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If given the choice with games that present you with multiple sound options (for example, a choice between Adlib / Sound Blaster FM synth and either MT-32 or General MIDI), do you prefer to play with the "optimal" option, or do you go with whatever you used back in the day because it's how you're used to the game sounding?
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>>11246471
It's all different per game. TFX has amazing MIDI soundtrack but it is glitched and wrong on soft synths and requires real hardware. But FM music is also good in that game. Doom FM music is horrible and is never a good choice whether you grew up with it or not. Etc.
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>>11246471
AWE64

As a SoundBlaster, it has more old games that support it.
As an ISA card, it can be run with no TSR taking up any RAM.
Among the "old" soundcards, it is newer than most of the other common SoundBlasters, so has less bugs.
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>>11246653
Shame about its CQM synth, though.
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>>11246710
I'm just not that picky about that, but it does have a wavetable header for potential upgrading.
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>>11246761
I may be wrong, but doesn't the AWE64 already have support for MIDI? Admittedly I'm rather ignorant about the subject.
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I appreciated marginal improvements a lot more then than I do now. it was pc speaker or soundblaster, a ridiculous difference come to think of it. Getting things to work was magic. Artists were eager to make use of newer and better technologies. Like they were given credit instead of their own compositions. Showing off the hardware capabilities. Innovation has been abandoned largely. Logic lost so the nest step isn't known. Audience to appreciate advances is absent too. Disgusting is advertised alongside what it's against, said to be responsible. Industry moved to/became controlled by the enemy.

I don't revisit what I remember much. Not the same person. I wouldn't like what is new filtered through older hardware. I've settled on the fact that whatever I touch from the past I didn't know at it's time, wasn't necessary. I got the best. There is more now to take in while it's alive and relevant. My taste demands what I don't know. It doesn't take long for what's wonderful to become boring, so best not to wear it out, retain the correct perspective it's valuable and as most of it disappears retain the expectation for what replaces it to be better.
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I like MIDI in games, it can sound fantastic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsYu_HsnoY
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>>11246471
I usually prefer OPL2/3 FM synth. Never found a game that sounds better with General MIDI or Wavetable synthesis.
There's a few games where I prefer the PC speaker over the alternatives like Supaplex but that's probably just me being used to it after hundreds of hours of game time with it.
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>>11246471
Whatever works best with the Soundblaster Live in my Win98 system. Some games like Dune II and Cannon Fodder force me to use Adlib because of some weird bug but otherwise it's typically general MIDI that works best for me.
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>>11247474
>doesn't the AWE64 already have support for MIDI?
Yes. I was never a fan of the sound though. But it did support loading custom soundfonts into the onboard RAM so it was possible to make it less horrible.
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>>11246471
These days I tend to use "whatever." PC soundtracks IMHO never have a "best" option, they all have tradeoffs and caveats. Like even though OPL2/3 is a real FM chip games overwhelmingly just used crappy MIDI emulation libraries with generic patches so everything would just sound like a muddy poor-man's emulation of general midi. And while some games had okay melodies, they were often composed in general midi but designed to sound good on whatever roland or yamaha keyboard the composer used. In game you were stuck with the patches your sound card offered or the defaults with your external box. A handful of games supported uploading custom patches but these were rarely used to any great effect. Most of the time all they were doing was uploading whatever low cost royalty knock offs of their equipment and then not bothering to use any of the sound modulation options for fear of making it sound awful when someone had to use the adlib fallback code.
Not to mention the fact that ALL MIDI soundcards had the loudness and reverb settings set to MAXIMUM EARRAPE because they had to hit users in the brain holes hard and fast to confuse them into thinking it sounded "better" to encourage a purchase. But in extended listening it's just harsh and tiring.
So while I coveted an MT-32 back in the day, since gaining one and comparing it to youtube videos of other people's MIDI stacks I can conclude that PC music basically always sucked and every other computer just made better use of their "limited" sound capabilities.
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>>11246585
>Doom FM music is horrible
Doom MIDI music is awful and I hate that people keep using it to demonstrate the superiority of their expensive MIDI equipment. It's just harsh butt rock that is only appealing to people who happened to like the songs they were trying really hard not to rip off.
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>>11246471
I go with Adlib/Sound Blaster since it's what I grew up with. Something like the Roland Ultrasound or Amiga music just sound weird to me.
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>>11247474
There is always a debate about which cards had chips came with the best sounding instruments.
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Am I out of line, or does the AZT2320 sound comparatively pretty nice? It's a cheap clone of the OPL chip.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=24ScDNeQoZ8
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>>11247879
Did you mean the Gravis Ultrasound?



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