I'm not so interested in the SID because I've heard lots of impressive music for it already, but more the FM synths because I grew up having to listen to lots of really crappy sounding OPL music, and I know that it can sound better.

Chiptunes in modules use sinewave, sawtooth wave, etc. samples for the instruments.

Thanks everyone, this is very interesting. I hope to find some of these games to listen to 😀

Snover wrote:

Thanks everyone, this is very interesting. I hope to find some of these games to listen to 😀

Zone 66

Dune.

Laser Squad.

Turrican II (if it counts).

Mig 29.

What to say, I'm an ebay addict.

ADDiCT wrote:

Mr. (or Mrs.) Know-It-All leileilol

ooh hes going to like that 😁

Ms.
I'm not married.

leileilol wrote:

Ms.
I'm not married.

....and I thought you were a guy.

Dum-de-dum... 😁

That comment of mine came across a little harsh, probably. I was just nitpicking - in principle, leileilol was right, but using strange terminology. I think TFMX allows for a mixture of FM and digital sounds. The format was developed very early in the Amiga's lifecycle, so it kinda falls between pure FM synth, and the sample-based mods.

Snover: hope you enjoy the show! (; I thought that Chiptune mods were using sampled FM sounds, at least early ones, like 4-Mat's tunes, etc. . There's also a lot of cool FM music on the Amiga, best played back on the PC with DeliPlayer. UnExoticA has a lot of the tunes, though i think a lot of the synth-only tunes were lost during the last redesign of the pages. There's a 3 or 4 CD compilation floating around the net called "Amiga MOD Collection", done by a guy called "Gryzor", which has a lot of the original files.

Oh, and FM music was great on the SNES and the Mega Drive, too! The SNES sound chip can produce some really cool and atmospheric sounds.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

leileilol wrote:

Ms.
I'm not married.

....and I thought you were a guy.

Oh well, women are fucking wonderful when it comes to spice up forums 😀
And I just love when they know about computers 😀 And well women are just fabulous, no wonder why, I fall in love with them 😀

ADDiCT wrote:

That comment of mine came across a little harsh, probably. I was just nitpicking - in principle, leileilol was right, but using strange terminology. I think TFMX allows for a mixture of FM and digital sounds. The format was developed very early in the Amiga's lifecycle, so it kinda falls between pure FM synth, and the sample-based mods.

Oh, and FM music was great on the SNES and the Mega Drive, too! The SNES sound chip can produce some really cool and atmospheric sounds.

TFMX was an extension to the OctaMed MOD format which split the 4 channels 22khz to 8 channels and added fx and simple synth. It didn't add true YM or OPL FM (which is modelled on analog waveforms) but a sort of limited, integer driven (CPU) synthesis (ie chipTunes). However, Turrican's music was entirely sample driven and was only in 4 channels (albeit a lower sample rate than 22khz) as they had had to allow other channels for soundeffects - environmental like the wind on level 1 and specific like the weapons, enemies and "One Up!" sample.

SNES didn't use FM. It used a digital sampler with limited wavetable synthesis, which was limited by extremely small sample space but used very cleverly nonetheless. SuperTurrican, for example, used a more
extensive version of the Hulsbeck TFMX MOD music (more channels) that was reedited to use the hardware reverb and chorus effects. The 16bit console that did use FM synthesis was the Sega Genesis (Megadrive) which used the Yamaha 2612 FM synth and the Zilog Z80 for sampled effects.

Also, the Dune : Spice Opera soundtrack used the Adlib Gold soundcard (professionally mixed via a mixing desk) which was also supported in the Dune CD ROM edition. Adlib Gold used the OPL3 in stereo and an addirional 12bit PCM stereo sampler which is why the Spice Opera / Dune CD soundtrack sounded so damn good. Even better than the MT32 soundtrack. Dune Amiga, the initial Cryo release sampled the Adlib Gold instruments and so it sounded closer to Spice Opera than the PC's 3.5" FDD FM soundtrack for the Adlib / SB / SB Pro. Meanwhile GUS owners who were lucky enough to get Dune CD to work with MEGA-EM (emulated MT32) got a pretty nice version that sounded better than the adlib but still worse than Adlib Gold.

Anyway, some of the best FM stuff is in SID - Knucklebusters by Rob Hubbard - Wizball by Martin Galway but there are heaps of nice Amiga chiptunes too. Lots of Sega Megadrive music was great too, including Vectorman 1 and 2 and the well known SNATCHER's in game tunes (most cinematics were CD Audio).

Hello!

I've accidentally stumbled upon this topic and remembered one very cool and very strange thing:

Back at the 1995-96 yrs. I had a 486DX4120(AMD hehehe 😉 ) with SoundBlaster Vibra 16. There was a standard pack of floppy disks with drivers and one of the drivers was a "Voyetra Super SAPI FM driver" for Windows 3.11. FM music with this driver sounded A LOT better than with standard FM. I wonder to this day - how they did that (and WHAT exactly they did!)! That "Voyetra..." drivers only existed for Windows 3.1/3.11. There was no such a driver for Win95 (well as long as I know).

PS. If this is off-topic - I apologize! I've just thought this is the "Beauty of FM music" kind of thread. 😁

PPS. Sorry for my english - I'm russian. 😁

I had a 486DX4-120 also, with an SB16 MCD that I scrounged from a 386. I remember that Voyetra Super SAPI stuff, but I think I only used it with the DOS-based Voyetra MIDI sequencer. Maybe it loaded in a different set of instrument parameters, or maybe it activated some OPL3-specific features (the SB16's used more advanced OPL3 chips instead of the OPL2's generally used by 8-bit SB and Adlib cards).

(P.S. Your english is perfectly fine)

CyberSphere must be heard.

One of my all time FM synth favourites : Double Dragon III Opening Theme.

EDIT: Converted to Adlib format by the Vibrants. One of the few Adlib music pieces that I prefer to their MT-32 counterparts.

The South Koreans did some pretty phenomenal things with the OPL2...

Olmang Jolmang Paradise
(Credit for this recording goes to Brandon Cobb - http://adlib.superfighter.com)
Illusion Blaze Arrange

Eol's Adventure
Opening
Stage 3-1
Stage 4-2
Stage 5-2
Stage 6-2
Boss 1
Boss 2 Epic...

Cobi Comi
Stage 1

ADDiCT wrote:

OK, to get back to the original post: so "FM synth music" is any music generated by a computer chip, without using digital samples.

No. FM synth music is music that plays on an FM-based synth or sound chip.
Look up the difference between additive and subtractive synthesis if you want to learn more.

ADDiCT wrote:

So i'd say, if you're looking for impressive FM synth music, look at the C64 SID sounds!

The SID chip is an analog/digital hybrid and it is not FM based. It has much more in common with the analog synths of the 70's than with an FM-based Yamaha DX7 synth or OPL chip.

The AY-3-8910 that was used in the Atari ST well as the Spectrum 128 and Amstrad 8-bits is not FM-based either.

Malik wrote:

One of my all time FM synth favourites : Double Dragon III Opening Theme.

EDIT: Converted to Adlib format by the Vibrants. One of the few Adlib music pieces that I prefer to their MT-32 counterparts.

Speaking of Double Dragon III, I once ran an undelete utility on the game's floppy and found what looked like a bunch of the game's source code! (some .asm files and other stuff) I should find it and upload it to somewhere for people to look at...

I always thought the main theme music from Papyrus' old "Indianapolis 500" was quite cool sounding for FM synth 😀

don't forget the two following midi or not midi formats: xmi and hmp

Cloudschatze wrote:

The South Koreans did some pretty phenomenal things with the OPL2...

One of the most impressive things I've ever heard from the Adlib:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1401201/98dont.mp3

from Ys II Special, a semi-remake of the classic Falcom game, only available for DOS in Korea. Apparently it was done by soundTeMP, who would later do the music for MMORPGs like Ragnarok Online and Granado Espanada

I download recordings (mp3 format) of the music from the game, although they're currently on another system (aside from this hosted one, obviously). I've been meaning to go through the game and capture DRO files of all the songs (including a few the recordings missed), but the game is unfortunately pretty buggy whether you're using DOSBox or not...

Thanks for sharing, everyone!

Uh...has anyone mentioned Eye of the Beholder I intro theme yet?..