CQM is fine, as is ESFM, later Crystal chipsets FM (CS4237B for example) and other clones too I'm sure. I've moved on from the whole "must have real OPL3" thing!

For me, it's just a question of what sounds good, and everyone's ears are different.

I prefer CQM with reverb & chorus over OPL3 as well. It sounds very good.

What you should avoid are OPL clones from OPTi and Analog Devices. Those *are* crap.

I agree, these tunes are sounding good. Thanks for sharing!
And after all it's often just a matter of personal taste.

It is indeed a matter of personal taste, but OPL3 sounds way better. 😁

It's like playing a Cello piece on a Banjo... the notes are the same but the timbre of the instrument is different.
Since the piece was composed on a Cello, you can't just smack the Banjo track with Reverb and Chorus and say it sounds just as good...
... keep telling yourself you like the Banjo more... 🤣

Unlike sample based synthesis, FM isn't close to real instruments at all. So It's more like a different interpretation and we can agree that while one may like the CQM output it still doesn't sound like the game developers intented the music to sound in DOS games. It's always up to the listener if that's a matter of concern or not.

FGB wrote:

it still doesn't sound like the game developers intented the music to sound in DOS games.

It almost never does with OPL2/3 as well, as game music was not composed for FM - apart from the very first games to support AdLib only. Whenever you can select General MIDI or MT-32 in a game, you can be sure that what you get with OPL2/3 is just a crappy conversion and not what the developers intended the music to sound like.

Besides, OPL3, CQM, ESFM, etc. isn't any different to different wave tables from Yamaha, Dream, Roland, and the like. It's always just an interpretation of notes.

I was not referring to games with crappy conversions and or wavetable support. There are many games with fantastic Adlib soundtracks and those sound like intended on "real" OPL cards only (Same as most General Midi tracks are sounding like intended when played back on Roland hardware). Still this doesn't imply the intended FM chip or wavetable module sounds best.

derSammler wrote:

you can be sure that what you get with OPL2/3 is just a crappy conversion and not what the developers intended the music to sound like.

Wrong, it's not a direct conversion, Midi and FM are totally different animals.
A company had to actually invest time and money on a musician/programmer to reprogram/recompose the Midi tracks into FM and still sound good.
And if that was the case, you can be 100% sure they did not use a CQM based card.

Many games sound excellent on FM as well as Midi.
Mortal Kombat 2, Prince of Persia 2, Doom and many many more.

If you are not familiar with Adlib Tracker 2, you should.
OPL3 can sound absolutely phenomenal if the programmer is good.

Add "Dune" to the list of prominent examples. Composed for Adlib and the Gold 1000 card. A prime example of quality FM music.

derSammler wrote:

Besides, OPL3, CQM, ESFM, etc. isn't any different to different wave tables from Yamaha, Dream, Roland, and the like. It's always just an interpretation of notes.

Yes, I completely agree, but there is just something about hearing the composition exactly as the composer heard it.
Today with digital audio it's not even something you would think about, but in the past with various clones/budget solutions the output could have been anywhere from somewhat similar to radically different to "WTF is this abomination?!".

James-F wrote:

It is indeed a matter of personal taste, but OPL3 sounds way better. :D […]
Show full quote

It is indeed a matter of personal taste, but OPL3 sounds way better. 😁

It's like playing a Cello piece on a Banjo... the notes are the same but the timbre of the instrument is different.
Since the piece was composed on a Cello, you can't just smack the Banjo track with Reverb and Chorus and say it sounds just as good...
... keep telling yourself you like the Banjo more... 🤣

This is pretty much it.

I guess Adlib FM isn't typically so technically impressive to me that I want alternative interpretations of classic pieces, even if no part of it sounded odd/bad.

It's a nostalgia thing, and when it's wrong, it's wrong. Everyone doesn't have to be purist about it, though; that's a completely personal problem. 😀

FGB wrote:

Add "Dune" to the list of prominent examples. Composed for Adlib and the Gold 1000 card. A prime example of quality FM music.

Personally, I think Dune sounds better on FM than MIDI.

James-F wrote:

It is indeed a matter of personal taste, but OPL3 sounds way better. :D […]
Show full quote

It is indeed a matter of personal taste, but OPL3 sounds way better. 😁

It's like playing a Cello piece on a Banjo... the notes are the same but the timbre of the instrument is different.
Since the piece was composed on a Cello, you can't just smack the Banjo track with Reverb and Chorus and say it sounds just as good...
... keep telling yourself you like the Banjo more... 🤣

How do you know what a given track was composed on? Did you look up the musician on Mobygames and try to google an old gear list of theirs? For games especially, they would have been *tested* on a variety of machines even if they were *written* on something different.

FGB wrote:

it still doesn't sound like the game developers intented the music to sound in DOS games.

How do you know what 'the game developers intended'?

James-F wrote:

And if that was the case, you can be 100% sure they did not use a CQM based card.

Again, why do you think you can be "100% sure" about this? Yeah CQM didn't come around until 1995 but lots of good FM music was written after that. And there were other clones & emulations before then.

Ugh, can we put the "argument" that "you're not hearing it as the composer intended!!!" to rest? We generally have no idea what sound cards the composers were using - some of them almost certainly were using AWE32s and 64s because those were the high-end offerings targeted at musicians, not to mention semi-pro stuff like the EWS64. Even OPL2 and OPL3 themselves sound different. Unless you have an exact clone of not only the composer's sound card, but also their amplifier, speakers, EQ settings, signal chain, room acoustics, noise & interference sources and even their ears you're still not hearing any music "the way they did."

HOWEVER, the above is moot because what a good musician or sound designer does is test his or her stuff in a wide variety of playback & listening environments, and make sure it sounds good to as many people as possible. I do this! You think oldschool game devs didn't test on AWE64s and Vibra 16s and fix things when the music sounded 'off'? Even demoscene groups usually tried to test on a few different setups if they could; they would often write what they tested on in the nfo files.

Tl;dr: unless the composer specifically included instructions saying "don't play this on CQM", or "use a real OPL3", or "use a GUS with FM emulation through a pair of Acoustic Research AR15s and a 1960s RCA Victor tube amp ONLY" or whatever, it's awfully presumptuous to think you know exactly "what they intended" and anything else is "wrong." Speaking as a composer myself, they probably 'intended' for people to *enjoy* their music in a way that sounds good to them.

For interest's sake, here's a page with other versions of the Lost Vikings song on different hardware (it's the 'Toy World' track) :

http://sound.dosforum.de/#awemt32

I actually think my CQM version sounds considerably better than the reference OPL2/3 version posted there. The lead synth-solo-thing on OPLx sounds thin and boxy to me, whereas mine makes it sound more like an instrument with some dynamics & depth. The Adlib has that lovely punchy bass guitar sound which Yamaha FM made famous, but IMHO the CQM sounds more like a real fretless bass that a groove band might use.

This might be the case of an *excellent* song getting a competent-but-not-spectacular OPL conversion; it was originally a Megadrive & SNES game after all (the SNES version of the tune, called "Factory Beat" on that system, is well worth looking up too.)

Some of the others recorded there are quite nice, the SC55 & MT32 versions are standouts & even the GUS is surprisingly good considering the size of the patch set that had to be used.

If you don't agree, that's awesome! The whole point is listening to things in a way which you enjoy them, not arguing which is "correct." 😀 I'm just trying to show off how good CQM *can* sound if you take it as its own thing & not just deride it as an inferior knockoff (it isn't.)

In around 2004 I got a 486, I lived in England back in those days, and I got an AWE64. I knew nothing about OPL3 and CQM and I had a great gaming experience. It was only much later, and on Vogons, that I learnt about the differences.

I like to use CQM to "spice up" the sound of older games. A bit of reverb, chorus, some extra bass and FM only games sound a bit more modern, with a new twist. I can't remember if the 3D Stereo Enhancements also work, but that's something worth checking out. Of course it's all fake Stereo and not for everyone, but I like it very much 😀

In some games it has to be the real deal for me though. Monkey Island 2 for example, it's got to be a Sound Blaster 1.5, nothing else. It was my first ever sound card, the first game I played with that card and only that card gives me that warm and cosy feeling 😊

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

In some games it has to be the real deal for me though. Monkey Island 2 for example, it's got to be a Sound Blaster 1.5, nothing else. It was my first ever sound card, the first game I played with that card and only that card gives me that warm and cosy feeling 😊

My first sound card was a SB 2.0 value - I've re-aquired a couple since but can't use them coz of the mono + crackle and pops. I still remember it very fondly though, along with PC speaker and crappy little battery powered speakers. Nostaligia has a lot to answer for 😵

"Infamous karting squirrel" haha, at first I thought it WAS the name of the game thinking how Ironic was that!
I didn't mind it though, WW was superior but its still better then a lot of the games you used to get on those 100 shareware game CD's pre download days

xjas wrote:

Again, why do you think you can be "100% sure" about this? Yeah CQM didn't come around until 1995 but lots of good FM music was […]
Show full quote

Again, why do you think you can be "100% sure" about this? Yeah CQM didn't come around until 1995 but lots of good FM music was written after that. And there were other clones & emulations before then.

Ugh, can we put the "argument" that "you're not hearing it as the composer intended!!!" to rest? We generally have no idea what sound cards the composers were using - some of them almost certainly were using AWE32s and 64s because those were the high-end offerings targeted at musicians, not to mention semi-pro stuff like the EWS64. Even OPL2 and OPL3 themselves sound different. Unless you have an exact clone of not only the composer's sound card, but also their amplifier, speakers, EQ settings, signal chain, room acoustics, noise & interference sources and even their ears you're still not hearing any music "the way they did."

HOWEVER, the above is moot because what a good musician or sound designer does is test his or her stuff in a wide variety of playback & listening environments, and make sure it sounds good to as many people as possible. I do this! You think oldschool game devs didn't test on AWE64s and Vibra 16s and fix things when the music sounded 'off'? Even demoscene groups usually tried to test on a few different setups if they could; they would often write what they tested on in the nfo files.

Tl;dr: unless the composer specifically included instructions saying "don't play this on CQM", or "use a real OPL3", or "use a GUS with FM emulation through a pair of Acoustic Research AR15s and a 1960s RCA Victor tube amp ONLY" or whatever, it's awfully presumptuous to think you know exactly "what they intended" and anything else is "wrong." Speaking as a composer myself, they probably 'intended' for people to *enjoy* their music in a way that sounds good to them.

It was already past the prime of FM soundtracks, but sure it's possible some 1996-1997 release may have been done with a CQM. Reference soundtracks by that time were sample based, MIDI, CDDA or wavetable when later cards and systems were targeted, with FM as the fallback for the existing market that was Yamaha OPL dominated, though. Just like wavetable stuff, they may have listened to other gear as well, or not.

"...their amplifier, speakers, EQ settings, signal chain, room acoustics, noise & interference sources...", even all of that doesn't make as big of a difference; you can tell an OPL as the OPL and a different solution as something else across most (reasonable) sound setups.

The music landscape in DOS was wild. Endless different ways to hear a given track. Go nuts.