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

[PearlJammzz]

Wow, these tunes are so much more...alive I guess you could say than what we normally hear. Any way to make these play like this with our current client? Perhaps w/ the secrets of faydwer client?

Would be awesome to be able to play mp3's for each zone/area. I imagine these are handled via the client though, and have nothing to do with server code?

[Gamkek]

I wish there were some way I could help with this! I want the original music so badly. Windows 7 does a poor, poor job of dealing with the MIDI files currently. The music often stutters or goes completely out of key. Other times there's just high-pitched squealing for 10-15 seconds and then it goes back to normal. Ugh, what a mess!

And none of it sounds nearly as good as it did on my old P2. Oh, the irony.

Anyway, if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know. Maybe we can all pitch in for the AWE32 so we can do this??

[PearlJammzz]

Some, like lavastorm, the game uses a .mp3 format file anyways. We could just swap this out, and it'd play these versions of the music [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

[mgellan]

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

Regards,
Mg

[km2783]

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

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

Regards,
Mg

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

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

[doacleric]

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

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

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

[km2783]

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

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

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

[ribaldron]

IMO UO and EQ had FANTASTIC music - I mean, it doesn't have shit on what we could have today with our fancy MP3's and whatnot - but they did the best they could with what technology they and their customers had, and it sounds *terrible* today.

I remember these being totally awe-inspiring back in the day - UO was the same story - I could not play UO with the terrible new MP3's and had to replace them all, heheh. At least with EQ we have poor-sounding high quality music. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]


Would be awesome if someone finds a solution to this. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[rikustrength]

I would LOVE to see this come to fruition. At first I read it and I thought "no way do I want my eq tunes sounding different at ALL", but just a few seconds of that kelethin music got me going [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] I would LOVE to hear that in my game. Y_Y

[doacleric]

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

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

Its tricky, and i'm not 100% sure how the internal workings were handled. The soundblaster came with its own soundfont, yes. EQ also came with its own 512k soundfont file, which was uploaded into the soundcard upon loading the game. What i'm NOT sure about is if EQ used its own soundfont instruments exclusively, or a mixture of the two.