midi is used to this day by professional musicians, so it can't be that bad :p

midi is just a communication protocol, it does not inherently define the "quality" of the music, it is often called digital sheet music and that's a very accurate description imo, it can in fact be objectively better than CD audio even, a lot depends on the quality of the samples you use.

I don't think mod is superior, it's basically the same thing, only that mod uses predefined samples included in the file, sure back in the day, quality of mod music could be vastly superior by including quality samples while most people didn't really have high quality midi playback devices, so that was a big advantage for a very short period of time, but that definitely does not make it "higher quality", nowadays most samples included in mod files from back in the day are probably considered pretty poor indeed, another advantage of mod was that you weren't limited to a predefined set of samples if you wanted to adhere to the GM standard.
mod is simply put just "midi with included samples" in the end.

the nice thing about midi is that it just being a set of instructions let's you play it however you want, whether you prefer the original 80s and 90s midi synths, a whole array of different sound cards to choose from, or use ridiculous soundfonts on modern systems or high end romplers.
and that is the single thing that makes midi just superior imho, you can listen to it however you want, you can easily change it's character just by using different playback devices or soundfonts, you're in control... and the reason why so many people build "midi towers".

and while this is easily attainable with midi, if you want to get different character out of tracker or other pre-recorded digital music you just venture into highly audiophile territory of nuances in sound output from different amps/speakers and so on :p

so in the end, for us in the retro hobby, midi is something preferable imho... but in general most people will prefer tracker or prerecorded music, because they don't want to go through the effort of making midi sound good or simply even care about changing it's character.
I'm pretty sure if every single person back in the the day had a quality midi synth or high end soundcard, tracker music would have never become widespread even and people would remember midi quite a bit different.

and well, then there's also just the nostalgia about "bad" sounding midi music how we remember it :p

Sometimes people confuse General MIDI and FM synth. I used to do that as well. Blame '90s game setup menus which labeled any kind of game music that wasn't CD audio or PCM as "midi music".

For comparison, here's what FM synth usually sounds like and here's one example of how General MIDI can sound.

Midi is what makes retro gaming worth it for many enthusiasts.

I too didnt get MIDI until I got it. And boy did I get it..

BardBun wrote on 2021-01-25, 15:24:

Using a Midi-Sequencer for game music can be so much nicer and more organic due to how it allows perfect infinite looping of music and how it properly ends the songs with the last instruments being played rather just fading out while the song never ends.

Precisely.

MIDI is computer programming for music. "Disliking MIDI" is essentially "disliking the concept of programming". And I would question the merits of disliking the concept of programming.

and FM is mathematics for music x3

Maybe people should also be more specific. As they might not like General MIDI. Has nothing to do with programming or music production. Producers would never rely on General MIDI for their musical instruments. It has more to do with mass market low cost music for games and toys. I think some people associate GM with cheaply produced toys, keyboards, etc. Because, for real, how many kids had a costly GM module of any quality when they played games that relied on it? After the demise of GM for games, it shifted to cheap toys, crap web games, shitty mobile phones etc. So that might also bias one’s opinion.

General Midi is just a standardized instrument map so you have compatibility across multiple devices after all.

idk of any cheap "toy keyboards" that use GM though, those mostly just have a very limited set of predefined samples without any midi in or output generally.

but yeah, after games shifted away from midi it's true that a lot of mediocore software still used midi probably.
it's obvious though that they would use GM (or rather GS) as that's the default instrument map used by windows.

a lot of musicians don't need GM as they only use specific instruments anyways and can just assign them manually to whatever they need.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-01-25, 15:56:

That's must be why a lot of DOS/Windows games used CD Audio as soon as possible.

I have to say there was some games (e.g. RoA: Star Trail), whose CD soundtracks are just their "midi" played via professional module (I think Star Trail OST was recorded with SC-55 or 88).

unfortunately there's also some games that included the midi music recorded on not so professional modules x3
I hate that nowadays they sometimes strip away the midi music in some re-releases of games in favor of pre-recorded tracks.

Not really retro...but I do despise all turn based games. I hate them, I hate them and when I'm done hating them I hate them some more.

Also, Windows XP isn't retro to me and never will be.

Besides that....my only REAL confession would be that i spend WAY more time tinkering, building and troubleshooting with my retro machines that I ever have playing games.

TBH that is true with my modern machine as well. I've got fairly capable retro and modern gaming rigs that will likely never be used to their real potential.

I work a lot and hve two kids and a wife, all my hobbies (music, cars and computers) pretty much take a backseat to life.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-01-26, 19:55:

Not really retro...but I do despise all turn based games. I hate them, I hate them and when I'm done hating them I hate them some more.

No OpenXCom, then. Sad. :'(

I really hated the Windows XP "gummy" start button. Every time I had to use an XP computer, I stopped or disable the themes service.

not really a confession, but I used the windows classic theme up to and including windows 7, and I still would in windows 10 if it were available ootb. also disabling horrible washed out fonts a.k.a. ClearType is still the first thing I do on any windows machine :p

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-01-26, 19:55:

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Besides that....my only REAL confession would be that i spend WAY more time tinkering, building and troubleshooting with my retro machines that I ever have playing games.

TBH that is true with my modern machine as well. I've got fairly capable retro and modern gaming rigs that will likely never be used to their real potential.

I work a lot and hve two kids and a wife, all my hobbies (music, cars and computers) pretty much take a backseat to life.

This. A million times, this.

My database says I have 929 physical games in my collection and 82 individual systems (computers or consoles). I resigned myself to the fact that there are some (ok, ok; many) titles in that list that will simply sit on a shelf and never get played.

I also despise the XP theme, I always turn it back to classic when I have to use one.

I guess I must be an oddity as I absolutely love windows XP pro and windows 2000. While I'm not crazy about the standard XP pro theme I usually change it to the NASA space scapes theme I've done the same with windows 7 Ultimate. I also enjoy using windows 7 Ultimate. I really detest windows 10 and still use windows 7 Ultimate/ Open Suse Linux on my daily driver.

never owned a voodoo cards or ever heard of it till sometime around 2015 or something around that time.

took awhile to even know that 3dfx was the one who started the SLI configuration with video cards.

CannibalRetro wrote on 2021-01-27, 01:52:

never owned a voodoo cards or ever heard of it till sometime around 2015 or something around that time.

took awhile to even know that 3dfx was the one who started the SLI configuration with video cards.

The Nvidia bought them and re-used the SLI acronym with slightly different words...