Make EQ's music (MIDI) sound Significantly 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.

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

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!

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

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]

Full Playlist on a Roland
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...vcnNql5xHsyVq1

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.

[krozar]

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

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/artifa...-3_FM_128M.zip (the raw PKGBUILD script)

Also, Fluidsynth has a Windows10 build on their Github repo.

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]

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

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]

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

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 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[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...