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What are music trackers? Are they just PCM samples? (re: confused about PCM and sound cards)

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First post, by sofakng

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I'm trying to have a better understanding of early sound cards and music formats, etc.

For example, MIDI music just contains instrument names (numbers) and song data. Therefore, music will sound different on each device because "drums" will have been recorded differently.

If I understand correctly, trackers (.MOD, .S3M, etc) are basically samples (instruments?) plus music data. Therefore, playback should sound the same on all devices (except for the audio quality itself).

Is this correct? Do the music trackers just output PCM data to the sound card?

Also, is there a "best" sound card for tracker playback? If I understand correctly, Sound Blaster and Gravis Ultrasound would both be equal except for the GUS having better quality (cleaner) and more channels (?).

Thanks for any help or information!

Reply 1 of 6, by Tiido

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Tracker isn't a music format but a method of music entry/creation, i.e it could be seen as evolution of a sequencer. They also are not strictly sample based although many are, and the very first one definitely is, but there are trackers for PC that work with the FM chip for example (AdlibTrackerII being one of the most powerful ones but there are others too).

Now as far as MOD, S3M, IT, XM etc. go, they are the music data (notes + effects in the patterns with the order information to arrange these patterns into the final sequence) + sounds that the music needs.

How the sound exactly is played depends on a particular tracker or player, some will do a really good job only with GUS, some will work with any SB card and stuff on Windows such as Winamp, XMplay and actual trackers like MODplug will make sound on whateever Windows drivers work with and "better" that whatever old sound card can do (one may really like what comes out of GUS or AWE32 or whatever else, there is room for subjectivity too 🤣), you get options for things that contemporary software simply had no CPU power to do such as elaborate resampling techniques.

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Reply 2 of 6, by digistorm

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To add a little to the great explanation of Tiido: you asked if a tracker just outputs PCM to the soundcard. Well, that is entirely up to the software and popular software from the early 90’s used the hardware of the GUS (and later AWE) to reproduce the music. That was in the early 90’s much higher quality (or the only option with 486’s or slower) than that was possible with a regular soundcard and the cpu doing everything. That is why the GUS was so popular with the demo scene, because they loved their tracker music.

Reply 5 of 6, by Scali

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A two-part blog on trackers and related music software and hardware:
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/trackers-vs-midi/
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/trac … midi-part-deux/

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 6 of 6, by sofakng

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Scali wrote on 2023-06-14, 10:14:

A two-part blog on trackers and related music software and hardware:
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/trackers-vs-midi/
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/trac … midi-part-deux/

These are fantastic articles, thanks for sharing!

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