Esselfortium's Doom Soundtrack Remastering Project

Hey there, everybody. About a year ago I first tried doing some Doom "remasters", and they turned out really terrible. Since then, I've become much more experienced in music production since then, and I now have better tools at my disposal (Reason 3.0 :D ).

To cut to the chase, I've been working on and off on a full replacement set for the Ultimate Doom soundtrack. I now have a "beta" version of every Ultimate Doom remaster. I think a lot of the tracks sound really nice, but they all still need a bit of work. That's why I'm posting some of them here. With your comments, criticisms, and suggestions, I can hopefully continue to improve these (and the rest of the set along with them) until they all sound good enough to release.

I'm calling them "remasters" instead of remixes because the primary purpose is to take the original midi arrangements and make them sound really (hopefully) awesome, without changing the original feel or intent of the song, as much as possible.

So without further adieu, here are a bunch of the tracks I've finished so far.

Doom Remastering Project (incomplete)

I'm extremely happy with some of the tracks, while other ones obviously need work. The better suggestions I receive on these, the more likely they'll improve to your liking. Thanks in advance, and I hope you all enjoy them!

Mike

(Yes, I posted this same message at NewDoom. I hope this is relevant and interesting enough not to be considered spam.)

I like these! They're an improvement on the original without butchering it.

Map 09 from Doom II would rock too...

E2M1 sounds like a midi

I'm liking the E1M1 so far; I'll try the others.

BBG said:

I like these! They're an improvement on the original without butchering it.

Map 09 from Doom II would rock too...

E2M1 sounds like a midi

Ditto, Into Sandys City is one of my favorites. and the tracks are good.

superloud4 said:

About a year ago I first tried doing some Doom "remasters", and they turned out really terrible.

They cannot possibly be as bad and half-assed as my "remixes"/remasters from 2001.

But hey, I like these. Keep it up.

This is pretty good.

Keep it up :)

Freaking awesome, even better than Sycraft's, which would sound a lot better with your drums.

Except E2M1 sounds a little...weak?

Iori Branford said:

Freaking awesome, even better than Sycraft's, which would sound a lot better with your drums.

Thank you! I'm stunned by the great response this has gotten :D

Except E2M1 sounds a little...weak? [/B]

Yeah, e2m1 needs a major overhaul...I'll get around to it eventually.

E1M1 - I sort of like this one. Where did you get those guitar samples? Is that a drum soundfont? If so, where could I maybe grab this? I could listen to this one while playing.

E1M2 - EQ those drums. Increase the lows, up the highs. The snare will make your ears bleed. Give it some body. I like the synths though. Again, if you have a soundfont share the wealth!

E1M4 - Again, snare sounds really hollow. Might just be the sample in your set. I could play to this one.

E1M5 - Sorry, this sounds horrible. The string samples = horrible. All you did was slap crappy GM patches on this it seems.

E1M7 - String Ensemble sounds goofy. Also, the square synth sounds really out of place in this tune. If you're gonna go full ensemble like this, I would've given the melody to higher strings.

E1M8 - I want to molest your drum samples. Also, your choral sample is the best I've heard in a while. Any info on where to obtain these would be greatly appreciated. The only thing about this one is that I think it could use some EQ, on the guitar and chorus specifically. They have a very muddy sound, down the mids and up the lows and highs

I'll do E2 later

Ralphis said:

E1M1 - I sort of like this one. Where did you get those guitar samples? Is that a drum soundfont? If so, where could I maybe grab this? I could listen to this one while playing.

E1M2 - EQ those drums. Increase the lows, up the highs. The snare will make your ears bleed. Give it some body. I like the synths though. Again, if you have a soundfont share the wealth!

E1M4 - Again, snare sounds really hollow. Might just be the sample in your set. I could play to this one.

E1M5 - Sorry, this sounds horrible. The string samples = horrible. All you did was slap crappy GM patches on this it seems.

E1M7 - String Ensemble sounds goofy. Also, the square synth sounds really out of place in this tune. If you're gonna go full ensemble like this, I would've given the melody to higher strings.

E1M8 - I want to molest your drum samples. Also, your choral sample is the best I've heard in a while. Any info on where to obtain these would be greatly appreciated. The only thing about this one is that I think it could use some EQ, on the guitar and chorus specifically. They have a very muddy sound, down the mids and up the lows and highs

I'll do E2 later

Heh...I didn't use any Soundfonts or GM strings. Nice try though ;) If I remember correctly, everything except the e1m1 guitars are from the Reason 3.0 soundbanks. I processed the e1m1 guitars a long, long time ago in some other program and exported them to audio, so I can't remember how I made them sound so nice =[

As for e1m5, there's only one string instrument in it that bugs me, and it's much better than the one I had there before it. Still needs work though.

Also, that's an organ, not a square synth in e1m7.

As soon as I saw you had replied, I was thinking "loo, Ralphis is going to whine about my crappy remixes now :D"

...but seriously, though, even though it probably sounds like I'm just writing off all of your complaints, thanks for the input, and I'll keep it in mind. Like I said before, these are all works in progress, and any input, good or bad, is very much appreciated, as long as you're specific about what you don't like.

Well they aren't really remixes. They're really just the originals with new samples in the end.

Ralphis said:

Well they aren't really remixes. They're really just the originals with new samples in the end.

Whoops; yeah, I misspoke there. I said in the original post that these are "remasters", not remixes, because I'm keeping the arrangements the same.

Just listened to these, all i can say is if you found a way to put this as the music in the game i'd listen to it. You can play Episode 1 of doom all you want, eventually the music gets old and remasters become a godsend.

I think it sounds great!
I can never get enough Doom music.
Keep up the great work.
The drums are pretty cool. I like the double kick.

i like your drum sounds. a lot. esp. the kick and the ride and toms - are they in reason? and the choir is reaaaly good. reason as well? if it is, whats the patch called?

i am also doing a remake of the doom soundtrack, and am too using reason! I am also implementing the use of live guitar, to overcome the sonic imperfections of its synthetic counterpart.

heres my site:

http://dangoodale.com/

i just started a thread in this forum, so give me some feedback too!

these are fucking awesome... im downloading e1m8 atm... i remember i listened alot to sypult's remake of it before doom3 came out (or even before the pre-alpha) - that song went well with the zombie soldier concept art made by the guy from activision (?).

if you found a way to put this as the music in the game i'd listen to it.

Nearly all of the ports allow this. For example in jDoom you just need to put them in the /music folder and then edit Music.DED with which mp3 you want to use to replace which midi track. Then goto the Doomsday control panel and set the music option to: use external.

Thanks man, actually I noticed that with doomsday. Then again i don't really use doomsday (maybe i should, just seems like it strays away from gameplay and more towards graphics--If i wanted graphics i'd be long gone from doom).

Is there a way to do that with zdoom?

You would have to load every MP3 into a WAD file, give them the same names as their corresponding MUS lump in the IWAD, and then load the WAD with ZDoom (or put it in your skins folder).

I just randomly picked out and listened to five tunes from your list. Overall they seemed to be quite impressive.
Keep going, and I hope you'll get this finished someday.

Bloodshedder said:

You would have to load every MP3 into a WAD file, give them the same names as their corresponding MUS lump in the IWAD, and then load the WAD with ZDoom (or put it in your skins folder).

Ah, well honestly i don't think i'd mind that. Whats an easy way to can look at/modify WAD files?

There's WinTex but you have to jump through hoops to import and name MP3 files. You should probably use XWE.

DarkJedi188 said:

I just randomly picked out and listened to five tunes from your list. Overall they seemed to be quite impressive.
Keep going, and I hope you'll get this finished someday.

Just out of curiosity, which tracks did you listen to?

Also, this is almost guaranteed to be finished at some point, hopefully not too far off in the future. I've got at least a rough draft done of every Ultimate Doom track; most of them sound pretty good and only need minor tweaking, while there are a few that sound like garbage no matter what I do to them (*cough* e2m1, e1m9, and d_bunny, I'm looking in your direction here)... =[

Mike

Haven't the DOOM music files already been ripped into .mp3 formats? Or is this a complete recomposition like Mark McWane's work on the Duke Nukem 3D files?

Another thing about digital music WADs.

You know those later levels that reuse music from before? Doom doesn't look for the same music file on those levels. Doom 2 MAP01 has D_RUNNIN, but MAP15 has D_RUNNI2.

If you don't wish to waste space with duplicate songs, you can add to the WAD a MAPINFO that usually fixes the problem. Take the D2INFO from zdoom.wad and rewrite the song assignments. For the above example, you would do this to MAP15's MAPINFO:

map MAP15 lookup HUSTR_15
titlepatch CWILV14
next MAP16
secretnext MAP31
sky1 SKY2 0
cluster 7
par 210
music D_RUNNI2 D_RUNNIN

Iori Branford said:

Another thing about digital music WADs.

You know those later levels that reuse music from before? Doom doesn't look for the same music file on those levels. Doom 2 MAP01 has D_RUNNIN, but MAP15 has D_RUNNI2.

If you don't wish to waste space with duplicate songs, you can add to the WAD a MAPINFO that usually fixes the problem. Take the D2INFO from zdoom.wad and rewrite the song assignments. For the above example, you would do this to MAP15's MAPINFO:

map MAP15 lookup HUSTR_15
titlepatch CWILV14
next MAP16
secretnext MAP31
sky1 SKY2 0
cluster 7
par 210
music D_RUNNI2 D_RUNNIN

This is true, but a few of the seemingly-duplicate tracks are actually variants of the original song, with some slight changes. For this project, I'm probably going to do remasters of the variants as well, just for completeness. If anyone doesn't want to download them, they don't have to.

superloud4 said:

Just out of curiosity, which tracks did you listen to?

I've checked out E1M4, E1M7, E1M8,and E3M3, as far as I can recall.

First impressions: E1M3 sounds great. Take a little of the reverb off the drums, and the only thing it's missing are some DnB-style breakbeats in the background. That is, if you were planning on adding anything to the songs.

EDIT: One thing I'm noticing is that you're applying way too much compression to these MP3's. Just work with the volume levels instead, so it doesn't sound like the loudest instrument is sucking the volume off of the other tracks.

these sound really great.
Almost as good as firing doom up on a Sound Blaster Pro for the first time :D

Any plans to remaster the doom2 music at some point?

Great work, some of the best remasters I've heard. And yea the percussion sounds badass.

Edit: Oh yea and please do E3M8.