But then there's the question of what Bobby Prince used for his tracks. That might have been a 55 as he used that for Doom, and Duke3D does have issues with some of the later Sound Canvas devices' bugfixes, right?

Oetker wrote on 2020-07-29, 09:40:

But then there's the question of what Bobby Prince used for his tracks.

Good point. I guess it would be more proper to say that we have confirmation for the tracks that Lee composed. Here are the track listings by author:

https://dukenukem.fandom.com/wiki/Music_in_Duke_Nukem_3D

Maybe one day someone will do an interview with Bobby as well, and we'll learn about his equipment too.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-29, 09:13:

In a recent interview on the RetroManCave YouTube channel, Lee Jackson the original Duke Nukem 3D composer, confirmed that the music was created on a Roland SC-88.

while i didn't watch the whole thing yet, this is certainly an overinterpretation of this one short sentence on the subject. this has been up for years now: http://www.rinkworks.com/apogee/s/2.8.14.1.shtml

so for the duke3d midis he primarily used cakewalk with a RAP-10 (which was sold by him a couple of years back on ebay), and apparently also did have a GUS MAX while doing ROTT and duke3d (https://forums.duke4.net/topic/2505-roland-sc … post__p__206525). now, that intermission track in duke3d, prerecorded in pretty low quality, was indeed done on the SC-88 he got late in the game's development cycle, as was the modified grabbag track they put on the atomic edition disc (which he also released as a midi file a while back, without any reverb in it).

i do believe the midis in shadow warrior shareware were actually meant to be played on the SC-88, but for the final game they for some reason decided to ditch midi altogether and to go for CD music only.

auron wrote on 2020-07-29, 10:35:

while i didn't watch the whole thing yet, this is certainly an overinterpretation of this one short sentence on the subject. this has been up for years now: http://www.rinkworks.com/apogee/s/2.8.14.1.shtml

That's an interesting read, thanks for pointing that out. I'll edit the title of this thread.

I suspect Lee was remembering working on the expansion soundtrack and the CD version of Grabbag when he mentioned the SC-88. From the article you linked, it seems clear that he was using a RAP-10 for the original game.

What threw me off was when the RetroManCave host asked "if we want to hear Duke Nukem the way you wanted it to be heard, is that (SC-88) the box we should put it through" and Lee confirmed.

well, according to that link, technical limitations of the sound engine prevented him from better supporting the SC-88 back in duke3d's development. though i don't get the impression that he was really going to redo all the tracks, it was apparently mainly about grabbag.

if i recall correctly, he did record all the tracks for that 20th anniversary edition on the 88pro he mentions here, including the newly composed ones. this for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLxMVOvmzwo

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-29, 09:54:

Good point. I guess it would be more proper to say that we have confirmation for the tracks that Lee composed. Here are the trac […]
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Oetker wrote on 2020-07-29, 09:40:

But then there's the question of what Bobby Prince used for his tracks.

Good point. I guess it would be more proper to say that we have confirmation for the tracks that Lee composed. Here are the track listings by author:

https://dukenukem.fandom.com/wiki/Music_in_Duke_Nukem_3D

Maybe one day someone will do an interview with Bobby as well, and we'll learn about his equipment too.

Well, being the owner of a Roland Sound Canvas SC-55mkII for decades, I would be very interested in replies, to my forum post, from experienced SC-88 and/or SC-88Pro owners, since I don't own any of these 2 synths.


There are 3 MIDI musics from Duke Nukem 3D composed by Bobby Prince, using NRPN (Non Registered Parameter Number) messages, allowing some cool and unique effects, by altering the pitch coarse of the drum instruments :

- WATRWLD1.MID : this is the music played in the "Toxic Dump" map (E1L4), where you start in a wrecked submarine being flooded by water ... here the music suits the map very well, thanks to the NRPN which makes the drum instrument being played 'slowly', in a similar way than how you hear sounds in real life, when you are underwater.

- ALIENZ.MID : in this music, played in the "Lunar Reactor" map (E2L7), the NRPN does the opposite to the previous music ... here the drum instrument is rather 'quick'.

- INVADER.MID : in the "Movie Set" map (E3L5), you'll hear the NRPN altered drum instrument, from time to time (the first one being heard after the 30 first seconds) ... the drum instrument is played 'slowly', in a rather similar way than WATRWLD1.MID


Here are recordings of these 3 musics played with a Roland Sound Canvas SC-55, SC-88 and the 20th Anniversary World Tour version, allowing to compare them :

Recordings links for WATRWLD1.MID played in the "Toxic Dump" map (E1L4) :

- Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h99fXCFpNYE (or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUt5iN_ENPo )
- Roland Sound Canvas SC-88 version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDvEEWeGyQU&t=893s
- 20th Anniversary World Tour version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EVhdhxuGFc


Recordings links for ALIENZ.MID played in the "Lunar Reactor" map (E2L7) :

- Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJtKTQkB_Ic (or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4nFSIZED4Y )
- Roland Sound Canvas SC-88 version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDvEEWeGyQU&t=3506s
- 20th Anniversary World Tour version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQvhc0fVkOI


Recordings links for INVADER.MID played in the "Movie Set" map (E3L5) :

- Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxHffgdfp58
- Roland Sound Canvas SC-88 version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDvEEWeGyQU&t=5580s
- 20th Anniversary World Tour version : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fvTDAbTNqk


However, in the SC-88 recordings for these 3 musics, I'm wondering if the "Rx NRPN" reception/receive switches are turned "off", on his SC-88 synth, resulting in the drum instruments being played in a standard way, or if it's just that the SC-88 doesn't sound like the SC-55 for the pitch coarse NRPN messages ?

Also, in the 20th Anniversary World Tour recordings for these 3 musics, the drum instruments seem to be altered, but unfortunately, they don't sound in a similar/faithful way than the SC-55 versions, and I've always been disappointed by these 20th Anniversary World Tour musics, especially by the one played in the "Toxic Dump" map (E1L4), since it doesn't have that "underwater feeling" anymore.


Finally, I would be interested in a reply from Bobby Prince himself, just to confirm if, for the WATRWLD1.MID music played in the "Toxic Dump" map (E1L4), the idea for his use of the pitch coarse NRPN message to alter the pitch coarse of the drum instruments, is really to make it sound in a similar way than how you hear sounds in real life, when you are underwater, or if it's just my own interpretation ?

And also, since it's Lee Jackson who has done the recordings of Bobby Prince's musics, for the 20th Anniversary World Tour edition of Duke Nukem 3D, I would be interested in knowing, from Lee Jackson himself, if it was really not possible to recreate this pitch coarse NRPN effect, in a similar/faithful way than the SC-55 version, with the music equipment he has used to record the 20th Anniversary World Tour musics ?

If it helps, a description of the EMIDI API is still available here. And some comments from Joe Siegler have been archived here.

Joe Siegler wrote:

If you're playing the files using Media Player or something similar that doesn't let you see the internal track structure of the […]
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If you're playing the files using Media Player or something similar that doesn't let you see the internal track structure of the MIDI files from Duke Nukem 3D, then you aren't hearing many of the files the way they should sound.

We used a system in Duke Nukem 3D called Expanded MIDI, or EMIDI. This allowed us to provide support for several different soundcards within a single MIDI file. We used Type 1 MIDI files with separate tracks, and we inserted some non-GM-standard controller events at the beginning of certain tracks to specify which sound cards they could be played on. We had to do this, since a song that sounded great on a Roland card might sound like crap on an Ensoniq Soundscape or Gravis Ultrasound. For example, we might use a "soundtrack" patch if the user selected an AWE32 as their soundcard during setup, while GUS owners might hear a "crystal" patch instead for the same track.

Also, we had to make special FM instrument sets for FM-only cards, like the SB-16 (without any wavetable daughtercards). FM instruments responded quite differently than wavetable instruments did, so they required separate tracks as well.

The reason that you might hear strange things in Media Player is that these multiple tracks usually shared the same MIDI channel. The Apogee Sound System was able to sort out the EMIDI code and tell which patch data to use for a particular channel. However, Media Player might see three different patch change messages coming down the same channel at the same time, and there's no way to predict which of the messages it'll wind up actually using. You might wind up hearing a track played on your SBLive using patch data for a GUS or an FM instrument.

Another thing we had to do with EMIDI was implement a different way of changing patches in the middle of a song. Normally, you'd just issue a patch and bank change event to switch sounds. However, if you had multiple tracks using the same channel and you issued a patch change event on one of them, you'd sometimes see the patch change happen across all of the channels. We could never figure out why this happened, but we managed to get around it by using another non-GM-standard controller event in place of the patch change event whenever multiple tracks per channel were used. For that reason, if you play an EMIDI song using Media Player, you might not hear the patch changes that you're supposed to hear.

There are only a couple of ways to really hear the songs the way they were intended. One way is to load the songs into a sequencer like Cakewalk and mute the extra tracks, making sure you change any EMIDI patch change events over to GM patch changes as well. The other way is to simply play the game.

FYI, the EMIDI spec is posted in the files section of my web site at http://gameaudio.3dportal.com - grab a copy and have fun looking at the hoops we had to make the music jump through for Duke Nukem 3D (and for Shadow Warrior shareware).

Also, that NRPN stuff might possibly work on Creative's Sound Blaster AWE32/64 cards, since they support it as well. Not sure if the game was coded to use that functionality on those cards though.