RIP

RIP. I wonder what would PC game music have become without Roland. Perhaps we all would have FM sound until Redbook Audio finally came?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

RIP. I wonder what would PC game music have become without Roland. Perhaps we all would have FM sound until Redbook Audio finally came?

It probably would have made the IBM Music Feature Card the de-facto MIDI interface, instead of the MPU-401.
And instead of using an MT-32 or Sound Canvas, I suppose other brands would have had more success with (wavetable-based) sound modules, including Yamaha, but also perhaps Korg, Kawai...
Perhaps Turtle Beach or Gravis UltraSound would have become more popular choices. There were plenty of alternatives.

I guess I don't particularly see Roland as all that important for PC game music. I think they were far more important in the professional music scene. They did great stuff with early analog and later LA synthesizers, drum machines, and they also helped establish MIDI and General MIDI standards.
Their D-50, 303, 808 and 909 left lasting marks on the musical landscape.
But for PC game music, how many people really used an MT-32 or Sound Canvas? They were super-expensive for 'just' gaming. I've never actually seen anyone with a rig like that. So I never actually heard how the games sounded either.
The first time I heard 'MT-32' or 'Sound Canvas' audio was when I got my UltraSound and ran games via MegaEm. I didn't actually hear the real thing until I could listen to a recording via internet years later. They're THAT esoteric 😀 So as far as I know, people pretty much listened to FM until CD audio 😀 Aside from the people who got an UltraSound, WaveBlaster, SB AWE or such.
LGR and the 8-bit guy say basically the same thing in their videos, so it's not just me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiZOxUhQj10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMmFcs-_4x4

Some games make good use of FM synthesizer, like Ultima 6 and Laser Squad. In some other games, FM synth just sound ugly; examples are X-Wing, Rebel Assault, and TIE Fighter. If Roland never existed, what are the most likely candidate for FM replacement? Probably tracker music ala Star Control II?

May he rest in peace.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

If Roland never existed, what are the most likely candidate for FM replacement? Probably tracker music ala Star Control II?

I don't understand the question?
Tracker music isn't limited to a particular sound technology. There are trackers for virtually any type of music chip, including FM.
For some reason, tracker music didn't really catch on on the PC platform. Possibly because there were so many different sound devices, and you basically have to 'port' your song to each of them.
So developers would often use MIDI-based technology, for that lowest-common-denominator vibe. You can really tell on the few occasions where they didn't, and actually tried to get the most out of individual hardware.

MIDI would likely either not have existed, or would have been quite different and/or introduced later, since Roland was one of the companies (if not THE company) that started the push towards having a standard in the first place...

yawetaG wrote:

MIDI would likely either not have existed, or would have been quite different and/or introduced later, since Roland was one of the companies (if not THE company) that started the push towards having a standard in the first place...

Yea, but what does that have to do with PC games?
MIDI is just a way to store note data. There are other ways (MML for example, popular in Japanese games). It doesn't determine how it sounds.

Scali wrote:

yawetaG wrote:

MIDI would likely either not have existed, or would have been quite different and/or introduced later, since Roland was one of the companies (if not THE company) that started the push towards having a standard in the first place...

Yea, but what does that have to do with PC games?
MIDI is just a way to store note data. There are other ways (MML for example, popular in Japanese games). It doesn't determine how it sounds.

Strictly put, isn't "how it sounds" determined entirely by the sound producing device's electronic circuits (at least, that's what all my reading on synthesizers has been telling me lately) and not by whatever format is used to store the data?
Loosely put, depending on the MIDI data transmitted to and processed by the sound device, the sound output of the same notes can be quite different depending on the values that are transmitted for velocity, aftertouch, etc. when playing on a keyboard or other controller. So it's a bit more than pure note data like you'd find on sheet music, it can include information on how to play the note (that's why it's great IMHO). Of course, the limited hardware on many PC sound cards may not actually support processing that kind of information...

In context, what I meant is that it might have taken longer (years) for a standard way of storing music data (in general, not only for PC games) to have emerged (thought I was quite clear in that...). It could have resulted in a single manufacturer dominating the market (Yamaha would be a good candidate due to their FM tech). It could have resulted in multiple competing and incompatible standards. Music quality could have been inferior for a long time, with desktop music production being more limited in scope or emerging later and home recording development not happening, instead there being a switch to CD-based music much earlier. On the other hand, maybe a better standard would have emerged. In short, History would have been different.
Music in PC games is just part of a much greater set of events, and considering the use of MIDI, maybe THE professional audio standard that really opened up the world of electronic music production, in PC games as just a thing that can be seen as entirely separate from everything else, when for many people it was a gateway to getting them interested in music production is, IMHO, seriously shorting it on its impact.

yawetaG wrote:

Strictly put, isn't "how it sounds" determined entirely by the sound producing device's electronic circuits (at least, that's what all my reading on synthesizers has been telling me lately) and not by whatever format is used to store the data?

Not necessarily.
For example, it can also be what the format *doesn't* store. Many synthesizers have very specific filters and other parameters that you won't use in any MIDI files, except ones written specifically for a specific piece of hardware (and then we're assuming the MIDI implementation can control 100% of that specific circuitry, which is not always true in practice).

Also, what about sample-based data? Then it's the samples stored in the file that determine how it sounds. Most obvious example would be ProTracker mods and related formats.

yawetaG wrote:

In context, what I meant is that it might have taken longer (years) for a standard way of storing music data (in general, not only for PC games) to have emerged (thought I was quite clear in that...).

My point is that MIDI was rarely used outside of PCs (Atari, C64, Amiga, Nintendo, Sega etc all have their own non-MIDI formats. MIDI isn't very useful for that sort of audio hardware), and even on PCs it was only used in certain games/for certain devices.
MIDI is not that relevant for games.
If anything, MIDI made the quality of PC audio worse than it could have been, because it wasn't very suitable for the most popular devices: the AdLib and other OPL2/OPL3 based devices.
You can really tell when AdLib music was made with custom software, like Dune and Tyrian.

Wow, semantics. If Roland / Mr. Kakehashi hadn't been around, I fully believe something *just like* MIDI would have emerged. It was mostly Dave Smith who spearheaded its development anyway. He got Roland on-board during the process, but it was his baby.

However, Roland's biggest influence on "game music" wasn't MIDI at all - it was the genres the developed during the synth boom of the '80s, *many* styles of which owed their sound directly to the availability of then-dirt-cheap Roland gear. You guys think techno would have developed like it did without the 303? Hip-hop without the 808? Industrial or synthpop without the Juno 60 & its ilk? Nah. This really isn't a question that can be "answered", but if you're going to debate what could have been about "game music", call it what it is - music.

xjas wrote:

However, Roland's biggest influence on "game music" wasn't MIDI at all - it was the genres the developed during the synth boom of the '80s, *many* styles of which owed their sound directly to the availability of then-dirt-cheap Roland gear. You guys think techno would have developed like it did without the 303? Hip-hop without the 808? Industrial or synthpop without the Juno 60 & its ilk? Nah. This really isn't a question that can be "answered", but if you're going to debate what could have been about "game music", call it what it is - music.

Yup, fully agree, as also in my first reply here.

Okay, fine, Scali is entirely right and has the only valid opinion*, I forgot about that (except...hardware samplers like the Akai S1000 (and I'll leave it at that...)). 🙄

* I won't be the first person to complain about this on this forum.

Scali wrote:

I don't understand the question? Tracker music isn't limited to a particular sound technology. There are trackers for virtually […]
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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

If Roland never existed, what are the most likely candidate for FM replacement? Probably tracker music ala Star Control II?

I don't understand the question?
Tracker music isn't limited to a particular sound technology. There are trackers for virtually any type of music chip, including FM.
For some reason, tracker music didn't really catch on on the PC platform. Possibly because there were so many different sound devices, and you basically have to 'port' your song to each of them.

I mean MOD tracker. And the programs MODEDIT.EXE (to create and play tracker music) and MPPLAY.EXE (to play it) works with PC speaker. Yes, they both support Sound Blaster and Adlib as well, but the only difference it makes is louder sound, because Adlib/Sound Blaster is connected to external loudspeakers --which are naturally louder than PC speaker.

yawetaG wrote:

Okay, fine, Scali is entirely right and has the only valid opinion*, I forgot about that (except...hardware samplers like the Akai S1000 (and I'll leave it at that...)). 🙄

* I won't be the first person to complain about this on this forum.

You won't. 🤣

yawetaG wrote:

except...hardware samplers like the Akai S1000

What about them? I fail to see the point you're trying to make.

Other than that, yes I'm a musician and coder, so I know MIDI, synths and related stuff from both sides of the spectrum. Both using them to compose and record music, and using them to reproduce music for games/demos.
Chances of me being right on this topic are quite high, statistically (and my main MIDI synth is a Roland Juno-D, teehee, currently hooked up to an 8088 machine with my own custom software).

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I mean MOD tracker. And the programs MODEDIT.EXE (to create and play tracker music) and MPPLAY.EXE (to play it) works with PC speaker. Yes, they both support Sound Blaster and Adlib as well, but the only difference it makes is louder sound, because Adlib/Sound Blaster is connected to external loudspeakers --which are naturally louder than PC speaker.

This stuff comes from Amiga, and was used in virtually all Amiga games. So yes, would have worked fine on PC as well.
Oh, and the volume is not quite the only difference.
Sound Blaster can replay samples with DMA transfers using its onboard DSP. PC speaker, AdLib, Covox etc could play samples with some hacks, but there was no DMA, so you had to run a timer interrupt at the sample rate to output each sample individually.
This could cause jitter, and it also made much higher CPU overhead than SB (which is why it wasn't really an option in the late 80s, when the AdLib and MT-32 first arrived on the market. You needed a fast 286 at least to play decent quality tracker music in the background for a game/demo).
Not to mention that a PC speaker can only do ~5 bit PCM quality with the PWM technique, and AdLib gets 6-bit quality. An SB gets 8-bit.
Amiga has 4 dedicated 8-bit channels, and does not need to perform any mixing or resampling, so none of the mentioned PC solutions get the same sound quality as the Amiga.
The first sound card for PC that could do this was the Gravis UltraSound.