Music file format supported by ZDOOM

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ColdRock
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Music file format supported by ZDOOM

Post by ColdRock »

Hello people!

I wonder what type of music format files zdoom supports?
What is the best? MP3, MP3 VBR, WMV, OGG, OTHERS?
I need the best quality per byte.


Thanx.
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cccp_leha
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Post by cccp_leha »

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Risen
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Post by Risen »

As far as I'm concerned, a well-composed MIDI(/MUS) is far better than anything but a an even better-composed audio recording. It doesn't get much better in terms of quality per byte.
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Xaser
 
 
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Post by Xaser »

MOD music is the best. Trust me on this one. :)
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Graf Zahl
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Post by Graf Zahl »

Xaser wrote:MOD music is the best. Trust me on this one. :)

No format is the best. Only the content is important. There are good MIDIs, there are good MODs and there are good MP3's. On the other side there's a lot of shit in each format.
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Mr. Tee
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Post by Mr. Tee »

Heh... [*checks own profile*]

Well, it seems as though Impulse Tracker is one of my interests, so I feel oblidged to post here! :wink:

MIDIs: A midi file is a series of commands sent to your sound card to reproduce notes at various intervals and lengths. The quality depends heavily on the sound card / equipment you have, since no samples (instruments) are saved in MIDI format (not counting DPI's). Hence, if you have an ADLIB card, it sounds terrible. A wavetable sound card (i.e. AWE64 ) will make it sound better, but MIDI lacks many instrument effects MODs can produce. Example: The Doom IWADs all use a format almost identical to MIDI called MUS. Boom was the first source port to incorporate direct MIDI playback.

MODs (MOD/S3M/IT/XM/699): A "really really cool MIDI file" as someone on United Trackers once put it. More versatile than MIDI, this file format saves all the instruments and their settings. The filesize is a little bigger (roughly 0.5 meg to 1 meg for a good MOD) but the quality is MUCH better. MOD trackers aren't limited to the instruments a sound card has, because they can import any WAV file as an instrument. Plus, in ZDoom you can change what part of a MOD plays (using localmusicset), so one could script the music to change when the player enters a new room or something dramatic like that :). In my opinion, this is the most versatile format, with excellent quality (depending on the skill of the author). Example: Cyb's VOID wad and LilWhiteMouse's CHOSEN (I think) both use this format. If you have not played them yet, GO AND DO SO!

*Impulse Tracker ROCKS!*

Redbook (MP3/OGG/RA/WMA): These are just "redbook" audio files that have been compressed. In other words, CD songs which have been ripped and made smaller by sacrificing a little quality. Higher quality than MODs but the filesize can go up to 5-6 megs. Not very versatile (they are basically CD audio tracks). Examples: I have not played any wads which use these formats although ZDoom does support most of them.

Sorry about the insanely long post... But that's the whole deal.

For ZDoom levels I'd use MODs because they are most versatile (you can set specific sections of a MOD to play when anything happens using scripting) while having good quality (check out the http://www.modarchive.com for some good examples). Oh, WinAmp plays MODs so you can check 'em out before using them in a WAD.

Also, it would be cool to drop the author a line if you use their MOD in your WAD (we like to hear that kind of thing :) It makes us feel nice)

I hope this helps!
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sirjuddington
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Post by sirjuddington »

I remember Impulse Tracker... Had to switch to ModPlug because of WinXP though. ModPlug is much better though once you get used to it...
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Lexus Alyus
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Post by Lexus Alyus »

Yes, I use ModPlug religeosly... I eben use it to create drums and samples for my own 'real' songs:

Real Songs (MP3/OGGs or if i'm a bastard and like people to download 80meg files, WAV :-D):

Songs that use real instruments and all that gubbins and are composed by me and then compressed to a smaller format to make everyone elses lives a little easier. Just so you know, these are created with Logic Audio, a professional sequencer/digital mixing program thing.

If anyone is interested, I'd hapily compose music for you in Mod format (by far the best because you can do loads of stuff with them and have them really small. For ROTGS2 I hade composed 3 REAL songs which made the wad like 4 meg, I recreated the songs in Mod and heavily shrunk the samples and now the wad is 2 meg and that has 6 songs! (That including the new sprites and sound FX so far... quite a bit of stuff :-) )). As for midi's being good, midis can sound only as good as your sound card, but as far as the ACTUAL music goes, yes, there are some fucking sweet compositions out there (I personally love Hexen, Heretic, ROTT, and I have a large collection... plus I've got about 25 that I made myself... years ago). If you want to enjoy high quality midi music, fuck your soubnd card and get a Sound Module (Roland do some good ones but you can also look towards yamaha (Dooms E3m2 sounds nice on a yamaha sound module ;-)and E-Mu) ;-). Also, the SB Live's midi sounds are nice, or you can look for a yamaha sound card... if you want...

:twisted:
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Mr. Tee
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Post by Mr. Tee »

SlayeR wrote: I remember Impulse Tracker... Had to switch to ModPlug because of WinXP though. ModPlug is much better though once you get used to it...
Aha! But you CAN use IT in WinXP! All you need is the VDMSound ( http://ntvdm.cjb.net/ ) SB16 virtual sound wrapper! I'm still using IT in WinXP just because I'm more used to the DOS interface than the Windows MODPlug one. However, I can't deny that I used MODPlug afterwards for cool effects... But I don't think ZDoom supports the "extended IT" format MODPlug has (DirectX effects, VST, VSTi and all).

However, VDMSound can be a bit of a pain to set up. If you need help, just drop me a line.
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randi
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Post by randi »

Trivia: I made the "you found a secret" sound using ImpulseTracker and some samples I pulled from some MODs. (It would have been FastTracker 2, but IT had a wave writer and FT2 didn't.)

Also, for FastTracker and ProTracker modules, FMOD supports compressing the samples using Vorbis to save even more space. Get the OggMOD XM converter from FMOD's download page.

ImpulseTracker has its own compression format for instruments, but the last time I checked with MODPlug Tracker, it couldn't save instruments using compression; you had to use ImpulseTracker 2.15 to compress them. Maybe things are different now.
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HotWax
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Post by HotWax »

Mr. Tee wrote:All you need is the VDMSound ( http://ntvdm.cjb.net/ ) SB16 virtual sound wrapper!
That program also helps you play the Space Quest series under XP. :D
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bimshwel
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Post by bimshwel »

My experience ought to be irrelevant, but I personally hate downloading a megabyte-ish file thinking it has lots of graphic edits, and it's just a stupid bloated mod. This has happened... twice. They were both without text files and from here. I remember back in the day, seeing some program called "midi2mod" and assuming the two were about equivelant, but I guess them aren'ts.
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Xaser
 
 
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Post by Xaser »

Heh. It's nice to hear all the cool comments on Impulse Tracker. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one here who uses IT. (No pun intended) :P
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Lexus Alyus
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Post by Lexus Alyus »

I make IT files but with Mod Plug. I'm intrigued... does mod plug support this compression? At the moment I;ve created the songs and then cut the but depth down to 8 and sample rate to 22khz on every single sample. It sounds bitty in places but the song sounds the same... just lower quality... most people probably won't even recognise any odd artofacts in the audio either... my songs are like 500kb (roughly... I think that's the biggest) and i have three files (6 songs). So, if i could compreess them I could have higher quality audio but a smaller file size.

Also, while I'm on the subject of bigging up mods, don't you just think itr's cool that you can embed a number of songs that loop at spacific points oin one file? I always ;llike to have two songs in one for my levels... so the single IT file has an ambience and an action part (like ROTGS... that filew is an XM though... but it's cool :-) ).

:twisted:
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HotWax
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Post by HotWax »

I love cutting my butt depth down. Those milkshakes are a godsend!
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