[High Treason]

Figured I should announce it over here as well, not sure how many of you still go on 3D Realms Forum. My AdLib music pack is done, this was recorded from a YM262 based card, basically by running the game with the sound card set as none, meaning the volumes are all correct and the right channels are played.

Version 2.0 - Now hosted on the HRP Site: http://hrp.duke4.net/download.php


This is the "poor man's" music pack, for people like me who didn't have anything better than a SoundBlaster when we first played the game and want to get that nostalgia feeling when playing with no HRP.

Thanks for taking a look at this

[Hendricks266]

This is really cool. They actually sound a lot like the Apogee music back in the day

[XThX2]

Can someone upload it elsewhere ? I can't access megaupload :/

[Fox]

Mirror: http://www.mediafire...php?5mjruiw0xzg

[KillerBudgie]

This sounds like the music I heard when I played Duke Nukem 3D all those years ago...

[NY00123]

I've just found out that the links to the pack given here are broken. I couldn't find alternative download links online.

However, I could find a copy of the pack around here, so I've uploaded it to somewhere on duke4.net for now:
***EDIT: Link removed. A newer revision of the pack should be available in the first post.***

Hope it's acceptable (by High Treason) that I've renamed the file from music.zip to musicpack_opl.zip, so it's name is more similar to the Roland SC-55 counterpart.

I think it'd be better if the pack is stored on some other place, still on duke4.net though; So I consider it a temporary location for now.

Regards,
NY

[High Treason]

Yeah, I have no problem with this, personally, I always thought they should be hosted on http://hrp.duke4.net/download.php

Of course I say "They" because I also did a Gravis UltraSound pack, but I'll find that one myself and get it stored somewhere - actually, I think that's the one I am using, but I might just end up re-recording it. Of course nothing I have done ever get's hosted anywhere, I was the first to record an SC-55 music pack but it was ignored, then a week later some other guy shows up with inferior recording quality and that version got distributed with the HRP, but whatever, that's how the cookie crumbles I guess.

[MusicallyInspired]

Inferior how? I'd love to hear some specifics as to how the quality is lacking. I'm completely redoing the SC-55 soundtrack because I lost my masters anyway and I wanted to make FLAC versions. Also, some of the instruments slipped by me and are still incorrect. But the quality shouldn't be an issue.

I do vaguely remember another SC-55 music pack that was made, but wasn't it all in WMA's? That's a horrible and incredibly lossy format, if you want to talk about quality. My memory could be faulty, though.

How was your Adlib music pack recorded anyway? I'm curious. What card did you use, or was it emulation? I'd be happy to host it on the SC-55 music packs website.

[High Treason]

I still have my SC-55 pack (Really an SCC-1, but they sound the same, hence I sold my SC-55 long before recording), I recorded mine by firing up the game on a computer running MS-DOS 6.22, set the sound card to "None" and the music card to "SoundCanvas" - I then recorded each track on my workstation. The same goes for the other packs I made. The AdLib pack was made using an AWE64 card (YMF262 chip) as opposed to a true AdLib, I have never noticed much difference and I assure you I never use emulation. All files were originally recorded to .OGG Vorbis at the highest bitrate but this was later lowered due to file size issues. My SC-55 pack might have started life as WMA though as I didn't know we could make music packs for EDuke at that time, somebody else converted it. Due to the awful quality of Roland's products, I don't think it matters to be honest (I'm a Yamaha man) - my main complaint with your pack is that it is totally inaccurate as I seem to remember you fiddling with channels, volumes and patches.

Just to be clear, I wasn't having a dig at you, I may have been having a dig at the community though. I don't really care all that much, whatever version people used, I can sttill say "I did it first " and I am happier being recognised as the guy behind the more obscure packs.

[Hendricks266]

High Treason, on 22 January 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

All files were originally recorded to .OGG Vorbis at the highest bitrate but this was later lowered due to file size issues.

Today's Life Lesson™: Do not reencode a file already encoded as lossy to another format or quality setting in lossy if you care about quality. In other words, one lossy iteration is a dead end. Lossless ftw.

[MusicallyInspired]

The reason I fiddled with channels is because I didn't record them from in game. I used a digital audio workstation to record. And because the MIDI files are in the EMIDI format there are doubles (sometimes triples) of different channels because of the different devices the game was composed for. There are certain channels dedicated to the SC-55, others to Adlib, and others to the Gravis Ultrasound. If I recorded them as is they would have come out completely inaccurate. I did not mess with patches and volume, though. At all. I never trust capturing straight from a game, though. While it does come out exactly as it should, there are too many variables that could impede playback reliability. Plus I don't entirely trust EDuke to play back the MIDIs correctly. I'd only be comfortable running from the DOS version itself. So I just circumvent all this for the total control a DAW gives me.

I have an AWE32 card myself. I'd say it's the best way to experience Adlib! As long as you selected the correct music driver in the game setup (some are only mono while others support stereo).

And Hendricks is right. Re-encoding an already lossy format to another lossy format is like slicing and dicing your audio. Particularly the high frequencies suffer. Since WMA is already a seriously (and noticeably) lossy format, going from that straight to OGG (even at high bitrates) just creates more damage. That's why I'm redoing mine because I lost the source WAVs and I want to make FLACs. Quality matters even if you don't think it does. Plus some people like the security of knowing that shortcuts like that weren't taken in the creation of the pack and since I'm just too freaking overly compulsive to take shortcuts, I agree with that side. People love the max and truly lossless audio formats.

I can understand your position, though. Ideally we probably could have worked together initially. Ah well.

[Mike Norvak]

MusicallyInspired, on 26 January 2012 - 10:23 PM, said:

Quality matters even if you don't think it does.

Amen

[High Treason]

I could interpret this as turning into another "Bash on High Treason's projects" thread. But I'm not going to.

I seriously don't believe there was any noticeable quality loss, especially with the AdLib pack, my editing program says that at it's highest bitrate, OGG is lossless.

I suppose I could re-do both packs, but keep in mind I don't get payment for this - in fact, I have to fork out money to pay for the bandwidth used uploading the pack. If you want lossless I'll record them in some uncompressed format and we'll see how many of you want to download a 2GB music pack - not an appealing idea is it?

If I do re-record this, it should see some improvement though, as I now have an AWE64 Gold, so I can use the SPDIF output from it as opposed to the analog output.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

I can hear something faint playing in the background on SUBWAY.ogg at the 1 minute, 27 second mark. Were you listening to something else while recording this?

[LeoD]

High Treason, on 28 January 2012 - 06:40 AM, said:

I could interpret this as turning into another "Bash on High Treason's projects" thread. But I'm not going to.

It is not. Calm down...

High Treason, on 28 January 2012 - 06:40 AM, said:

I seriously don't believe there was any noticeable quality loss, especially with the AdLib pack, my editing program says that at it's highest bitrate, OGG is lossless.

Only if it's FLAC in an OGG container.

High Treason, on 28 January 2012 - 06:40 AM, said:

I suppose I could re-do both packs, but keep in mind I don't get payment for this - in fact, I have to fork out money to pay for the bandwidth used uploading the pack. If you want lossless I'll record them in some uncompressed format and we'll see how many of you want to download a 2GB music pack - not an appealing idea is it?

At least four of us, I suppose. But as far as I'm concerned, buying beer or condoms instead of upload bandwidth is OK, too.

[High Treason]

@The Mighty Bison; SUBWAY.OGG? You're right! I've no idea how that happened, I wouldn't have used those workstations for listening to anything whilst working on that, must have been interference. Careful inspection reveals that it was "America Fuck Yeah!" that was playing.

@LeoD; I was being sarcastic in my previous post. I keep being misunderstood, I shall try putting more thought into and then re-reading what I am writing. And besides, I'm working on something - I shan't say what - that I think almost everyone will appreciate if I can pull it off.

I think they were FLAC in an OGG container, at least, the GUS pack, I think I still have the masters for that. It would have been set at 192KHz 24-Bit Mastering.

I may well re-record the packs, but I don't seem to be able to make the game play the music in stereo for the AdLib, the alternative is to use MusicallyInspired's technique, but that has it's own problems when using the AdLib, as the game programs it's own AdLib patches which sound different to the ones provided by Windows... I'm sure there was a program that played EMIDI, but I might be getting that mixed up with an IMF player I had.

[Hendricks266]

High Treason, on 28 January 2012 - 06:40 AM, said:

my editing program says that at it's highest bitrate, OGG is lossless.

OGG Vorbis is never lossless. You can tell if it's OGG FLAC by opening it in ffmpeg.

High Treason, on 28 January 2012 - 06:40 AM, said:

If you want lossless I'll record them in some uncompressed format and we'll see how many of you want to download a 2GB music pack - not an appealing idea is it?

As you said yourself in the sentence right before this (about paying for bandwidth), doing that would be both a shot in the foot and a spit in the face. This may be a joke, but if not it's incredibly simple to encode waves to FLAC.

High Treason, on 28 January 2012 - 06:40 AM, said:

If I do re-record this, it should see some improvement though, as I now have an AWE64 Gold, so I can use the SPDIF output from it as opposed to the analog output.

S/PDIF rocks, especially if you directly record the digital signal without more DAC->ADC steps.

[High Treason]

I'd be using .wav for master this time as my setup has changed a little since this was done. I was joking about uploading a massive file.

Only SPDIF-Out to SPDIF-In, I have an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, so I'm not short of inputs for everything.

[MusicallyInspired]

Recording an Adlib pack via my method wouldn't be my first choice. Like you say, Duke3D has its own drivers and FM patches. The only way to be 100% accurate is to record from the game in that instance. Setting the music options (in the "sound card type" setting or something like that) to Sound Blaster 16 or Sound Blaster Pro or even Adlib Gold should give you stereo Adlib music. If you compare it to regular Sound Blaster or Adlib you should notice a big difference.

[High Treason]

Aye, I've tried fiddling with the Music Card options (Sound Card is set to SoundBlaster 16, but the sound volume is 0 - The Music card I have tried as "AdLib" and "SoundBlaster") but it refuses to go into stereo - does the original DOS exacutable even support Stereo FM Synth? I'll fiddle around with different machines (And DOSBox for a test - but I would never record from any kind of emulation.) and if I can't get it running in stereo, then it must be concluded that the original game did not support Stereo AdLib and therefore mono is more accurate.

[MusicallyInspired]

Huh, you're right. My memory was apparently faulty. I could have sword it supported Adlib Gold at least. Really should have. Everything else in that time did. Ah well. Rock on.

[NightFright]

@ High Treason:
If you wish, I will upload your music packs to the official HRP server and place the links on the website.
It'll certainly be interesting to check out AdLib or GUS packs for nostalgia purposes. We need more music options for Duke in general.

[Hendricks266]

I hope it isn't too much to ask, but High Treason, could you record the soundtrack for the Apogee game Raptor under your Adlib setup? The GoG.com and 2010 Edition ports of the game use .wav files of the soundtrack and they sound hideous. The original game sounds best under Adlib.

[High Treason]

It does indeed appear that the game does not support AdLib/SoundBlaster music in Stereo. Re-recording is going well, I've finished recording Episode 1. Looking back, the sound drivers were a heap of garbage, the AdLib support was limited to mono and the GUS support was lacking (I had to be quite inventive to stop it glitching out), then there's the AWE32 support which came with it's own set of problems.

Here's a sample of how things are going, Death Row, mainly because that one has silences in so it showcases how much better things are this time around, unfortunately, conversion to OGG can be done in mono, but it seems to half the bit-rate (Makes sense I suppose) so even at 320K its only going to be at 160K - quality advantage I suppose), it's still smaller than the masters though. http://www.mediafire...zhcgbh5lely3hlc

@NightFright; That would be cool, but if you're going to do that, it's probably worth waiting for me to finish re-recording the packs.

@Hendricks266; Raptor? I don't have that game in my collection, I could probably record what is in the shareware version though. It runs like this; http://www.mediafire...gybpdx6a53vu8id

Edit: Why do things go wrong every time I post this?

[NY00123]

If Raptor is mentioned, I'm unsure about this, but a digital copy of the DOS version might be purchasable from here: http://www.3drealms.com/raptor/

[NightFright]

Well, for the time being, I have added the current AdLib music pack to the HRP site. It's just a repack with a small readme (and without any zip compression, doesn't make much of a difference anyway). It's labelled v1.0, so once you are done with your re-recording, we can bump this to 2.0 so people know it'll be an improved version. Maybe this gives an additional motivation boost to actually getting it finished soon.

[High Treason]

I just finished re-recording the pack, but before I upload it I have one question, since some time ago - when Autoload was removed I suspect, I have had no idea how to load things like music packs (or the HRP) without using a batch file, I'm not too fussed on how I'm supposed to do this, but what I am questioning is wether my .DEF is OK, basically the pack is structured like this;

music.zip
---highres
------music.def
------music
---------OGG Files

This used to work back in the day if I just dumped it in the Autoload folder, has this changed, I want to know so I don't waste my time uploading a 260MB file only to discover that I've put a DEF in that doesn't work.

[NightFright]

This structure should still work, provided your def file is correct.

On a side note, I have put a small override file on HRP download page for those who just want to use a music pack without any HRP file. It's basically a duke3d.def with the line "include highres/music.def" inside.

[Hendricks266]

High Treason, on 05 February 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

when Autoload was removed I suspect

Autoload is still good to go.

[NightFright]

Yeah, I am using autoload folder all the time, actually. Looking forward to the new release. Curious about the differences. Maybe once you are done, you can upload comparison samples from one of the old tracks and the same from the new version.