A discussion on restoring EQ's music once and for all

[grazulis]

Originally Posted by km2783 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

**edit** Sadly, that MP3 archive link was no longer good, so I don't have any reference material to work with =/

Look further down in the thread. Somebody is kind enough to repost the full archive. The new link does work. The individual MP3s are also available directly from http://www.xs4all.nl/~treesong as was pointed out earlier, although do note that the EQmp3.zip at that link does not contain all of the MP3s found in the true archive (missing things like Ak'Anon, Mistmoore, etc.) Also worth noting that while these MP3s represent idealized renditions of EQ's music, they do not cover the entire soundtrack. The midi files archive is more thorough, providing, for example, the several varieties of "eerie" music.

My next attempts at this problem will involve hijacking Windows' midi mapper. Clearly, EQ tells Windows to treat the XMI music as midi. That's the key. Back in the day, this resulted in an Awe32 using its built-in soundbank and reverb. These days it results in Windows using its built-in soundbank (which is bad) and no reverb (which is worse). To reiterate, the process of hijacking this process is reportedly easy in XP, difficult in Vista, and perhaps impossible in 7, as Microsoft removed more and more associated freedoms (probably also forcing more and more musicians onto Macs). But we'll see how it goes. After hijacking the process, all that remains is to forward the midi information to a standalone player with a good soundfont and things like reverb / chorus. I already had success replacing Windows' soundfont, but that turns out not to be the full solution.

[grazulis]

Originally Posted by km2783 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

**edit part 3** I actually found a plugin that emulates the AWE32 card. But it costs $100 =( Found other GM plugins. $100+ lol.

Prompted by this revelation, and somewhat to my amazement, I poked around and managed to find the actual Awe32 GM soundbank in soundfont format. That will be interesting to use as reference if/when I manage to reroute EQ's midi information to a standalone player. I did not, however, find the Awe32 emulator you mention, which would probably, by definition, include the all-important reverb (and whatever else the card did to make that small soundbank sound so good). Have a link?

[FatMagic]

Originally Posted by binibren [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There may be an easier solution. If you can find someone with old hardware and an AWE32 -- I just tossed mine about 6 months ago [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] -- you can run all of the midis through winamp and output them to mp3 files. You can then replace the sound files in Titanium. It's been a while since I've messed around with the Titanium client but I *think* it supports both mp3 and midi.

For those who were not so lucky as to have played EQ with an AWE32 here is what Kelethin sounded like with that magical sound card:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atHxsHPt7Fc

Here is Kelethin with "normal" sound card:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO4_8A9Uiwg

Holy. Crap. What a difference! I want those tunes! How nice sounding!

And grazulis - keep us up to date on your work. Can't wait to see what you can create. I wish I could help but I have zero skill in working with sound!

[km2783]

Originally Posted by grazulis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Prompted by this revelation, and somewhat to my amazement, I poked around and managed to find the actual Awe32 GM soundbank in soundfont format. That will be interesting to use as reference if/when I manage to reroute EQ's midi information to a standalone player. I did not, however, find the Awe32 emulator you mention, which would probably, by definition, include the all-important reverb (and whatever else the card did to make that small soundbank sound so good). Have a link?

I may have jumped the gun. It came up when I searched KVR's plugin database for AWE32.

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2699.html

Apparently here's why:
*Do quality conversion between the instruments formats most common PC synthesizer sound cards. Some examples: SB AWE32, SB Live!, all Vortex II-based cards, TB Pinnacle, TB Maui, AVM Apex, Gravis UltraSound, UltraSound PnP.

It actually does a LOT more, but I don't think it's going to have that reverb. and ew, AWE32 was actually an ISA card hehe. It turns out it used technology from Emu in it's MIDI playback, ie sample-based.

Interesting read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_AWE32

So, if you find the AWE32's SoundFont you're most of the way there. There are a LOT of great reverb plugins out there.

Also have you tried MIDI Yoke to shuffle the MIDI around?

[mgellan]

FWIW I have an AWE64 Gold card in my toy box that probably still works, and a P200 box (first box I played EQ on I think!) to run it in if need be...

Regards,
Mg

[km2783]

Originally Posted by mgellan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

FWIW I have an AWE64 Gold card in my toy box that probably still works, and a P200 box (first box I played EQ on I think!) to run it in if need be...

Regards,
Mg

Well, now. That rather handily solves a lot of problems right there. Surely even a 200MHz machine can handle the task of playing MIDI files and recording them to disk. The 64 was suposed to be quieter, too. Only issue is if it dips into voices 33-64 of polyphony, it no longer uses the emu8011 but the host CPU and sounds inferior than the soundbank.

but I don't think that issue will arise. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[grazulis]

Originally Posted by km2783 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I may have jumped the gun. It came up when I searched KVR's plugin database for AWE32.

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2699.html

That's Awave Studio - the program I referenced earlier as being one means of converting any of the common SF2 soundbanks into the esoteric DLS Level 1 format which Windows utilizes for midi playback. It doesn't appear easy to determine whether one could use it to play midi from a yoke, but certainly I wouldn't expect it to provide processing like reverb.

So, if you find the AWE32's SoundFont you're most of the way there. There are a LOT of great reverb plugins out there.

Also have you tried MIDI Yoke to shuffle the MIDI around?

I installed MIDI-OX and either this installed MIDI Yoke along with it, or Windows 7 has its own MIDI Yoke built-in (no real way for me to tell, at this point). As it happens, somebody did cleverly produce a tiny hack to enable one to bypass Microsoft's GM wavetable synth and forward the midi information to a yoke. I've fiddled with it and it works (I can monitor the midi data with MIDI-OX). Now what I desperately need to complete the picture is some kind of app that will take this midi information and correctly play it. Once I have everything in place, I will outline the steps I took.

For the time being, the closest I have come is with a free app called Terry West's Take1. It can load big soundfonts, and it includes a reverb of reasonable quality. The only problem is that it is interpreting all the midi notes as piano (or, more probably, failing to interpret them at all, and defaulting to piano, the first patch in any general midi soundbank). I've emailed the author in an effort to determine what can be done. It was only recently that I confirmed to my satisfaction that the midi mapping hack was not responsible for this anomaly (by way of observing the data flow in MIDI-OX). I have not found any other standalone midi players which 1) can load soundfonts, 2) accept midi input from a user-selectable source, and 3) provide crucial effects such as reverb. No doubt multipurpose programs such as FL Studio could be set up to do all this, but that wouldn't be much use to readers here, and the practicality of this exercise would be greatly diminished.

[km2783]

A thought occurred to me. Does anyone know if classic EQ loaded it's own soundfont into the AWE32? Games like Final Fantasy 7 supported this feature of the card.

And I stumbled across a Sound On Sound article from 1994 about the AWE32:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1994...lasterawe.html

Where'd you find the AWE32 SoundFont? I'd like to play around with it in Live [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I've also run across a thread from 2009 with people trying to get the AWE32 sound of Doom working, and weren't having much luck with any SoundFonts [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] They speculated, and from what I've read on the AWE32 they are correct, that the physical card itself has a onboard sounds to pull from, too.

We might have to rely on Mg and his AWE64 for the most accurate results.

**edit** I did find this: http://my.opera.com/Silverspring/hom...ming%201.5.zip

Supposedly a SoundFont made by someone for playing old games. downloading it now just to see. And it is not the file you are looking for =/

**edit 2** but this might be. Experimenting with Live+Kontakt now. http://my.opera.com/Silverspring/blo...awe-rom-gm-set

ugh it keeps crashing Live. Fail.

**edit tree** I just had an "oh shit" moment. I just played the Kelethin MIDI file and it sounded very, very good. Admittedly not exactly like the AWE32 clip posted on page 1 (the string pads aren't as lush or prominent, imo), but DAMNED better than the "other soundcard" clip. details to come.

**edit four** ugh DropBox is taking FOREVER to upload this little MP3. fastest it was moving was 12.8KBps but it's been hovering around 1-3KBps... my internet is NOT this slow =/ Patience...

**Final edit of this post I swear**

Here it is:

Kelethin - Dry, no added reverb from me anyway

Apparently OS X has a nice MIDI soundset. I routed audio from it's preview player and into Ableton Live, recorded it and then exported and converted to a 192kbps MP3. The AWE32 pizzicato is more plucky and sharp, the strings are more prominent and lively, the bass is a little weak, so this isn't quite there yet, but I guess a decent step.

**edit 6** I lied, another edit. One thing I noticed while doing this, is that the AWE32 Kelethin posted on page one is the Kelethin.MID while the "craptacular soundcard" version uses the KelethinFull.MID which has some REALLY cheesy sounding solo lines in it, I guess a MIDI clarinet or oboe or something.

**edit 7** post is getting long... but here's the EQ Theme as performed by the OS X MIDI soundset. I'm listening to Ak'Anon right now [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What troubles me, though, is those cursed xmi files and the seemingly random number of mp3 files as well. It's like some are going to play MIDI, some songs are mp3 and it's somewhat annoying.

[doacleric]

Its funny, because after looking at the mp3's posted on http://www.xs4all.nl/~treesong/ , i found that they sounded vaguely familiar. Oh yeah, thats because they were recorded by me [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All those mp3's were created by uploading the EQ soundfont into my Sound Blaster Audigy and playing the original xmi files. I added a bit of reverb to it too. Note that you MUST play the original XMI files, and not use an XMI -> MID converter, which tends to change the pitch and speed of the music. They should sound reasonably close to the way EQ played them back in the day, though I remember them sounding a TAD bit better. The only true way to see how it sounded back in the day would be to get a 1999-2001 version of the client (before Luclin, and before sound blaster support was dropped), and load up the game on an ancient version of the emulator on a computer with a SB AWE card.

I also spoke with the composer of the EQ soundtrack a couple of years ago. He told me that he actually had a master sound font file that was MUCH larger than 512k one EQ shipped with that had the potential to make the MIDI's sound amazing. If any of you remember the music that would play on EQ's homepage back in late 1998 before its official release, then you know what i'm talking about.

[km2783]

Originally Posted by doacleric [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All those mp3's were created by uploading the EQ soundfont into my Sound Blaster Audigy and playing the original xmi files.

Small world hehe. So EQ did come with it's own SoundFont for use in compatible sound cards like the AWE32 and others. So the OP probably needs THAT SoundFont and not the default AWE32 one?