Best soundfont for Doom?

[bagheadspidey]

Well, I've never been a big fan of listening to raw MIDI sequences, but I've heard tell that with the right soundfonts it can become almost bearable. After checking out a few different soundfonts more or less at random, I still feel pretty much the same way. Comments like this make me want to keep trying, though...

So, those of you with good ears and custom soundfonts, would you care to share with me the name and origin of those soundfonts so I could try em out? I think it would be cool to eventually put together a list of "Best Soundfont(s) for Doom" and then maybe "Best Soundfont(s) for Heretic/Hexen" - although H/H music has always sounded a lot better to me than the Doom music, probably because it is original music that is designed to sound good as a midi sequence rather than cheap midi ripoffs of awesome Slayer and Pantera tracks.

Anyway, I digress - so, what are your favorite soundfonts to use with Doom(2)?

[bagheadspidey]

el bumpo

[Janizdreg]

Here's the soundfont that I use. It's by far the best that I've come accross. It's been a few years since I discovered it and unfortunately I don't remember who created/compiled it and where I originally downloaded it from.

I must say that I actually like the Doom songs a lot. I don't see what's so bad about using famous heavy metal songs as a base for the soundtrack of an action game, especially since the tracks aren't IMO "cheap ripoffs", but quality MIDI work. And besides, the Doom soundtracks also feature many good completely original tunes as well.

[bagheadspidey]

Hey, thanks Janizdreg! I'll check this out right away =)

I guess what I meant by "cheap ripoffs" was not that the midi work was done poorly, or that heavy metal is inappropriate for Doom, but that raw midi sequences just cannot do the original tracks justice. Also, I say "cheap ripoffs" because as far as I know, no recognition or compensation was given to the artists who originally created those tracks / guitar leads / etc. The original tunes in Doom, most of which are ambient / minimal kinds of tunes, imo work much better with raw midi than, for example, trying to recreate guitar chords.

Of course, I may change my mind once I check out this soundfont, who knows

[bagheadspidey]

hey, do you have a timidity config to go along with this? If not, how are you using it with zdoom?

edit - found it, it's in the zip as gravis.cfg. BTW this soundfont is called "eawpats12" I believe. Sounds very similar to "freepats" (default soundfont on open systems) with a few added instruments.

[DBThanatos]

ok, I dont have a clue of how to use it. Any advice? how can I install it?


DBT

[phi108]

This patch set is pretty good. One problem: The marching footsteps on level 31 use some instrument that doesn't sound like footsteps. Aside from that, Awesome

[bagheadspidey]

ok, I dont have a clue of how to use it. Any advice? how can I install it?

Here's the easiest way for windows users to use this particular soundfont. Linux users can probably figure it out for themselves (at least from reading this), but if you need help just ask.

1 - unzip everything to C:\eawpats -- If you can't or don't want to use this location be sure to read step 5
2 - Find timidity.cfg (should be wherever timidity installed to) and rename it something like timidity.cfg.old
3 - Copy the timidity.cfg from C:\eawpats (or wherever you unzipped the file to) to the same directory as timidity.cfg.old
4 - Change line 30 of timidity.cfg to whatever location timidity is installed to, if needed.
5 - If you are not using C:\eawpats, change line 61 of timidity.cfg to whatever location you unzipped to.

That's it!

[DBThanatos]

thanks man, but I have been looking (manualy and by windows "search") the timidity folder or something that at least mention timidity and i found nothing. I also tried with GUS but the result is the same. damn... I hate vista


DBT

[bagheadspidey]

thanks man, but I have been looking (manualy and by windows "search") the timidity folder or something that at least mention timidity and i found nothing.

Yeah, after I said that i realized timidity is probably compiled along with zdoom in the windows version. Check around in your zdoom directory. Let me know what you find out and I'll turn this into a wiki entry.

edit: have a look at this thread. It's old but it may work.

[Matt]

http://www.zdoom.org/files/timidity4zdoom2.zip

[bagheadspidey]

http://www.zdoom.org/files/timidity4zdoom2.zip

Does it work? Did the instructions above work with that?

[Matt]

Yeah, after I said that i realized timidity is probably compiled along with zdoom in the windows version. Check around in your zdoom directory. Let me know what you find out and I'll turn this into a wiki entry.

Unless there's been some massive change that no one's told me about, Timidity doesn't come with ZDoom. The zip I linked to contains the version of Timidity used for ZDoom (without any soundfonts).

[bagheadspidey]

yeah, realized that after checking out the windows zip of zdoom, thus the edit pointing out that other thread. Guess I was not being clear... What I was asking was if that version of timidity you found actually works with the current version of zdoom, being too lazy to boot into windows myself... if it does, the instructions given above should more or less work.

[Skunk]

Hate to bring up an old post... but I've never seen a soundfont as a zip. Is there any reason for this?

EDIT: Also, how do I use timidity for SF2 soundbanks like Silverspring or Fluid?

EDIT 2: Also are there soundfonts that recreate the FM synth sounds from games like Doom and Lemmings?