Plutonia MIDI Pack + Plutonia 2 soundtrack: OPL Synth cover

[Hisymak]

[Youtube links HERE]
Plutonia MIDI pack: https://youtu.be/TeQzexPTLRs
Plutonia 2 soundtrack: https://youtu.be/lT6_G1usQXc

Hello!
Some time ago I found out about this excellent Plutonia MIDI Pack. It really impressed me and I liked many tracks from it, and most importantly, playing Plutonia with this was way much better experience than with those boring reused Doom/Doom2 music tracks.
In ZDoom I am permanently using "OPL Synth emulation" as a MIDI device. That means, I heard all the soundtrack with OPL synth for the first time while playing Plutonia. The reason is that I played Doom and other DOS games back in late 90's with a Sound Blaster-compatible sound card and strongly got used to its sound, so I still want to listen to the music like that.
I was looking for Plutonia MIDI pack recordings on Youtube and found many versions played with some high-quality soundfonts (for example Patch93's Roland SC-55 soundfont), which sounded really good. But I could not find any OPL synth version. I understand that people are mostly not interested in it, because it does not provide the best quality sound, and they prefer the modern fancy midi synthesizers. But then I got an idea: Why not to record Plutonia MIDI pack played with that oldschool OPL synth myself?
So basically the purpose of this video is to show how the music tracks from Plutonia MIDI pack would sound on an oldschool Adlib/Sound Blaster card if they were composed back in the 90's. But not exactly like this, because I recorded the music with ZDoom's built-in OPL synthesizer (MAME OPL2 core) which is a bit different from the real hardware.

Edit: Now also added Plutonia 2 soundtrack! Go to this post for more information.

[leileilol]

Why don't you record with the Nuked OPL3 core? That's based off YMF262 decapping and is currently the most accurate OPL3 emulator out there.

Also I wouldn't call this a "cover"... that would imply effort. Rendering would be a better word to describe.


Finally the video is misleading with the pictures of the hardware when it's software emulation being used and you are not clear and up-front enough about this (as there is a purist OPL2/3 recording scene and they will tear a new one for tricking them)

[Gez]

Hisymak made his own GENMIDI lump for this, so there is some effort involved.

[Hisymak]

Why don't you record with the Nuked OPL3 core? That's based off YMF262 decapping and is currently the most accurate OPL3 emulator out there.

As I am using the MAME OPL2 core (which is the default in ZDoom) and I'm most familiar with its sound, I decided to use this one. And Doom does not use any special features of OPL3 so I had no need to use any OPL3 core.

Finally the video is misleading with the pictures of the hardware when it's software emulation being used and you are not clear and up-front enough about this (as there is a purist OPL2/3 recording scene and they will tear a new one for tricking them)

You are pretty true about this and I feel a bit sorry. However, I put the pictures there mainly for those (younger) people who have never heard about OPL and Adlib/SoundBlaster cards, so that they can see what is it all about. I know this is misleading for purist OPL2/3 recorders, but I'm stating it's emulated in the video description anyway.
To be honest, I'm personally not keen on using and recording from real hardware, but I am pretty amazed how good the emulation quality is, so (at least for me) it can well enough replace the real hardware, which is not available for modern computers at all. The emulation also brings some nice additional features, like full stereo, much more available voices and so on.

Also I wouldn't call this a "cover"... that would imply effort. Rendering would be a better word to describe.

As Gez said in his comment, I actually edited some of the instruments in GENMIDI lump. That is some effort I put into it. Generally the original Doom GENMIDI is pretty good, mostly any midi played with it would sound reasonably (which is not the case with some other games). However some instruments sounded really crappy so I needed to fix them, and I tried to highlight some other instruments to add more depth into them.
If you listen to the music carefully, you will definitely hear the difference between my video and the result you get when you play ZDoom with the midi pack. There are a few songs that sound very different, MAP25 just came into my mind.
I'm also curious how many edited instruments you can find and how you like them.

[Jimmy]

I'm enjoying this a lot. Thanks for doing this!

[Hisymak]

I'm enjoying this a lot. Thanks for doing this!

And I'm really enjoying the songs you and your team have composed!
This "cover" is actually my way to say "Thank you" for bringing up and fulfiling the idea of custom soundtrack for Plutonia.
Just curious - which song or instrument you like the most from my video?

Now I'm thinking about doing the same for Plutonia 2 soundtrack. I see you contributed lot of songs there too, some are my favourites (for example map01, map05, map10, map25). Are you interested in hearing them with OPL and some of my customized instruments?

[Hisymak]

Hello again!
Now I recorded also Plutonia 2 soundrack, as I promised! You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/lT6_G1usQXc

Again I customized even more instruments in the GENMIDI lump. I gave new sounding to many instruments which I was not happy with, trying to make the songs sound better and closer to how they were probably intended (I got inspired by the recordings with Arachno soundfont). So enjoy this kick-ass music and let's show that OPL synth still has a chance to compete with modern MIDI synthesizers and fancy soundfonts!

For those who are interested: Here you can download the GENMIDI lump I used for recording.