Jepael wrote:

No those are not comparable as per the raw chip. […]
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No those are not comparable as per the raw chip.

Yamaha DX-7 has 16 channels (voices), 6 operators per channel, only sine wave operator waveform, and 32 algorithms how the operators are combined together.

Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2) chip has 9 channels (voices), 2 operators per channel, four operator waveforms (sine and three modified out of that sine), and only 2 algorithms (modulator->carrier arrangement for FM, or just sum of both operators).

So when you turn on a sound on DX-7 channel, it can be very complex sound produced in hardware by the chip.

Sounds produced by OPL2 hardware only are much simpler, but the Loudness system software might constantly update the sound parameters when it plays, so it sounds better than native OPL2 instruments. So yes, this is what you called "simple software synthesis". I think it can never reach the level of real DX-7 instruments in terms of waveform complexity, but it can still sound better as a whole. Just like cheap violin played by skilled person might sound better than expensive violin played by unskilled person.

Some MOD players were even capable of playing sampled sounds on a OPL2 chip, although quality was relatively poor.

I understand, I just tried to recreate some loudness instruments with reality adlib tracker and.. no way, loudness produces much more realistic drums, some really cool saw waves and even "voices"... so the software is important.

I didn't knew the opl could play sampled sounds, I have to test that 😀.

Thanks

Very nice song selection however. I liked the video.

More OPL2 RIX stuff...

Empire of the Angel II (天使帝國二)
A08
A17
A31
A33
ENDA

Thank you so much for the 天使帝國二 musics.

Joey_sw wrote:

Thank you so much for the 天使帝國二 musics.

There is a music jukebox feature, by-the-way, that works with both the Chinese and Korean versions of the game, and is accessible as part of a larger "cheat" function.

http://forum.gamer.com.tw/C.php?page=1&bsn=02966&snA=256

Its works, thanks for telling me about this.

The jukebox said there 31 musics,
however the music.swf file indicates there might me 41 musics available.
From the first 300-bytes from that file, divided into series of 6 bytes.
The 6-bytes were formed something like : [Offset_from_beginning_of_file - 4 bytes; Length - 2 bytes].
That about 50 entries, but for the last 9 entries the length value is 3 bytes, so i doubt theres meaningful data from that last 9 entries.

For example, the music for insufficient conventional memory notice (slightly modifed 3-A07.RIX), are not included in the jukebox.

Again, thank you for telling me about how to access the jukebox.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Joey_sw wrote:

Thank you so much for the 天使帝國二 musics.

There is a music jukebox feature, by-the-way, that works with both the Chinese and Korean versions of the game, and is accessible as part of a larger "cheat" function.

http://forum.gamer.com.tw/C.php?page=1&bsn=02966&snA=256

Nice songs! Is there an English translation of this game somewhere?

how about this? (Lollypop, 1994)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vh4wnHCeNI

mills26 wrote:

I didn't knew the opl could play sampled sounds, I have to test that 😀.

Thanks

Inertia Player supports AdLib-as-a-DAC playback. Give that a shot if you're interested. 😀

It doesn't work in DOSBox though, only on real hardware.

Joey_sw wrote:

Its works, thanks for telling me about this.

Just need to find a similar feature for "Chinese Paladin" now... 😀

MaxWar wrote:

Nice songs! Is there an English translation of this game somewhere?

Not that I'm aware of, I'm afraid.

VileRancour wrote:

how about this? (Lollypop, 1994)

The Lollypop tunes, while still technically impressive, were never my cup of tea. Then again, I've always been more partial to Jesper Olsen's Vibrants works besides...

SquallStrife wrote:

Inertia Player supports AdLib-as-a-DAC playback.

There are a fair number of commercial examples as well. You'll find that anything using Activision's OmniMusic driver supports this feature.

Here's an example from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, where everything heard, including the introductory tune, is digital playback through an OPL2:

http://www.symphoniae.com/elw/BnTadlib.mp3

Lollypop has some amazing music, courtesy of the Vibrants. However, they really take off if you listen to them with an MT-32 or CM-32L.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRbP8aNkJHo

The most impressive FM synth I've heard is in a simulation game called WOLF:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQlcnhZZ_A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EKY950LloY

I've tried the game with both GM and MT-32 settings, and neither sound as soulful to me.

Heh, I know what you mean, I feel the same way about Elite 2's music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjoMq-H3b8o

The amiga version and MT-32 can't top this rendition IMO !

SquallStrife wrote:

Inertia Player supports AdLib-as-a-DAC playback. Give that a shot if you're interested. 😀

It doesn't work in DOSBox though, only on real hardware.

Thanks SquallStrife!

Empire of the angel music sounds awesome!

I discovered something amazing about ym3812, According to Wikipedia, and some comments from people around the web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM3812...
...The ym3812 has a "composite sine mode" (CSW or CSM mode) which was ment to be used for speech synthesis! 😮 (By the way, can somebody explain me something about "composite sine waves"?)

Neither OPL3 nor ym2612 seem to have this mode available, and it seems this feature was never used on OPL2.

I also asked Alexander Brandon, (he created most of tyrian's tunes). He told me these tunes were composed in "adlib visual composer" and then converted to the loudness system. He also told me, loudness system is a special custom format, and only Andras Molnar knows its secrets.

I wonder if this format uses that composite sine mode, there are some really weird "voices" in some of the loudness tunes.

mills26 wrote:

The ym3812 has a "composite sine mode" (CSW or CSM mode) which was ment to be used for speech synthesis!

CSM synthesis is fairly, eh... distinct. A few PC-88 titles by Game Arts feature CSM speech, including Zeliard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3apkzZQa4E

Cloudschatze wrote:

CSM synthesis is fairly, eh... distinct. A few PC-88 titles by Game Arts feature CSM speech, including Zeliard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3apkzZQa4E

Cool... Never listened things like that.. it seems it still can do another sounds while playing voices, like the rain scene.

Mills26,

the Composite Sine Wave Mode (CSM or CSW) just means all channels are turned on at the same instant (with assistance of the timer), instead of all channels separately. Therefore the resulting output signal is a composite (sum) of (sine) waves of all channels, in perfect sync.

It is mostly used for speech synthesis, which is really just a composite sum of sine waves of different frequencies and amplitudes.

Not many emulators implement this mode, and as you said this mode does not exist OPL3. I may be wrong here, but I remember reading from somewhere it might have been buggy on some chips, which is why it is not very popular and not implemented at all on OPL3 any more. But it is supposed to exist on OPL2 chips, so I don't really know.

Thus, it is impossible that the Loudness system uses Composite Sine Wave Mode, or you would not hear anything on a OPL3 (real chip or emulation) or some OPL2 emulators.

Thanks Jeapel

I tested inertia player in dosbox to play some pcm samples and mod files using the opl2. It worked with the emulated opl2, but the quality is very low, just some distorted, noisy and barely audible music came out.. I even captured a "dosbox raw opl" file, and played it using another adlib emulator, and the same...

does it really sound like that on a real adlib?

mills26 wrote:

Thanks Jeapel

I tested inertia player in dosbox to play some pcm samples and mod files using the opl2. It worked with the emulated opl2, but the quality is very low, just some distorted, noisy and barely audible music came out.. I even captured a "dosbox raw opl" file, and played it using another adlib emulator, and the same...

does it really sound like that on a real adlib?

No, it sounds OK on a real DOS computer.

It's a bit better than PC Speaker playback, but not by much.

mills26 wrote:

It worked with the emulated opl2, but the quality is very low, just some distorted, noisy and barely audible music came out.. I even captured a "dosbox raw opl" file, and played it using another adlib emulator, and the same...

I have to check but I recall many emulators (might include Dosbox) are not sample (or "cycle") accurate, and they run OPL emulation in blocks. Like for example to achieve sampling rate of 48000 Hz, it generates 48 sample blocks from register settings, and does it 1000 times per second.

For normal music playing this is OK, only very few games have problems with this and sound glitchy, meaning the 48 samples were generated while in fact the emulated software was in the middle of updating OPL registers to correct values.

But for PCM through OPL, even if Inertia Player updates PCM data 48000 times per second to OPL, the OPL emulator output would only have 1000 updates per second.

Dosbox RAW OPL capture file is similar, it works only in 1 millisecond blocks too, so basically updates are done 1000 times per second too, I just don't know if it records all the PCM data register writes for 1ms in one go or just the last one, but the effect is the same, PCM level stays same for 1 millisecond at a time.

More specialized music/midi playing software that emulate OPL (AdPlug and ScummVM for example) know how many samples are between OPL register writes so they can just write register values and generate enough samples that are needed between note events.