Midi snares and other percussion items becoming muted in certain tracks

[The_MártonJános]

This freakish shit is just starting to get on my tits.

For those who don't know, I have an unusual habit of extracting all the custom music ever made for - especially - Doom Wads, mainly to listen to them in my free time. (Disclaimer: I always read the terms of use before having any further plans with any of them.)

I do this since 2010 or so. In April 2012, my PC using WinXP broke down due to severe hardware problems, but I managed to save 100% of my data to a relative's computer, on which it remained for 8 months. After that, I was given my laptop - using Windows 7 - on Christmas which I still use 'till nowadays.

I encountered that certain "ripped" midis - such as "Into the Fray" and "The Maw Awaits", both from the PWAD Memento Mori - are sounding different, due to the former lacking quite a few bass(?) notes or so at the part where many percussion items are played fast, whilst the latter has its snare notes, with the exception of a few random, on an extremely low volume, almost inaudible. This also affected Simon Castles' midi which he made for the Duke Nukem 3D expansion pack "The Gate"'s level "Star Chamber" - here, no rhythm track is played at all.

These features make quite a few midis, including the three mentioned, unenjoyable to listen to. I actually "re-ripped" both "Into the Fray" and "The Maw Awaits" from the MMII PWad, but to no success, as they appeared to be "damaged", too. So, what to do now? Any ideas?

[Gez]

Cell said:

These features make quite a few midis, including the three mentioned, unenjoyable to listen to. I actually "re-ripped" both "Into the Fray" and "The Maw Awaits" from the MMII PWad, but to no success, as they appeared to be "damaged", too. So, what to do now? Any ideas?

Remember that MIDI files are, essentially, sheet music rather than recordings. It's up to the MIDI synth to create sounds according to instructions given in the MIDI files. Kind of how a text file can be shown in a different font and different line breaks from one text editor to another, whereas a JPG or PNG scan of a book page will always display the text exactly the same.

So my idea is that what changed between your old WinXP PC and your new Win7 laptop had different MIDI synths.

I don't know what program you used to use, and are using now, to listen to MIDI files: is it the standard Windows Media Player? Good old WinAMP? Something like Foobar2000? (Personally I use SLADE3...)

[The_MártonJános]

Gez said:

Good old WinAMP?

Never anything different from that.

[Aliotroph?]

Try installing something like BASSmidi and pointing WinAMP at that instead of the Microsoft synth. Then the rest of this thread can be about which soundfont everyone prefers.

[The_MártonJános]

The problem is, "installing BASSmidi" seemingly exceeds my abilities as I simply can't make fckn WinAmp to show it amongst the other devices.

[Aliotroph?]

I tried it just now. Turns out I had to run the config tool as admin to get the settings to stick. Then I had to restart WinAMP before it saw the device. Now it works great.

WinAMP's volume control doesn't work with it, though - which is a serious pain in the ass.