OPL2 Doom2 into mystery [investigated]

[Darkcrafter]

I remember in the old days when I had an ess 1868 card that synthesizer lead patch sounded almost exactly like here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOGJvid8leU
So you can hear in the video it has that punchy attack while in GZDoom both in adlmidi and opl synth emulation its attack is smooth, it kind of fading it, that shouldn't happen. If I use DosBox its attack becomes sharp but it loses all these harmonics, even more strangely, "AdLib" and "Sound Blaster" modes sounds a bit different too! What do you think might be the reason and can it be fixed, so that final lead sound (instrument #63 if I'm not mistaken) has a sharp attack like in the video? Or is this just a bug and actually GZDoom emulation is just perfect and sounds the way it's intended to? Then if there is a way to make an exception for some midis to sound that buggy?

[leileilol]

Several factors could be at play:

1. ESS has ESFM, not true OPL2. but it's a damn good clone of the chip though

2. DOSBox by default emulates all sound at 44100hz which isn't enough for better OPL2/3 emulation (49716hz), so you might want to compare with an ECE build with NukeYKT's NukedOPL core as it's the most accurate and bestest AND have all the rates set to 49716hz. PCem's also an option (also does native rates only) and emulates filter effects of the Sound Blaster cards (still no ESS) and has NukedOPL available for SBPro2/SB16/AWE32/WSS emulation.

DOSBox's default settings led to a lot of ignorance about dos music recordings on youtube since the percussion is obviously wrecked at 22khz/44khz and the default 'fast' opl core which is mostly bitshifting has some polyphony issues.

3. GZdoom has NukedOPL as well and NukedOPL's the most accurate and bestest

4. The MUS playback is reverse engineered as the DMX sources weren't released so there may be inaccuracies

5. DOS Doom 1.666 actually regressed a couple of MUS FM playback effects (bends broken in e1m2 notably), 1.9 fixed it, so make sure you're not comparing 1.666

[NeuralStunner]

Sometimes I worry that I'm the only person who prefers OPL2 to 3 or other FMs.

Seems DOSBox does have the option to output OPL emulation at 49716, though it notes to also set the mixer rate to that. Your actual soundcard will likely downsample that (probably to 48K if it's decent) but it should put you on the right track.

Personally, I'd throw in another vote for PCem if you want the closest emulation experience, rather than just to play the games.



... Wouldn't it be neat to have a virtual OPL2 device as a MIDI out driver? Yeah.

[Darkcrafter]

Several factors could be at play:

1. ESS has ESFM, not true OPL2. but it's a damn good clone of the chip though

2. DOSBox by default emulates all sound at 44100hz which isn't enough for better OPL2/3 emulation (49716hz), so you might want to compare with an ECE build with NukeYKT's NukedOPL core as it's the most accurate and bestest AND have all the rates set to 49716hz. PCem's also an option (also does native rates only) and emulates filter effects of the Sound Blaster cards (still no ESS) and has NukedOPL available for SBPro2/SB16/AWE32/WSS emulation.

DOSBox's default settings led to a lot of ignorance about dos music recordings on youtube since the percussion is obviously wrecked at 22khz/44khz and the default 'fast' opl core which is mostly bitshifting has some polyphony issues.

3. GZdoom has NukedOPL as well and NukedOPL's the most accurate and bestest

4. The MUS playback is reverse engineered as the DMX sources weren't released so there may be inaccuracies

5. DOS Doom 1.666 actually regressed a couple of MUS FM playback effects (bends broken in e1m2 notably), 1.9 fixed it, so make sure you're not comparing 1.666

Sometimes I worry that I'm the only person who prefers OPL2 to 3 or other FMs.

That all makes the point too, thanks.

No guys, I've got samplerate at 49716 both for mixer and synth, the problem isn't the samplerate here! It's about the way an opl chip receives commands, otherwise how it could change such instrument parameter like ATTACK which is really not there as if we took and played it separately in solo mode, I also got a special Nuked OPL3 DosBox build, so the problem isn't harmonics but how software transfer parameters to the chip.

Edit: I installed PCem and it sounded exactly like sound blaster videos on youtube (soft attack), just like dosbox with nuked did so the reason of a much different tone here is that ess fm: https://youtu.be/iGLVgfO0W_c?t=1488