>old pc game devs had to pretty much make different soundtracks for every sound card under the sun

I'm relatively too young to have had to deal with sound cards so I find this stuff crazy.

https://youtu.be/X9oTzK4mKkw?t=1227
https://youtu.be/R9VTUNlC104?t=2296
https://youtu.be/H5QVHzaGfQ8?t=2208

And then, even the same midi soundtrack will sound different depending on your device. And then there were games that had CD music anyways yet still had an alternate midi soundtrack that very few people would have listened to. Recently I learned that the original Age of Empires had one such soundtrack hidden as a command line option, now I'm wondering which other games had such a thing.

I'm not making this thread just to ask that though, let's just post and appreciate some soundtracks, or versions of soundtracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4geHBkA1vE

>>11815742
Great stuff

https://youtu.be/sTIHT8nEA6s?t=841

>>11815731 (OP)
I think they didn't really "make" different soundtracks but had software translate it.
On the CD soundtracks you can often tell what the intended midi device was (they weren't using real orchestras here). Warcraft 2, for example, was definitely recorded on an SC-88 as it sounds identical to the CD version.

>>11815731 (OP)
Yeah, PC sound is a hell of an autistic rabbit hole to go down into should you choose to do so. Of course, back in the day people were just happy to get working sound and music at all, even if it wasn't the best quality. Very few people had an MT-32 or Sound Canvas or whatever, so while those were the premium experience, it's FM synth and, later, General MIDI from lesser devices or even the default Microsoft GS Wavetable soft synth that are much more emblematic of how PC games sounded like, before CD digital audio became widespread, that is.

>>11815761
>I think they didn't really "make" different soundtracks but had software translate it.
I think the same. Though they probably made some adjustment to make sure the track would sound good for most hardware\software.

>>11815731 (OP)
>>old pc game devs had to pretty much make different soundtracks for every sound card under the sun
no. on pc they made music once and had their driver adapt to whatever card is present.

>>11815775
>Yeah, PC sound is a hell of an autistic rabbit hole to go down
it's not.
> Of course, back in the day people were just happy to get working sound and music at all
no. we had working sound and it was never a drama.
>Microsoft GS Wavetable
was trash.
>>11815761
>I think they didn't really "make" different soundtracks but had software translate it.
this is exactly what happened

>>11815815

The GM standard only covered what channels had what instruments, not what those instruments sounded like (timbre, volume). In practice 95% of devs mixed their songs for the Roland SC-55/88 in mind, and if you had a different device, all GM did was ensure that you could tell if a song was supposed to have a piano in it.

The worst part is that it was STILL a vast improvement over what PC gamers had before.

>>11815815
>>Microsoft GS Wavetable
>was trash.
What do you want, Mozart?
The default MSGS does the job fine, it's not the fanciest but you're supposed to be focusing on the game anyways

>>11815846
I was under the impression the "Roland" option in games usually implies MT-32. I don't think they expected you to own a Sound Canvas.

>>11815761
>I think they didn't really "make" different soundtracks but had software translate it.
That entirely depends on the game. Tons of retro games have soundtracks crafted for a range of hardware. It isn't possible to simply feed a PC speaker tune into a program and get a Gravis Ultrasound rendition that makes full use of the hardware or sounds remotely good.

Final Fantasy VII is an example I've been thinking about recently, since it always gets shit on for having bad music compared to the PS1 version. Yet that was the basic ass General MIDI soundtrack included as a fallback in case you couldn't play anything else. Unfortunately, Square decided to sample that version using the default Windows soundfont for future PC releases and taint everybody's opinion of the PC version. Yet the original disc-based PC release had FOUR different versions of the soundtrack on the disc (along with variously-sized soundfonts), each crafted for different hardware. The Yamaha XG version is the likely intended experience, yet very few people actually had the setup to play it back in the day (or even now). There's also one designed for the Sound Blaster AWE64, which generally sounds worse than the XG version but has the USP of One Winged Angel having its vocals, which are missing in every other version.

A ton of effort was put into making it as good as possible by the devs at the time, working with what high-end audio hardware was available on PC and customizing the soundtrack to its strengths. And all for nothing, since it was largely unheard and is pretty much totally forgotten, and will always be remembered by most as the version with the shit music. No wonder they didn't bother for the FFVIII PC port.

https://youtu.be/49ibqCOVKsg?t=1289

>>11815870
To be fair, I never considered it had shit music because I had no frame of reference. So I thought the music was great (it sure isn't with windows general midi). I just remembered it had awful performance and trouble playing fmv movies, so as soon as I got my hands on a PS2 I never played the PC version ever again.

>>11815858
>What do you want, Mozart?
high quality sounds, and compatible sounds that sound like or close enough to every other midi synth at the time. no idea what roland and windows were smokin to think their slop GS sounded good. someone dropped the ball.

>>11815870
>The Yamaha XG version is the likely intended experience
xg is awesome. also fun to program. the effects are nice.

>>11815731 (OP)
>>old pc game devs had to pretty much make different soundtracks for every sound card under the sun
They didn't have too. Some devs could write their own drivers or use things like mod support. Or just do it with PC speaker. Or just pick one like General Midi and stick with it. For the ones that did - congrats, they had to make a four versions of the same twelve songs - often plenty ripped off from actual songs. Boohoo. That must make must them so busy doing their job of getting paid to sit around and make a handful of jobs while everyone else is coding and and doing the hundreds or thousands of assets and making sure shit is tiled properly and verifying collision and looks.fine.

Also they didn't have to make different soundtracks. They had to make different files for the same soundtrack. Which is easier than creating wildly different compositions for each card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRk57dve0pA

>>11815846
In my experience - I'd say at least half or more were mixed more for GM than the SC/MT. A lot of them are clearly better using default general midi. Like 60/40. Not that the SC/MT weren't better sounding of course... but like they're improperly mixed for them in a way you can tell the GM isn't with most generic sound banks.
It seems like some devs just assumed the SC/MT would just automatically be upgraded sound and fit GM standard perfectly but ends up being slightly wonkier for it.
Like I want to say it's 60/40... which 40 is still a huge majority share for a specific vendor over the generalized standard.

>>11815731 (OP)
>old pc game devs had to pretty much make different soundtracks for every sound card under the sun
SOME devs would actually do this. Most did not bother, however.

>>11815761
MIDI takes up very little space, if you wanted to do different versions for different devices, you only needed to include tweaked copies. Five times Almost Nothing is still Almost Nothing.
As for if they used special software for translation, perhaps, but it wouldn't take TOO much time to just test the tracks with a few different devices to hear if any of it would sound off, then tweak the necessary parts.

>>11815910
>>11815815
The Wavetable is hardly the best, but I think that it's overall passable. Better than OPL Synth by far.

>>11815870
That sounds quite good, I learned something here.

>>11815761
>I think they didn't really "make" different soundtracks but had software translate it.

That depends on the game. Early DOS games had to have the music coders making different versions for each major standard, this usually meant OPL2 and MT32. Gravis had to do with software patches to play back OPL2, but some games supported it natively, it used a wavetable synthesis, so this usually meant making a custom soundfont/patch. Cryo Interactive games had separate versions for MT32, OPL2 and OPL3, and sometimes supported the surround module in the Adlib Gold (probably the only company to do so, they also hand-crafted their soundtracks instead of using midi converters and basically maxed out each sound chip).

Then from 92-94 onwards you had the Human Machine Interface and the Audio Interface Library / Miles Sound System, which was basically a middleware driver. It could play the same midi file properly among different sound cards and take advantage of each one of their strengths. So composers could just have to do one music track for whatever was their best hardware, and the driver would play it back as good as it was possible from Gravis/AWE32 wavetable synths to OPL2/3 to MT32 and everything inbetween.

>>11815815
>no. on pc they made music once and had their driver adapt to whatever card is present.

No. They made songs for OPL2 since that was the least common denominator. SC55/MT32 support only happened because the games were technically all using MIDI (sometimes in fact composed with SC55 + keyboards) and you could pipe those to the devices.

It was only from early-mid 90s that middleware drivers started taking off.

>>11816027
>MIDI takes up very little space, if you wanted to do different versions for different devices, you only needed to include tweaked copies. Five times Almost Nothing is still Almost Nothing.

Not when games still came on floppy disks, which had a capacity of slightly over almost nothing.

>>11816068
It really doesn't take much space, particularly when your game is shipping on a bunch of floppies.

>>11815858
>dude, don't care about anything but standard

you people are such low standard retards

They would quickly convert/import the score and make it sound decent.
It wasn't as easy as importing a midi file into FL studio, but it was similar.
I believe some versions would have to be hand made for sure. For a trained musician that wouldn't be a problem.

>>11816671
i did a lot of research on japanese game musicians and there was a common theme throughout the console and arcade industry:
> hire composer
> they write out their song on paper, midi etc. using anything at hand
> they give a copy to the "sound programmer". a copy of the midi file, the sheet music, a recording on a tape whatever it may be.
(for those that don't know, the sound programmer is usually the main programmer of the audio driver or assigned to convert data over to the driver)
> sound programmer then spends rest of time translating your midi/whatever to whatever format the driver requires
> composer gets most of the credit
sometimes studios would get lucky and have people that knew how to program drivers and compose. a special breed - like yuzo koshiro. mml seems to be the language they all used for their drivers so even duur duur idiots could write music with the driver and not have to think too deeply about it.

>>11815731 (OP)
>Recently I learned that the original Age of Empires had one such soundtrack hidden as a command line option
Why did they do it?

>>11815731 (OP)
Desu its because of this I wish more games had tracker music. Epic had the right idea with Jazz, OMF, and Epic Pinball. The OST is virtually the same across Soundblaster, Gravis, or some third party. I guess it just wasn't the standard due to resource consumption?

>>11815731 (OP)
Hey I've got a roland sc-88

>>11815731 (OP)
>different soundtracks for every sound card
No, that's just how MIDI works.
>even the same midi soundtrack will sound different depending on your device
Yes, that's just how MIDI works.

>>11815761
This. They would compose the MIDI on a synthesizer workstation and USUALLY automated tools would translate the sountrack to whatever device was intended. At most they'd have to make patches.

>>11815846
>In practice 95% of devs mixed their songs for the Roland SC-55/88 in mind
Zero proof of this actually. It's commonly bandied about but no, there's no actual proof of this happening except SUPER rarely.

Maybe 5% of composers would mix for SC-55/88. Maybe 2% even.

>>11817453
SC-88 was widely used to compose, but when that thing was current, it was well into the era of CD-ROM, so that's how people were listening to it.

>>11815758
People like this crap? the original is just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUBEoKOcL0c

>>11817480
>SC-88 was widely used to compose
No no you don't compose on something that doesn't even have a sequencer. You mean 'audition.' Composers used workstations in general. And the SC-88 wasn't very popular, it was too expensive. More budget Sound Canvases were more popular until wavetable hit and people completely stopped buying them. Completely.

I'll help you anon, there's a shit load of fake news floating around about retro gaymen, much of it spread by zoomers who weren't there or extrapolated from tiny clues and greatly expanded on like any fish tale.

>>11817494
You are right, my terminology was wrong.
However, it most definitely was used in extremely well known games. Maybe not enough to classify as "widely", won't even fight on that, but definitely used in games like FF7 and Warcraft 2. I've played the midis on SC-88, it is identical to the CD-ROM games.

If you want to hear the music how the composer intended it to be heard, you have to get off your butt and RESEARCH what they were using at the time to compose. Chances are when working they were using the much better instruments on their workstations. The workstation version of a soundtrack, or workstation + modules, is recorded to produce the CD soundtrack. Because it sounds so much better than a Sound Canvas, which is a BUDGET item with SHIT DACs and TEENY LIL INSTRUMENT SAMPLES.

>>11817503
I will accept that some games have soundtracks made especially for the Sound Canvas. Sure. But I can't accept it as a rule with no proof at all. It's just not a great synth, any professional musician would have had something much better at the time, probably a number of modules and keyboards.

>>11817510
I don't know, some CD OSTs sound like they just recorded off an SC-55/88 anyway. HeXen comes to mind. If it was other equipment then it still has that "General MIDI" sound to it. Blood is a good exception where the CD music sounds like an actual arrangement of the MIDI tracks and not just a recorded rendition. That or the CD music is just completely different like Descent 2. I feel like most composers that are specifically designing music for games would have the MIDI constraints in mind anyway, otherwise they would have made a premium CD version or the extra quality from workstations would be lost anyway with the final product. Even some MIDI OSTs sound like it took advantage of the Soundblasters OPL chip like Descent 1.

>>11817490
Either is "the original"
Have you learned nothing ITT?

>>11817612
All the workstations back then had a General MIDI mode, often which sounds identical to the company's cheaper gaming and home modules and sound cards. Optionally you can drop in whatever patches you like on most boards. My Alesis QS 6.1 has a GM mode but none of the cheesy low-fi samples. They just left that out and probably assumed that if you wanted your music to sound like it came out of a Sound Canvas that you'd buy one. With the EX5R I have you can load up the GM bank which sounds like any XG unit (better, because of better DACs) but you can edit it so any patch is anything you like of course.

It depends totally on the game of course. I'm not saying composers didn't only restrict themselves to using a Sound Canvas in those days, but they might have for a project or whatever. In each case the best way to tell would be to try to get a pic of them from the time of the game's release at their music workstation and see also what's in their rack for other MIDI modules, on a case by case basis.