Can anyone identify and record this (likely Creative) sound card? \ VOGONS

Can anyone identify and record this (likely Creative) sound card?

Topic actions

Post a reply

First post, by SpeedySPCFan

Posted on 2020-03-08, 18:13

SpeedySPCFan Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 237
Joined: 2014-10-30, 20:34

Hi all,

One of my weird projects recently has been trying to restore the original music of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, an early 2000s visual novel with a very... bizzare, soundtrack? The soundtrack can be split into basically two halves, both sets of royalty free music: half of the music was done by a company called AI-D-IA and came from a royalty free music pack in 22kHz, 8-bit, stereo WAV. All of THAT music was composed on a Korg Trinity which I've been slowly working on restoring:

Restore: https://soundcloud.com/speedyongaku/orenji-restore
Original: https://youtu.be/Yan1F5U63r8

Now the second half of the soundtrack is a bit more confusing. The music was done by a guy name of K. Kusaragi, going under the alias NERVE, who distributed his music for free, with a commercial use license requiring the client to first request permission. All of the tracks were distributed as MIDI files for Yamaha XG and Roland GS synths, which... being that Higurashi was a very, very budget production, the creator, Ryukishi07, didn't own. So roughly half of Higurashi's soundtrack was recorded on some unknown GM-compatible sound card, with awful clipping and compression, and slapped into the game. For a while it eluded me what sound card was being used, and by accident, finally found out yesterday it's a Creative Labs card!
...probably. One of the pianos in the soundtrack matched up EXACTLY with the one in one of Creative's 4MB factory sound fonts (I believe it's either for the AWE64 or AWE32), and some of the strings seem to be identical.

So, a quick request for anyone here who happens to own any of the following sound cards:
SB AWE32
SB32
SB AWE64
Creative AudioPCI
SB Live! (APCI and Live/Audigy are both deconfirmed, thanks Wanderer)
...or any other Creative sound card with General MIDI compatibility and samples...

Is it possible to record the two attached .MID files on them and post the result here? My goal is to try and figure out exactly what card was used so I can narrow down the time period the samples came from, and, assuming it's anything but the AudioPCI, find the original uncompressed samples on an E-MU synth or sound library to record the music with the same sounds but in far greater quality. If it IS the AudioPCI, then... well, I guess I have to go down the rabbit hole of Ensoniq samplers and synths.

Many thanks to anyone who helps :3

P.S. Sorry if this is the wrong section, I figured since this was talking about sound cards and sounds it may be appropriate :x

Attachments

Filename

Higurashi MIDIs.zip

File size

35.85 KiB

Downloads

113 downloads

File license

Fair use/fair dealing exception

Last edited by SpeedySPCFan on 2020-03-09, 00:23. Edited 1 time in total.

Musician & music gear/game reviewer.

MIDI hardware: JD-990, SC-55, SC-880, SD-90, VL70-m, Motif ES, Trinity, TS-10, Proteus 2000, XK-6, E6400U

Reply 1 of 3, by Wanderer

Posted on 2020-03-08, 23:17

Wanderer Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 62
Joined: 2020-02-24, 19:49

Hello SpeedySPCFan.
Linked below are my recordings made on 4 synths:
- Creative Audigy, using CT4MGM.sf2 from Live!/Audigy drivers;
- Ensoniq AudioPCI, mimicked via Audigy Sw Synth using Ensoniq's EAPCI4M.ecw bank from SB PCI128 drivers;
- Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth (just to cover the cheapest synth ever);
- Yamaha MU15 sound module (was worth a try since there are XG-specific data in the MIDIs).

Link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!App_YLHfwVtdgR7E8IWwn2Pc0VtD?e=kc7PjL

From a quick comparison with the ripped tracks on Youtube it seems that MU15 renders are very close. This module's ROM contains the same 4MB wave table that was used on DB50XG daughterboard and later in Yamaha XG WDM SoftSynthesizer driver and S-YXG50 VSTi - any of these should be suitable for your restoration effort. Other XG devices may sound similar or even better.

Hope this helps!

Reply 2 of 3, by SpeedySPCFan

Posted on 2020-03-09, 00:22

SpeedySPCFan Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 237
Joined: 2014-10-30, 20:34

Hi Wanderer,

Sadly none of those seem to be it, but you did actually help confirm what was used for ANOTHER release of Higurashi: at some point the NERVE tracks got re-rendered, at least for the French release and apparently the newer MangaGamer versions of the VN, and your MU15 render of Fascism fits exactly with that version. I'm trying to restore the very original version of the soundtrack, though knowing what was used in the "new" version is fantastic anyways since I was planning on making a vid about this whole convoluted history. So, thanks a ton!!

Also helps to have the Audigy/Live! and AudioPCI squared away since those were two I was curious about. So, back to suspecting some older Creative cards... still, thanks a bunch again - it was interesting hearing hearing the music on more cards ^^

...I never did realize until now how bad the loop points are on the MSGS pianos.

Musician & music gear/game reviewer.

MIDI hardware: JD-990, SC-55, SC-880, SD-90, VL70-m, Motif ES, Trinity, TS-10, Proteus 2000, XK-6, E6400U