For an in depth description, please see the previous topic
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=3134


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pfWkZUd8SA

I'm digging it!

Awwwww baby, Gives me the ensatiable urge to play nowww

Ah! Very nice indeed! This is how I remember it!

Many thanks, especially for Felwithe and Kelethin, which is where I began my very first days in EQ.

just listen to the songs on youtube and compare. What a massive difference. On a side note the melody of Kelethin always relaxes me and I could fall asleep to it. Felwithe song was very well done. Rivervale song makes alot of sense

Wow these are really nice - the quality is impressive. In the Rivervale song, there is a snare drum instrument that you don't hear at all in the software synth version. Incredible! EQC is going to be so freaking badass when it's done.

I vote for North Ro, Neriak, and North Karana (at the bridge to SK) next

FREEPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I listen to the entire EQ midi soundtrack on my phone while I run. Makes running bearable. =)

Deathrydar is right, freeport is just the best.
I spent hours just sitting at the west gate buffing newbes and listening to the music.

I love it! EQ had some amazing music, it wasn't over the top and it set the mood well. I feel bad for people who played this game with the sound off

Amazing music, great work! I use to own a AWE32, I remember how great it use to sound in the day. I was wondering if you get a chance could you post another vid with the music from the NK to EK bridge, that was great stuff!

Love the music, sounds great!

Hello everyone!

Buckle up, this is a bit of a read.

Like many others, I played EQ back in 2000 using a Win98 box and an AWE32 soundcard. I remember how amazing the music sounded for the time, and while current methods are close to what we had, it's still not 100% perfect due to the way soundfonts on actual AWE32 hardware work.

After a bit of research and tooling around, I've discovered a way to get the music to sound almost identical to what someone with a Win9x/AWE32 and Trilogy client would hear back in the day.

Currently, the closest we've been able to get is to load up 1mgm.sf2 and synthusr.sf2 into a software synth like VirtualMIDISynth in a specific order. It sounds good, even close! But there are still some pretty large inaccuracies, especially with certain tracks.

When loading EQ's synthusr.sf2 on a real AWE32 with the correct drivers, the soundfont expects the 1MGM ROM to be available to import and manipulate it's wave samples.

We can use a utility like Viena Soundfont Editor to verify this.



Here is synthusr.sf2 loaded into Viena. Notice on the left side under "samples" we see a list of !ROM: samples. These are the samples that synthusr.sf2 is expecting from the AWE32 ROM. If we click on one, we get an error that it isn't found.

Now let's load up 1mgm.sf2 (AWE32's official ROM in soundfont form) into Viena - and what do we find? All of the samples synthusr.sf2 is looking for, of course.



If we go back to synthusr.sf2 and look at the instrument presets, we'll notice that not only do many of the presets use a combination of wavetables - some existing in synthusr.sf2 and some from 1mgm.sf2, but synthusr.sf2 applies specific parameters (reverb, chorus, etc.) to the wavetables imported from 1mgm.sf2.

For this example, let's take Brass 1 from synthusr.sf2



We can see that this instrument preset combines BrassSectC3 from 1MGM 4 different times to create a unique sound that's different from simply using the preset from 1mgm.sf2 by itself. Every single preset in synthusr.sf2 uses the AWE32 ROM samples in this function. This is also true for all of the drum presets.

The limitations of using software synths like VirtualMIDISynth are that they don't allow individual soundfonts to import or access wavetable samples from another.

Now what we can do is import the 1MGM samples and reassign the missing wavetables from every instrument preset in synthusr.sf2 to use the correct ones, then save the resulting .sf2 out. You can now load it into something like XMPlay and play an original EQ .xmi file. (note: This new .sf2 removes the need to load 1mgm.sf2 at all)

The results speak for themselves - Here are a few tracks using the new .sf2 with correct samples:

Akanon track 1:
https://sndup.net/2kts

Qeynos tracks 2 and 6:
https://sndup.net/5wfj
https://sndup.net/9gn5

West Karana (qey2hh1.xmi track 3)
https://sndup.net/853w

Kaladim tracks 5 and 6 (notorious for sounding terrible with the wrong soundfont)
https://sndup.net/536w
https://sndup.net/59m3

I think you'll notice there's extra depth to instruments and all of the correct percussion sounds are working. The pieces now sound as close as to what I can remember from back then and how Mr. Jay Barbeau originally intended.

If you want to give it a try, the new .sf2 file is here -> https://tinyurl.com/ybv4h2wv

You can load it up into VirtualMIDISynth, OmniMIDI, or whatever soundfont synth you want and hear the music in game as it was intended.

One side note - The EMU8K on the AWE32 also allowed the hardware effects processor to be applied to MIDI out, including soundfonts. I am not 100% sure if the EQ client used this in any way. The only way to verify would be to run a Trilogy client on a Win9x box that has an AWE32 with the correct drivers installed.

Have fun!

Oh, and for those who just want to listen to the music, I dumped all of the .xmi subtracks into .mp3 using XMPlay and the new soundfont. You can find it at this link -> https://tinyurl.com/y7vtaqpx

Fascinating work, good job!

How much time would it take to fix all of them, maybe it can be automated.

I've fixed all of them already in the synthusr_samplefix.sf2 that I posted above. It works perfectly in game right now.

You won't need any other soundfonts loaded, for example synthusr.sf2 or 1mgm.sf2.

Even better, i will add this soundfont to the Auditor Thread for Music Configuration.