How old DOS games actually sounded with good hardware.

Ironbunny

Ironbunny

Member
Ema Zamboni posted a video about old DOS games and their music with different timely sound cards. I myself remember playing these games with either a PC peeper with bleeding ears, Sound Blaster AWE 32 or Gravis Ultrasound (still have those with package and all). That era's golden system was of course Roland MT32 which always peeked its head in the configure menu's but most of us never knew what it actually sounded like. Well...watch the video and see how it sounded. Especially the Kings Quest, Police Quest 2 sound great.




additional info of MT32

 
Last edited:
I had all of those back in the day: AdLib, Sound Blaster, Gravis UltraSound, Roland MT32... Fun times ...
 
For a time before the rise of these sound cards the Amiga was the machine capable of great audio, straight out of the box, no additional sound card required, but saying that though there were instances where you couldn't get both SFX and music together for some of the games on that platform...
 
RAIDEN1 said:
For a time before the rise of these sound cards the Amiga was the machine capable of great audio, straight out of the box, no additional sound card required, but saying that though there were instances where you couldn't get both SFX and music together for some of the games on that platform...
Click to expand...

True. Amiga was amazing. Its altogether another rabbit hole to venture in youtube.
 
Last edited:
RAIDEN1 said:
For a time before the rise of these sound cards the Amiga was the machine capable of great audio, straight out of the box, no additional sound card required, but saying that though there were instances where you couldn't get both SFX and music together for some of the games on that platform...
Click to expand...

Yes, it was so much fun when my classmates with powerful 80286 with no soundcard came to my house and saw (and listened) Amiga
"How can you play with all that music??" They told me once
 
I remember being impressed with the RealSound that was used in Tex Murphy: Mean Streets to get digitized sound from the PC speaker in 1989. It was tinny sounding, but it was also funky.
 
In 1990 I got a fully loaded PC with sound blaster just for Wing Commander and Origin System games in general. Still can hear it to this day. Coming from Amiga, I was used to good music. Some of my favourite audio was Wing Commander 3 and Day of the Tentacle. The cost though, ouch.
 
season 20 20x1 GIF by South Park


Going from the onboard pc sound to the adlib card blew my mind at the time. But then years later I happen to get a mt32 cheap (it was a going out of sale pc store and it was used). I almost couldn't believe how much better it was, like night and day difference. I really had a strange feeling with the great generation ahead sound but still seeing pixelated graphics.
 
Wow... I can only recall ever hearing any of these on the PC Speaker I never knew they had so much detail in the sound using other sound cards!

Cool video.
 
I had some Sound Blaster something card back in the day, and I do remember vaguely they really made a difference with certain games.

Seeing the back to back comparison though...absolute gulf of difference going from generic pc speaker to MT-32. Anything with trumpets and percussion you can make out so much more.
 
It's such a shame that the dedicated sound card market died and people fellate endlessly over pixels but completely ignore the music. This is the same thing to playing something on a $1000 or $100,000 piano.
 
RAIDEN1 said:
For a time before the rise of these sound cards the Amiga was the machine capable of great audio, straight out of the box, no additional sound card required, but saying that though there were instances where you couldn't get both SFX and music together for some of the games on that platform...
Click to expand...
4 channels can do that
but even before the amiga the atari 400/800, commdore 64 and even the vic 20 had actual sound capabilities well before pcs started featuring decent sound
 
The Roland MT-32 sounds like a crappy Cassio synthesizer. Ad-Lib sounds good at times (Monkey Island) but sometimes it is used so poorly that PC speaker is better ( Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis).
 
Wildebeest said:
How it sounded if you just had a stock Amiga and didn't have a rich dad who bought a studio grade Roland sound card.

Click to expand...

This doesn't sound bad at all to me. But I can imagine the disappointment of playing on a computer and getting that kind of sound.

(Not so) fun fact: I have no clue what produced the sound in the PC we had at home in the early 90s, but I distinctly remember MI and Indy and the Last Crusade having music only in a handful of scenes. Pretty much only the title screen, the ending, and a few occasions such as the Indiana Jones jingle or the scene where Indy goes to Berlin to get the diary back. The rest was silence.
 
I went from Amiga to a then top of the line 486 66Mhz DX2 with a Soundblaster 16, so I never experienced the speaker bleep-bloop stuff.
256 color VGA was neat, but sound felt like a downgrade.
 
NeoIkaruGAF said:
This doesn't sound bad at all to me. But I can imagine the disappointment of playing on a computer and getting that kind of sound.

(Not so) fun fact: I have no clue what produced the sound in the PC we had at home in the early 90s, but I distinctly remember MI and Indy and the Last Crusade having music only in a handful of scenes. Pretty much only the title screen, the ending, and a few occasions such as the Indiana Jones jingle or the scene where Indy goes to Berlin to get the diary back. The rest was silence.
Click to expand...

The Last Crusade does not have much music at all but I do remember old PCs where nutty when it came to IRQ settings. Usually some conflicts with adlib compatible cards caused no sound.
 
I played a lot of these games, especially the early (now classics) LucasArts and Sierra games with a PC speaker/beeper. I was quite amazed with the inventive ways that most LucasArts titles, and some of the Sierra ones, would use the beeper to produce something more complex and pleasing than beep boop beep beep.

Still, as I kept listening to what barely passes as music by today's standards, my parents must have been plotting how they'd smash my PC with a hammer and make it look like an accident.
 
Ironbunny said:
Ema Zamboni posted a video about old DOS games and their music with different timely sound cards.
Click to expand...
Who needs this dipshit to run these games through an MT32 emulator? There's youtube videos of the songs recorded on real hardware... And the emulation probably wasn't quite as good, but literally decades ago I was emulating these with the better sound options.
Wildebeest said:
How it sounded if you just had a stock Amiga and didn't have a rich dad who bought a studio grade Roland sound card.

Click to expand...

I don't dislike the sound of the Amiga here, never had one, but oh god what happened to the melody 50 seconds in?!? Pure pain. That's not the Monkey Island theme I know and love.
Unknown Soldier said:
A Sound Blaster AWE32 or AWE64 was not an expensive card. Back then few people knew the difference between FM synthesis and wave table synthesis
Click to expand...
I think I had the AWE32 in the mid 90s, after SB16 and the dreaded PC speaker before that... honestly the AWE32 was kind of shit at general MIDI or whatever for these games, which I only realized years after the fact when I heard the actual Roland MT32 versions. And it was right in the CDROM era where digital voices and Redbook (tm) audio were taking over, and everybody thought FM and MIDI was quaint. So I don't think I ever had much that really made use of the AWE32.
 
ShadowNate said:
I played a lot of these games, especially the early (now classics) LucasArts and Sierra games with a PC speaker/beeper. I was quite amazed with the inventive ways that most LucasArts titles, and some of the Sierra ones, would use the beeper to produce something more complex and pleasing than beep boop beep beep.

Still, as I kept listening to what barely passes as music by today's standards, my parents must have been plotting how they'd smash my PC with a hammer and make it look like an accident.
Click to expand...

True sone games really made the best of even the PC beeper.
 
Super interesting. Very good explanations too.

I think that aol is about to stop modem internet this week so that's another crazy sound from this era that I'll miss
 
Ironbunny said:
Ema Zamboni posted a video about old DOS games and their music with different timely sound cards. I myself remember playing these games with either a PC peeper with bleeding ears, Sound Blaster AWE 32 or Gravis Ultrasound (still have those with package and all). That era's golden system was of course Roland MT32 which always peeked its head in the configure menu's but most of us never knew what it actually sounded like. Well...watch the video and see how it sounded. Especially the Kings Quest, Police Quest 2 sound great.




additional info of MT32

Click to expand...

Yeah, Roland was "the white whale", and I made do with various Sound Blaster cards over the years.

I have watched multiple Roland sound videos for DOS games and the sound is simply amazing.
 
Cyberpunkd said:
It's such a shame that the dedicated sound card market died and people fellate endlessly over pixels but completely ignore the music. This is the same thing to playing something on a $1000 or $100,000 piano.
Click to expand...
Windows Vista & 7 didn't help by breaking support for EAX, requiring additional software to re-reenable audio acceleration. AMD did make an effort with TrueAudio, but the market just wasn't interested.
 
Wildebeest said:
How it sounded if you just had a stock Amiga and didn't have a rich dad who bought a studio grade Roland sound card.

Click to expand...

Funny thing about Monkey Island though. I actually think it sounds better on Adlib compared to more "advanced" Sound systems.



Ultimately it was up to what the composer targeted and in many cases, higher fidelity just sounds wrong and overproduced.

It similar to how some music sounds better on Vinyl compared to CD. The limitations make it sound more "Genuine".
 
Last edited:
Kadve said:
Funny thing about Monkey Island though. I actually think it sounds better on Adlib compared to more "advanced" Sound systems.

Ultimately it was up to what the composer targeted and in many cases, higher fidelity just sounds wrong and overproduced.

It similar to how some music sounds better on Vinyl compared to CD. The limitations make it sound more "Genuine".
Click to expand...

True the adlib version sounds more real game music compared to the GUS and SB awe versions

As a sidenote I think The Game Brass rendition of this theme is pretty much best real instrument version I have heard of. Especially when the flute solo kicks in.

 
Last edited:
Kadve said:
Funny thing about Monkey Island though. I actually think it sounds better on Adlib compared to more "advanced" Sound systems.



Ultimately it was up to what the composer targeted and in many cases, higher fidelity just sounds wrong and overproduced.

It similar to how some music sounds better on Vinyl compared to CD. The limitations make it sound more "Genuine".
Click to expand...

Every new card generation after Adlib makes it sound overproduced till it's almost soulless at CD quality (I think it's the hall reverb is what kills it).
But the final arrangement in this instance is the fault of the musician. Pluck a string and it sounds much better.

 
nkarafo said:
Isn't "General Midi" in a more modern card/chip the same as an MT-32 or better?
Click to expand...
Some what, but it's mostly completely different and General MIDI doesn't work correctly with old games.

The MT32 was released before General MIDI standard. It speaks MIDI, but the standard defined that instruments were in which slot. The mapping to the MT32 is different. So old games expected an MT32 could play the wrong instrument.

The other thing is that General MIDI modules and newer stuff operate by having a lookup table of samples which recordings of the instruments and then play the samples. The MT-32 does have some PCM wave data, but it applies a bunch of Math to it and synthesizes the audio by combining up to four modified partials to create a sound.

I highly recommend checking out Munt or the MT32 Pi for MiSTer, there's also a new Nuked SC-55 which is basically Munt but for the SC-55. Compare them in various games to really see for yourself just how different they are.
 
SScorpio said:
I highly recommend checking out Munt or the MT32 Pi for MiSTer, there's also a new Nuked SC-55 which is basically Munt but for the SC-55. Compare them in various games to really see for yourself just how different they are.
Click to expand...
I use Dosbox Pure in RetroArch and it has all these options already. Tested MT32, works great too.
 
Holammer said:
Every new card generation after Adlib makes it sound overproduced till it's almost soulless at CD quality (I think it's the hall reverb is what kills it).
But the final arrangement in this instance is the fault of the musician. Pluck a string and it sounds much better.

Click to expand...

Yea MT32 is probably the one who handles it best otherwise. Gameblaster is way too mechanical in its sound and the 90s cards just can't stop themselves from showing of all their bells and whistles.
And let's be real here. If you remember the PC speaker sounding good in anything. You are blinded by nostalgia.

In terms of CD stuff though. I personally kind a like the arrangement from Curse (If you ignore those stupid sound effects).

 
Last edited:
Kadve said:
Yea MT32 is probably the one who handles it best otherwise. Gameblaster is way too mechanical in its sound and the 90s cards just can't stop themselves from showing of all their bells and whistles.
And let's be real here. If you remember the PC speaker sounding good in anything. You are blinded by nostalgia.

In terms of CD stuff though. I personally kind a like the arrangement from Curse (If you ignore those stupid sound effects).

Click to expand...


When I heard the music for the first time from the LGR video, I thought the MT32 (and above) sounded way better.

Not sure how Adlib was better since to me it sounded inferior and limited.
 
Melon Husk said:
github.com

GitHub - munt/munt: A multi-platform software synthesiser emulating pre-GM MIDI devices such as the Roland MT-32, CM-32L, CM-64 and LAPC-I. In no way endorsed by or affiliated with Roland Corp.

A multi-platform software synthesiser emulating pre-GM MIDI devices such as the Roland MT-32, CM-32L, CM-64 and LAPC-I. In no way endorsed by or affiliated with Roland Corp. - munt/munt
github.com github.com
Click to expand...

hmm could you make this work on android and dosbox? Would be cool to run this on a Android phone when I'm travelling :S.
 
Ironbunny said:
hmm could you make this work on android and dosbox? Would be cool to run this on a Android phone when I'm travelling :S.
Click to expand...
I don't know about the various Android ports. But there are versions of DOSBox and SCUMMVM that have this built in. You just need to provide the copywritten Roland samples and ROM for it to work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Modern Games Vs. Old Games, A.K.A how games have regressed
2 3
104
1K
DreamcastSkies replied
Freedom To Buy Games (Good Old Games fights back censorship)
Social News NSFW  2 3
128
1K
MayauMiao replied
[The Verge] Wooting’s 60HE v2 upgrades the best gaming keyboard with improved speed and sound
News Hardware Hype 
9
1K
OverHeat replied
Nintendo Switch 2 doesn't actually run original Switch games natively uses a hardware/software hybrid proprietary technology
2 3
126
11K
Hudo replied
Is $230 a good price for PS5 Digital without controller?
Hardware 
32
2K
JimmyRustler replied
Top Bottom