Original Dos (OPL SoundBlaster 220) Heretic/Hexen music pack (for fans)

Graf Zahl said:

Thy the one from this page. It's not the very best quality but it's certainly enough to give you an idea:

http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/info/music.php?wad=doom2.wad

Tried this:

http://www.doomworld.com/music/d_evil.mid
http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=1753

And didn't like what I heard

Still think that OPL version of map 31 is best

So many people - so many opinions

BTW: found many interesting things on that link, for example this: http://www.doomworld.com/music/d_e1m3.mid

So thanks for it:)

theleo_ua said:

BTW: are there any tips to launch it correct (for example some special ingame options or some packages and so on) ? Especially I want to see sound and midi options for correct opl playing, because Zdoom for example has a lot of such midi options, and only creators of Zdoom know, what configuration will play best.

My aim is to make it behave like Vanilla Doom does, and to avoid configuration options as much as possible.

fraggle said:

My aim is to make it behave like Vanilla Doom does, and to avoid configuration options as much as possible.

Nice

GL

Personally, I find that the version of the heretic music I like best of the ones I've tried are the sound I get from using my SB Audigy 2 ZS.
While it doesn't have as much body as the Sycraft ones, the instruments are in my opinion much better balanced there.

kristus said:

Personally, I find that the version of the heretic music I like best of the ones I've tried are the sound I get from using my SB Audigy 2 ZS.

Creatives soundfont is pretty decent, but I find that I can only get it working with my SB Live! when I'm running XP, I have no idea how to make it work on Windows 7.

kristus said:

Personally, I find that the version of the heretic music I like best of the ones I've tried are the sound I get from using my SB Audigy 2 ZS.
While it doesn't have as much body as the Sycraft ones, the instruments are in my opinion much better balanced there.

Can you upload mp3 or wav of title, E1M1 and E1M9 ?

Wanna hear this:)

I say a real sound blaster 16 like the one in my hand is the only way to go.


http://sites.google.com/site/ghostlydeath/MySB16.jpg

SOUND BLASTER WOO YEAH!

GhostlyDeath said:

I say a real sound blaster 16 like the one in my hand is the only way to go.


http://sites.google.com/site/ghostlydeath/MySB16.jpg

SOUND BLASTER WOO YEAH!

Real nostalgy:)

Can you record (in this soundcard) mp3 or wav of e1m1 and upload it?

theleo_ua said:

Real nostalgy:)

Can you record (in this soundcard) mp3 or wav of e1m1 and upload it?

I can most certenly record music, and so that end I have already done so years ago. But I cannot find my recording of e1m1 I made a long time ago, not sure where I uploaded it exactly. Also, there's not many ISA slots in my computers these days as there used to be.

I discovered Doom and Heretic with a classic SB16-ISA. For me it's the way they should sound, probably like many other players did. Few people had a Roland or GUS.

I can certainly appreciate the GUS and Roland versions of these tracks. But to me the SB16 is how it should sound for a good slice of oldschool nostalgy :)

I still own 3x Win98 machine which 2 have SB16's. Maybe I should get a roland for the last one.

GhostlyDeath said:

I can most certenly record music, and so that end I have already done so years ago. But I cannot find my recording of e1m1 I made a long time ago, not sure where I uploaded it exactly. Also, there's not many ISA slots in my computers these days as there used to be.

I still have a working PC with a working SoundBlaster 16, problem is, I'm not sure how I can get that to work with Linux. The card works, but MIDI on Linux doesn't make any sense.
I would have a go at recording it if I knew how to get MIDI to play though the card.

MUS_E2M4 is totally raped when played in OPL mode, sorry.

Doomworld sure has some of the most arduous OPL zealots ever.... OK, that's justified by the fact that Doom had one of the best sounding FM timbres to ever appear in PC games (only a handful of titles like 1869, Prince of the Yolkfolk, Indy 500, Lemmings or Body Blows had more elaborate pure FM sound).

If you don't believe it, try one of the late DOS-era games using the dreaded Miles Sound library (on a title with MIDI music) and compare the loungy, quiet, flat timbres used there. Yeah, sounded like shit, and that was the new "industry standard" until CD Audio and then MP3 practically killed off any form of synthesis for commercial PC games.

There are countless of threads about how this or that OPL emulator or soundfont (yeah, there are "OPL soundfonts", which is a contradiction in terms) sucks, and countless of comparative "wav or mp3 posts" that allegedly show MASSIVE differences, but in reality they only reflect poor/different recording/equalization, or simply the fact that a clean emulated OPL doesn't sound like a pair of "2000W PMPO MULTIMEDIA SPEAKERS!!!!" from 1994, driven by the soundcard's onboard amp with "MULTIMEDIA 3D SPATIALIZING EFFECT!!!".

For example, somebody set the emulated OPL synth rate in DOSBOX/ZDoom to 22 KHz (when the real chip operates at 49+ ) and complained it didn't sound "as good". Well no shit, sherlock!

printz said:

MUS_E2M4 is totally raped when played in OPL mode, sorry.

But I think, that MUS_E2M4 is totally raped when played in sycraft\windows midi mode.

So many people, so many opinions

BTW: what do you think about E1M1, E1M9 and TITL ?

Maes said: Well no shit, sherlock! [/B]

I have one question to you: what versions of TITL, E1M1 and E1M9 you prefer?:)

theleo_ua said:

I have one question to you: what versions of TITL, E1M1 and E1M9 you prefer?:)

The one that played through my SB 2.0 and then from my SB 16 on my QuickShot multimedia speakers with Bass Boost and Treble Boost on, from 1994 to 2001. Ha!

Of course, you can do much worse from General Midi: try FM sound through Windows using a card with an OPL2/OPL3 chip in "general midi" mode.

You'll need a source port able to use MIDI devices (pretty much anyone) and a card with a real OPL2 or OPL3, with drivers that enable using it (you can only find it on very few cards nowadays, mostly ISA Sound Blasters and compatibles, and a handful of PCI cards like the Yamaha Waveforce.

The resulting sound will be FM sound, of course,but will also sound NOTHING like you expected (and I don't mean it will be slightly/subtly off, I mean it will be a fucking joke). The reason why is left as an exercise for the reader.

Maes's specifics are waaaaaay technical :)

theleo_ua said:

But I think, that MUS_E2M4 is totally raped when played in sycraft\windows midi mode.

With the classic instruments the accompaniment in MUS_E2M4 gets louder than the main melody, and sometimes you can barely hear the latter, resulting in a monotonous repeatedly rising music.

Also, generally the strings seem to be an octave higher when played in those instruments, resulting in quite some high-pitched songs. Most of Heretic's soundtrack uses string ensembles.

Hexen sounds better in OPL though.

FM synthesis renders certain types of istruments very well -especially strings, some kinds of piano, some kinds of bass etc. but it doesn't work very well for percussion instruments, too "square" synthetic sounds etc.

Plus there are limits to its capabilities if you drive FM chips as "midi" devices: it means that you will only have one same timbre per instrument, and you won't be able to finetune it, apply weird effects like operator feedback etc. on demand, and so on.

Of course, musicians just want to compose music once in a standard format (MIDI) and be done with it, without tinkering with the specifics of each card, let alone doing register-level manipulation.

Only some games using very specialized AdLib trackers could do that (Body Blows is the most common example, even has pure FM speech synthesis!).

Maes said:

The resulting sound will be FM sound, of course,but will also sound NOTHING like you expected

Can you upload an mp3 sample?

printz said:

Maes's specifics are waaaaaay technical :)
With the classic instruments the accompaniment in MUS_E2M4 gets louder than the main melody, and sometimes you can barely hear the latter, resulting in a monotonous repeatedly rising music.

Also, generally the strings seem to be an octave higher when played in those instruments, resulting in quite some high-pitched songs. Most of Heretic's soundtrack uses string ensembles.

Can you upload mp3 of E2M4 version that you prefer?

printz said:

Hexen sounds better in OPL though.

Yes. Strife and Doom too:)

theleo_ua said:

Can you upload an mp3 sample?

No, but look for a recording of the 32X version soundtrack, it sounds pretty close, for a similar reason.

What's with everyone and the "OMG THAT BEEPING NOISE IN E1M1" with OPL? Whenever I played Heretic (with OPL) there was no beeping noise at all, unless you are talking about that string sounding instrument that plays throughout the entire song and the intro. It sounded great, however when I played ZDoom sometime back then with it's "OPL" Emulation, it didn't sound great.

GhostlyDeath said:OMG THAT BEEPING NOISE IN E1M1

Can you tell the minute and second of this omg beeping noise?
I want to understand what noise you mean.

Thanks

theleo_ua said:

Old songs and compositions can be poor by modern criticism, but you cannot fight with yourself: music, with which you grown up, will be best for you forever.

Heh, what planet are you on where this is true? Most of the stuff I listened to as a kid/teenager I can't stand today.

So I downloaded this OPL2 sound pack and while I got a bit of nostalgia from listening to it, it was not that good for FM style music. I'd rather listen to a modern rearrangement of this soundtrack. Although to be honest the original composition at it's core isn't that great either. Mostly boring and generic stuff going on.

Here's something done with the OPM (YM2151) on a Sharp X68000. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQ9BTWytFo

udderdude said:

Heh, what planet are you on where this is true?

Mars

udderdude said:

as a kid/teenager I can't stand today.

Nice to meet you, Earthman:)

udderdude said:

So I downloaded this OPL2 sound pack

Breaking news! File transfer between Earth and Mars!

udderdude said:

Here's something done with the OPM (YM2151) on a Sharp X68000. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQ9BTWytFo

Sorry, my new friend from the Earth, but Earth music sux. Really

P.S. Just kidding

Reality check. The quality of emulated OPL is not getting any better without proper DAC emulation (yes DAC, that's where the "warmth" or "feel" in the original OPL sound comes from) which I presume would be highly impractical, though meticulous parametric equalization may still help rub off some of the harshness.

As for the music pack, you're trashing too much of the signal for it to be useful. Overally it sounds like shit.

Porsche Monty said:

Reality check. The quality of emulated OPL is not getting any better without proper DAC emulation (yes DAC, that's where the "warmth" or "feel" in the original OPL sound comes from) which I presume would be highly impractical, though meticulous parametric equalization may still help rub off some of the harshness.

This is nonsense. FM is entirely digital, and the older Soundblaster cards did not have special, magical DACs that create "warmth" or "feel". If anything, they were simply lower quality DACs that added distortion or otherwise unwanted effects to the analog signal.

udderdude said:

This is nonsense. FM is entirely digital, and the older Soundblaster cards did not have special, magical DACs that create "warmth" or "feel". If anything, they were simply lower quality DACs that added distortion or otherwise unwanted effects to the analog signal.

Have you ever wondered why OPL emulation still sounds radically different when compared to the original even though the math is allegedly correct? because of the DAC, period. Low quality or unwanted, that's what gives character to it. Proper resampling helps, but you don't get a genuine OPL sound out of that alone.

You are both right. The OPL chips used DDS (Direct Digital Synthesis), there were no analog oscillators, but there was also a specialized output 1-bit DAC that operated at an unusual frequency, 49716 Hz. That frequency is not a multiple or a perfect divisor of any of the standard output frequencies like 44.1, 48, 96 KHz etc. and the only way to hear it "pure" is on an old sound card without a "codec" in the mid: e.g. on the old SBs that DAC was directly connected to an analog amplifier (or line-out preamp), while on the AWE32/64 it was subsampled to 44 Khz and passed through the EMU8000 chip, and that sucked ass. Similarly, the OPL3 that's found on some modern CMedia sound cards is subsampled through the internal I2C channels.

There was a thread where I explained with digital signal theory why doing a proper downsampling to 48 or 44 Khz would be awfully expensive, in terms of computational power. Unless you can set the output of your soundcard to exactly that frequency and play NOTHING ELSE, it will be "mutilated" anyway.

Unless you consider it worthwhile to oversample the OPL signal to 60 MHz (!) in order to get a hair closer to the original.

There are some practical compromises like e.g. blowing the playback rate to a round 50 KHz or down to a rounder 49 KHz and the oversample that, but both approaches would make purists cringe.

From that page come to my attention the following paragraphs:

"A cruder way would be to raise the sampling rate of the OPL to 50 KHz precise, and play the SFX at 11 KHz (11000 Hz, not 11025). This way, you can get away with an oversampling factor of 5, at the cost of slightly increased OPL pitch (by 0.571%), and direct mixing without chopping off anything from the OPL output (you'd have to put up with the higher pitch). With this method you'd only need to oversample the SFX to the OPL's rate and output without any further filtering.

The advantages of up-pitching or chopping down the OPL output to a rounder number is that you can afford much lower oversampling LCM buffers, no oversampling for the music and then output directly at the final OPL rate (44.1 or 50 KHz)"

Here's the good news. You don't really have to "put up" with pitch-shifted frequencies. What you do is compensate the shifting before resampling. E.g

For 11.025Hz -> 11.000Hz = -0.039 semitones (approx)
For 22.050Hz -> 11.000Hz = -12.039 semitones (approx)
For 49.716Hz -> 50.000Hz = 0.099 semitones (approx)