Cloudschatze wrote:

Cloudschatze wrote:

Wing Commander III does indeed play the cinematics in their native 16-bit mono @ 22kHz audio format, where the actual gameplay mixing/output is 8-bit stereo @ 11kHz. Thank-you for the heads-up!

Cool. WC3 is a fantastic DOS title.

Longbow's assets are 16 bit/22 kHz/stereo for the FMV bits, 8 bit/11 kHz/mono for sound effects and in fact only 8 bit/22 kHz/stereo for music.
I grabbed the original raw PCM file for the base theme and saved it (mostly for my own amusement): http://www.mediafire.com/file/oncw5xl9z4xqj5d/Home28S.flac

Quake has a few 22khz 16-bit sounds remaining (Unused shub idle/sight, rotfish sounds, thunderbolt firing). Quake deathmatch test however was entirely 22khz 16-bit with some 44khz 8bit thrown in

I think Shattered Steel and MAX had all 16-bit sounds iirc (or at least 22khz and well produced. Interplay had very nice sound production teams)

I'm 90% certain Fade to Black has native SB16 support (with high DMA as a parameter), but unfortunately I can't re-test to confirm any more; I already pruned it from my collection.

zerker wrote:

I'm 90% certain Fade to Black has native SB16 support (with high DMA as a parameter), but unfortunately I can't re-test to confirm any more; I already pruned it from my collection.

Indeed it does, with the output being 16-bit stereo @ 22kHz. I've added this title to the Google Docs spreadsheet - thank-you very much!

leileilol wrote:

I think Shattered Steel and MAX had all 16-bit sounds iirc...

M.A.X. and Shattered Steel both leverage 16-bit @ 22kHz samples (8/16 being an option with the latter), and corresponding 16-bit output, but while the actual playback format for M.A.X. is 16-bit stereo @ 22kHz, Shattered Steel's SOS implementation is only initializing at 16-bit mono @ 22kHz, despite some of the samples themselves being stereo. I'm not yet sure why this might be, or if there is some means of overriding the behavior to obtain stereo mixing/output.

In any event, I've added these two titles to the list as well. Thank-you!

After all that being said, it's a small'ish game list after all, and most of the games don't even remotely close utilize the dynamic range of 16bit.
The mixing in these 16bit games is LOUD to be compatible with 8bit sound cards and hide the limitations of 8bit audio.
It seems the developers adjusted the game for the lowest common denominator, CPU and Audio.

Apogee Sound Engine for Duke3D, Blood, Rott, etc.. for example, has no dynamic range whatsoever even if it mixes in 16bit, all samples are played full blast.
In Duke3D I can hear rats or monster growls from across the level... that is clearly not proper use of the 96db 16bit mixing has to offer.

The necessity of 16bit sound card for DOS gaming is still questionable.

James-F wrote:

Apogee Sound Engine for Duke3D, Blood, Rott, etc.. for example, has no dynamic range whatsoever even if it mixes in 16bit, all samples are played full blast.
In Duke3D I can hear rats or monster growls from across the level... that is clearly not proper use of the 96db 16bit mixing has to offer.

The necessity of 16bit sound card for DOS gaming is still questionable.

UHHHHH WHAT?!

What version of the games have you been playing? All three of those have sound diminishing except for certain sounds, in Duke3D's case it's world ambient sounds and boss monster sounds. In Blood's case it's certain ambient sounds and event sounds. As for ROTT all sounds are diminished in the distance except for maybe when the boss sees you?

ROTT also has messed up reverb if you play with 16-bit mixing, it chops and clips a whole lot. Shrooms mode in 16-bit mixing is a noisy mess as a result.

James-F wrote:

The necessity of 16bit sound card for DOS gaming is still questionable.

Please stop. The SBPro is SO overrated on this forum, it is ridiculous.

Time and time again, people on vogons go over the same, small group of games - "The only thing that has to hold up are Apogee/iD games, Epic Megagames, Duke Nukem 3D...," and then it fizzles. Like those are the only DOS games that were made - hardly an appropriate sample size to make a blanket assumption about 16-bit sound cards in DOS.

I think it is admirable that a list is coming together, but it shouldn't have to come together. Nor should it have to reach a certain size.

CkRtech wrote:

I think it is admirable that a list is coming together, but it shouldn't have to come together. Nor should it have to reach a certain size.

In science we test things and come up with interesting results that might ruin some beliefs or misconceptions about things, sorry, that's just that.
In my opinion nothing should stay a myth or taboo, so this list is quite helpful to the good or to the bad.

I really don't care how "rated" the SBPro is, what I do care is how compatible with DOS games it is compared to hundred revisions of buggy mess the SB16 or AWE is.
What I wanted to say is that I doubt games use different mixing technique between 16bit and 8bit.
I brought DN3D as an example because it is easy to test and it has 16bit mixing but the mix itself is no different to 8bit mix and it's clearly audible.
Again, I doubt the mix itself is different between 16bit and 8bit in DOS games.

Thanks Cloud for another good thread.

Shivers is 1995 Sierra, 8-bit mono. Shivers 2 is 1997 Sierra, 8 and 16 bit, mono and stereo.

James-F wrote:

In science we test things and come up with interesting results that might ruin some beliefs or misconceptions about things, sorr […]
Show full quote

CkRtech wrote:

I think it is admirable that a list is coming together, but it shouldn't have to come together. Nor should it have to reach a certain size.

In science we test things and come up with interesting results that might ruin some beliefs or misconceptions about things, sorry, that's just that.
In my opinion nothing should stay a myth or taboo, so this list is quite helpful to the good or to the bad.

I really don't care how "rated" the SBPro is, what I do care is how compatible with DOS games it is compared to hundred revisions of buggy mess the SB16 or AWE is.
What I wanted to say is that I doubt games use different mixing technique between 16bit and 8bit.
I brought DN3D as an example because it is easy to test and it has 16bit mixing but the mix itself is no different to 8bit mix and it's clearly audible.
Again, I doubt the mix itself is different between 16bit and 8bit in DOS games.

Please have a look at Crusader: No Remorse. Pitch shifted samples in the soundtrack could make use of additional dynamic range on mixing. I'm curious if they do.

I was looking all over the place for a SB16 (or clone) with a decent OPL3 but these 3 samples convinced me to just stick with a SBPro clone. I always thought the SB16 was a lot better in games but it seems the difference is not as big as I thought. I might still want a SB16 (clone) or WSS for mod tracking stuff because I do remember that difference to be significant. I'm very interested to hear about bigger difference though. So if anyone has samples of other games: please post them, I would like to hear them.
EDIT: Wait... I skipped to halfway of the examples and there the differences are actually quite noticable...

starquake wrote:

I might still want a SB16 (clone) or WSS for mod tracking stuff because I do remember that difference to be significant.

There is only one choice for tracking, the Gravis UltraSound.

Scali wrote:

There is only one choice for tracking, the Gravis UltraSound.

Ssssht! My wallet might here you and he's still recovering from my last purchase...

Then just wait for the rise of the clones:
ARGUS Project thread - Now with gerbers and documentation in initial post!

Scali wrote:

There is only one choice for tracking, the Gravis UltraSound.

Yeah, if you're going to be using ScreamTracker 3 or something.

FastTracker II and especially Impulse Tracker 2.14 sound better on a SB16, the latter even has really neat resonance filters to mess with if you have a MMX supporting CPU.

I've seen quite a few tracked songs that wont even fit on a 1MB GUS to top it all off...

Cloudschatze wrote:

Perhaps it's time to document the titles that include 16-bit samples and/or leverage...16-bit mixing/playback routines. The resulting list will likely be larger than most people realize.

...

In conclusion, I hope to never read another statement on this forum that a Sound Blaster Pro is all a person should ever need or want for DOS gaming, or that there are no DOS games that provide 16-bit sound. 😉

I'm with you on this, and I have several threads active on VOGONS because of it. I've been torturing myself trying to get the perfect sound setup in my vintage builds. My 486 in particular has been a huge pain because of problems using high-DMA. I have a P-II system that is great, but whose screaming fast (for the time) CPU is far too fast to play some classic DOS games; hence the need to build my 486 and 386 systems. The P-II only has a ViBRA card (CT2940) and a GUS -- no Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT1600) as my 486 does.

In the interests of figuring out which games output 16-bit sound but which I *cannot* play in my P-II, I took your list and intersected it with the list from the top of this page: http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_C … sensitive_games

and the only ones that stuck out to me were Descent II and Kings Quest VII, which both happen to be games I'm going to want to play at some point. Even though I prefer the higher quality sound that comes out of a ViBRA-based SB16 (CT2890 is the one I have in my 486), I will admit that for simplicity's sake, it would be nice to just have the SB Pro 2 in there alongside the GUS and call it a day.

It would be fantastic if people would contribute to both lists so the intersection, if it contains more than 2 games, would be more fully explored.

DracoNihil wrote:

I've seen quite a few tracked songs that wont even fit on a 1MB GUS to top it all off...

All the more reason to use a GUS!
Tracking is all about optimizing music.

I must admit that given a choice between having double the sampling rate or double the bit-depth, I'd go with sampling rate every time.
22khz sampling rate is so low (see Nyquist frequency) that 8bit or 16bit does not really sound that different.
The soundblaster pro only sounds bad because of the typical use of unfiltered output for stereo mode with massive amounts of aliasing, and when its filter is turned on, it starts cutting the highs far too early, but not steeply enough.

I agree however that we should update the table with data that shows both the sample quality used within the game, AND the selectable mixing/output quality. To the best of my knowledge, the games in the list prior to 1995 have at best 11khz samples in 8bit.

One of the misconceptions I'd tried to address with this thread is the notion that only 16-bit samples benefit from 16-bit playback. As mentioned early on, it is fairly common for mid/late-90's audio engines to mix several 8-bit mono @ 11kHz (or greater) samples into a stereo stream, while also providing software effects like reverb or spatialization.

Using an example of straight mixing/playback of eight 8-bit samples, theory suggests that if there isn't at least 11-bit mixing resolution, with corresponding 11-bit output, there is a necessary loss of information and subsequent increase in noise. In this example, 16-bit mixing and output is more-than-adequate for full-resolution playback, while 8-bit routines are not.

In other words, and concerning the summation of multiple 8-bit samples, irrespective of frequency:

8-bit mixing, 8-bit output = loss of resolution (Worst)
16-bit mixing, 8-bit output = loss of resolution (Better)
16-bit mixing, 16-bit output = theoretically lossless (Best)

With this in mind, I'm of the (perhaps incorrect) opinion that knowing the rates and bit-depths of individual samples is of lesser importance than knowing the mixing and final output rate and depth.