bit it sounds infinitely better:

And I said even the Sega Genesis, because the Genesis' sound chip was pretty much the second worst thing going at the time (after OPL2) and the SNES's chip wiped the floor with it.

And, suprise surprise, the "remastered" Genesis/32X soundtrack sounds exactly like good old Adlib ;-)

Well, FM sound was pretty much an acquired taste, and the software didn't do it justice most of the time.

There were a handful of games with wonderful Adlib soundtracks (most Apogee shareware games, certain gems like Body Blows, Doom itself), but they were pitted vs an ocean of titles where AdLib support came almost as an afterthought, by slapping a "MIDI compatible" driver and some stock FM timbres together, resulting in cow, horse, reindeer and rabid jackal anus quality (I called that the "Lounge MIDI syndrome", because most timbres were low-volume,, flat sounding, piano and string affairs).

DOOM is pretty much the only game I know of that has a decent OPL2 soundtrack without using specialized tracker formats and without having been tracked especially for it (unlike e.g. 1869 or Body Blows) but just MIDI lumps. Its MIDI timbres for OPL2 were unusually good, and whoever is expecting the same quality on other titles such as Descent etc...just has to suck it down.

Sorry for digressing, but it seems OPL2/OPL3 have received a lot of bad rep and there are still a lot of myths and misconceptions revolving around them.

Woolie Wool said:
Of course, the 32X Doom soundtrack could have sounded a hell of a lot better. This is someone's remix of the soundtrack using the same hardware. Same song, same Genesis chip, bit it sounds infinitely better:

That is just awesome I never knew about this remix.

I remember I was excited to play the game when it came for 32X
borrowed the 32X add-on and Doom from a friend... after a minute or so I turned that horrible mess of music off.

[EDIT]

that didn't stop me from buying the boxed game from him years later, for as low as 5$ =)

Hmm.... TBQH this "remix" has already been posted here in the past {this was the first remix) but the author himself admits that it's not a "real" remix using the same hardware etc.: they are just using (in their own words) some "authentic-sounding YM2612-style renditions" made with some particular soundfonts, not actually reprogramming the 32X cart to play better music (there's no easy way to do that).

So it's more of a "What if...?" type of reconstruction of how it could have sounded.

Granted, the Genesis is practically like an OPL3 stuck in 4-op mode, so it could definitively do better. Too bad that the FM timbres they used in the actual 32X game suffered from both "Lounge MIDI" and "Squarewave Banjo" syndrome (that is when the E1M1 guitar doesn't sound properly).

The same thing will happen if you use an OPL2 or OPL3 card under windows with a stock MIDI driver: you'll get something VERY similar to the 32x version sound, because the stock FM timbres will be used instead of DOOM's GENMIDI lump.