Sonic 3K PC version music - NOW UPLOADED -

I use it to convey annoyance.

BTW, uploading.

 

[offtopic]
I use >_> in the same context as the wackysymbol_wackysymbol, because I don't have the wacky symbol on my keyboard anymore. And >_> <_< for shifty-eyedness.[/offtopic]

How is Stage Complete broken apart from the drums being a bit over-enthusiastic?

 

Ew. I just finished listening to the music, and I still think that it's inferior to the Genesis version. They should have shipped the game with a soundfont. Many of the songs are fairly faithful to the originals, but the water warning is way off, it's supposed to have a gospel organ, and the remade zones like ice cap and launch base sound horrible, they should have kept the old ones.

 

I got the package downloaded too but should have avoided to eat bandwidth since I've got exactly the same sound with my VSC88 (a software version of SC88, usable as a real MIDI synth to replace a buit-in wavetable).

In fact, I'm sure you recorded this from the GM versions, not the FM ones. In fact, the game can play songs either in 'General MIDI' mode, or in 'FM Synthesizer' mode. But even if it says "FM", the songs will play even if the sound card doesn't have a built-in OPL-3 chip.

And yes, those GM versions sound better than the FM ones on a SC88 (since they may have been composed with this expander).
But, I'm not really sure about FM ones... they sound weird using my VSC88 but sound really nice when turing on the Yamaha S-YXG50 (another software wavetable, XG compatble).
And about the GM ones on XG, they sound roughly the same as on a SC88 (unless knowing the songs by heart, it's hard to find differences). And, logically they seem to sound inferior than FM ones (for me). I may record a few extracts if you want to.

So, the question remains about "FM" songs.

(my view about it, for those still considering S3Kc music "sounding like crap", turn on the Yamaha S-YXG50* and play them in 'FM Mode', you'll probably be well surprised)

*Yamaha unfortunately discontinuated it. The only way to grab it is P2P... (you'll find versions working under XP... and be sure to choose a "uninstallable" version, since it's hard to uninstall)

 

LOL, I remeber I posted a tutorial on my first website on how to do that in like 1997

 

Now, I remember (MaliceX posted something similar back in 2001 I think about those two modes). You have to find the 'S3K.INI' file (in the 'Windows' or 'WINNT' folder). Then you set 'BGMMode' to '1' (to have FM mode) or to '2' (to have GM) like this:

'BGMMode=1' or 'BGMMode=2'

(weirdly, I thought we could do that from the 'Option' button when launching 'Runsonic.exe')

Oops, now that I realize, I don't recall exactly which one could be FM and which one could be GM. I probably swapped the two (I'm sure Chazman has it's BGMMode set to '2' anyway).

 

What a good source of information! (my S-YXG has 4 MB of wavetable sounds... *just looking at the size of 'sxgwave4.tbl'*)

About FM songs you're probably right, but I find weird that they sound good on a S-YXG50 (and yes, I was stuck to 'FM mode' since my default synth is this one).
They probably composed them using the traditional FM MIDI driver Microsoft ships with Windows 95 even if this one only seems to use 2 operators; as opposed to the Voyetra driver for Win3.1 shipped by Creative with SB16 cards which use 4 operators, sounds better, but all this also limits polyphony.
About ESS, are you sure they use a single OPL-3? (they could have put two to boost up sound, who knows... or the driver does a better job... with only 2 ops)

Otherwise, about VSC88 in fact, I think this is just simply a VSC55 with more samples (more instruments and more drum kits) to make it "compatible with a real SC88". Of course, songs on my VSC88 souded a bit inferior to your MP3 record but I didn't find it so noticeable (now that I remember, Roland/Edirol also made a VSC-MP1 but I don't know what it's equivalent to).
Actually, VSC seems to use the same sound core as MS Synth and QuickTime, but boosted a bit, in quality (44 KHz instead of 22). Chorus and reverb also plays in favor of VSC compared MS Synth and Quicktime.

 

I agree :D. But are you sure the traditionnal MS FM driver could do that? (yes, I know about OPL-3 drivers that use that feature)
However, did FM songs sound as if each instrument was mapped to an OPL-3 channel? I don't think so (could Sega've done that? Under Windows?).

Hey, your demos come from the MIDIbox FM, it cheats ^^;;;. It uses some additional features to improve OPL-3 sound (which sounds really decent in those demos by the way... *makes me regret my old SB16*). At least it clearly shows the obvious superiority of an OPL-3 compared to the "previous generation" YM2612 (unlike what used to hear so many times), as it can use more waveforms to create sounds (instead of sinewaves only) and have more channels.

Thank you for the info. Well, I guess sounds are still based on SC55. And for the "major technology leap", I trust you.

 

Has anybody tried playing them on a Roland MT-32? It's been confirmed that at least the games from LucasArts had its music composed in them.


Perhaps none of these will sound off when being played through it.

 

LucasArts had a totally different crew anyway, Clint Bajakian and that lot.