That wasn't really a common practice back when gamers had sound modules. We were somewhere between the era where mastering engineers were terrified of peaking at 0dBfs and so kept their transient levels closer to -6dB just to be safe, and when Pro Tools ushered in the DAW as standard operating procedure, spurring the use of software like Waves' L1 limiter, which made it safe to treat digital like tape -- "pushing a little into the red isn't going to hurt anything" because the limiter will catch it.

SirNickity wrote on 2020-02-19, 20:47:

That wasn't really a common practice back when gamers had sound modules. We were somewhere between the era where mastering engineers were terrified of peaking at 0dBfs and so kept their transient levels closer to -6dB just to be safe, and when Pro Tools ushered in the DAW as standard operating procedure, spurring the use of software like Waves' L1 limiter, which made it safe to treat digital like tape -- "pushing a little into the red isn't going to hurt anything" because the limiter will catch it.

Digital mastering at it's worst has become highly detrimental to the quality of the audio with excessive clipping and virtually no dynamic range left in the material. It wasn't just a case of "pushing a little into the red" as you put it.

gamers had sound modules? ^^

I didn't even really know they existed before I saw some youtubers using them, the best I ever had was AWE.

that's another reason why I like midi so much, this is all new to me ^^

chinny22 wrote on 2020-02-18, 12:10:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-02-18, 11:22:

chinny22 wrote on 2020-02-18, 10:58:

But then I was blown away by C&C's CD audio soundtrack.

While C&C and Red Alert had great sounding music, they didn't use redbook CD audio.

IIRC, the music was was in some sort of compressed PCM format. The files were stored on the CD but they weren't standard 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo redbook audio CD tracks. Still sounded pretty awesome though.

You are correct, I should have known better as well as I messed around with the hidden tracks in the mix file.
I shall go listen to Mechanical Man 100 times as punishment

the upcoming remaster for C&C has frank's soundtrack remastered in 44khz. the tracks so far sound unreal, plus there are a few hidden tracks that never made it onto the original soundtrack but were still in the game files. if you're curious there's a few videos about it on youtube.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-02-19, 21:18:

Digital mastering at it's worst has become highly detrimental to the quality of the audio with excessive clipping and virtually no dynamic range left in the material. It wasn't just a case of "pushing a little into the red" as you put it.

It was, and then we ended up in the loudness war. If you look at the waveform of an audio CD from the early 80s, mid 80s, late 80s, early 90s, mid 90s, late 90s, early 2000s, late 200s, etc... there's a steady increase in level. The period where consumer MIDI was relevant was somewhere between fear of 0dBFS and a little bit of limiting to use all the bits in digital audio. That's what I consider the golden era. Even the mid-to-late 90s was generally OK. I can handle a little limiting. It's the 2000s where things took a turn for the worse. I can't even listen to a lot of stuff from 2005 and on, it just sounds obnoxious and fatiguing.

imi wrote on 2020-02-19, 21:44:

gamers had sound modules? ^^

Clearly some did! Hence their availability on eBay. 😀 (Particularly ones aimed at computer music reproduction, and not fully-fledged instruments for professional musicians.)

I think that most of those were probably from hobbyist musicians, professionals were mostly using the bigger rackmount units I guess, even back in the day I have never even seen a midi module in a PC store, like I said, I didn't even knew they existed until a few years ago, and I have been very much into PCs and hardware since I'm a kid ^^ though I have to admint that I was using onboard sound from 2001 onwards and only had one soundcard in between, an asus xonar because I needed "DTS connect" functionality, I've been using s/pdif since socket A.

sure, some gamers with deep pockets had them, and obviously game designers had them ^^

imi wrote on 2020-02-21, 21:45:

I think that most of those were probably from hobbyist musicians, professionals were mostly using the bigger rackmount units I guess, even back in the day I have never even seen a midi module in a PC store, like I said, I didn't even knew they existed until a few years ago, and I have been very much into PCs and hardware since I'm a kid ^^ though I have to admint that I was using onboard sound from 2001 onwards and only had one soundcard in between, an asus xonar because I needed "DTS connect" functionality, I've been using s/pdif since socket A.

sure, some gamers with deep pockets had them, and obviously game designers had them ^^

I think what was popular, sound hardware wise, is rather location-dependent. I got into discussions on these forums about the prices of sound cards back in the 1990s, with American people claiming sound cards were really cheap and MIDI modules available in computer shops. Obviously I don't live in the US...some people assume that because they do, and because prices there were "cheap" and MIDI modules readily available, that must be the case anywhere 😐 .

Where I lived the reality was that prices were much higher and we didn't know about MIDI modules (except that it was a very high end, expensive thing that was out of our reach).
Sure, we knew MIDI music was good, better than standard sound cards (i.e. 2 operator FM OPL), and if you had the money you would buy an AWE-32, or later on a Terratec sound card. However, they were expensive, heck, even a SB16 was quite expensive. IIRC, it was only with the advent of the Soundblaster Live! that MIDI music became accessible to a lot more people around here.

MIDI modules and other professional hardware was the stuff you would drool over staring at them in the "professional" corner of the local independent electronics (Radioshack-likes) or electrical appliance store, with prices that went together with their professional looks...

Well, my memory is fuzzy on this a bit but my parents would buy me computer magazine when they came back from the store etc. in the late 80s. It was from those that I learned about sound cards and the mighty MT-32. Additionally I can remember the marketing for the Adlib, CMS Game Blaster, and MT-32 in the various Sierra adventure games back then as well. I actually purchased my first sound card (Original Adlib) from the local Babbage's here in my hometown. But I only used it for about a year before learning about the wonders of PCM audio available on the Sound Blaster cards. I'd read about them in the magazines but didn't really understand it until another buddy of mine was showing off some Amiga tracker music through his sound blaster. Anyway, I then got me a sound blaster 2.0 as that was the current version to get at the time. Not too long after that I paired it with a Turtle Beach Maui that again I read about in computer mags. All of that on a decently high end 286 for the time. About 2 years later I was in the military and had the means to buy a replacement computer. Anyway that 486 would eventually end up with an SB16 and SCB-55 attached to it.

So I don't recall any of the midi modules being shown or sold in the stores and only knew about them from the computer magazines and adverts inside some games. I do remember that I actually purchased my SCB-55 directly from Roland through a magazine advert for them. I offset the cost of my upgrades by selling the old stuff to friends. I remember selling the Maui to another service member for like $50 at the time hehe.

Sorry this was so long a reading...it just got me thinking back. I also recall that I sent out for a demo tape that had music from other games through Adlib, and MT-32. I do not remember what happened to that tape but I do know it made me drool for the MT-32 at the time. But it was way outta mine and my parents price range 🤣!