ONML Music

[ccexplore]

Wow, that was quite different instrument-wise from the version I know from DOSBox, even though the notes are the same.

This is definitely a mystery.  I find it hard to believe DOSBox's emulation could be that far off, or that any special effects the AWE card supports could create such drastic changes (though I suppose it's not completely inconceivable, maybe a low-pass filter?).  The adlib synthesis capabilities are pretty much legacy by 2000 so I highly doubt that they would have changed it so drastically at that point.  The possibility of the Xmas 94 having an updated version of music is not supported by the fact that adlib.dat compares identical to the version from ONML, so unless they released a special version of Xmas 94 that I don't have (possible), it should sound the same on both.  And unlike MIDI, FM synthesis doesn't have concepts of things like samples or soundfonts that could easily explain such different sounding instruments.

So I have no answers for you.  But, with my MIDI having pretty much the right notes, you may still have some success recreating what you hear by careful selection of instruments/samples/soundfonts in the MIDI.

Out of curiosity, do you remember whether the other DOS Lemmings music also sounded very different on that computer from what you now hear in DOSBox?

[JustDig]

The instrument difference is rather intense, isn't it? For a little while I thought it was just some crazy setup I had. But like I mentioned before, another friends PC had played it the same way. I brought my CD for Holiday, we installed it, and immediately played it with it sounding like that. So it can't be any special setup or anything of the sort either.

How curious isn't it? Is there perhaps a feature SB had that remapped FM to MIDI instead? I mean, the "Honky Piano" sounds incredibly MIDI so I'm beginning to think that isn't too far out of the question.

Oh, one possibly key thing might be that we were both running Windows 98 at the time, if I am not mistaken.

What is a little problematic though is that I tried each of the different MIDI instrument for the "deep whale call sound" and none of them sounded even a little close. Do you have any idea what could work for that sound? It has a "sweeping" property too, as in the notes blend into eachother instead of being separated as many of the MIDI instruments render it as. That could be a special Adlib property though I bet, right?

I also don't remember how different it sounded, but I can say that the regular version of lemmings also sounded different on both of the computers that Tune 3 sounded like that on.

Has anyone else that downloaded the file recognized the sound by chance?

[ccexplore]

The instrument difference is rather intense, isn't it? For a little while I thought it was just some crazy setup I had. But like I mentioned before, another friends PC had played it the same way. I brought my CD for Holiday, we installed it, and immediately played it with it sounding like that. So it can't be any special setup or anything of the sort either.

Hmm, well if it is a CD, maybe it is a version that's different from the version I obtained from abandonia.com.  I might have a CD version of Xmas 94 from a purchase a while back.  I'll check later this weekend and see.

[ccexplore]

Hmm, well if it is a CD, maybe it is a version that's different from the version I obtained from abandonia.com.  I might have a CD version of Xmas 94 from a purchase a while back.  I'll check later this weekend and see.

Well, no difference.  Files on CD are identical to what I already have on my DOSBox computer for Holiday Lemmings 94.  Nothing like extra audio tracks on the CD either.

Anyway, I took a stab at the "whale sound", how's this sound to you?  (Note: this is just a small excerpt with only the melody part.)  I use General MIDI program number 79 ("Whistle"), and I also transpose the notes one octave down from what I had in the MIDI you got from Proxima.

[JustDig]

Ah, I'll have to give that a real go tomorrow. I left my computer out there with all the tools on it.

Just from hearing it on this one though, the instrument sounds fairly close being a bit deeper. Do you know what I would need to do in order to have the notes "blend" together to create a more sweep instead of a more obvious jump in notes?

[Braden12]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Very interesting that you should have noticed this like I did several years back, and other notable times afterwords! 

Yes, I've come across this 'mystery' Whale-like sounding #3 ONML/HOLID'94 music track several times in DOSBox, where, when I, to the best of my memory, was playing the level named "Get The Point?" of holid94 lemmings while with that track. It did not do that whale-sound right at once, but sure enough, due to the fact that it took several attempts for me to beat the level for a first, I then began to after some time to hear the #3 track to change pitch or whatever and then I was certainly shocked to hear the track get out of how it was all along sounding before. I thought at the time that this must be a DOSBox emulation problem. And though to mention that I'm not at all sure to what different possible things I did to get and get-rid-of this new-sounding track #3,  I quickly resorted back to my config settings for DOSBox, and fixed it back to non-whale-sounding. But before posting this, I confused myself trying to get it to mess-up and go into the whale-sounding thing, and it is safe to say I have no idea what-so-ever what I did with the dosbox conf file to getting it to do that, and then reverting it back.

I have no idea if this was before I discovered DOSBox's {sdl_videodriver=windib} Environment Variable already, and even though I think it *might* be *possible*, if I worked hard enough for LONG enough, to figure out what the exact setting(s) with dosbox.conf and/or with windib enabled-or-not, I'm afraid it's just not a task worth taking on by anyone due to how it is STILL MY BELEIF that it must be a bad dosbox emulation issue, SIMPLY BECAUSE on ALL times I've come across this whale-sounding track #3, it always was AFTER this same track had already played some time with no whale-singing-sound WITHOUT restarting dosbox;  In other words, I've never known to get to hear the whale-singing music without the non-whale music with it also, before hand. Hence why it is my belief it's a dosbox issue.

whew!

(for more info on this 'windib' environment variable and how you can use it to sometimes fix issues with DOS Lemmings, refer to this post: http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=592.msg12550#msg12550)

[Mr. K]

Hey, I can shed some light on this musical mystery, since I have some knowledge in vintage sound cards and the likes.  I know exactly what this is.  (WARNING: Boring technical explanation ahead.)  While the early Sound Blasters all had the OPL synthesizer, up through the AWE64, later Creative cards (starting with the Live) did not include it.  Everything past the AWE64 was based on technology acquired from Ensoniq.  Ensoniq's early MIDI-based ISA cards like the Soundscape didn't have an OPL synth at all, but a lot of games only had OPL support and no MIDI yet (except for a select few) so Ensoniq made a sort of compatibility hack for people who didn't have a Sound Blaster to use alongside a Soundscape.  What it did was roughly remap OPL waveforms to MIDI instruments.  I don't really know the details, but what's for sure is that it was very rough and usually didn't sound that good.

Later, after the Soundscape cards, Ensoniq did a PCI card called the AudioPCI.  They said that it was Sound Blaster compatible, which was pretty handy because most PCI cards couldn't do that (a limitation stemming from how games were programmed to access the Sound Blaster in the first place-- through the ISA bus).  To my knowledge it was mostly software emulated.  While they got the wave audio working, the OPL synth couldn't be done due to the processing limitations of the day.  So they jumped back to their hack from the Soundscape and kept on using it.  After Creative bought out Ensoniq, they made the Live.  By that point Windows 9x had been out for several years meaning Creative didn't really want to bother with DOS compatibility, so they did the bare minimum, making Ensoniq's stuff from the AudioPCI work on the Live-- I suppose just as an act of courtesy.


In layman's terms:  The SB Live, which you heard this on, doesn't have the OPL synth that the Lemmings games were programmed for, and tries to be compatible with it by roughly replacing its sounds with MIDI instrument equivalents.  So what you heard is its best approximation.

My old Pentium II had an AudioPCI in it, and when I listened to the tape recording from the last page I recognized it immediately.  When I played Lemmings and also ONML on there it sounded just like that.  If you're looking for a recording, I can get the machine set up again and record it.  However it'll be a while, since I'm at college right now and my PII is not.  I'll be home for the summer in around 4 weeks, though.

[JustDig]

@Mr. K!
Oh wow, thanks Mr. K! That explains everything perfectly! And now I know what I'll have to look into for figuring out my next move. For the instrument mapping, you wouldn't happen to know off the top of your head if there is a "set" instrument set it always maps to, or is it more variable for one reason or another?

And absolutely, if you would be willing to I would LOVE a recording of it! I'll give you a PM though (and probably post in this topic) if I manage to find a way to get it working in some form myself before you return, to save you the trouble.

@Braden12
That is really odd actually that it would just 'flip' like that on you! But thanks for that tip, I'll be sure to look into tweaking around with DOSBox a little more too and see if I can make something work through that. I mean, I have a SB Audigy 2 in this computer, I'm not too far off from Live and might be able to pull something out through it!

*EDIT
I now have a converted SF2 from the AudioPCI's Wavetable and am trying to match up instruments... the whale sound still doesn't seem to match up very well... Is there something special done to the instruments, like say being toned down several octaves or something?

[Mr. K]

For the instrument mapping, you wouldn't happen to know off the top of your head if there is a "set" instrument set it always maps to, or is it more variable for one reason or another?

As far as I know it's set, if only because the waveforms are the same each and every time.  Whenever I played on there it sounded the same.  Nobody really has a clue exactly how it picks things though... it's a mystery those Ensoniq coders will probably take to the grave.

I now have a converted SF2 from the AudioPCI's Wavetable and am trying to match up instruments... the whale sound still doesn't seem to match up very well... Is there something special done to the instruments, like say being toned down several octaves or something?

Ensoniq's instrument format is a lot different (and in a few ways superior, apparently) than Creative's Soundfont.  It supports a lot of extra features to define exactly how the sample is going to sound.  Chances are that this is just part of the conversion process-- it might not be able to replicate the original sound exactly.  I remember playing around with a partially converted Soundfont version (is it complete now?) a few years ago and many of the instruments were de-tuned or off a few octaves.  Others didn't decay properly or just sounded odd.

[ccexplore]

Everything past the AWE64 was based on technology acquired from Ensoniq.  Ensoniq's early MIDI-based ISA cards like the Soundscape didn't have an OPL synth at all, but a lot of games only had OPL support and no MIDI yet (except for a select few) so Ensoniq made a sort of compatibility hack for people who didn't have a Sound Blaster to use alongside a Soundscape.  What it did was roughly remap OPL waveforms to MIDI instruments.  I don't really know the details, but what's for sure is that it was very rough and usually didn't sound that good.

Interesting. Justdig was talking about AWE32 which is still ISA and still seems to have OPL3 support (at least Wikipedia says so), but it would make more sense that it is in fact a later Soundblaster model that no longer directly supports OPL3.  That would explain why the music sounds distinctly more MIDI to me than FM.  I'm amazed it worked apparently well enough on the Lemmings music, since as I explained, there is really no fundamental concept of "instruments" in FM synthesis.  But I suppose if you only want a rough remap, you can ignore most of the FM parameters and just remap semi-haphazardly to MIDI based on the few remaining parameters (such as the base carrier and modulation waveforms).  And thus the tinkle bell becomes a whale song in the process.

It also means that if someone can get their hands on the build-in MIDI soundfonts used by those cards, with some suitable software and the MIDI conversion I made, you can render the MIDI with the exact instruments used by those cards (you'd need to experiment with the MIDI instrument assignments though).  Otherwise just wait for Mr. K's summer to begin.   [edit: okay, that might be harder than it seems, based on Mr. K's latest reply...]

[ccexplore]

I now have a converted SF2 from the AudioPCI's Wavetable and am trying to match up instruments... the whale sound still doesn't seem to match up very well... Is there something special done to the instruments, like say being toned down several octaves or something?

Please keep in mind that if you are using my MIDI conversion, the octaves may be off in one or more instruments--it is far too complex to do a more accurate pitch analysis on the original FM sythesis parameters when you can far more easily adjust octaves in the MIDI afterwards.  Plus now we are talking about the sound card doing its own "rough conversion" from FM to MIDI, which can obviously have the same problem.

So do play around with transpositions as well as assigning instruments.

[mobius]

I don't mean to go off topic but you guys  seem to be knowledgeable about this. Can anyone recommend a good preferably, simple program for creating songs in Midi or similar format (any format will do really but you seem to know about Midi first and foremost). I've been looking for something like this for a while and haven't found much. I want something that's simple/ not complicated like Fruity-Loops and preferably inexpensive or free. Also having an interface like a piano keyboard for entering notes would be nice.

I don't know what program you guys were using to do this. Adobe Audition is a very good sound program to edit/analyze music with. It's not great for writing/creating songs though.

[JustDig]

Haha I second Thick Molasses, what MIDI programs are you guys using? I just got myself a new system so I was thinking about getting a better MIDI program.

[ccexplore]

I haven't actually done much with MIDI in ages, and even at the time when I was working on making MIDI versions of ONML music for Proxima for Cheapo, it was more about conversions from other versions of music (eg. MODs from Amiga, DOS adlib.dat, etc.).  I basically Googled for whatever tools I needed and see what works out for me.  I think I might also have skimmed places like vgmusic.com forums for tools other people might have recommended.  And because it was mainly about conversions and not like composing new stuff, there was no need for things like being able to hook up an actual piano keyboard for inputting notes.

On my old computer I see I have Noteworthy Composer, Anvil Studio, and Microsoft DirectMusic Producer installed.  I think they all have their strengths and weaknesses and no program is perfect for everything, even for the limited set of things I needed to do in my case.  Noteworthy Composer isn't even really much of a MIDI editing program (for example if you import MIDI into the program, you lose some key information like individual note loudness [velocity], which can be a complete non-starter for some MIDIs depending on the music), but I'm somewhat more used to the staff notation available in N.C over the "piano roll" UI available in more typical MIDI editing programs like Anvil Studio.

Anyway, long story short, I don't really have anything I'd consider a recommendation per se.  You are well advised to hunt the Internet for more choices and more expert advice.

[Mr. K]

Bumpity bump.  It's a little behind schedule, but I have successfully made a recording of this song.  Enjoy!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11388083/ONML%20Lvl%203%20-%20AudioPCI.mp3