VOGONS


First post, by 1ST1

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I have a large collection of MOD files (maybe 60 GB). Last night I tryed to play some on my 386-33 with SB-Pro, but I was not quite satisfied with the mod players I took from my backup of my last DOS-PC in the 1990's.

I tryed Grind (by @Trixter, still active in vcfed.org forum, here I don't know) and I tryed Inertia Player (iplay.exe). Both don't support all kinds of mod file formats I have (669, ahx, far, hvl, it, med, mmd, mnd, mo3, mod, mol, mtm, nst, oct, okt, rr, s3m, smp, stm, xm, xpl) , but even if they can load and play, the modfiles often sound strange as some voices/instruments are not well played as they are not noisy enough, so some of the mod files are like unrecogniceable when compared the the also MS-DOS based X-Tracker 2 or some mod players on Amiga and Atari (STE, TT, Falcon) and even Winamp plays these mod files correct. But not Grind and Inertia. As I told, X-Tracker 2 is much better here, it plays the modfiles correctly as long as it suppors the mod file format.

So which one to use? Is there any with playlist support or with the function of playing all songs in a folder (in a random order) which plays the files correctly?

Reply 1 of 18, by leileilol

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How's Cubic Player? I use v1.6, as later versions broke .mod a bit (while gaining fixes/support for then new formats) and I doubt Opencubic ever fixed them.

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long live PCem

Reply 2 of 18, by Plasma

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XTC-Play is my favorite mod player for DOS. Cubic Player is also pretty good.

Reply 3 of 18, by 1ST1

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Thanks, I will try these, if you have other suggestions, still welcome.

Reply 4 of 18, by Rawit

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I use a bunch of players as there are a lot of tracker formats and not all players do every format well. Also hardware support is a thing with DOS players.

Currently I use (with a GUS GF1):
- XTC Player for XM as it can load files > 1MB (and FT2 doesn't work correctly on my machine);
- Inertia Player for MOD, S3M and 669 (won't play S3M with FM though);
- N-Play for MDL, DMF and FAR;
- Impulse Tracker for IT (haven't had much luck with newer IT files with players).

Which tracker songs don't play correct? I want to test as well. Also going to give Cubic another shot, I tried 1.7 I think and it wasn't so great for me (often low volume channels, IT effects missing, pops on the GUS).

YouTube

Reply 5 of 18, by digistorm

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Open Cubic Player 0.2.6 works quite well for most ITs, XMs, S3Ms and MODs. It supports filters and NNAs, but it has some little playback differences. They are quite subtle though. 0.2.5 is more stable, but doesn’t support IT filters.

Reply 7 of 18, by BloodyCactus

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Sometimes I use my own player Aural Hemorrhage for gus+awe32. (its some bugs, I have old + newer sources and I need to rebuild it from recovered old disks).

Mostly I use awemp, old dmp, new dmp or open cubic player. I find iplayer bugs out way too much. The old + new DMP versions are better worse at some things than others between the old/new version 🤣.

On linux/windows, the king is XMP. there is no competition to xmp! It supports soooo many formats, packed, unpacked special amiga/st files etc. http://xmp.sourceforge.net/

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 8 of 18, by Azarien

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leileilol wrote on 2021-12-11, 09:10:

How's Cubic Player? I use v1.6, as later versions broke .mod a bit (while gaining fixes/support for then new formats) and I doubt Opencubic ever fixed them.

What's broken with .mod on later CP versions?

Reply 9 of 18, by ntalaec

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I think openmpt123 has support for almost any format. It has a DOS version:
https://lib.openmpt.org/libopenmpt/download/

But with a Pentium 200 I get CPU usages around 90% playing 4 channel MODs. I think a 386 would not be able to play any file (and it also requires a coprocessor, which I think the 386/33 didn't had).

Cubic Player is a very good choice from that era. It supports a lot of formats.

Another great option is Mod Master. His author has released previous shareware version for free and it's developing a newer version that works even in a XT machine.
Re: GLX Player the only XT player ? Check Mod Master...

Reply 10 of 18, by zyzzle

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ntalaec wrote on 2022-01-02, 14:27:

I think openmpt123 has support for almost any format. It has a DOS version:
https://lib.openmpt.org/libopenmpt/download/

I downloaded the DOS version of openmpt123 and it looks great -- and very current (2021) CLI. However, for the life of me I can't get this bloated 2.7mb DOS executable to WRITE the mod files to disk as .wav files. I always get the error ".wav file handler missing." Also, no sound card is recognized. It just shows as devices: none and RAW (which is useless). The program recognizes all my MODules, but can't write the WAV or PCM data to disk. Using the option --stdout with the pipe directive > writes what appears to be raw, 44100 hz pcm, signed, 2-channel 16-bit data to disk, but it is corrupted and unplayable by DOS players as such, it's unrecognized when compressed, for example by .FLAC and WAVPACK for DOS.

Any help on how to get openmpt123 for DOS to actually write (passthrough) its digital output from MODules to disk instead of to a sound card?

Reply 11 of 18, by zyzzle

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Other players:

xmp
http://xmp.sourceforge.net/

mikmod
http://mikmod.sourceforge.net/

Both of these players claim to be able to be compiled for DJGPP in DOS, but I've not found DOS binaries anywhere, for either one. May someone who is able to compile this source code possibly help? I'm not sure if either of these supports direct writing to disk of MODules, but that would be an excellent feature for DOS. I found a link to the old mikmod version 2.09 DOS binary compiled here:
http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/pr … il/mikm209b.zip

but no DOS binaries of any more recent version. Latest source code is for 3.3.11.1, about two decades newer than the DOS binary above. It *should* compile for DOS, but I can't get it to.

There is also DUMB for DOS:
http://dumb.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=downloads

I found references to a newer fork / version of DUMB, but again, no dos binaries for DJGPP:
https://github.com/kode54/dumb

It supports many more interpolation methods. It would be *lovely* to get a DOS compile of this version. Is any one kind enough to help?

Many any profound thanks for pointers on getting newer DOS binaries of any of the above players.

Reply 12 of 18, by thepirategamerboy12

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I've always just used Impulse Tracker, myself.

Reply 13 of 18, by K.A.R.R.

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i also use openmpt123
https://lib.openmpt.org/libopenmpt/

imo the best mod player for dos in terms of accuracy and sound quality.
but it requires a strong pc for 32 channel files
and there is no gui but for that you can use doszip commander and assign all supported mod formats.

libopenmpt 0.6 supports
mptm mod s3m xm it 669 amf ams c67 dbm digi dmf dsm dsym dtm far fmt imf ice j2b m15 mdl med mms mt2 mtm mus nst okt plm psm pt36 ptm sfx sfx2 st26 stk stm stx stp symmod ult wow gdm mo3 oxm umx xpk ppm mmcmp

Reply 14 of 18, by K.A.R.R.

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zyzzle wrote on 2022-01-09, 06:16:

I downloaded the DOS version of openmpt123 and it looks great -- and very current (2021) CLI. However, for the life of me I can't get this bloated 2.7mb DOS executable to WRITE the mod files to disk as .wav files. I always get the error ".wav file handler missing." Also, no sound card is recognized. It just shows as devices: none and RAW (which is useless). The program recognizes all my MODules, but can't write the WAV or PCM data to disk. Using the option --stdout with the pipe directive > writes what appears to be raw, 44100 hz pcm, signed, 2-channel 16-bit data to disk, but it is corrupted and unplayable by DOS players as such, it's unrecognized when compressed, for example by .FLAC and WAVPACK for DOS.

Any help on how to get openmpt123 for DOS to actually write (passthrough) its digital output from MODules to disk instead of to a sound card?

i am not sure which soundcards are supported but with dosbox-x and sb16 playback works without problem.
render files seems not to work with dos version.
windows version can create wav files without problems

here in the openmpt forum i found somthing about stdout and wav files
https://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=6492.0

Reply 15 of 18, by zyzzle

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Thanks, I seemed to have figured something out. Open mpt123 does not have any built in diskwriter support. It only has the --stdout option. This seems to produce something playable, ie:

openmpt123 --stdout --no-float file.mod > file.pcm

But, then you have to know that this outputs 44100 khz, signed, 16-bit word-length, 2-channel audio to actually convert that output to .WAV with sox:

sox -r 44100 -c 2 -s -w -t raw file.pcm -t wav file.wav

Then hopefully that can be played by another DOS player which supports modern PCI sounds cards, like MPXPLAY.

I still don't understand why the very large DOS binary doesn't include any diskwriter support for .wav files. It makes the DOS version nearly useless. What is all that code (ie, nearly a 3mb CWSDPMI binary). What's it there for, what's is the code actually *doing*?. How can we recompile Open MPT123 with useful code which actually supports "moden" PCI soundcards like Intel High-Definition Audio (IHD)? That code exists in MPXPLAY, but how to port that source over into the guts of Open MPT 123? Open MPT claims to use the old, obsolete Allegro sound libraries.

Reply 16 of 18, by darry

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zyzzle wrote on 2022-01-16, 03:05:
Thanks, I seemed to have figured something out. Open mpt123 does not have any built in diskwriter support. It only has the --std […]
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Thanks, I seemed to have figured something out. Open mpt123 does not have any built in diskwriter support. It only has the --stdout option. This seems to produce something playable, ie:

openmpt123 --stdout --no-float file.mod > file.pcm

But, then you have to know that this outputs 44100 khz, signed, 16-bit word-length, 2-channel audio to actually convert that output to .WAV with sox:

sox -r 44100 -c 2 -s -w -t raw file.pcm -t wav file.wav

Then hopefully that can be played by another DOS player which supports modern PCI sounds cards, like MPXPLAY.

I still don't understand why the very large DOS binary doesn't include any diskwriter support for .wav files. It makes the DOS version nearly useless. What is all that code (ie, nearly a 3mb CWSDPMI binary). What's it there for, what's is the code actually *doing*?. How can we recompile Open MPT123 with useful code which actually supports "moden" PCI soundcards like Intel High-Definition Audio (IHD)? That code exists in MPXPLAY, but how to port that source over into the guts of Open MPT 123? Open MPT claims to use the old, obsolete Allegro sound libraries.

The Linux version of OpenMPT123 supports rendering to a wave file and does it really fast on a modern machine. Rendering your MOD collection to WAV and playing back using MPXPLAY under DOS might be an option (probably best to render at 48000Hz if intended output is through an AC97 CODEC).

bob@openmediavault:/tmp$ time openmpt123 --render  --no-float --samplerate 44100  SPCDEBRS.MOD
openmpt123 v0.4.3, libopenmpt 0.4.3+r11358.pkg (OpenMPT 1.28.03.00 https://source.openmpt.org/svn/openmpt/tags/libopenmpt-0.4.3@11358 (2019-02-11T05:32:52.673531Z) clean-pkg)
Copyright (c) 2013-2019 OpenMPT developers <https://lib.openmpt.org/>

Filename...: SPCDEBRS.MOD
Size.......: 347kB
Type.......: mod (ProTracker MOD (M.K.))
Tracker....: Generic ProTracker or compatible
Title......: space_debris
Duration...: 05:05.940
Subsongs...: 1
Channels...: 4
Orders.....: 42
Patterns...: 41
Instruments: 0
Samples....: 31

Ord:::0/:42|Pat:::1|Row:::0 Spd::6|Tmp:125 05:06.040/05:05.940


real 0m0.727s
user 0m0.662s
sys 0m0.064s
bob@openmediavault:/tmp$ mediainfo SPCDEBRS.MOD.wav
General
Complete name : SPCDEBRS.MOD.wav
Format : Wave
File size : 51.5 MiB
Duration : 5 min 6 s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 1 411 kb/s
Track name : space_debris
Writing application : Generic ProTracker or compatible (via openmpt123 0.4.3 (libopenmpt 0.4.3+r11358.pkg, OpenMPT 1.28.03.00 https://source.openmpt.
Comment : SuperHyperBass / BD1 / SD1 / Zoh2.Minor / Chord1.Minor / Chord1.Major / Hup / SoftShake / Choir / Chord1.Arrested / / Rezonatix3 / SawSynth.Major / SawSynth.Minor / SawSynth.Arrested1 / SawSynth.Arrested2 / SawSynth / SynBrass / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Audio
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 5 min 6 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 411.2 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 51.5 MiB (100%)

Reply 18 of 18, by Malik

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Fast Tracker and Impulse Tracker are both good.

I myself used to create some pieces using Tetra Music Compositor.

5476332566_7480a12517_t.jpgSB Dos Drivers