Make EQ's music (MIDI) sound Significantly Better.

[Psycher]

*Most of the Information I found to complete this was taken from http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8893&

By changing your systems MIDI soundfont, you can recreate the AWE32 Soundblaster sound which is how the music was meant to be heard in EQ! (the MIDI soundfont that windows comes with by default is pretty terrible)

Preview the sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWj-oT75UPg&feature=g-upl
(you may not be super impressed but in comparison its a lot better, im too lazy to upload a comparison video, maybe i will at a later date)

------
HOW TO:
1.) Download 1mgm.sf2 to Desktop or any location [download] (http://p99.yourfirefly.com/1mgm.sf2)
2.) install bassmididrv.exe [download] (http://www.mudlord.info/bassmididrv/bassmididrv.exe)
3.) Run BASSMIDI Driver Configuration
4.) "Add" 1mgm.sf2 to soundfonts and click "Apply"
5.) Go to Advanced tab, under Default MIDI Synth, select BASSMIDI Driver and hit "Apply"
------

You can google "MIDI soundfont Banks" to see if you find any you like better

You might notice a little bit of glitchyness in the video with the sound, i think that's only because my fraps was running.

Enjoy!

[Rumgrin]

This is good stuff, thanks! Definitely sounds way better..

[Pillow Armadillo]

Nice work! I was just thinking about wanting to turn on the music again this week.

Thanks Chebby :)

[seanidor]

I've actually been messing around with the soundfonts a bit too. I tried out the SGM-V2.01.sf2 and it sounds pretty bad for some of the EQ music. If you want to know what I mean play the kaladima.xmi and go to the last song, its like the inn music. It kinda sounds like people hitting on trash cans or something, lol.

So far the soundfont that sounds the best to me is the one called 1mgm.sf2. According to the mudlord website (http://www.mudlord.info/bassmididrv/BASSMIDI_Driver_Installation_and_Configuration.htm ) it's the AWE32 Rom Dump Soundfont. I haven't tried listening to all of the EQ music to see if it all sounds good though, but hey lets hope for the best right?

[norova]

Giving that 1mgm.sf2 file a try right now. I'll post back in a day or so if I find any weirdness. :)

[norova]

Yep, as far as I can tell, 1mgm.sf2 is exactly a dump of the AWE32. Sounds 100% the same as I remember it on my SB card.

[Abraham99]

I'm using 1mgm.sf2 and its pretty awesome and noticable. I always thought there was something not right about the eq midi's nowadays and this restores them to how they should sound.

It seems like there was a lot of secondary melodies in some songs with instruments that just dont sound right with the default midi set. Everyone should do this IMO, its how the songs are supposed to sound and how they used to sound, so get this right now (it only takes 30 seconds max to set everything up).

Its also great if you play other old games that use midi's.

This thread should be stickied, but please include a link to 1mgm.sf2 in the original post

[norova]

I threw the soundfont file and bassmidi driver installer on my P99 files site in my sig.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner

[Psycher]

updated

[sykotic]

Thank you, I always knew something was off I guess this was it

[ir0nfist]

I haven't played in a long time, but this always bothered me. I remember some people working on it, glad to see it was solved. Gonna keep and archive of these files for future reference just in case. Thank you.

[Dantes]

Thanks Chebby! This is awesome.

[Zliz]

Thanks a lot, just used this setup successfully today.

Furthermore, I figured out how to play all the XMI files in an application. I used XMPlay with the "MIDI input plugin", both found here: http://www.un4seen.com/xmplay.html

Quick instructions:

You need two files:
1mgm.sf2 - from http://p99.yourfirefly.com/1mgm.sf2
synthusr.sf2 - from your EQ directory

Install XMPlay

Launch XMPlayer, right click title bar, Options and stuff

Go to Plugins->Input, double click "MIDI (rev.12)"
With Bank 000 selected, click 'add' button, add synthusr.sf2, then 1mgm.sf2. Make sure 1mgm.sf2 is on top.

click Apply, close

You can now drag .xmi files from the EQ directory to the XMPlayer playlist and enjoy the awesome tunes.
Right-click the next/previous buttons to skip between subsongs

[Buellen]

Hi


I have to say thank you to everyone involved. sound is Definitely better. best i can describe it is that you can really here every instrument instead of muted flat tone of it.


Couple things

had to use my mac to download the 2 files for some reason got weird code on that screen with first one and second file could not get it.

once i got past the unable to get files i was very happy with the sound richness i can listen too. Man chilling at bar in south qeynos is amazing sound from the music.

Buskier 33 cleric follower of Rodcet Nife


PS sitting at fish ale inn south qeynos and doing nothing but listen to the music IT is that good the difference

[RelivingNorrath]

So I followed all the steps (re-checked myself several times) and now my music doesn't work. General sound FX still work, but I have no music anywhere in game. Any ideas why?

[Zliz]

So I followed all the steps (re-checked myself several times) and now my music doesn't work. General sound FX still work, but I have no music anywhere in game. Any ideas why?

The actual instructions one should follow for the setup of the BASSMIDI driver are here:

http://kode54.net/bassmididrv/BASSMIDI_Driver_Installation_and_Configuration.htm

If you're on Vista or Windows 7, you will need to use an additional program to setup the driver properly, the section named "Additional Configuration Note for Windows Vista and Windows 7" near the bottom. I used the control panel applet called Putzlowitschs Vista MIDI Mapper linked there.

Furthermore, I also added the synthusr.sf2 file found in the EQ directory to the list of SoundFonts, although it will work without.

[ir0nfist]

I personally use VirtualMidiSynth (http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth). I also use synthusr.sf2 font as the secondary font. If you are on Win 8 midimapper has been removed so you can't use the bassmididrv.exe to remap the soundfont. In which case Virtualmidisynth works, works on win xp, vista, 7, also. Under options I turn off Increase process priority to REALTIME, turn on preload soundfont, and under advanced options I set the audio buffer to 250. If you hear crackling, increase the audio buffer.

[RelivingNorrath]

Thanks for the responses to my question, very helpful indeed!

[Method]

Epic! Tox forest sounds like it did back in 1999 Priceless!!!

Thank you!

[Enanon]

Mmm i have a problem.

I follow the instructions, but when i get to use Vista MIDI picker, it only has Microsoft GS option to chose, no bassmidi around anywhere.

I tried too the German program, but it dosnt work either.

Im under Windows 7, so dont know what to do... ideas?

thanks!

[Korisek]

My issue is interesting.

As far as I am aware, I have installed and set everything up right. I can confirm as much by playing MIDI files I downloaded as tests.

However the music in Everquest only plays when I'm playing the test files, which I discovered when I tried playing the UNATCO theme while EQ was in the background and got the Blackburrow music instead.

I am using Windows XP SP3.

EDIT: Turns out I jumped the gun on reporting this as an issue. I had to go into my audio properties, load up the master volume control, and raise the volume for SW Synth. Then the music started playing as normal.

And Everquest doesn't sound so boring and lifeless anymore.

[Jakaris]

I have windows 7 and I can't get this to work, tried all of these programs. If anyone could help me with this, I would, quite literally, cry out in joy.

[Rhun]

Try "Run as Admin" on the config program.

[Yinn Yang]

Would this trick also work in The Grand Creation server? Anyone know? I'm using EQ Titanium install to play... not sure if the proper files (.xmi?) are there or not.

[Bill Tetley]

Music won't play anymore after setting this up. Doh!

Music still broke even after uninstalling :(

Problem happening on both my Win7 and Win8 computers.

[Bill Tetley]

Anyone know how I can fix my music? Not sure why but now EQ plays no music (but has other sounds) Wouldn't really suggest this if it breaks stuff

[Cyph]

Thanks for this, can't wait to try it out!

[RiffDaemon]

This should be a sticky. I actually played on the default Microsoft MIDI (didn't have a dedicated sound card at the time) back in the day. Playing P99 on Win7 sounds the same and gives me those nostalgia chills, but sometimes the instrument tracks start playing in different keys or go slightly off-tempo, creating ear vomit.

I've tried the OP's sound font, and all that has gone away. Gonna be neat listening to everything with fresh instrumentation. THANK YOU, OP!

[phacemeltar]

Music won't play anymore after setting this up. Doh!

Music still broke even after uninstalling :(

Problem happening on both my Win7 and Win8 computers.

it seems to me that this fix involves changing core windows files, so unless you have backed up your original windows files then you may have to reinstall your OS in order to undo this mod. correct me if im wrong.

[phacemeltar]

ok i just tried this and i think it sounds alot better than it did before. the music is definately not nearly as glitchy as it used to be. no more pops and clicks, so im impressed!

[phacemeltar]

ATTENTION WIN8 USERS: after a painstakingly long process, i figured out how to make this work with windows 8. the new version of BASSMIDI will not work! you must get version 1.06 from the following website: https://kode54.net/bassmididrv/archive/

after installing this, run as administrator and it will save your loaded banks. works really well!

[RiffDaemon]

This should be a sticky. I actually played on the default Microsoft MIDI (didn't have a dedicated sound card at the time) back in the day. Playing P99 on Win7 sounds the same and gives me those nostalgia chills, but sometimes the instrument tracks start playing in different keys or go slightly off-tempo, creating ear vomit.

I've tried the OP's sound font, and all that has gone away. Gonna be neat listening to everything with fresh instrumentation. THANK YOU, OP!

Well shit. When I camped and went to character select, a brass track went out of phase and threw everything off. Guess it's back to Microsoft MIDI.

[phacemeltar]

i wasnt happy with the soundbank OP posted, so i searched google and found a different one.. that might improve your issues

[Xadion]

*Most of the Information I found to complete this was taken from http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8893&

By changing your systems MIDI soundfont, you can recreate the AWE32 Soundblaster sound which is how the music was meant to be heard in EQ! (the MIDI soundfont that windows comes with by default is pretty terrible)

Preview the sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWj-oT75UPg&feature=g-upl
(you may not be super impressed but in comparison its a lot better, im too lazy to upload a comparison video, maybe i will at a later date)

------
HOW TO:
1.) Download 1mgm.sf2 to Desktop or any location [download] (http://p99.yourfirefly.com/1mgm.sf2)
2.) install bassmididrv.exe [download] (http://www.mudlord.info/bassmididrv/bassmididrv.exe)
3.) Run BASSMIDI Driver Configuration
4.) "Add" 1mgm.sf2 to soundfonts and click "Apply"
5.) Go to Advanced tab, under Default MIDI Synth, select BASSMIDI Driver and hit "Apply"
------

You can google "MIDI soundfont Banks" to see if you find any you like better

You might notice a little bit of glitchyness in the video with the sound, i think that's only because my fraps was running.

Enjoy!


Awesome.. back "in the day" my eq computer was a HP Pavilion P1 75mhz that I later upgraded to 200mhz "p2" but more like some odd OC p1.5 hybrid thing... anywho- its orig soundcard was a soundcard modem combo card- and the sound died on it- long story short after a dumb tech replaced stuff a few times not listening to me- I ended up with a Soundblaster AWE 64gold as a replacement- that card followed me for many moons and many computers it was such an awesome card... it had its own little sound processer :-P

thanks for this tip!

[Gadwen]

Well after many failed attempts at forcing windows to use my SB x-fis midi synth I found this, worked like a charm. Now freeport music actually sounds like music instead of a strange tune with odd hammering sounds over it. Thanks for the guide!

Edit: This should be a sticky, and at the very least it should have a section under client customization on the wiki.

[iasus]

All I hear is that TUBA!

[phacemeltar]

Edit: This should be a sticky, and at the very least it should have a section under client customization on the wiki.

[Tero Leary]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS

[xblade724]

link dead for BASSMIDI Driver :(

[xblade724]

wait wait, found a new link that works!
http://www.kode54.net/bassmididrv/bassmididrv.exe

[Xorekle]

Btw, if you use the Soundblast, Adlib, or Midi drivers for old sierra games, they benefit a lot from this soundfont as well :)

[LeorickEci]

So I downloaded the two files, followed the instructions, but I still have the old sounds. I'm running Win 7 64 bit. I hate the new combat music and the muted Kelethin music.

[Gyva02]

If I were to buy a new Soundblaster audio card would I get the good sound again? Or would I have to buy an older Soundblaster card? I watched a Youtube video of the correct sound and its way better than what I'm getting now, the kelethin music is awesome. Check it out here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWj-oT75UPg

[TheRusty]

Downloaded, installed, followed the directions. the Everquest Theme sounds like it's being thrown through an industrial fan, very chopped and scratchy.

[David Johnson]

I googled soundfont and download a free one from FL Studios. It really does sound better, especially when using headphones or tabletop speakers. Even the combat music is more tolerable. I never figured out how to turn just the combat music alone down without effecting the volume of all the other music, so I end up turning combat music off most of the time. Does anyone know how to do that?

[adaemus]

Downloaded, installed, followed the directions. the Everquest Theme sounds like it's being thrown through an industrial fan, very chopped and scratchy.

Yeah, I just experienced the same thing and reverted back to the windows midi sound. With Win10 coming out this week I figured I would wait until after the upgrade to see if they fixed the MIDI issue. If not, I'll dive back in and see if I can figure out why the opening theme song is so choppy and stuttery.

[frammelpie]

This is the first time I've accessed p99 since building a new Win10 PC, fresh install (purchased copy, not even an upgrade) with all new hardware.

I started up the game after bringing it over from my old HDD, so all has remained the same except for updating to v40 files as needed. The windows midi kicked in and reminded me that I'd forgotten to upgrade using Welgrim's MIDI files, so I did that exactly as I had done on the previous PC.

Now I have no music at all. I don't have a sound card or anything, just using board sound drivers (MSI M5 gaming board) which is more than adequate these days.

Anyone know if the AWE32 ROM dump is even compatible with Win10?

UPDATE: Well now I've completely killed midi functionality on the PC. It seems that after running BASSMIDI and using this soundbank, it has either overwritten or deleted the one it replaced. Uninstalling BASSMIDI did not restore it either...

Does anyone know how to get THAT sound file back?! Cruddy music is better than no music.

[frammelpie]

Managed to get midi working again by running a system restore. Still would like to use AWE32 in Win10 though.

[ir0nfist]

This is the first time I've accessed p99 since building a new Win10 PC, fresh install (purchased copy, not even an upgrade) with all new hardware.

I started up the game after bringing it over from my old HDD, so all has remained the same except for updating to v40 files as needed. The windows midi kicked in and reminded me that I'd forgotten to upgrade using Welgrim's MIDI files, so I did that exactly as I had done on the previous PC.

Now I have no music at all. I don't have a sound card or anything, just using board sound drivers (MSI M5 gaming board) which is more than adequate these days.

Anyone know if the AWE32 ROM dump is even compatible with Win10?

UPDATE: Well now I've completely killed midi functionality on the PC. It seems that after running BASSMIDI and using this soundbank, it has either overwritten or deleted the one it replaced. Uninstalling BASSMIDI did not restore it either...

Does anyone know how to get THAT sound file back?! Cruddy music is better than no music.

Bassmidi won't work with anything after Win 7 as far as I know because midi mapper has been removed. I linked to VirtualMidiSynth a couple years ago a few pages back. That will work and still does. I just decided to maybe play a little bit and it works. I'm using a different soundfont though than most others as well. You have to disable "Increase Process Priority to REALTIME" in virtualmidisynth options or it won't work from my experience.
VirtualMidiSynth (http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth#download)
Soundfont I use: FluidR3_GM.sfArk (http://www.synthfont.com/SoundFonts/FluidR3_GM.sfArk)
Needed to decompress that font: sfark (http://www.synthfont.com/sfArk.zip)

[frammelpie]

Excellent! It's working again, off of the old 1mgm.sf2 file.

Curious though, the sound file you are using now - is that a drastic difference in sound? Is it a better version of the original in some way?

[ir0nfist]

Excellent! It's working again, off of the old 1mgm.sf2 file.

Curious though, the sound file you are using now - is that a drastic difference in sound? Is it a better version of the original in some way?

No big difference. Some things sound better, some worse. I just like the way it sounds in nro since I ran so many alts through there back in the day and that song is stuck in my head permanently.

[R Flair]

A few things sound better, but imo, too much sounds worse. It makes some of the most memorable music totally off-key.

[Muggens]

Bumping this one too for Good music listening!

[Muggens]

Bassmidi won't work with anything after Win 7 as far as I know because midi mapper has been removed. I linked to VirtualMidiSynth a couple years ago a few pages back. That will work and still does. I just decided to maybe play a little bit and it works. I'm using a different soundfont though than most others as well. You have to disable "Increase Process Priority to REALTIME" in virtualmidisynth options or it won't work from my experience.
VirtualMidiSynth (http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth#download)
Soundfont I use: FluidR3_GM.sfArk (http://www.synthfont.com/SoundFonts/FluidR3_GM.sfArk)
Needed to decompress that font: sfark (http://www.synthfont.com/sfArk.zip)

Makes the music beautiful, that soundfont is awesome.

[h0bbit]

I'm also running Windows 10. In order to get things working properly I followed the steps in the first post. The only difference is that I had to use a tool called: Vista MIDI Tool

Download and run the Vista MIDI Fix.exeas administrator. Once the program is open, select the BASS MIDI port that you configured in the early steps.

I had to relaunch EQ afterwards. My original issue with the MIDI music was that it would become distorted after a few zone changes. This fixed that issue for me.

Cheers!

[Silvara]

Does this actually work h0bbit? I had this working in the past on windows 7 and loved it. But every time I have tried it on windows 10 (bootcamp) it either makes the midi sound all distorted or it completely destroys all midi playback.

[on3moresoul]

Is there a quick fix for the combat music not shuffling? This seems to have been an issue since launch.

[Lilcea]

I noticed a lot of the MIDI music sounded really funky, I remember it sounding a lot better on my AWE 32 back in the day.

I just could not take it anymore so I spent 3 hours sorting it out last night, I made a load of level 1 toons and ran them around a bit to check the music and I think I've pretty much sorted it.

It now sounds exactly like it used to on my AWE 32, I did a live stream of it this morning, the video is here : https://www.twitch.tv/videos/144247757

If there is a certain zone you want me to do please let me know and I'll do a recording of it.

Please let me know what you all think, comments/criticism more than welcome :)

[kunoxs]

This is great, how do I do this for myself?

[Machiavelli]

This apparently caused my game to freeze upon attempting to connect to the server.

Game ran fine before, but then after following the steps in this guide, I suddenly could no longer get to the character select screen. The game would simply freeze and I'd have to cntrl+alt+del to close it.

I tried disabling firewall, resetting resolution settings, and combed through the archives of p99 in a desperate search for a solution to the freezing issue.

Then just before outright reinstalling everything, it dawned on me that it could be the file and program from this guide causing the issue!

Uninstalled the program & deleted the file -- EUREKA! -- everything works again. Dunno if anyone else had this problem, but I guess I'll just have to live with the music as is :(

[wildbane]

Bassmidi won't work with anything after Win 7 as far as I know because midi mapper has been removed. I linked to VirtualMidiSynth a couple years ago a few pages back. That will work and still does. I just decided to maybe play a little bit and it works. I'm using a different soundfont though than most others as well. You have to disable "Increase Process Priority to REALTIME" in virtualmidisynth options or it won't work from my experience.
VirtualMidiSynth (http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth#download)
Soundfont I use: FluidR3_GM.sfArk (http://www.synthfont.com/SoundFonts/FluidR3_GM.sfArk)
Needed to decompress that font: sfark (http://www.synthfont.com/sfArk.zip)

Thank you. This worked for me.

[GoldRidley]

Installing all of this gave me music on Windows 7 for the first time! Thanks!

[pdub]

now that its 2018, whats the best setup people have found for modern versions of windows?

I'm on windows 10. I've installed VirtualMIDISynth, and i've configured my soundfonts chain with synthuser.sf2 first (from EQ install directory), and then the 1mgm.sf2 second (as recommended here (http://www.zlizeq.com/Game_Information-Music_and_Graphics), archived here (https://www.evernote.com/shard/s173/sh/18ccb693-e702-49b3-8850-2907c2e692d1/f092304772ce35fd4a31cf1987ae8e49)).

the FluidR3_GM.sfArk was OK, but its not like i remember the classic music.

[Mecharius]

I have to second pdub above. After being on P99 for two years or so, I turned on the music and wandered around. At first I thought the game was glitching because it sounded SO OFF. I think it's the oboe on the Freeport Docks music is out of tune! I didn't realize it could be a MIDI problem.

[frammelpie]

If you're talking about the occasional audio track in a midi getting completely off-key, I've run into that many times. The music seems to be pretty fragile no matter what midi file you're using and the only fix I've found is to close out completely and re-open.

[deven1313]

I followed the original instructions (I'm on Windows 10,) and it didn't change anything. So, I uninstalled bassmidi and deleted the .sf2 file. Now, I have sounds but all the music is gone. Anyone know how to get it back? I don't care about the new music at this point just want to get some music working again.

*Edit* Never mind, I installed VirtualMidiSynth and it seems to be working now.

[Silvara]

Is anyone having trouble with the newest version of virtual MIDI synth? Ever since I upgraded to latest version I only see Windows GS wavetable under MIDI devices and I can't pick virtualmidisynth#1 anymore.

[Champion_Standing]

I have to second pdub above. After being on P99 for two years or so, I turned on the music and wandered around. At first I thought the game was glitching because it sounded SO OFF. I think it's the oboe on the Freeport Docks music is out of tune! I didn't realize it could be a MIDI problem.

You can setup several soundbanks in virtual midi synth, I've found that using the files you can find in the EQ directory in combination with the awe32 soundbank will give you the correct instruments. They overwrite each other as you load more in, here's my current load order and it sounds pretty good.

1mgm.sf2
synthys2.sf2
sythnusr.sbk

The last two are in the EQ directory. I haven't noticed anything that sounds significantly off with this setup yet.

[maximum]

Summer bump.

[Deathrydar]

This no longer works. The download to the AweRINGM.rar is corrupt or broken

[Knuckle]

June 2020 - Windows 10:
I got the MIDI music to play using virtualMIDIsynth and using the 1mgm.sf2 loaded first and synthusr.sf2 2nd. I confirmed the midis played through it by toggling its volume down to 0 when a midi song would play in game. Sound is more nostalgic, less clashing instruments. Make sure that virtualMIDIsynth is set to autorun(will be on your taskbar programs).

I might make a seperate thread or if someone has a link to this info....but i noticed not all the MIDI songs are in game, or maybe I am wrong. for example there are over 400 MIDI tracks for classic everquest:
"These are the 422 EQ MIDI files that someone extracted from the XMI files in the EQ directory and posted on the EQ forums a few years ago. These are Jay Barbeau’s performances, they aren't cleanly synced to beats and measures like sheet music."

https://sites.google.com/site/everquestmidiproject/everquest-midi-files

So my question is, for example, in character select the MIDI character creation music does not play, is there a way to fix these "midi gaps" i am craving total MIDI bliss here.

[Lilcea]

I did a Midi fix in 2017, I didn't get much of a response in this thread, I think that it was partly my fault as I linked to one of my Twitch streams. Main problem with that is they deleted the video after 60 days.

I have however uploaded another video, this time to YouTube. If you want me to capture any other MIDI from zones around Norrath let me know and I'll put up another Vid. I cannot really get to places like Cobalt Scar though as my highest toon is around level 20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ikot8EEtQ

[Rick Sanchez]

The Hero we don’t deserve.

[Kennie]

June 2020 - Windows 10:
I got the MIDI music to play using virtualMIDIsynth and using the 1mgm.sf2 loaded first and synthusr.sf2 2nd. I confirmed the midis played through it by toggling its volume down to 0 when a midi song would play in game. Sound is more nostalgic, less clashing instruments. Make sure that virtualMIDIsynth is set to autorun(will be on your taskbar programs).

I might make a seperate thread or if someone has a link to this info....but i noticed not all the MIDI songs are in game, or maybe I am wrong. for example there are over 400 MIDI tracks for classic everquest:
"These are the 422 EQ MIDI files that someone extracted from the XMI files in the EQ directory and posted on the EQ forums a few years ago. These are Jay Barbeau’s performances, they aren't cleanly synced to beats and measures like sheet music."

https://sites.google.com/site/everquestmidiproject/everquest-midi-files

So my question is, for example, in character select the MIDI character creation music does not play, is there a way to fix these "midi gaps" i am craving total MIDI bliss here.
A+

[Kennie]

I did a Midi fix in 2017, I didn't get much of a response in this thread, I think that it was partly my fault as I linked to one of my Twitch streams. Main problem with that is they deleted the video after 60 days.

I have however uploaded another video, this time to YouTube. If you want me to capture any other MIDI from zones around Norrath let me know and I'll put up another Vid. I cannot really get to places like Cobalt Scar though as my highest toon is around level 20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ikot8EEtQ

Need the Dagnor's Cauldron middle island song. After duplicating Knuckle's instructions everything sounds great except Dagnor's. It is missing the bongo drums.

[Knuckle]

Need the Dagnor's Cauldron middle island song. After duplicating Knuckle's instructions everything sounds great except Dagnor's. It is missing the bongo drums.

with just your description it sounds like you are describing eruds crossing(soundtrack).

[Kennie]

with just your description it sounds like you are describing eruds crossing(soundtrack).

No, different tune.

[Lilcea]

Need the Dagnor's Cauldron middle island song. After duplicating Knuckle's instructions everything sounds great except Dagnor's. It is missing the bongo drums.

After a few mishaps I managed to get to the island to capure the tune, I had a request for Neriak Third Gate so included that aswell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDKCbRTrXfg

[Knuckle]

how do we utilize these midis from youtube?

[System Shock]

I did a Midi fix in 2017, I didn't get much of a response in this thread, I think that it was partly my fault as I linked to one of my Twitch streams. Main problem with that is they deleted the video after 60 days.

I have however uploaded another video, this time to YouTube. If you want me to capture any other MIDI from zones around Norrath let me know and I'll put up another Vid. I cannot really get to places like Cobalt Scar though as my highest toon is around level 20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ikot8EEtQ

Lilcea, may i ask what this "fix" was exactly? and the name of the soundfount's used if any. I've been trying to get the midi tracks sound like this for a long time and while I'm close, its not a close as this.

Here's an example of how my West Freeport gate track sounds.
https://streamable.com/yhedtx

[Lilcea]

Lilcea, may i ask what this "fix" was exactly? and the name of the soundfount's used if any. I've been trying to get the midi tracks sound like this for a long time and while I'm close, its not a close as this.

Here's an example of how my West Freeport gate track sounds.
https://streamable.com/yhedtx


We took the original instruments with all the timing etc. from the original files that the EQ devs did and combined them with the AWE32 instruments and timings.

We compared the tunes with the fix to my real hardware, my old Pentium with AWE32 sound card. There not just close, they sound exactly the same. So if you played the original EQ with an AWE32 like I did, it should sound the same as it did back in the day.

Assuming no mistakes have been made with the instruments that is :rolleyes:

I don't have any web hosting any more due to real life shenanigans but I'll try and source something.

Would be great if the P99 team could host it though ;)

Oh if anyone is interested this also works with the live servers, it worked fine when I was streaming the Agnarr server on Twitch when it launched. I’ve not tested it since then but as long as they have not buggered up the xmi player code too much it should be fine.

[Knuckle]

We took the original instruments with all the timing etc. from the original files that the EQ devs did and combined them with the AWE32 instruments and timings.

We compared the tunes with the fix to my real hardware, my old Pentium with AWE32 sound card. There not just close, they sound exactly the same. So if you played the original EQ with an AWE32 like I did, it should sound the same as it did back in the day.

Assuming no mistakes have been made with the instruments that is :rolleyes:

I don't have any web hosting any more due to real life shenanigans but I'll try and source something.

Would be great if the P99 team could host it though ;)

Oh if anyone is interested this also works with the live servers, it worked fine when I was streaming the Agnarr server on Twitch when it launched. I’ve not tested it since then but as long as they have not buggered up the xmi player code too much it should be fine.

I mean I think I could share this from my google drive? What are your step by steps we would need to make this happen and to update our game files/midi player.

[Kaa]

I hope this doesn't count as spam but, just popping in here to say that I'm also very interested in getting the MIDIs to work properly -- all 400+ (or whatever it was) of them. Right now it seems like certain melodies are out of key which play alongside melodies in key which is jarring. I'd be extremely grateful as well for a fix. Thanks for working on this all.

Edit: Note that the solution in the original post on this thread no longer works as one of the download links is broken.

[loramin]

We took the original instruments with all the timing etc. from the original files that the EQ devs did and combined them with the AWE32 instruments and timings.

We compared the tunes with the fix to my real hardware, my old Pentium with AWE32 sound card. There not just close, they sound exactly the same. So if you played the original EQ with an AWE32 like I did, it should sound the same as it did back in the day.

Assuming no mistakes have been made with the instruments that is :rolleyes:

I don't have any web hosting any more due to real life shenanigans but I'll try and source something.

Would be great if the P99 team could host it though ;)

Oh if anyone is interested this also works with the live servers, it worked fine when I was streaming the Agnarr server on Twitch when it launched. I’ve not tested it since then but as long as they have not buggered up the xmi player code too much it should be fine.

How big is this file? The wiki could probably host it (if it doesn't limit files by extension ... I'd have to check), and really the wiki is a better (more permanent) host for the instructions and such than a forum post also.

EDIT: It looks like you just have to use the syntax: [[Media:File.ogg]] (and presumably .zip, or .midi, or whatever would work also).

We already have an https://wiki.project1999.com/Audio_Enhancements page (although it could clearly use some love), and it would be the perfect place to add it. Alternatively you could also add it on its own page, and link to that page from there.

Feel free to PM me if you have questions.

[Maestrobob]

Hi Guys,

I posted this over at TAKP today, I figured I would post it here as well. It seems like Lilcea was down the same path as I was.

Just stumbled across this thread and thought I would share some thoughts and findings on this topic, as I have been researching it for a while.

A little history first - I played EQ in 2000 on a Win98 box with an AWE32 and remember how great the music sounded with this hardware. For years I've looked for ways to get the music sounding as I remember.

SO in the case of the EQ client itself - As mentioned previously; about the time when PoP came out, they removed the clients ability to dynamically switch the soundfont banks into EMU8000 cards. This had to do with them trying to fix the compatibility issue with Windows XP/NT and Creative drivers no longer allowing access to bank switching directly by applications. Windows 9x/DOS allowed for much lower level access to the hardware through the drivers. If you tried to use any period EQ client on a Windows XP/NT/2000 machine, soundfont bank switching would NOT work. Using a Trilogy or Luclin era client on a Win9x box with an AWE32 card and correct drivers should dynamically switch in the proper banks automatically.

Now let's dive into the meat and potatoes of what I've found. Using VirtualMIDISynth, Timidity++ etc. and loading the banks 1mgm.sf2 and synthusr.sf2 in the appropriate manner gets us CLOSE to what it sounded like, but it's not exact. This is because of how synthusr.sf2 relies on the onboard AWE32 ROM (in this case 1mgm.sf2) to patch in missing wavetables. This can be verified by opening synthusr.sf2 into a soundfont editor like Viena.

https://i.imgur.com/ZXoImLH.png

Here you can see synthusr.sf2 loaded into Viena. Notice on the left side under "samples" we see a list of !ROM: samples. These are the samples that synthusr.sf2 is expecting to import from the AWE32 ROM. If we click on one, we get an error that it isn't found.

Now let's load up 1mgm.sf2 into Viena - and what do we find? All of the samples synthusr.sf2 is looking for, of course.

https://i.imgur.com/3UTw8ij.png

Back to synthusr.sf2 - Now let's look at the instrument presets, and we'll notice that not only do many of the presets use a combination of wavetables - some from synthusr.sf2 and some from 1mgm.sf2, but synthusr.sf2 applies specific parameters to the wavetables from 1mgm.sf2 that cannot be reproduced by loading the soundfonts into a software emulation.

For this example, let's take Brass 1 from synthusr.sf2

https://i.imgur.com/yEZVsql.png

We can see that this instrument preset combines BrassSectC3 from 1mgm.sf2 4 different times to create a unique sound that's different from just using the preset from 1mgm.sf2 by itself. Every single preset in synthusr.sf2 uses the AWE32 ROM samples in this function. This is also true for all of the drum presets. The limitations of software like VirtualMIDISynth doesn't allow individual wavetable samples to be imported in these cases.

Now what we can do is import and reassign every instrument preset in synthusr.sf2 to use the correct samples, then save the resulting .sf2 out and in this case load it into XMPlay with an original EQ .xmi file. (note: This new .sf2 removes the need to load 1mgm.sf2 at all)

The results speak for themselves - Here are a few tracks using the new .sf2 with correct samples:

Akanon track 1:
https://sndup.net/2kts

Qeynos tracks 2 and 6:
https://sndup.net/5wfj
https://sndup.net/9gn5

West Karana (qey2hh1.xmi track 3)
https://sndup.net/853w

Kaladim tracks 5 and 6 (notorious for sounding terrible with the wrong soundfont)
https://sndup.net/536w
https://sndup.net/59m3

I think you'll notice the extra layers to instruments you'd normally be missing along with the correct percussion sounds. The pieces now sound as close as to what I can remember and how Mr. Jay Barbeau originally intended.

If you want to give it a try, the new .sf2 file is here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoRDVxylRHXl7SNAwkeYnaPLUVsZwpMA/view?usp=sharing) (I highly recommend XMPlay, as it has built-in soundfont support and you can load up the original EQ .xmi's with all of the subsongs).

As a last note - There is one other variable not taken into account - The EMU8000 on the AWE32 also allowed for hardware effects processing through EAX, which could be applied to soundfonts. I am not 100% sure about how the EQ client went about this, but if someone does get a Win9X box running with a Trilogy or Luclin client and AWE32, it would be interesting to compare results.

Edit: I have dumped all of the .xmi subtracks to .mp3 using this new soundfont. You can find the .zip of them all here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1177jg7JmkOUNwSKEDEPHnKnEo8k2KyjH/view?usp=sharing). (633 MB)

[kfmonster]

You can find the .zip of them all here


This is amazing, thank you!

[Magnus Of Rorck]

I use the FluidR3 or the Arachno soundFont with VirtualMIDISynth and it sounds like a full friggin' orchestra inside my box with Everquest.

[Maestrobob]

The previous .zip had a small issue where my MIDI player was limiting the max reverb per channel to 64 instead of the full 127.

I've recreated them with the correct reverb settings and put them in a .zip -> here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/12ZiNq1ax02uA4XoDDD4zY-nGyvp1nK0s/view?usp=sharing)

It should be a noticeable improvement for those who just want to listen.

[Scoojitsu]

Those all sound very very nice!

Could you post a quick tutorial on how to get this new sound file into the game?
I installed XMPlay and don't know what to do.
Thank you!!

[Maestrobob]

Those all sound very very nice!

Could you post a quick tutorial on how to get this new sound file into the game?
I installed XMPlay and don't know what to do.
Thank you!!
XMPlay is only if you want to listen to the MIDI files outside of the game.

The easiest and quickest method for getting the in game music to sound like this is to use BASSMIDI or VirtualMIDISynth, as outlined by the OP of this thread. Then, instead of using 1mgm.sf2, synthusr.sf2, or a combination of both, load my soundfont I posted earlier and all the in-game music should sound like the mp3s.

As a quick note, VirtualMIDISynth limits the max MIDI reverb and chorus to 64 by default. You will need to go into options and change both to 127.

There is one other way - which involves making the client use mp3 files instead of the .xmi. It's much more complex as you have to edit a ton of .emt files in the EQ folder, but you can see the details of what's involved on this (https://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/xmi-midi-background-music-using-mp3-files.6701/) post.

[norova]

Awesome work Maestrobob!! Updated the reverb/chorus to 127 and loaded your updated soundfont and things are sounding better than ever. Much appreciate the time and effort put into this!

[System Shock]

Hi Guys,

I posted this over at TAKP today, I figured I would post it here as well. It seems like Lilcea was down the same path as I was.

Just stumbled across this thread and thought I would share some thoughts and findings on this topic, as I have been researching it for a while.

A little history first - I played EQ in 2000 on a Win98 box with an AWE32 and remember how great the music sounded with this hardware. For years I've looked for ways to get the music sounding as I remember.

SO in the case of the EQ client itself - As mentioned previously; about the time when PoP came out, they removed the clients ability to dynamically switch the soundfont banks into EMU8000 cards. This had to do with them trying to fix the compatibility issue with Windows XP/NT and Creative drivers no longer allowing access to bank switching directly by applications. Windows 9x/DOS allowed for much lower level access to the hardware through the drivers. If you tried to use any period EQ client on a Windows XP/NT/2000 machine, soundfont bank switching would NOT work. Using a Trilogy or Luclin era client on a Win9x box with an AWE32 card and correct drivers should dynamically switch in the proper banks automatically.

Now let's dive into the meat and potatoes of what I've found. Using VirtualMIDISynth, Timidity++ etc. and loading the banks 1mgm.sf2 and synthusr.sf2 in the appropriate manner gets us CLOSE to what it sounded like, but it's not exact. This is because of how synthusr.sf2 relies on the onboard AWE32 ROM (in this case 1mgm.sf2) to patch in missing wavetables. This can be verified by opening synthusr.sf2 into a soundfont editor like Viena.

https://i.imgur.com/ZXoImLH.png

Here you can see synthusr.sf2 loaded into Viena. Notice on the left side under "samples" we see a list of !ROM: samples. These are the samples that synthusr.sf2 is expecting to import from the AWE32 ROM. If we click on one, we get an error that it isn't found.

Now let's load up 1mgm.sf2 into Viena - and what do we find? All of the samples synthusr.sf2 is looking for, of course.

https://i.imgur.com/3UTw8ij.png

Back to synthusr.sf2 - Now let's look at the instrument presets, and we'll notice that not only do many of the presets use a combination of wavetables - some from synthusr.sf2 and some from 1mgm.sf2, but synthusr.sf2 applies specific parameters to the wavetables from 1mgm.sf2 that cannot be reproduced by loading the soundfonts into a software emulation.

For this example, let's take Brass 1 from synthusr.sf2

https://i.imgur.com/yEZVsql.png

We can see that this instrument preset combines BrassSectC3 from 1mgm.sf2 4 different times to create a unique sound that's different from just using the preset from 1mgm.sf2 by itself. Every single preset in synthusr.sf2 uses the AWE32 ROM samples in this function. This is also true for all of the drum presets. The limitations of software like VirtualMIDISynth doesn't allow individual wavetable samples to be imported in these cases.

Now what we can do is import and reassign every instrument preset in synthusr.sf2 to use the correct samples, then save the resulting .sf2 out and in this case load it into XMPlay with an original EQ .xmi file. (note: This new .sf2 removes the need to load 1mgm.sf2 at all)

The results speak for themselves - Here are a few tracks using the new .sf2 with correct samples:

Akanon track 1:
https://sndup.net/2kts

Qeynos tracks 2 and 6:
https://sndup.net/5wfj
https://sndup.net/9gn5

West Karana (qey2hh1.xmi track 3)
https://sndup.net/853w

Kaladim tracks 5 and 6 (notorious for sounding terrible with the wrong soundfont)
https://sndup.net/536w
https://sndup.net/59m3

I think you'll notice the extra layers to instruments you'd normally be missing along with the correct percussion sounds. The pieces now sound as close as to what I can remember and how Mr. Jay Barbeau originally intended.

If you want to give it a try, the new .sf2 file is here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoRDVxylRHXl7SNAwkeYnaPLUVsZwpMA/view?usp=sharing) (I highly recommend XMPlay, as it has built-in soundfont support and you can load up the original EQ .xmi's with all of the subsongs).

As a last note - There is one other variable not taken into account - The EMU8000 on the AWE32 also allowed for hardware effects processing through EAX, which could be applied to soundfonts. I am not 100% sure about how the EQ client went about this, but if someone does get a Win9X box running with a Trilogy or Luclin client and AWE32, it would be interesting to compare results.

Edit: I have dumped all of the .xmi subtracks to .mp3 using this new soundfont. You can find the .zip of them all here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1177jg7JmkOUNwSKEDEPHnKnEo8k2KyjH/view?usp=sharing). (633 MB)

This is literally the holy grail of what i was looking for, Thanks Maestrobob.

At this point if the off key/pitch problems that arise after a few midi tracks play/repeat can be fixed along with the Infinitely looping tracks and multiple tracks not triggering from the same .xmi (e.g. the 3 combat tracks but we only hear 1 or the underwater track), the music will be flawless. Although i fear some of those may require rewriting code for the way titanium client handles xmi files vs the original/trilogy clients.

[Scoojitsu]

XMPlay is only if you want to listen to the MIDI files outside of the game.

The easiest and quickest method for getting the in game music to sound like this is to use BASSMIDI or VirtualMIDISynth, as outlined by the OP of this thread. Then, instead of using 1mgm.sf2, synthusr.sf2, or a combination of both, load my soundfont I posted earlier and all the in-game music should sound like the mp3s.

As a quick note, VirtualMIDISynth limits the max MIDI reverb and chorus to 64 by default. You will need to go into options and change both to 127.

There is one other way - which involves making the client use mp3 files instead of the .xmi. It's much more complex as you have to edit a ton of .emt files in the EQ folder, but you can see the details of what's involved on this (https://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/xmi-midi-background-music-using-mp3-files.6701/) post.

Thank you very much! :)

[Maestrobob]

This is literally the holy grail of what i was looking for, Thanks Maestrobob.

At this point if the off key/pitch problems that arise after a few midi tracks play/repeat can be fixed along with the Infinitely looping tracks and multiple tracks not triggering from the same .xmi (e.g. the 3 combat tracks but we only hear 1 or the underwater track), the music will be flawless. Although i fear some of those may require rewriting code for the way titanium client handles xmi files vs the original/trilogy clients.
Yes, unfortunately ever since around the time of DX8 patch/PoP, they completely borked the way the client handles some of the .xmi's events. The global MIDI file (gl.xmi) is barely used at all now. This includes the different combat music (gl(1)-(3)), all of the bard instruments (gl(10-17)), underwater music, etc.

My next task is to test out the new .sf2 with the Trilogy client, and I'm expecting all of those to work/sound perfectly.

[torusnc]

Windows 10, running WinEQ. I seem to be having problems getting P99 to pick up the OmniMIDI configuration. I have this list directly assigned to the P99 eqgame.exe.



Here is my current setup, very simple:


https://i.imgur.com/56up5mo.png




I've tried the flags as 1 1 0 0 over 0 0 1 1, and 0 0 1 1 over 1 1 0 0 in addition to the settings in the picture above. I haven't heard any difference whatsoever. Also have tried the creative 8MBGM soundfont.


Any ideas/input? Thank you.

[Lilcea]

How big is this file? The wiki could probably host it (if it doesn't limit files by extension ... I'd have to check), and really the wiki is a better (more permanent) host for the instructions and such than a forum post also.

EDIT: It looks like you just have to use the syntax: [[Media:File.ogg]] (and presumably .zip, or .midi, or whatever would work also).

We already have an https://wiki.project1999.com/Audio_Enhancements page (although it could clearly use some love), and it would be the perfect place to add it. Alternatively you could also add it on its own page, and link to that page from there.

Feel free to PM me if you have questions.

Sorry for the slow reply I've been in hospital again :(

I have the file on my google drive, it's 3 years old but still works, as you can see from the Youtube video's I did last month. Other than those vids I've not touched it since I last tested it against the real hardware. Feel free to put it onto the wiki.

It's a standard sound font, I'm not going to explain how to use it as i'd just be going over info already posted at the beginning of this this thread.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I8198BnHW89KWt4Ex3iBqbFQ-VmA7b9b?usp=sharing

[Maestrobob]

Sorry for the slow reply I've been in hospital again :(

I have the file on my google drive, it's 3 years old but still works, as you can see from the Youtube video's I did last month. Other than those vids I've not touched it since I last tested it against the real hardware. Feel free to put it onto the wiki.

It's a standard sound font, I'm not going to explain how to use it as i'd just be going over info already posted at the beginning of this this thread.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I8198BnHW89KWt4Ex3iBqbFQ-VmA7b9b?usp=sharing
Wow, you beat me to the fix by 3 years! ;) I compared our .sf2's in Viena and they are nearly 100% identical.

I noticed you used the AweROMGM.sf2 when you reassigned the samples, while I ended up using the official 1mgm.sf2 that came with E-mu's Soundfont Librarian.

There is one small discrepancy with the sample pianof5 #2 (used in presets 000: Piano 1, 001: Piano 2, and 003: Honky-Tonk). Since the AweROMGM.sf2 was put together manually by splitting the awe32.rom data, the wave split is a bit off and includes a small portion of the pianof5 sample before it (these occur back to back in the awe32.rom dump, so it'd be super easy to mess that up). I don't think it actually affects the presets though, since it clips before then.

Otherwise I am stoked that we can finally hear the music again as it was on the AWE cards! I know some people might not care at all, but there are still plenty of us who do. Now if there was only some way to fix the .xmi triggers in the binaries, it'd be absolutely perfect.

I've heard through the grapevine that Jay Barbeau had his hands on a higher fidelity soundfont which he used to make recordings of the soundtrack back in the day. I wonder if it is still sitting around on a hard disk somewhere...

[Lilcea]

Wow, you beat me to the fix by 3 years! ;) I compared our .sf2's in Viena and they are nearly 100% identical.

I noticed you used the AweROMGM.sf2 when you reassigned the samples, while I ended up using the official 1mgm.sf2 that came with E-mu's Soundfont Librarian.

There is one small discrepancy with the sample pianof5 #2 (used in presets 000: Piano 1, 001: Piano 2, and 003: Honky-Tonk). Since the AweROMGM.sf2 was put together manually by splitting the awe32.rom data, the wave split is a bit off and includes a small portion of the pianof5 sample before it (these occur back to back in the awe32.rom dump, so it'd be super easy to mess that up). I don't think it actually affects the presets though, since it clips before then.

Otherwise I am stoked that we can finally hear the music again as it was on the AWE cards! I know some people might not care at all, but there are still plenty of us who do. Now if there was only some way to fix the .xmi triggers in the binaries, it'd be absolutely perfect.

I've heard through the grapevine that Jay Barbeau had his hands on a higher fidelity soundfont which he used to make recordings of the soundtrack back in the day. I wonder if it is still sitting around on a hard disk somewhere...

I started to reverse engineer the main eq exe shortly after I did the sound font, unfortunately I did not get deep into it as I ended up in hospital with gut problems. I never really continued it after that. I may have another go at disassembling it as I really miss the extra music (The other combat tunes, boat music etc) that's missing.

I have a feeling the music lists with the track info is stored elsewhere though, I do seem to remember going though some of them to disable the really load and annoying lightening sound.

I dug the old pentium with the AWE32 out of the loft, didn't connect it up to the internet but the old everquest tutorial still works, I may do a video if I can find my cables to hook it up to the capture card. I don't think there is any audio in the tutorial though as far as I remember.

[Lilcea]

I had some free time this morning so I decided to go on a boat ride ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7S2lstG9vE

Ok A few things, at the moment it's just set to a zone wide trigger and on auto repeat. this can be changed quite easily.

What I need is some help, I'm pretty sure there is more boat MIDI, I seem to remember some wave sounds and a dock bell on one of them.

I'm hoping people can remember what tunes are missing with an approximate location in the zone that they triggered. If I can get that information I should be able to restore the missing tunes.

Should also be able to fix zones like West Karana and stop the MIDI from triggering every 10 seconds as you run along the shoreline and have the whole tune to play.

[Maestrobob]

I had some free time this morning so I decided to go on a boat ride ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7S2lstG9vE

Ok A few things, at the moment it's just set to a zone wide trigger and on auto repeat. this can be changed quite easily.

What I need is some help, I'm pretty sure there is more boat MIDI, I seem to remember some wave sounds and a dock bell on one of them.

I'm hoping people can remember what tunes are missing with an approximate location in the zone that they triggered. If I can get that information I should be able to restore the missing tunes.

Should also be able to fix zones like West Karana and stop the MIDI from triggering every 10 seconds as you run along the shoreline and have the whole tune to play.
Ah yes... the boat music. Here's what I remember from the year 2000! The boat music was always a little bit... buggy? It definitely didn't loop continuously though. I also don't think there was any other music, at least when taking the old world boats like from from Freeport to BB.

I'm an auditor on EQClassic, which uses the trilogy client. As far as I can tell, all of the .xmi triggers there seem to work exactly as I remember. I made a recording of the boat ride from FP to BB with the music below so you can hear exactly what happens.

https://youtu.be/YAZZuaonjpU

You can hear the music plays through completely once then loops once, but with most of the channels muted. Eventually the all come back in and then it ends. What's interesting is as soon as a different .xmi trigger event happens (for example the battle music), the boat music starts over again, etc. I'm thinking the .xmi was always on a zone-wide trigger, but after one loop, it's supposed to drop all of the channel volume to 0 until the next trigger. Just a hypothesis, as I haven't dove into the deep end yet.

I'm definitely curious to see what you can come up with on this issue.

[Lilcea]

Ah yes... the boat music. Here's what I remember from the year 2000! The boat music was always a little bit... buggy? It definitely didn't loop continuously though. I also don't think there was any other music, at least when taking the old world boats like from from Freeport to BB.

I'm an auditor on EQClassic, which uses the trilogy client. As far as I can tell, all of the .xmi triggers there seem to work exactly as I remember. I made a recording of the boat ride from FP to BB with the music below so you can hear exactly what happens.

https://youtu.be/YAZZuaonjpU

You can hear the music plays through completely once then loops once, but with most of the channels muted. Eventually the all come back in and then it ends. What's interesting is as soon as a different .xmi trigger event happens (for example the battle music), the boat music starts over again, etc. I'm thinking the .xmi was always on a zone-wide trigger, but after one loop, it's supposed to drop all of the channel volume to 0 until the next trigger. Just a hypothesis, as I haven't dove into the deep end yet.

I'm definitely curious to see what you can come up with on this issue.

Thanks, just watched it. I think the second tune that is a little quiet may be a separate track, I'm probably wrong though. I can lower the volume of the track at another trigger point that may have the same effect.

The other tune I mentioned remembering is track 8 in the gl.xmi. Maybe it’s from one of the other boats and I’m just remembering it wrong. I’ll try and investigate more later this week when I have some more free time.

[Maestrobob]

Just to be clear (for those of us who are more 'technically challenged'), we would download your synthusr-samplefix.zip and copy its contents into the Everquest directory, then run Everquest with BASSMIDI or VirtualMIDISynth loaded alongside EQ? Or, what do I have wrong...I'm very excited about this (and about the possibility of getting the combat music to shuffle properly between tracks, bring back the underwater music etc.), thank you for your hard work on it :-)
Download the synthusr-samplefix.zip, you can unzip the synthusr-samplefix.sf2 into any directory you want, doesn't have to be the Everquest directory.

The key here is that you have to load the synthusr.sf2 into BASSMIDI or VirtualMIDISynth first and as your only soundfont.

The next step is to make sure BASSMIDI or VirtualMIDISynth is set in Windows to be your default MIDI playback device. Microsoft removed MIDIMapper from Windows 7 and all versions since. You will need to use Coolsoft's MIDIMapper (or similar) to set VirtualMIDISynth to default. You can find it here -> https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/midimapper

Now you can start up Everquest and the music should play correctly. You can start EQ in a window, then pull up VirtualMIDISynth's mixer just to make sure it's going through there.

[Kaa]

Thank you! I actually had deleted that post, I'm glad you saw it and responded before I deleted it, I worried I was asking a 'stupid question' but your answer proves otherwise. Thanks and thanks for all your hard work on fixing EQ's music -- I look forward to the day when hopefully the combat music and underwater music work right too.

[Maestrobob]

I've found and fixed an issue with the synthusr-samplefix.sf2 not processing reverb, chorus, and mod wheel data correctly on modern software synths. The MP3 soundtrack .zip has also been updated with this change.

The updated soundfont is here -> https://bit.ly/307B2VT

The updated MP3 .zip is here -> https://bit.ly/30TOD1X

Big thanks to shortok for capturing audio from real AWE32 hardware for comparison.

[Maestrobob]

I've found and fixed an issue with the synthusr-samplefix.sf2 not processing reverb, chorus, and mod wheel data correctly on modern software synths. The MP3 soundtrack .zip has also been updated with this change.

The updated soundfont is here -> https://bit.ly/307B2VT

The updated MP3 .zip is here -> https://bit.ly/30TOD1X

Big thanks to shortok for capturing audio from real AWE32 hardware for comparison.
Here's a quick soundfont update - Messing around a bit more this morning, I was able to fix the wind instruments (along with some other issues). There's a cutoff filter that was defined in the soundfont, but wasn't translating right in BASSMIDI. Assigning the value manually to the instrument global made it work.

Here are some comparisons between a real Awe32 (in Win98 + EQT client, recorded by shortok) and the new soundfont used in XMPlay:

Qeynos Bard's Guild on real Awe32 - https://sndup.net/5n2f
Qeynos Bard's Guild on new soundfont - https://sndup.net/4dkw

Qeynos Tavern on real Awe32 - https://sndup.net/2p2y
Qeynos Tavern on new soundfont - https://sndup.net/7hjf

It also changes some other instruments, like Halo Pad and Choir Aahs:

Qeynos Caster Guild on real Awe32 - https://sndup.net/3vpz
Qeynos Caster Guild on new soundfont - https://sndup.net/7ssk

For anyone interested, the original links above to the soundfont and MP3s to all music files have been updated.

[Kaa]

Thanks for updating it again!

When you say the original links have been updated, do you mean in the original post a few pages ago? (I.e. not in the previous post of yours from the 27th?)

Also: Do you believe there's any chance of restoring the underwater music and the other battle musics?

Thanks.

[Maestrobob]

The links in my original post and from the 27th are to the same versioned file on my google drive, so yes. You can use those links to always get the latest versions.

Unlike the zone music, the different combat, underwater, bard instruments, sneak, etc. music are part of a global midi file (gl.xmi). The triggers for those seem to be hard coded into the EQ binary, which were screwed up when they switched over to DX8 and/or added support for the MP3 playback in PoP.

I'm pretty sure the only way to get those working again is to find a way to hack or otherwise redirect those calls externally (can't be done as far as I know).

[Shortok]

All my recordings be here. (http://www.planeofmischief.com/awe32.htm)

[Kaa]

Thanks Shortok, that's fuckin rad

I'm guessing the different racial versions of the character creation screen is also unfixable? I.e. each race when clicked on had a different musical arrangement or theme, originally. That would be awesome to bring back in P99 but if it's impossible, alas

[Shortok]

I recorded each race for 3-5mins so those audacity projects(and for everything else) are available if anyone wants to mash it together better than me pushing buttons. It took the instruments a while to switch out after the click so it gets sloppy in places.

I have to figure out if I can do velious with a velious client/emu or if I need to edit the xmi's/etc to get this dumb kunark client to play them. If anyone has solutions or wants to help edit the files or even VNC the 98 box, lmk.

[paronga]

First, thank you so much to you excellent talented people for working on this project. Music is such a key part of any video game.

I know this a long shot, does anyone know how to get this sort of thing working under linux/macOS under wine?

[vans21emu]

Does this still works? it seems some of the link is dead

[Arkaan]

*Most of the Information I found to complete this was taken from http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8893&

By changing your systems MIDI soundfont, you can recreate the AWE32 Soundblaster sound which is how the music was meant to be heard in EQ! (the MIDI soundfont that windows comes with by default is pretty terrible)

Preview the sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWj-oT75UPg&feature=g-upl
(you may not be super impressed but in comparison its a lot better, im too lazy to upload a comparison video, maybe i will at a later date)

------
HOW TO:
1.) Download 1mgm.sf2 to Desktop or any location [download] (http://p99.yourfirefly.com/1mgm.sf2)
2.) install bassmididrv.exe [download] (http://www.mudlord.info/bassmididrv/bassmididrv.exe)
3.) Run BASSMIDI Driver Configuration
4.) "Add" 1mgm.sf2 to soundfonts and click "Apply"
5.) Go to Advanced tab, under Default MIDI Synth, select BASSMIDI Driver and hit "Apply"
------

You can google "MIDI soundfont Banks" to see if you find any you like better

You might notice a little bit of glitchyness in the video with the sound, i think that's only because my fraps was running.

Enjoy!

Noticed you are suggesting to load 1MGM.sf2.

This is a compacted 1MB soundfont with GM fonts only. This was the ROM preloaded in the AWE32 line of cards from Creative.

There are several, much more rich fonts available. 1MGM.sf2 has larger variants such as 4GMGSMT.SF2 or CT4MGM.SF2. These are copyright, but if you can get your hands on an old school AWE64 Gold installation CD you will find them there.

If your goal is to make EQ music "sound like it used to in 1999" then it depends on what you were hearing. Windows 98 defaulted to MS GS Wavetable Synth regardless of soundcard. You may want to search the web for a better version of the built in windows soundbank, gm.dls.

If your goal is to make the music not have issues such as skipping and clipping then you need another synthesizer. I wont recommend building a computer with ISA slots and getting a 20 year old AWE64 Gold. Software can fix these issues nicely.

In either event, I recommend OmniMIDI https://github.com/KeppySoftware/OmniMIDI

This software allows you to load various soundbanks. It is a fork of BASSMIDI but is more updated and robust.

Once you have loaded the soundfont you can change the default midi device in Windows 10 by editing the registry under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\M icrosoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32 for 64 bit OS or Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Win dows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32 for 32 bit OS

There will be a REG_SZ key named "midi" which points to wdmaud.drv by default. This is the default windows audio driver which also contains Microsoft's software synth.

You should see your custom synth listed as "midi1" with the registered driver name.
Just copy the string from "midi1" and paste it into "midi"

To revert to default just make sure "midi" says "wdmaud.drv"

[Arkaan]

If you havent yet heard EQ music using 4GMGSMT.SF2 or CT4MGM.SF2 (they are the same) I would highly recommend doing so. This was the default font on SoundBlaster Live

[mischief419]

2nd link broken.

[Arkaan]

Ah yes... the boat music. Here's what I remember from the year 2000! The boat music was always a little bit... buggy? It definitely didn't loop continuously though. I also don't think there was any other music, at least when taking the old world boats like from from Freeport to BB.

I'm an auditor on EQClassic, which uses the trilogy client. As far as I can tell, all of the .xmi triggers there seem to work exactly as I remember. I made a recording of the boat ride from FP to BB with the music below so you can hear exactly what happens.

https://youtu.be/YAZZuaonjpU

You can hear the music plays through completely once then loops once, but with most of the channels muted. Eventually the all come back in and then it ends. What's interesting is as soon as a different .xmi trigger event happens (for example the battle music), the boat music starts over again, etc. I'm thinking the .xmi was always on a zone-wide trigger, but after one loop, it's supposed to drop all of the channel volume to 0 until the next trigger. Just a hypothesis, as I haven't dove into the deep end yet.

I'm definitely curious to see what you can come up with on this issue.

This music is also in Dagnors at the center island.

[faBBe]

A WORD OF WARNING for Windows 10 users.

If you can't login anymore after playing around with this "BASSMIDI driver".

I was curious. Ran it once, selected the sound font. Didn't hear any music in game.

I became annoyed and figured I didn't want to spend time on this customization of the game for now, so I tried running the program again.

Only now, the "Configure BASSMIDI Driver" app would NOT start anymore. So I was unable to reset the midi driver. :mad:

I realised this was likely the cause that I couldn't run the game anymore because the file Logs/dbg.txt stopped at

Sound Manager loaded 2165 filenames from soundassets.txt.

... and there was no "WorldAuthenticate" to be seen.

I figured that since that's what I was messing with recently, it was probably the cause.

Even though I uninstalled BASSMIDI driver, it let an invalid driver in the REGISTRY!

So now you're having fun running REGEDIT and editing the registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth (only on 64bit systems)

Look for the "midi" keys and replace the "bassmididrv" entries with the default "wdmaud.drv".

Finally, the game logs into character screen. :D

TLDR

- I used the BASSMIDI exe linked on Welgrim's page (https://p99.yourfirefly.com/) .. It ran once, but would not run again, therefore preventing me from resetting the MIDI device.
- Having uninstalled BASSMIDI ... the game now freezes on login as it can not find the now missing midi driver
- Had to manually clean the registry keys to get game to run again.

[faBBe]

My bad if you have the issue above the Registry keys modified by BASSMIDI driver are:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\ Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32

Cf. Stackoverflow answer How to re enable the default MIDI synth in Windows 10?
(https://superuser.com/questions/997896/how-to-re-enable-the-default-midi-synth-in-windows-10)

[Knuckle]

So I updated my windows 10 to latest patch, it ruined virtualmidisynth so I rolled back the windows10 patch. Uninstalled and Reinstalled the program, am now only using your sound font. BUT I also extracted the updated music files you posted and I don't if that will screw something up please advice based on the screenshots below:

[Maestrobob]

So I updated my windows 10 to latest patch, it ruined virtualmidisynth so I rolled back the windows10 patch. Uninstalled and Reinstalled the program, am now only using your sound font. BUT I also extracted the updated music files you posted and I don't if that will screw something up please advice based on the screenshots below:

Dumping the mp3s into your EQ directory won't affect your install at all, so you'll be fine. Just know that if you're trying to get the EQ client to use them in game, it won't unless you change all of the zone emitter files (*.emt in the EQ dir) to point to the mp3 instead of the xmi. You can open any zone_emt file in your EQ dir with a text editor to see what I mean.

If you are using my soundfont to play back the in game MIDI music, it should work perfectly fine with VMS. Your soundfont chain is correct (synthusr-samplefix-BASSMIDI.sf2 only). If it's not working, then it's likely VMS is not set as the default MIDI mapper. Windows 10 has a terrible habit of changing default midi back to the MS synth on my box constantly, and if you recently rolled back it has probably reset the registry values for it. You'll have to use something like Coolsoft's MIDI mapper to change it back. -> https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/midimapper

[Knuckle]

Dumping the mp3s into your EQ directory won't affect your install at all, so you'll be fine. Just know that if you're trying to get the EQ client to use them in game, it won't unless you change all of the zone emitter files (*.emt in the EQ dir) to point to the mp3 instead of the xmi. You can open any zone_emt file in your EQ dir with a text editor to see what I mean.

If you are using my soundfont to play back the in game MIDI music, it should work perfectly fine with VMS. Your soundfont chain is correct (synthusr-samplefix-BASSMIDI.sf2 only). If it's not working, then it's likely VMS is not set as the default MIDI mapper. Windows 10 has a terrible habit of changing default midi back to the MS synth on my box constantly, and if you recently rolled back it has probably reset the registry values for it. You'll have to use something like Coolsoft's MIDI mapper to change it back. -> https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/midimapper

Bob thanks again for your help, your program definitely works and i do have midi mapper set up as such below.

my question to you and anyone else, does it feel like music does not trigger often enough? is there a fix or confirmation into this?

[pdub]

This is a TL;DR of what I had to do to get EQ music sounding right on Win10 , Feb 2021. Big THX to Maestrobob for doing his musical magic and fixing the soundfont file manually somehow!! Bob is doing The Great Work!!

1. Download the soundfont file that Maestrobob graciously provided. I will quote it here, but check his original post to make sure he hasn't provided a newer version:

The updated soundfont is here -> https://bit.ly/307B2VT

2. Download OmniMidi here, install it (get latest setup exe): https://github.com/KeppySoftware/OmniMIDI/releases

3. Run OmniMidi Configurator, click the + button on the right hand side, browse to & select the soundfont .SF2 file (that you downloaded in step 1). It should be the ONLY soundfont file loaded in OmniMidi Configurator. There is no need for the 1mgm.sf2 or any of those other soundfont files; ONLY load the one provided from maestrobob!!

NOTE - I open OmniMidi configurator every time i start up windows / before I play EQ, because Win10 seems to 'overwrite' the default MIDI device. OmniMidi will check this when it starts up, and ask you if you want to fix it (click yes)

4. I also use the Coolsoft MIDI Mapper prior to launching EQ to quickly ensure that OmniMidi is set as the default MIDI device. I dont think this is required, but it is a nice tool to view and set the Default MIDI device without having to manually browse/update registry values.

5. Also, it seems like in-game you need to turn ON "Enviroment Sounds" in the options, as apparently some (if not all) music in game is considered an environment sound. Unfortunately, this means you will also hear the annoying wind tunnel noises, or ocean breeze noises in some areas. I manually toggle environment sounds off when those annoyances start playing, and then turn them back on otherwise so i can hear music.

Again many thanks to Maestrobob for his excellent work on the fixed soundfont file, it makes the music sound great.

[Gustoo]

Nothing can sound better than original MIDI I hope nirgon is working around the clock to correct this.

My music doesn’t trigger reliably like in combat and stuff it’s odd.

[foxchris509]

Pretty cool thanks for this! Sounds great im really diggin it

[Maestrobob]

This is a TL;DR of what I had to do to get EQ music sounding right on Win10 , Feb 2021. Big THX to Maestrobob for doing his musical magic and fixing the soundfont file manually somehow!! Bob is doing The Great Work!!

1. Download the soundfont file that Maestrobob graciously provided. I will quote it here, but check his original post to make sure he hasn't provided a newer version:



Thanks, pdub. That bit.ly link will always redirect to the latest version of the fixed soundfont.

As an aside for those interested; The SoundFont spec itself went through several revisions back in the mid to late 90's and there are some features that were removed/changed. For example, version 2.01 (the version used by Miles SS in the EQ engine in 1998) had a velocity to filter cutoff modulator that was removed in version 2.04 of the spec, to which BASSMIDI and other software synths adhere.

The end result is that while it is very close, the music will never be 100% faithful to what it sounded like on a real AWE32 under Win9x with period correct drivers. Until we have completely accurate 2.01 emulation, this current method will be the absolute closest we'll get to having correct sounding music playback on modern hardware.

I would like to also give huge thanks to shortok, who has put a ton of time, money and effort into recording EQ's music on real hardware (you can find his captures here (http://www.planeofmischief.com/awe32.htm)). Having those references for comparison has been a massive help.

[bivouac]

Thanks for sharing a way to hear this music as it was meant to sound! I enjoyed it in P99 for a while, but I had to stop using it after I ran into some technical issues between VirtualMIDISynth and other games.

In December, I read someone's post on the P99 reddit about adding new music into Kunark zones using a tool to convert the sound trigger files into the newer, less cryptic, EMT format. Since then, I've done a similar conversion for all Trilogy zones with Maestrobob's mp3 transfers instead.

TrilogyEMT v0.1 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j8TJ59TjlQvPaomNutrN2VxAHGdIhRkc/view?usp=sharing)

The install is detailed in the readme, but it's basically drag-and-drop into your EQ folder. The EMT conversions aren't perfect and there's more I hope to add to them. Please share any feedback if you try it out.

[Maestrobob]

The install is detailed in the readme, but it's basically drag-and-drop into your EQ folder. The EMT conversions aren't perfect and there's more I hope to add to them. Please share any feedback if you try it out.

Thank you, bivouac. This is exactly how I believe the music should be implemented going forward, and how I've personally played P99/TAKP/Live over the past months. It would be great if a package like this were to eventually be added to the official P99 file distribution.

This method fixes many issues with using the current in-game MIDI engine, including the pitch bend modulator not resetting (out of tune notes after a while). It also removes any software synth dependency and should work the same for everyone on all configurations.

The only major downside is that any global .xmi (gl.xmi) music, with the exception of combattheme1/2 and deaththeme, will still rely on MIDI playback since there are no EMTs associated with them.

Here are my trilogy EMTs for comparison -> http://bit.ly/2MZJyC6

The mp3 names in my package are changed to match the XMPlay output from my mp3 zip, otherwise the data should match.

[bivouac]

The only major downside is that any global .xmi (gl.xmi) music, with the exception of combattheme1/2 and deaththeme, will still rely on MIDI playback since there are no EMTs associated with them.

I managed to work around this somewhat. This fix involves modifying eqgame.exe, which may get your account banned on a server you do not own.

I opened eqgame.exe in Notepad and Ctrl+F searched to find gl.xmi, then changed it to gl.mp3. As far as I know, Titanium only references gl.xmi at bankers, merchants, and class trainers. I settled for using the banker/merchant music as "gl.mp3" since I assume mp3s can't have multiple tracks like an XMI. It worked as expected on a local eqemu server.

[Maestrobob]

Very interesting... I wouldn't have expected opening the game binary in notepad would've revealed specific filenames. I loaded eqgame.exe into HxD and saw a ton of strings and direct filename calls, including some Miles SS stuff.

Makes me think it could be possible to hack the executable enough to fix the gl music triggers. That's a little above me, so maybe someone with more experience could give their opinion. It really sucks that so many of the gl subtracks were disabled - having the swimming music, sneak music, all 3 battle songs, and the string/wind/brass/percussion bard instrument queues back would be fantastic.

[void221]

About this TrilogyEMT v0.1 ...

i installed first this Coolsoft MIDI Mapper and this OmniMidi .. the music was really better , but i also got some game crashes so i deinstalled these 2 programs again and installed this mp3-variant TrilogyEMT.

i played now not much but i run to any places in freeport with new music for testing.
everthing works fine and i have got no game crashes ... tomorrow i will play all day long and keep an eye on this.

thank you for your work , this makes the game really better.

[evogelion]

Thanks for all the hard work put into this and I'll be watching the progress at the edge of my seat for future developments.

The amount of talent that goes into all these mods is mind blowing.

T It would be great if a package like this were to eventually be added to the official P99 file distribution.

Yeah since this was a classic experience that many of us had back in the day.

[Muggens]

Thanks Maestrobob, this is sounding very good to my ears!



As a quick note, VirtualMIDISynth limits the max MIDI reverb and chorus to 64 by default. You will need to go into options and change both to 127.


Newest release of VMS wont let me change the reverb/chorus, seems bugged, stuck at 64

[krozar]

For those on a Linux distro (never could get Directmusic working for me in WINE) there's fluidsynth and it has a GUI front-end called qsynth. i would expect most package managers to have these. Arch has them on pacman and according to the wiki ubuntu and its forks have it as well on apt.

No need to have a GUI open for MIDI support. Fluidsynth is a command line application and as such can be run in the background.

Here is the command I run:
fluidsynth -a pulseaudio -m alsa_seq -i -C off -R off -g 0.3 -s /usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM.sf2 &> /dev/null &
A breakdown of the options and arguments I use:
-a, audio driver (you can use pulseaudio or alsa here. I prefer pulse whenever possible as alsa can hog the sound card)
-m, midi driver
-i, suppresses the fluidsynth shell
-C, chorus (personal preference to: off)
-R, reverb (personal preference once again)
-g, gain (0 - 5 x.1 float, defaults to 0.2)
-s, server mode (doesn't seem to run its own service, just keeps it running if the fluidsynth shell is closed)
/usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM.sf2, replace this with your preferred soundfont.
&> /dev/null suppresses all output
& runs it as a background process (note, if you close the terminal window it will terminate all BG processes associated with that session)

You can place it in a shell script that you may already be using to start the Titanium client or if you use Lutris you can have it start a script with that command. Select your EQ installation in Lutris, go to options, under the system options tab there's a field for pre-launch script.

I tried to run this as a Systemd service, but I'm having issues getting pulse and alsa to agree running fluidsynth as root. You can try it with a Type=simple service file and load it on command with systemd start fluidsynth. However I would expect more issues trying to get this to run automatically at boot since audio tends to start with the user login and doesn't like switching users, even to root. But for me the background process works nicely.

[starkind]

TkJ9R9Jppes

Full Playlist on a Roland
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_BhbJAAueZSK0QQRx1vcnNql5xHsyVq1

Sounds magical.

Going to see if there's a Roland emulator or soundfont out there.

xXw6cNEvy2M

Something horrificly wrong under windows 11 alienware default configs, there's a horrible ringing during combat music.

[krozar]

Full Playlist on a Roland

Sounds magical.

Going to see if there's a Roland emulator or soundfont out there.

Something horrificly wrong under windows 11 alienware default configs, there's a horrible ringing during combat music.

Nothing better than a Roland back in the 90s. I later realized how much I was missing out by not having one.

Plugged 'soundfont' into all Arch packages (including the Arch User Repo) and got some results but nothing regarding Roland specifically. (Likely a copyright issue)


talzahr  arch  ~/build/fluidsynth  pikaur -Ss soundfont

Searching... [---]###
extra/fluidsynth 2.2.3-1 (pro-audio) [installed]
A real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications
community/fluajho 1.6.2-3 (pro-audio)
A simple sf2 soundfont host/player
community/freepats-general-midi 20210329-1 (soundfonts)
Free and Open general MIDI sound set
community/liquidsfz 0.2.3-1 (lv2-plugins pro-audio)
SFZ Sampler
community/polyphone 2.2.0-2 (pro-audio)
A soundfont editor for quickly designing musical instruments
community/sfizz 1.1.1-1 (lv2-plugins pro-audio vst3-plugins)
SFZ library and LV2 plugin
community/soundfont-fluid 3.1-3 [installed]
FluidR3 soundfont
community/timidity++ 2.15.0-5 (pro-audio)
A MIDI to WAVE converter and player
multilib/lib32-fluidsynth 2.2.3-1
A real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications
aur/soundfont-unison 1.00-3 (33, 0.17)
A lean and clean GM/GS soundbank
aur/soundfont-sgm 2.01-1 (20, 0.18)
A balanced, good quality GM soundbank
aur/soundfont-titanic 1.2-3 (13, 0.19)
A public domain, high quality MIDI soundfont by Luke Sena
aur/soundfont-generaluser 1.471-1 (12, 0.19)
A small and well balanced GM/GS soundbank for many styles of music.
aur/soundfont-zelda3sf2 20040819-1 (8, 0.00)
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past soundfont for MIDI playback
aur/soundfont-zeldamcsf2 20050118-1 (8, 0.00)
Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap soundfont for MIDI playback
aur/soundfont-fatboy 0.790-1 (6, 0.02)
A free GM/GS SoundFont for classic video game MIDI, emulation, and general usage
aur/soundfont-arachno 1.0-1 (4, 0.17)
GM/GS soundbank courtesy of Maxime Abbey.
aur/soundfont-sso-sf2 1.0-1 (4, 0.02)
The Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra by Mattias Westlund. (SF2 format)
aur/fluidsynth-git 1.1.8.r868.e485129-1 (4, 0.00)
A real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications (development version)
aur/freepats-ydp-grand-piano 20160804-1 (2, 0.46)
Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano sf2 SoundFont
aur/soundfont-opl3-fm-128m 1.0-1 (3, 0.00)
A SoundFont designed to simulate the classic MIDI sound of the Sound Blaster 16 (and other YM262 enabled hardware).
aur/soundfont-toh 3.4-1 (3, 0.00)
Don Allen's Timbres of Heaven soundfont
aur/polyphone-git 2.2.0.r98.5d9179b6-1 (1, 0.95)
A soundfont editor for quickly designing musical instruments
aur/swami 2.2.1-1 (2, 0.00)
A SoundFont editor
aur/konfyt-git r181.81b5295-1 (2, 0.00)
A digital keyboard workstation - search for SFZs/soundfonts, create layered patches on the fly, and more
aur/fluidplug-git r36.889b256-1 (2, 0.00)
SoundFonts as LV2 plugins via FluidSynth
aur/fluida.lv2 0.7-2 (1, 0.10)
An LV2 plugin which wraps the fluidsynth SF2 soundfont player
aur/soundfonts-aur-meta 0.0.1-1 (1, 0.00)
Installs all the soundfont packages in the AUR
aur/fluidsynth-dssi 1.0.0-1 (0, 0.00)
A FluidSynth soundfont-playing plugin
aur/mingw-w64-fluidsynth 2.2.3-1 (0, 0.00)
A real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications (mingw-w64)
aur/mingw-w64-fluidsynth-bin 2.1.2-1 (0, 0.00)
A real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications (mingw-w64)
aur/sfarklib-git 20200903-2 (0, 0.00)
Library for decompressing sfArk soundfonts.
aur/soundfont-jeux 2.4-4 (0, 0.00)
Jeux organ soundfont
aur/soundfont-personalcopy 5.1f-1 (0, 0.00)
A large free SoundFont.
aur/soundfont-realfont 2.3-1 (0, 0.00)
GM soundbank by Michel Villeneuve.
aur/soundfont-sunshine-perc 1-1 (0, 0.00)
Five drum/percussion soundfonts from Sunshine Studios. Non-commercial use only.


soundfont-opl3-fm-128m package looks interesting: "A SoundFont designed to simulate the classic MIDI sound of the Sound Blaster 16 (and other YM262 enabled hardware)."

soundfonts-aur-meta has all soundfonts on the AUR in one package.

AUR packages will simply download them from a source that's defined in the PKGBUILD script, so they can be utilized by Windows users as well. The AUR meta package above simply lists the other soudnfont packages in the depends array. The soundfont-opl3-fm-128m package calls a source url: https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/15/OPL-3_FM_128M.zip (the raw PKGBUILD script (https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=soundfont-opl3-fm-128m))

Also, Fluidsynth has a Windows10 build on their Github repo (https://github.com/FluidSynth/fluidsynth/releases).

I've started doing some P99 EverQuest videos on Youtube, so I'll test some of the soundfonts out and provide a good solution for Windows and Linux users alike. Also the Linux wiki page needs some serious updating so I will work on that as well. Everyone deserves good music without the strange looping sounds. *EDIT: I may even make a build of the qsynth qt GUI front-end for Windows. Presently it's only released for UNIX(like) environments. Since it interfaces directly with fluidsynth, it should be relatively quick to do (famous last words).

[VII]

I've found and fixed an issue with the synthusr-samplefix.sf2 not processing reverb, chorus, and mod wheel data correctly on modern software synths. The MP3 soundtrack .zip has also been updated with this change.

The updated soundfont is here -> https://bit.ly/307B2VT

The updated MP3 .zip is here -> https://bit.ly/30TOD1X

Big thanks to shortok for capturing audio from real AWE32 hardware for comparison.

how does this work? do i have to extract all the mp3 to a folder somewhere in the EverQuest install first then setup the soundfont? or are these just mp3 of how the game will sound using this soundfont and they're just for reference?

[Maestrobob]

are these just mp3 of how the game will sound using this soundfont and they're just for reference?

This is correct. The mp3s were created using XMPlay to play the game MIDI with the fixed soundfont. They represent what the music should sound like in-game with the soundfont configured properly.

There is a method to replace most of the classic .XMI zone midi's with mp3 on the p99 client, but it's rather involved and requires editing all of the zone emitter files in the EQ directory.

[Vormotus]

as an FYI under Linux Qsynth, a frontend for fluidsynth works flawlessly.

I can hear Cobalt Scar , Qeynos, KFC and other specific midi music for areas perfectly.

I use the AWE 32 soundfont and with Qsynth you can literally add any kind of effect to the music to enhance it.

I highly recommend it :)

[letdaddydoit]

no music in game and was working fine but now nothing and can't go back to my original midi. Any advice?

[AbstractVision]

Same issue here, I installed it, and it worked the first time I loaded up P99 after install. Then it quit working, and I just noticed I no longer have any music at all in game. No combat music, city music, nothing...

[AbstractVision]

Thanks for sharing a way to hear this music as it was meant to sound! I enjoyed it in P99 for a while, but I had to stop using it after I ran into some technical issues between VirtualMIDISynth and other games.

In December, I read someone's post on the P99 reddit about adding new music into Kunark zones using a tool to convert the sound trigger files into the newer, less cryptic, EMT format. Since then, I've done a similar conversion for all Trilogy zones with Maestrobob's mp3 transfers instead.

TrilogyEMT v0.1 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j8TJ59TjlQvPaomNutrN2VxAHGdIhRkc/view?usp=sharing)

The install is detailed in the readme, but it's basically drag-and-drop into your EQ folder. The EMT conversions aren't perfect and there's more I hope to add to them. Please share any feedback if you try it out.


I wish you posted this as its own thread, I have had nothing but trouble trying to get music working in P99 with several different MIDI programs... and I install this and BAM everything works better than it ever has. There is music changing in cities... vendor music, bank music, guild music, arena music, login music, etc As the legendary scoundrel Todd Howard once said "It just works.". Thank you for this and seriously make it its own thread, people are still looking at the original post in this thread that hasn't been updated since 2012 and its breaking music in game.

[Jazzi]

Just thought I would add to first post, If you use synthusr.sf2 from an original Everquest Trilogy install it sounds pretty much 100% perfect, Not sure why with titanium synthusr.sf2 some of the Qeynos audio is not perfect guess next step is check other towns anyway give it a go and see if any of you guys notice the difference.

[Knuckle]

Sorry not sorry to bump this thread. Any configuration tweaks recommended for the basic omnimidi approach? I just dumped in maestrobobs soundfont to omnimidi and set omnimidi each restart.

1.) Anyone found some good configuration tweaks to get more out of omnimidi, such as any settings to instruments, etc.?

2.) Anyone found something they believe to be vastly superior with no downsides? I'm quite happy with it but still get annoyed by sour notes from time to time.

[Eloora]

I also have followed the last few pages of this thread and grabbed Maestrobob's soundfont file, loaded it into OmniMidi etc. I couldn't really tell if the underwater music is supposed to be fixed/play with this file or not - is it?

[Maestrobob]

I couldn't really tell if the underwater music is supposed to be fixed/play with this file or not - is it?

Unlike zone music, which is triggered by the zone emitter files, the triggers to play the underwater music, sneak music, bard instruments, and cycling through the 3 combat songs from the global XMI were broken a long time ago. When the PoP client came out and introduced a MP3 soundtrack, the existing MIDI playback engine was butchered in the process and was never fixed.

There's currently no way to get those songs working in the Titanium client. The soundfont I created serves only to make what songs do work sound like they originally did on AWE32/64 hardware back in the day. Even then, there are still major problems with Titanium's MIDI playback that a soundfont can't circumvent.

2.) Anyone found something they believe to be vastly superior with no downsides? I'm quite happy with it but still get annoyed by sour notes from time to time.

Unfortunately, the only way to avoid out of tune notes is to work around Titanium's MIDI engine entirely by going the route of changing the .emt files to use MP3's instead.

[Eloora]

Thanks for the reply, Maestrobob! Shame about those midi files being borked beyond reasonable repair :(. I listened to a sample of the sneak music (I'd never heard it before) and loved it - so mischievous!

[Knuckle]

XMPlay is only if you want to listen to the MIDI files outside of the game.

The easiest and quickest method for getting the in game music to sound like this is to use BASSMIDI or VirtualMIDISynth, as outlined by the OP of this thread. Then, instead of using 1mgm.sf2, synthusr.sf2, or a combination of both, load my soundfont I posted earlier and all the in-game music should sound like the mp3s.

As a quick note, VirtualMIDISynth limits the max MIDI reverb and chorus to 64 by default. You will need to go into options and change both to 127.

There is one other way - which involves making the client use mp3 files instead of the .xmi. It's much more complex as you have to edit a ton of .emt files in the EQ folder, but you can see the details of what's involved on this (https://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/xmi-midi-background-music-using-mp3-files.6701/) post.

Yeah they didnt have great instructions im a bit confused. I THINK I know what to do, but could use a confirmation.

EDIT:

So FIRST I followed the README instructions:

---Installing---
1. Back up all existing .emt files in your EverQuest directory.
2. Copy all .emt files in the EMT folder to your EQ directory. Overwrite any files that already exist.
3. Copy the /music folder into your EQ directory. What is this step doing? And I was supposed to move the entire folder so that I have a "music" folder in my eq directory, or just paste the files inside into the main directory?
-Optional
4. Back up combattheme1.mp3, combattheme2.mp3, deaththeme.mp3, and eqtheme.mp3.
5. Copy the four files from the optional folder and replace those in your EQ directory.

Based on this screenshot from the spreadsheet in the download:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/708040826210746371/1127648299248263209/image.png?width=952&height=164

EDIT: So with having followed steps 1-5 in the readme, is this spreadsheet simply explaining what was already done when I overwrote the EMTs? Or is this an additional step that needs to be done?

I am taking the downloaded mp3 from the music folder, making multiple copies of it with the name of the xmis in my everquest directory, and overwriting them with the same name? So I am taking a copy of the mp3 "theme" and renaming it "freportn.3" and pasting it into my main directory as a mp3? Am I missing a step? And why would that play in lieu of the xmi file if they have different file types?

Last, am I supposed to be doing anything with the XMI to MP3.ods file?

[Maestrobob]

Yeah they didnt have great instructions im a bit confused.

EDIT: So with having followed steps 1-5 in the readme, is this spreadsheet simply explaining what was already done when I overwrote the EMTs? Or is this an additional step that needs to be done?

I am taking the downloaded mp3 from the music folder, making multiple copies of it with the name of the xmis in my everquest directory, and overwriting them with the same name? So I am taking a copy of the mp3 "theme" and renaming it "freportn.3" and pasting it into my main directory as a mp3? Am I missing a step? And why would that play in lieu of the xmi file if they have different file types?

Last, am I supposed to be doing anything with the XMI to MP3.ods file?

It's explaining what was already done. The only folders you need to worry about are the music, optional, and EMT folders. It's a lot simpler than it looks.

1. Copy the entire music folder into your root EverQuest game directory (so that it's a subfolder in your EverQuest folder).

2. Copy the .emt files from the EMT folder directly into your root EverQuest game folder overwriting the existing .emt files (probably good idea to back these up first.)

3. If you want the main EQ theme, combat themes, and death theme, copy the .mp3 files from the optional folder directly into your root EverQuest game folder.

Done.

Alternatively, you can just download and extract my .emt's and music directly into your EverQuest folder (overwrite any existing files): https://bit.ly/3paKc0w

It's larger, much less optimized and includes redundant songs, but accomplishes the same thing as bivouac's package.

[Knuckle]

Thanks for responding Bob, looks like I am all set then!

[Eloora]

Is there a way to replace the main EQ theme music with a silent file? I enjoy having the periodic zone music enabled but the theme that plays on repeat when sitting at character select has worn on me, and prevents me from being able to just camp out and walk away from my PC if I need to.

[Deathrydar]

Does anyone have a fix for the midis now? The link no longer works in the original post.

[IzHaN80]

Just download this program instead, is more modern and lets you change MIDI in real-time:

https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth

For the soundfonts use this link https://archive.org/download/soundfonts_201910:

I highly recommend the ChoriumRevA.sf2 and if you feel nostalgic and wanna listen to the game just as you would have done back in 1999 with an Soundblaster AWE 32/64 download the AWEROMGM.sf2

A lot of nice sf2 out there, but i vote for those 2 as the best from that list.

[f4k3n4m3]

For those on a Linux distro (never could get Directmusic working for me in WINE) there's fluidsynth and it has a GUI front-end called qsynth. i would expect most package managers to have these. Arch has them on pacman and according to the wiki ubuntu and its forks have it as well on apt.

No need to have a GUI open for MIDI support. Fluidsynth is a command line application and as such can be run in the background.

Here is the command I run:
fluidsynth -a pulseaudio -m alsa_seq -i -C off -R off -g 0.3 -s /usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM.sf2 &> /dev/null &
A breakdown of the options and arguments I use:
-a, audio driver (you can use pulseaudio or alsa here. I prefer pulse whenever possible as alsa can hog the sound card)
-m, midi driver
-i, suppresses the fluidsynth shell
-C, chorus (personal preference to: off)
-R, reverb (personal preference once again)
-g, gain (0 - 5 x.1 float, defaults to 0.2)
-s, server mode (doesn't seem to run its own service, just keeps it running if the fluidsynth shell is closed)
/usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM.sf2, replace this with your preferred soundfont.
&> /dev/null suppresses all output
& runs it as a background process (note, if you close the terminal window it will terminate all BG processes associated with that session)

You can place it in a shell script that you may already be using to start the Titanium client or if you use Lutris you can have it start a script with that command. Select your EQ installation in Lutris, go to options, under the system options tab there's a field for pre-launch script.

I tried to run this as a Systemd service, but I'm having issues getting pulse and alsa to agree running fluidsynth as root. You can try it with a Type=simple service file and load it on command with systemd start fluidsynth. However I would expect more issues trying to get this to run automatically at boot since audio tends to start with the user login and doesn't like switching users, even to root. But for me the background process works nicely.
For anyone having issues with music on Linux, you want to replace the FluidR3_GM.sf2 from the guides for linux and use one of the .sf2 from this thread.
Synthusr-samplefix is night and day different from FluidR3. FluidR3 might be good for general purpose, but it mangles EQ midis.

[f4k3n4m3]

Actually 1mgm, synthus2 and synthus were the best combination on Qsynth on linux. Synthusr-samplefix might combine them, but it does not sound the same.

[Kelendil_Arclight]

This is correct. The mp3s were created using XMPlay to play the game MIDI with the fixed soundfont. They represent what the music should sound like in-game with the soundfont configured properly.

There is a method to replace most of the classic .XMI zone midi's with mp3 on the p99 client, but it's rather involved and requires editing all of the zone emitter files in the EQ directory.

One of the issues I’m having with this fix is that the music sounds incredible but the vendor music is very very low compared to the game music now. So turning down the city music, for example, makes the vendor and bank track inaudible. Any fix to equalize these sounds? Love the rest though.

[Qaedain]

Necrobumping to highlight Merlin_GMV32 as a sound font. It's extremely balanced instrumentation and sounds great on EverQuest midis. Kelethin sounds like itself... but better. Just got back into EQ again and spent hours trying different SF2s to retain the same feel, but improve it.

Available here: https://archive.org/download/free-soundfonts-sf2-2019-04

Titanic 200 GM-GS is also good, and better in horns (imo) than Merlin: https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/1720 -- the string on nro3 sound fantastic with this. Literal goosebumps when I heard it the first time.

[Nori]

I recently purchased a modular (MIDI) sound canvas to bring life back to vintage game music. Does anybody know how I might be able to route the original EQ midi music playback through my external sound canvas via MIDI? I'm using a USB-to-MIDI adapter to my Roland SC-55.

I think it's what you guys are doing with system sound fonts, but instead of the system generating the sound, the external MIDI device would create the sound.

Any thoughts?

[Knuckle]

If I got an actual soundblaster 32 awe woudl it even be possible to run on a modern PC? i run a modius DAC from my studio speakers to USB on the PC. Is there a way I could funnel a soundblaster to run only on EQ to give native MIDI sound with no emulation?

[Knuckle]

Necrobumping to highlight Merlin_GMV32 as a sound font. It's extremely balanced instrumentation and sounds great on EverQuest midis. Kelethin sounds like itself... but better. Just got back into EQ again and spent hours trying different SF2s to retain the same feel, but improve it.

Available here: https://archive.org/download/free-soundfonts-sf2-2019-04

Titanic 200 GM-GS is also good, and better in horns (imo) than Merlin: https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/1720 -- the string on nro3 sound fantastic with this. Literal goosebumps when I heard it the first time.

Dude sweet I am gonna test this out.. Its been a year since I had MIDI since I built a new PC and got EQ up and running recently... Do you recommend using this with the coolsynth program or do you use something alternative?

EDIT: Listened to that F-Zero sample.....It definitely sounds way different from the original SNES version, as I have an original SNES cartridge plugged into my CRT right next to the PC here, haha. But it's not bad...It's just, way less "crunchy" than the retro sound I am used to, a bit too high on treble I think with certain instruments.

[Knuckle]

I cant even get the coolsynth midi to kick in at ALL even using the built in mapper as well as the seperate download. I also made sure the midis were set to kick out to my speakers which I know is obvious but I am at my wits end of troubleshooting on this new pc with win11. Going to try the emt overwrites and ignore the midi player i guess.

[mcoy]

I can't get eax to work with my sound blaster x-fi usb either. Not sure if it's a limitation of the usb devices compared to a pci card or what...

-Mcoy

[Guids]

Noticed you are suggesting to load 1MGM.sf2.

This is a compacted 1MB soundfont with GM fonts only. This was the ROM preloaded in the AWE32 line of cards from Creative.

There are several, much more rich fonts available. 1MGM.sf2 has larger variants such as 4GMGSMT.SF2 or CT4MGM.SF2. These are copyright, but if you can get your hands on an old school AWE64 Gold installation CD you will find them there.

If your goal is to make EQ music "sound like it used to in 1999" then it depends on what you were hearing. Windows 98 defaulted to MS GS Wavetable Synth regardless of soundcard. You may want to search the web for a better version of the built in windows soundbank, gm.dls.

If your goal is to make the music not have issues such as skipping and clipping then you need another synthesizer. I wont recommend building a computer with ISA slots and getting a 20 year old AWE64 Gold. Software can fix these issues nicely.

In either event, I recommend OmniMIDI https://github.com/KeppySoftware/OmniMIDI

This software allows you to load various soundbanks. It is a fork of BASSMIDI but is more updated and robust.

Once you have loaded the soundfont you can change the default midi device in Windows 10 by editing the registry under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\M icrosoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32 for 64 bit OS or Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Win dows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32 for 32 bit OS

There will be a REG_SZ key named "midi" which points to wdmaud.drv by default. This is the default windows audio driver which also contains Microsoft's software synth.

You should see your custom synth listed as "midi1" with the registered driver name.
Just copy the string from "midi1" and paste it into "midi"

To revert to default just make sure "midi" says "wdmaud.drv"
Heya, first off wanted to thank you for the info you provided on that comment. Secondly, I wanted to ask if you still use OmniMidi, and if you've noticed any issues with it. After testing a ton of sf2 files and messing with the settings, i've gotten the sound where I want it, but I'm noticing that regardless of sf2 or settings, its cutting off certain notes (like Qeynos entrance theme the quick high notes near the beginning, or in the vendor music, the single high note about 6 seconds into the track). Did you ever notice these issues, and if so, any idea how it can be fixed?

[Nedala]

Necrobumping to highlight Merlin_GMV32 as a sound font. It's extremely balanced instrumentation and sounds great on EverQuest midis. Kelethin sounds like itself... but better. Just got back into EQ again and spent hours trying different SF2s to retain the same feel, but improve it.

Available here: https://archive.org/download/free-soundfonts-sf2-2019-04




I jst did this and it's awesome. thanks

[Nedala]

Quick how to for guildies:

1. download and install this: https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth (click download on top and choose version)


2. Go here: https://archive.org/download/free-soundfonts-sf2-2019-04 and download Merlin_GMV32

3. run virtualMIDISynth (the one you installed at 1.), click on the "+" symbol and choose the "Merlin_GMV32" you just downloaded, click on "Apply" - start eq and enjoy improved music