[MusicallyInspired]

It's a strange choice for sure. But then, so is composing MIDI's primarily for OPL while supporting wavetable GM as an afterthought. Either way, I think it would benefit from some proper seamless looping.

Also, sorry. I meant to say:

Quote

"I may try to get away with just posting boosted tracks for Heretic and seeing what the response will be like."

[MusicallyInspired]

So I encountered a strong interest in having the authentic unmolested MIDIs as a music pack, which I was half-expecting. I can appreciate this request and in the interest of unbridled authenticity...

I hereby present the Heretic SC-55 Music Pack at last. Please let me know if you encounter any errors or problems! Enjoy!

I will still be creating an enhanced pack with the changes I mentioned earlier but that will come after Hexen is finished.

[Malgon]

Awesome work MI, I've really enjoyed all these packs. I listened to the Doom (Boosted) one recently in the car and it sounded very nice indeed.

Also, it looks like you replied to Daedolon about having a lossless version of RotT and intending to redo it. I'm guessing this is still on the list?

Anyway, looking forward to your enhanced Heretic and Hexen packs!

[MusicallyInspired]

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying them. Yeah, ROTT is on the ol' list. I just want to finish up Heretic and Hexen at least before I go back to rerecord the older ones. I'm not sure how to handle them, though, because the source ports either don't support music packs or definitely don't support metadata loop tags. I actually would like to get a hold of the guy who did the DXX-Rebirth source port for Descent who first asked me to record music packs and get him (or somebody) to implement metadata loop tags so I can rerecord that one too.

There's also the fanmade Plutonia MIDI pack and James' Duke it out in DC MIDI pack....then Strafe, Powerslave, WW2GI, etc, the Duke beta MIDIs (the ones that are available anyway).....still a ways to go before I've got a complete collection. I've got a quite a backlog.

[Malgon]

No worries, all in due time of course!

[Master O]

MusicallyInspired, on 21 December 2018 - 10:47 PM, said:

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying them. Yeah, ROTT is on the ol' list. I just want to finish up Heretic and Hexen at least before I go back to rerecord the older ones. I'm not sure how to handle them, though, because the source ports either don't support music packs or definitely don't support metadata loop tags. I actually would like to get a hold of the guy who did the DXX-Rebirth source port for Descent who first asked me to record music packs and get him (or somebody) to implement metadata loop tags so I can rerecord that one too.

There's also the fanmade Plutonia MIDI pack and James' Duke it out in DC MIDI pack....then Strafe, Powerslave, WW2GI, etc, the Duke beta MIDIs (the ones that are available anyway).....still a ways to go before I've got a complete collection. I've got a quite a backlog.

In light of the new source port Nblood for Blood (which uses Eduke32 as its base), will you make a new music pack for that game, too? The current Blood music pack on your site has abrupt track endings for non-seamless looping.

[MusicallyInspired]

Everything that currently has abrupt endings will eventually get a rerecording.

[High Treason]

MusicallyInspired, on 09 December 2018 - 04:33 PM, said:

One problem is the polyphony issues still exist and will still be a problem. I'm getting around this by recording select tracks separately at a time and bouncing them all together digitally after as a single track so the SC-55 doesn't have to work as hard.

Oh, the pain. In 80s synth land this is the only way to get things done.
...I'm still toying with the idea of a CZ-1 music pack. No DX7 shit though.


Not sure why I wrote this, I was bored, but yeah, when it starts to become tedious just remember that some of us have to do things one channel at a time, all the time, every time, with only eight or in some cases four notes to go around.

[oasiz]

For what its worth, id be interested on a cz-1 pack. Would require some re-arrangement work i believe.

[MusicallyInspired]

I've never considered the process tedious. In fact, working under limitations is in a way even more fun. I'd love to make an MT-32 pack just for the heck of it, actually. Or even a Tandy 3-voice music pack. But I don't have the time.

[High Treason]

This is why the MU90R is no longer my main workhorse, I like the challenge of getting things done with an older and far more primitive instrument - although I still route the sounds through the MU90R to use its FX unit sometimes.

The MT-32 is barf, unfortunately mine is dead or I could have made such a pack quite trivially - I still have configurations somewhere that would make it easier to get Duke's MIDIs running on it - but I'm not sure I'd want to risk loaning one, nor can I stand the sound of the thing, so much lag and polyfighting going on, it just makes me think of that wheezy asthmatic kid in school who nobody liked. I could look into borrowing one and knocking out recordings, but there's no way I'd be willing to sit there and play with loop points and shit afterwards. Can't do anything now anyway, don't have any way to record any music.

<div><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Edit: Of course it still wouldn't likely be worth it anyway, here's a recording I found from when I had an MT-32;&nbsp;</span>https://www.mediafire.com/file/a6vce0c201ptrxn/MTSHIT. ogg/file</div><div>(Why does the forum software keep spitting out HTML when I hit Save Changes?)</div>

[MusicallyInspired]

The MT-32's pitch shift range is different from GM, so that's part of the problem because it's really brutalizing the bass there. But generally, the MT-32 is great for going after a certain sound. It excels in its niche and suffers in others. You don't generally want anything orchestral or things like piano in there. Also, having a good library of custom timbres helps because the stock patches on the MT-32 are half terrible and a large portion of the other half passable with only a small handful that are truly special.

It's at its best when it's being programmed. Don't just translate a GM MIDI to the MT-32's stock best matches. That'll sound awful every time. Though, Descent's level 2 track wasn't totally horrible with stock instruments...would have been better if I took the time to really adapt it though with custom timbres.

[High Treason]

The bend range could be fixed - it should be adjustable, but I'm not sure Roland would bother to implement something like that because that would be useful, so it'd mean time in Cakewalk - but programming would have been impossible, my MT-32 could not be programmed and would ignore any such input. It makes no difference, LA Synthesis just doesn't sound good and tends to generate rather flat and lifeless noises no matter what you do, it just barely topples FM synthesis from the top spot on my shitlist for the mere fact that FM synthesis can sound passable if someone can be bothered to waste a decade of their lives messing with it... and given that stuff is 80s Yamaha gear, it will almost certainly crash just before you save whatever you were doing, or corrupt its program memory and leave you stuck because Yamaha thought it would be fun to remove diagnostics and factory restore functions from later models - at least 80s Roland gear is slightly less prone to crashing, though it has equally crappy build quality and tends to break down just as much in the end, although it probably won't kill you in the process like Yamaha's gear does.

I don't think the dude I know would lend me his MT-32 anyway, given how I apparently broke mine by trying to write music on it. Odds are my efforts would be better spent on the CZ-1, or being cheap and recording an MU90R pack, or Maestro 32/96 pack, or a Maui pack, or a SoundScape S-2000 pack (would be better with an Elite, I can't afford one and it'd still be shit anyway because Ensoniq's ROM sucks)... I still think the CZ-1 would be more fun, even if it would be more work.

[MusicallyInspired]

Of course, everything I'm talking about would have to be done through a Cakewalk/DAW session. One does not simply run MIDI through the MT-32 and be done with it. It's a whole process for sure.

Why couldn't it be programmed? They can all be programmed. It just won't save any changes when you turn it off (unless you solder in a battery and make other changes to set it up that way, which others have done). Which just means you have to keep your banks stored on-hand as SYX files. The MT-32 is also far too simple to "crash". I don't even understand how you can get to that point.

Agree to disagree on the merit of LA synthesis. To each their own.

[High Treason]

On most decent instruments you can adjust things like bend range from the front panel.

I don't know, it just wouldn't listen to SysEx data being sent, it'd act like it was receiving it but nothing would change. I tried several tools and libraries, tried getting it to dump data back which partially worked but wasn't really useful outside of showing that it wasn't a fault in my setup. Storing SysEx isn't a problem, I have to do that all the time, some things still only exist as handwritten parameters in a table too, need to fix that though this is obviously for other gear. The MT-32 was very prone to crashing in the time I had it, you'd hear a kind of scratch, like a split second of white noise and it would freeze, often with the MIDI indicator on and the screen having gone blank, sometimes it would randomly 'shriek' without crashing too. Oddly I had the same results with a D-50 which died in my hands years before, minus the shrieking, so I just put it down to some design flaw somewhere, thinking it likely that cheap construction does not bode well for longevity, and moved on when it eventually didn't come back up. Strangely both of them also exhibited peculiar tuning issues towards the end, which is unusual for a digital synth - except the DX7 as that likes to corrupt its microtuning data, but at least in that there's a fairly clear reason as to what's wrong and ti can be put right so long as you took a dump of the factory sounds from it.

Agree to disagree all you want, yet you and everyone else have never gotten back to me on the gauntlet I lay down, it's funny how that works. Until then, PD Synthesis is where it's at in my mind, maybe I'll think differently when someone gets this kind of sound out of an LA synth instead of off-key wheezes and farts.

[Mark]

Great stuff on your page HT. As a CZ-101 user back in the old days it was cool to listen to those familiar instruments again. I love that CZ saxophone in Nitemare3D.

[MusicallyInspired]

I keep saying that you're trying to force the MT-32 into doing something it just doesn't excel at. I concede that the MT-32 isn't the best for what you like to hear in music. But that doesn't mean it's lifeless and horrible like you say it is. You seem to prefer a more gritty and digital kind of synth music while the MT-32 sounds much more round and analog. It's representation of acoustic instruments is not the greatest (though I have grown to love its French Horn and Acoustic Guitar patches), but man that Soundtrack patch. Or Doctor Solo. Or even the drum kit. Then there's the pads you can create with it. There's a particularly awesome growling sweep pad that I pulled from the database (I think it came from a Dynamix game...maybe not) that had an awesome sound. I used it in my KQ3Redux soundtrack. I can't use everything the MT-32 has, but I have definite beneficial uses for it. I used Soundtrack and Bassoon in Mage's Initiation (coming out on the 20th).

Also, you haven't really answered my question. How is the thing crashing? What software are you using to create patches? In all the years I've used an MT-32 and programmed custom timbres and patches and instrument lists (that's a separate portion entirely, by the way. You can't just make custom patches you also have to arrange the new instrument list with your new patches). I use LA-Synth for Win3.x that I use inside DOSBox and it works just fine. Wish there was a modern alternative, but there isn't. In any case, every time I choose custom patches from my database library of hundreds of saved timbres it works like a charm. I haven't tried creating my own patches, though, because I have no idea what I'm doing. Just haven't sat down and experimented with it enough. If that's where it's all going wrong I have nothing to say about it because I don't have the experience in that area. But the interface seemed simple enough and I was generating tones without anything falling apart like you're describing.

[Yarn366]

Great work with your Doom music packs (and all the others)!

I noticed that d_e1m2 in the boosted Doom pack stops abruptly at the end rather than continuing and then fading out. It still has loop markers, resulting in the first two measures being skipped upon looping. Again, this is only in the boosted pack; the raw pack has the correct version.

After noticing this, I decided to check all the other music in your Doom packs. Here is what I found:

• Doom d_e2m8; TNT d_ddtblu, d_openin, d_romer2: These files continue past the original loop points as they should, but they don't have fade-outs. (Boosted and raw)
  
• Doom 2 d_doom, d_doom2; TNT d_adrian: These have about 2.5 seconds of silence at the beginning, which is not present in the original versions. (Boosted and raw, but see below)
  
• TNT d_adrian: The raw version (and only the raw version) has the wrong music. It still has the loop markers for the correct music, so it (almost certainly; I didn't bother testing it) doesn't loop properly. (Raw only)
  
• TNT d_shawn: This has about 0.35 seconds of silence at the beginning. I debated whether to report this since it's hard to notice in-game, but I decided to do so anyway (obviously). (Boosted and raw)

[MusicallyInspired]

Geez...thanks for pointing these out! I'll fix these eventually.

[Ninety-Six]

EDIT: Apparently I had the boosted pack the entire time and never realized it.


What's the difference, again?

[MusicallyInspired]

The volume is boosted but compressed so that nothing clips. It sounds louder and "punchier" but it does alter the audio and removes the dynamics. The effect is that It basically makes the quietest parts almost as loud as the loudest parts. It's a way of increasing volume without clipping it. I originally did it because music would always be quieter than the sound effects and it was the only way to get music to sound louder. The Doom community wanted the original untampered audio though so I released two packs.

[Radar]

@MusicallyInspired

Do you know if you'd be able to update your Blood pack with a def file that can be loaded with NBlood?

[MusicallyInspired]

I've got to rerecord a bunch of music packs so it's on the backlog.

[MusicallyInspired]

Huh. Looking back through my TNT source files, it seems I'm missing a number of project files. I don't know if I just didn't save them when I was recording or what happened. Maybe I accidentally saved them elsewhere. I have no idea. And not all of them are the ones with problems. Dang. Got a lot of work to do to fix this. I'm essentially going to have to start over for many of these.

[Hendricks266]

 MusicallyInspired, on 19 February 2019 - 11:08 AM, said:

Maybe I accidentally saved them elsewhere.

Try the tool Search Everything. TX, Daedolon, and I use it regularly.

[Rimantas]

MusicallyInspired, could you add music pack for Eviternity (new WAD for Doom II) to to-do list? It has incredible music tracks, even M$ GS Wavetable, Scc1t2.sf2 sounds not so bad with them. They would shine on SC-55.

[MusicallyInspired]

For sure. My PC is kaput at the moment though, so music pack recording is at a standstill for now.

[Yarn366]

Another problem: The raw (but not boosted) Doom 1 packs lack the duplicate songs, resulting in GZDoom falling back to the MIDI versions when it tries to play them.

[MusicallyInspired]

Noted.

[Master O]

 MusicallyInspired, on 19 March 2019 - 04:59 PM, said:

For sure. My PC is kaput at the moment though, so music pack recording is at a standstill for now.

When you eventually have that sorted out, do your Shadow Warrior music packs now work with VoidSW, the Eduke32 based sourceport for Shadow Warrior?