MUS Format

[Grimm]

Is the reason id used this is so the Doom music would sound the same on every computer?

[Fredrik]

No. The format does not have any impact on the way the music sounds. A MUS file is just like a MIDI file - it only contains note values, which are processed by a synthesizer upon playback. The difference from MIDI (AFAIK) is that MUS is more compact (requires minimally less processing time, memory and disk space).

[Enjay]

Fredrik said:

requires minimally less processing time, memory and disk space

Which of course was far more of an issue in '93.

[Ultraviolet]

Will anything work with MUS besides MIDI2MUS and MUS2MIDI?

[Fletcher`]

Ultraviolet said:

Will anything work with MUS besides MIDI2MUS and MUS2MIDI?

Better question. Will anything work with MUS besides MIDI2MUS and MUS2MIDI that doesn't distort the music?

[Fredrik]

It's funny, neither MUS2MID nor MID2MUS has ever distorted a track for me.

[Bloodshedder]

I know that Winamp's MIDI input plugin supports playback of MUS files, but I've never really tried it. You could theoretically try extracting a raw MUS file from a WAD and play it back with Winamp to see if it is played scrambled.

[Fletcher`]

Fredrik said:

It's funny, neither MUS2MID nor MID2MUS has ever distorted a track for me.

It's not funny, because id DOESN'T work with me. (properly)

[Russell_P]

I've noticed that some midis sound different on a standard windows media player to they way they sound when converted, imported into and played in vanilla doom. Not major changes, just alterations in certain instrument volumes and sounds. I put this down to the code (instrument patches, whatever) that vanilla doom uses. But I must admit I know nothing about this field so it's only a guess. All I can say is that sometimes what I think are great midis, turn out to sound crap in vanilla doom.

[Fletcher`]

Russell_P said:

I've noticed that some midis sound different on a standard windows media player to they way they sound when imported into and played in vanilla doom. Not major changes, just alterations in certain instrument volumes and sounds. I put this down to the code (instrument patches, whatever) that vanilla doom uses. But I must admit I know nothing about this field so it's only a guess. All I can say is that sometimes what I think are great midis, turn out to sound crap in vanilla doom.

And sometimes vice-versa. :(

[Russell_P]

In fact, for both NullSpace and LegoBase, I wasn't able to use the music I wanted for this very reason. I'd found what I thought were the perfect tracks for each, but had to abandon both when they came out as 'somewhat dissapointing' in sound quality after importing.

[Fredrik]

Ah yeah, I do remember that I've had a problem with pitch bends. Minor issue though.

[myk]

This application plays MUS files relatively decently (in respect to doom.exe):

ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/pc/games/idgames/utils/sound_edit/muslb175.zip

This explains the MUS format:

ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/pc/games/idgames/utils/sound_edit/muspl175.zip

[Grimm]

The .MUS format definately distorts MIDIs. The greatest example of this would have to EP4B.WAD.

[Fredrik]

It's probably not the format that distorts the MIDIs, but the tools that do the conversion.