Adlib for the win seriously Tie fighter and monkey island sounded the best with adlib or general midi....

>> ^Kalle:

Adlib for the win seriously Tie fighter and monkey island sounded the best with adlib or general midi....


And the use of dynamic music during gameplay!

*history

Adding video to channels (History) - requested by ant.

A yes
I Think the name was IMUSE... great stuff they dont make them like that anymore...

Pffft for Adlib. It was surpassed very quickly in sound quality. The Gravis Ultrasound and the like were far superior in sound.

It's not like games don't use iMuse like systems today, they do... I can't remember examples, but I do notice it from time to time. I do remember back though and remember what a huge deal it was that the iMuse system dynamically changed things, it was huge at the time.

I have to say, I wonder where the PC beeper / tandy examples came from. Of all these I actually kind of prefer those versions, but I also think it sounds way better in this video than it ever did from my beeper back in the day... Where's all that bass coming from, for one?

When you are used to hear the music from your specific card everything else just sounds kinda wrong after a while...

I think the difference between imuse and todays games is, that imuse changed the mood far more frequently depending on what you were doing.. and that most games just had an amazing soundtrack of course.

Eeesh. They could have used a better example for the Redbook audio. The orchestration they used for The Curse of Monkey Island is far superior. I've got that one on my iPod.

>> ^videosiftbannedme:

Eeesh. They could have used a better example for the Redbook audio. The orchestration they used for The Curse of Monkey Island is far superior. I've got that one on my iPod.


Then it wouldn't be the music of The Secret of Monkey Island. May as well just use different tunes for each example then. >_>

Best sound card I ever had back in the 90's was the Aureal A3D. My LAN buddies would pick on me for going some 'generic brand' but it was by far the best gaming sound card available. I kicked so much ass in Quake 2 and Quake 3. Those same LAN buddies would be like 'how the heck did you know I was there?' I'd say 'because with this 3d sound card, I can hear you above and behind me' lol. They never picked on me about it then, in fact a few of them picked up the card for themselves and boasted of it's capabilities.

Those were the days.

Did Q2 support A3d?>> ^Xaielao:

Best sound card I ever had back in the 90's was the Aureal A3D. My LAN buddies would pick on me for going some 'generic brand' but it was by far the best gaming sound card available. I kicked so much ass in Quake 2 and Quake 3. Those same LAN buddies would be like 'how the heck did you know I was there?' I'd say 'because with this 3d sound card, I can hear you above and behind me' lol. They never picked on me about it then, in fact a few of them picked up the card for themselves and boasted of it's capabilities.
Those were the days.

Yep, if I remember right (and mind, it's been a long time) they implemented support with a patch after that card gained some popularity. Now I do know that Q3 supported it from the get go.

The Gravis Ultrasound was the best sound card of all time (in relative terms of course). It also, unfortunately, taught me a lasting lesson in computer hardware. Even though it was comparatively cheap, and was at least three or four years head of its competition, I ended up switching from the GUS to a far inferior Sound Blaster 16. The lesson: it doesn't matter how cool your hardware is, if there isn't software to support it, it amounts to nothing. You're better off just buying whatever is the mainstream most of the time. (Hands up if the phrase "SBOS installed." rings a bell).

It did ultimately become reasonably well supported though after a few years, once Miles Sound System supported it and became pretty much the standard for DOS games audio.

The Roland cards in this video weren't really consumer cards (they were more for musicians) and they were terrible for games, unless you only used it for music and had another card for sound effects.

>> ^Xaielao:
Best sound card I ever had back in the 90's was the Aureal A3D.


Amen. I remember the first time trying an A3D card and being completely blown away by the fact the "3D sound" was actually 3D sound! Incredible card, too bad Creative Labs bought them and then kiboshed them.

>> ^shponglefan:

>> ^Xaielao:
Best sound card I ever had back in the 90's was the Aureal A3D.

Amen. I remember the first time trying an A3D card and being completely blown away by the fact the "3D sound" was actually 3D sound! Incredible card, too bad Creative Labs bought them and then kiboshed them.

from the moment they bought and killed Aureal, Creative went downhill.
A3D had actual 3d positional sound, not shitty reverb effects that Creative started putting in their EAX.

Technological evolution. It works

Ahh yes, my favorite past time, midi music. I picked up my first cd rom drive and with it, the must have cd game of all time, 7th guest. 7th guest was a SVGA game (That sucker was 8 bit color! 256 colors and some how they pulled off transluscent digital video footage over the back ground) that used Midi for all its music. I discovered the game had an easter egg, the 2nd disc had a red book cd audio track of most of the games soundtrack played on the SCC1 roland board. After hearing just how good these midi files could sound, I quickly got into the world of PC Midi. I upgraded my SBpro to an SB16 multi cd, this monster not only supported the proprietory connector for my cdrom drive, but also an MPU expansion connector for a midi daughter board. The first daughter board I got was creatives wave blaster, but it was pretty weak. I figured out if I wanted a really good midi sound, I would need to plunk down some seriouse cash, and it would probably need to be from roland. So I picked up the roland SCD-15 (I still have that thing! but nothing to plug it into now) and while not quite as good as the dedicated SCC1, it was enjoyable. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJlkz6V0VOQ to hear how it sounded)

I picked up the SBlive as soon as it came out and proceeded to knock several megs of instruments into that sucker as well. I even put together a sound font called musica theoria (its hilarious when I google that now). My thirst for playing with midi music now is dried up now, but I have a sizeable collection of chip music, sound tracks from my fav gameboy/genesis/snes/ps1 (the entire final fantasy 7-9 series is chip music) so I can hark back on old memories of how music evolved over the decades.

Yes for the absolute best in PC sound card quality the Gravis was certainly it, especially if you were into the midi crowd (which I somewhat was myself). But for gaming the Aureal topped them all. Two fantastic cards for two fantastic specialties.

And yes Shponglefan, it did have actual 3D and once my LAN friends found that out (both through me killing them from seemingly 'out of nowhere' to them testing it out as well. Even the hard core Creative fan had to think twice. He never took the plunge with Aureal but even with 4.0 system he had, he knew he was outmatched sound-wise when it came to gaming.

I may actually like the very first rendition best of all.

>> ^rebuilder:
I have to say, I wonder where the PC beeper / tandy examples came from. Of all these I actually kind of prefer those versions, but I also think it sounds way better in this video than it ever did from my beeper back in the day... Where's all that bass coming from, for one?


He probably just recorded the signal directly using an emulator like DOSBox. Some PCs had some pretty decent speakers but most used a tiny piezo.
The PC can generate a square wave anywhere between 18.2Hz and way into the ultrasound range, if the physical loudspeaker can play it is another question.

Speaking of PC sounds, I remember the first time I played Pinball Fantasies on a PC without a sound card... I couldn't believe my ears! Back in those days all you got from the speaker was some "beeps" and "boops" but using PWM and a lot of wizardry the guys at Digital Illusions made it sound like a proper sound card and were playing MODs on it straight from the Amiga version.

Blasphemy! Everyone knows today's sound cards were created by Him, in the image of His soundcard.

>> ^chilaxe:

Technological evolution. It works


Until Creative Labs for some reason is "leading" the evolution.

God, MIDI is awful. Held back VGM artists for decades.