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The Secret of Monkey Island Shows Evolution of PC Audio
Normally I don't have much interest in stuff like this, but this history of PC audio is dripping with nostalgia. From the bleeps and bloops of the PC Jr to the Gravis Ultrasound I lusted after while stuck with an Adlib ... it warms the cockles of my old-man heart. Not sure that Monkey Island was the right demo choice, but hey.
I had one of those... shelled out quite a few bucks for it too. Any Sierra game sounded absolutely amazing in it, particularly Leisure Suit Larry. Anyone else remember the elevator music? "... da dum da da dum dum dum dum, wah wah wah wah wah..."
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Not sure that Monkey Island was the right demo choice, but hey.
I remember playing The first 2 when they first came out, with all their beeps. Then I remember playing them in '99 for kicks on a laptop. And I remember playing them a couple years ago for the nostalgia.
Each and every time the audio was different (though only slightly for the most recent attempt). Its crazy how hardware changes could make such a profound difference, since I assume its all the same audio code just getting executed differently. It's funny, because in '99, I thought I had mixed something up with the audio setup because it didn't sound right. No that was just how it was SUPPOSED to sound on a good audio card.
I LOVED by GameBlaster. Such a major upgrade from the PC speaker. My (rich) friend got the Roland and I was jealous.
Then years later I upgraded to the AudioBlaster and loved it. My (rich) friend got the newer Roland and I was jealous.
Owning a computer is like owning a boat. You're always jealous of the guy in the next slip who has one just a little bit better.
Developers: We can use your help.
IMHO, listening to these side by side, that Roland MT32 is better sounding than even the cd-quality digital audio. How about that sweet marimba lead line? DickMacInnis.com
That's pretty much my "nostalgia" when it relates to 1980s and early 90s PC Audio. "Ugh". Or "ick". Or "I'm glad I bought a multimedia computer".
I remember debating online with IBM PC fans, and how they kept insisting that the PC had better sound (and graphics) than an Atari 800, Commodore 64, or Amiga/ST. Well I guess they were "invested" and had to defend their PCs, but it wasn't even a close race. Check it out for yourself. A lot of these PC sound effects don't sound much better than my old 1977 Atari console:
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cETl8PhUy_E
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4uwzNkUVE
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I had the original GUS.
Getting a GUS and SB16 to coexist peacefully under Dos, windows 3.1, and Windows 95 is probably the apex triumph of my dos/win 9x hardware troubleshooting youth.
IRQs, DMAs, and win.ini/system.ini can rot in hell.
On the other hand, I suppose it prepared me for linux...
It's interesting; the evolution of PC audio was mostly bottlenecked by storage. We had the ability to playback full waveform sound back in the day, but we didn't have the storage capacity for it until larger hard drives and CD-ROMs came about.
The reason that cards like Adlib were popular and in widespread use is because storing the notes of a song and using whatever music banks were available on the user's card was cheaper (storage-wise) for game developers than storing a full waveform audio track and playing it. We had waveform sound effects, of course, because they're short and thus small (though some early soundcard-using games even simulated that through the card's music banks).
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I was a Commodore guy in the 80s. One of my friends had an IBM PC, and I would laugh at how primitive it was - CGA graphics and that horrible blatting from the speaker! But what REALLY got me was that he had to insert a DOS disk to load another program! I mean, just imagine - the Commodore you just turned on and it was ready to roll into action. It wasn't until many years later when I saw a system with VGA graphics and a Soundblaster - and I was still on my Commodore 128. Ooof. How theonce mighty fell.
That's because Creative is the Bose of the computer world. The bulk of the "premium" cost of creative products goes into advertising and packaging (and frivilous litigation! anybody remember Aureal?) trying to convince you that they're the best, and that's why you're paying that premium.
After I learned this the hard way (ouch wallet), I did purchase a few $15 OEM SBlive cards at computer shows over the years, but never any of their premium packaged BS.
The sad thing is, the EMU10K chip CAN be awesome when surrounded by quality components instead of hype. I still use my E-MU 1212m card as the DAC for both of my computers.
I remember how amazing the AWE64 Gold was...worth every penny I spent on it way back in the day. I still have the glossy cover that came on the front of the box, it's hanging up in my gaming room :-)
When we were dating, I bought my wife an AWE64 for her birthday with a MIDI capable keyboard w/ cables and some MIDI software. She was pissed. She saw it as me buying her computer equipment, much like Homer buying Marge a bowling ball. It wasn't until years later that I explained that it was the best gift I had ever given anyone. She was a music major and I was a computer geek. This hardware would have allowed her to create her own symphonies if she so desired, right there from my living room.
The gift was the perfect "marriage" of our talents but she was so pissed that I didn't dare explain the hint until many years later.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
My first card was the Sound Blaster 16 (non-ASP). Bought over the Pro Audio Spectrum 16. Later I got the Roland Sound Canvass Daughterboard, an obscure card that plugged right into the SB16 and greatly improved the MIDI quality. Creative offered the WaveBlaster which was similar.
Came with a ton of software including:
DR. SBAITSO!
That's the second oldest monkey theme I've ever heard!
My Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sounded great, when I could get it to sound at all. Half the time I had to use SB/Adlib compatibility modes. Had a bitch of a time trying to get it to work on later games, eventually traded up to a SB.
These days I barely even think about sound cards, I suppose because they're now basically just fancier and fancier amplifiers and mixers. I suppose the home sound studio and audiophiles will always want the next new shiny, but there's only so much innovation you can do with audio data before you have to modify the output devices. You have to wonder how Creative stays in business, I can't think of a significant advance in sound hardware in many years that wasn't fully dependent on your speaker setup.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
At the time you needed to spend $50,000 to record a decent sounding professional album in a studio. Nowadays you can make a recording on par with the hits of the 90s (at least) on a $100 desktop with a $200 soundcard. And major record labels wonder why we're not convinced that the major pop acts are worth the money.
Either this is one hell of a subtle troll, or you're smoking something crazy if you think a professional recording studio can be replaced with a few hundred bucks in computer equipment. Though I suppose you could use the computer as a microphone stand or a chair, and the packing material as budget sound baffling. And maybe you could find an audio engineer to work for free and bring along all his/her equipment and cabling. That aside, you're on crack.
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As a child in 1993, the version that I had on my 486 had CD AUDIO. About 2% of the CD was game data, and the rest was music, the way that they had to do things before computers were powerful enough to do audio compression but when people were becoming tired of MIDI. You could listen to the audio tracks from the CD player if you started up Windows 3.1. All of the sound effects/music in Monkey Island were absolutely beautiful. Good luck finding actual CD-quality music in games today!
And by the way, the "1994-now" "CD quality" snippet is not the same game music that I had in 93. I kind of wonder which version he got it from and what format it came in.
The last one is not "CD quality digital audio," other than that is was probably rendered at 48kHz, 16-bit (which would actually be DVD or DAT, not CD). It was just rendered with a soundfont on a SoundBlaster X-Fi, and not a particularly good one. The quality you get out of a sampler is only as good as the samples you put in.
So it isn't as though this was played by a live orchestra and recorded to CD. It is the same technology as the AWE32/64 stuff, just a larger sample set, but probably not professionally done (there are lots of shitty free soundfonts online).
What would be interesting to hear is how it would sound if given the full treatment of high quality modern professional samples. You find that you can get very realistic, high quality sample sets these days. I'm talking multiple gigabytes for a single instrument. While it still doesn't sound 100% real, you can get some really good expressiveness and realism from it.
If I were at home I'd post a quick demo using some of the samples I have but oh well.
At any rate, it isn't that the MT-32 was the be-all, end-all or anything, it is that the person doing the demo didn't understand what they were doing. Also I suspect the original track was composed for the MT-32. A lot of games in that era were composed for the MT-32, and then arranged for other popular devices like the Adlib.
Star Control 2 was amazing - it could to speech & digitized music on the PC speaker without soundcards! For those who haven't played it, it's been open-sourced and you can download it here complete with new remixed soundtracks.
http://www.object404.com
Xenon 2 Original - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3n6BRUVAl0
Remix - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFkP6xzzTeI
Not bad for a computer from 1985, eh? Notice the near-CD-quality sampling. And here's an overall compilation of Amiga music from the 80s and 90s:
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTz5iwmtkrs
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5Eoc8VsV_M
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuXVy6qXyuI
Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l6_mS_cnwQ
Music Archive - http://www.paula8364.com/
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I have fond memories of the PCjr's 3-channel audio. Not only did it produce a unique sound, but it allowed for simultaneous sound effects and music. What was really interesting was that about when consumer-level sound cards really began entering the market a few game developers were getting digitized audio out of PC speakers. The audio was very grainy, but it was nonetheless impressive.
The early versions of that music still appeal to me more than the later, higher quality variations. I think they had more character, kind of like the difference between 2D sprites and polished 3D graphics. The later versions sound more generic to me. And I feel like the melody is buried under the percussion in the later versions.
I remember there were games which managed to generate very impressive sounds from the good old PC speaker using pulse-width modulation. It was pretty impressive when you suddenly heard _real_ sound from your PC speaker for the first time. I was like "what the hell is going on??"
When the game-blaster was $500 or so we made our own thank you. :)
I used to get reels of matching resistors and make soundcards for everyone I knew with a PC.
Originally released by Covox, it was simple to make your own, and way cheaper than everything on the market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
I bought my wife a GBA for the first birthday we spent together.
I bought her a DS for an engagement present (yes, I got her a ring first of course). She bought me a PSP.
SHE is the one who told ME that we should go shopping for more RAM and new video cards a few months back.
you guys married the wrong women.
He's exaggerating a bit, but try this to see what can be done with a modern PC.
On a tangent, and a somewhat interesting experience I had...
In 1992 I saved up enough allowance to buy a Sound Blaster, my first sound card. After I made my AUTOEXEC changes I tried out my favorite game of the time, Space Quest 4. What I experience was this annoying ringing that made me stop the game, quit, tweak the settings, reboot and start the game again. This went on a few times until almost an hour had passed.
Then out of defeat I started the game and didn't quit it, only to discover the annoying ring was the beginning of the soundtrack. Mind you, it's an MIDI instrument to the sound isn't as annoying on better sound cards, but on a SB it was pretty annoying, check it out for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKE4YExWcy8
Anyone who gets pissed when receiving presents is someone seriously spoiled and best avoided.
The problem usually was the GUS's SB emulation. The best bet was simply to disable it, use the GUS in GUS mode for things that support it and use the SB for everything else. I had both cards too, I don't remember anything particularly problematic about getting them both to work.
Not sure that Monkey Island was the right demo choice, but hey.
I disagree
There's a technical problem in this demo :
Monkey Island was designed at a time when *General* MIDI didn't exist yet and MT-32 was considered the nec plus ultra.
As such its music was composed with that plat-from in mind and make extensive use of its capabilities and special features (uploads a lot of instrument patches, etc)
So it's a good demo for MT-32/LAPC-1 (because that's what the music was composed for).
And it's a good demo for everything that came before (because during production the musicians and programmer spent a great deal of time making sure that the music plays well in reduced quality. Note for example the emulation of polyphony by using arpeggios in sound cards lacking enough channels, like PC-Speaker's Mono and PCjr's 4 voices).
But it's a BAD EXAMPLE for everything that came after-ward :
Monkey Island simply saw a quick General MIDI patch, which enabled it to play on general midi synths by mapping the MT-32 soundtrack's (custom) instruments to their (stock) GM equivalent.
So NONE of the cards shown afterward are used at their full potential, although using better synth technology (Wavetable synthesis for most of them) they simply play the GM approximation of the soundtrack.
The over-all quality is so-so : stock instruments of recent card with wavetable sound better than the linear arith. synthesis of MT-32, but the General MIDI sound track lacks the customisation uploaded to the MT-32 by SysEx commands. (It would have been better if the GM enabled version did upload its own samples bank into the wavetable. Saddly not possible using strictly GM commands).
(With perhaps the exemption of Orchid sound cards which feature full MT32 emulation instead of instrument remapping as in other "MT32 modes")
For a *real* progression of quality, the demo should have featured the Amiga version of the game (4 sound channels only, but sample based synthesis, so indeed an improvement of quality),
and the later VGA enhanced talkie version of the games (uses a CD soundtrack).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Clearly you don't understand how women mind works... Women are crazy. You never know for sure how they will react. This case seems obvious because the guy told you the story, but you will never guess her reaction before hand.
Its part of the burden men has to carry in order to have a significant other of the opposite sex
-- dnl
It amazes me that Aureal A3D still is more detailed and acoustically correct than the latest revision of EAX. Proper occlusion and reflection on 3D-positioned sounds in A3D Vs. varying levels of reverb in EAX. Why did Creative win that particular battle?
I bought a good number of sound cards over that period.
I started with a cheap Soundblaster clone called the Thunderboard. It offered Adlib compatibility, which was enough for games music. The card was somewhat noisy when playing audio and not always compatible. It did, however, have native drivers with Windows 3.1 when that finally appeared.
The next card was an early wavetable card from Orchid. I wanted a Roland but couldn't afford one, so went for this thing instead. The card supported the GM sound set, but also roughly emulated a Roland device. It also emulated Adlib playback, but had severe compatibility issues when it came to playing back wave audio.
A few months later I acquired a Soundblaster PRO. Finally I had stereo PCM, but also updated the FM synthesis to OPL3. Finding games that supported OPL3 was tricky, but when they did appear the sound was phenomenal, with big 'farty' bass sounds.
Eventually my old PC became obsolete so I upgraded to something new. That came fitted with it's own adequate Soundblaster 16 clone from Opti, but went back to OPL2 for FM. It lacked any wavetable facilities onboard, but had a slot for a daughter-board that offered the feature. Unfortunately I could never find anything to fit that slot.
Then I picked up a Yamaha XG wavetable board that was probably the last in wavetable technology. The XG soundset added many more instruments to GM, together with a whole other set of parameters that could be tweaked. By then, of course, most games were abandoning external music sources, so it was only really used for other projects. I've still got this card at home, but lack anything with an ISA slot to fit it to.
I'm pretty sure I also picked up another cheap Soundblaster clone around this time too, as the card originally fitted into the PC wasn't compatible with the latest version of DirectX requited by one game. Again
But most of those MIDI sucked unless you had high quality. I remember using Yamaha SoftSynthesizer that made a big difference in MIDI! Do those high quality MIDI softwares exist today? I still have some OLD *.mid files I would like to listen under XP, 64-bit Windows 7, Linux/Debian, and Mac OS X. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
What this video doesn't tell you is that MIDI could allow pacing of music to the action. MIDI could allow for real climaxes and transitions between different passages depending on the kind of action; a good sound card could give you, in many cases, a better experience to a pre-recorded digital piece.
Great examples: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and X-Wing.
I don't know...
I mean, in X-Wing, you'd normally be flying around and if there were enemies around, you'd hear the "Millennium Falcon vs. TIE Fighters" music. And then if you destroyed a target you'd get a little triumphant musical phrase thrown in there for your victory...
One of the problems here was that it didn't distinguish targets. You'd get the crescendo even if you just destroyed an immobile, unarmed cargo container with no shields.
And there were missions where you had to destroy like 30 of those damn things... So you'd wind up hearing those two "triumph" phrases, alternated one after the other, nearly back-to-back sometimes...
Not to say the system couldn't be made better, but sometimes I think it's better just to have good background music in a loop, and don't worry about matching the action. You can match music to film because you can control the timing of film through editing... That's just not true of a game.
Bow-ties are cool.
I concur. EAX at that time wasn't even a 3D sound technology, it was cheap annoying echo and nothing more. I remember trying A3D in jDoom engine - it was amazing! Playing Heretic with only two speakers, I could tell that monster was behind, above and left of me. Even later surround systems could not achieve that. Yes, with surround you can probably tell if something happened behind you or left of you, but you can never distinguish if something happened above you.
And it had proper occlusion and reflection. So if there was something outside the room you were in, you could hear the echo of it as it bounced off the wall outside.
Yes, it did require you to give the sound driver a very rough model of the 3d scene, but as you already had a model laying around that you were rendering, it wasn't too difficult to add, provided you were willing to put the work in at an engine level. 3rd party developers who didn't own the game engine they were using relied on the engine provider to add the functionality (Example: Half-Life had it, as Valve had access to the engine and could code it in).
From Wiki[Citation Needed]pedia:
That last sentence is rather telling, as I've yet to see the features that A3D had being advertised in a Creative product.
The alternative now is that I can buy the $100 computer (a p4 with 3gb ram will do great), and a $200 soundcard (an m-audio delta 1010lt). I should have been more clear earlier, but the other $700 would easily rent a nice set of drum microphones (if you're even using real drums, and even then, it's usually easier to get a good sound with triggers - ala Nirvana's Nevermind, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and just about every other mainstream record you've ever heard), a good vocal mic, and any instruments you may also need (although if you're a recording musician you probably already have that stuff, major label deal or not). To be absolutely realistic, the costs of the rentals you'll need for tracking (and the old carpet you need for the walls) is probably more in the region of about $200, but I tend to err on the side of caution when I make such broad statements. So you could make an album yourself, and after you recoup the $1000 it took to make it, you start earning money on all the hard work you have done in writing and recording your music. Alternatively, you could make an album with a major label, go into the hole with them for $50,000, and start making money for the same amount of work after 30,000 albums are sold. And when you want to make a new album again, the label won't let you unless you've made money on the last. If you had done it yourself, you could not only start creating again in a couple of months, but your costs for album 2 are 30% less because you already have the computer and soundcard you used the first time
Where do I come up with this stuff? I've done it. Several times. Check out dickmacinnis.com to listen to my debut solo album, which I've already made almost $20,000 on to date. The album took about two months to write/record/produce/master, and I'll be able to continue selling it until the day I die. I'm currently working on the follow up.
DickMacInnis.com