This is a little thing we have.... What''s wrong with midi? Everyone seems to hate it. The only problem with it is it sounds a little crap. But hey spend an entire RPG listening to midi and it starts to sound good. I''ve been writing game music for years with only midi and I''ve always had people saying how good it sounds. Sometimes people ask how to make good midi. The answer is don''t record off a keyboard or something, use a sequencer like cakewalk pro 9 or something. I don''t believe in warez but I''m sure most warez sites have this ''app'' under the ''appz'' section. Well I must be off.....

Reminds me of when I orgiginally got my SoundBlaster 32 way back when. I tried convincing my friend of how much better wavetable sounded compared to FM synthesis, but he just shrugged. "Whatever you say..."

When it comes to the sound quality of the music, I have found that the care that went in to creating the original MIDI scoring determines much. I have heard many instances where a MIDI version of a song surpasses the MOD, simply because the MOD had no dynamic volume, reverberation, chorus, or stereo. But the opposite could be said of MIDI with its variances in intstrument sound.

I believe it comes down to what format the person writing the score is used to and what each format has been used for. MODule files have heavily been techno and rock in content where MIDI has been used mainly for classical and pop. I personally would love to take my MIDI abilities and use them to create a MOD file (.XT, .IT, S3M, etc.) to preserve the quality of the strings, woodwinds, and brass I use. But I can''t do so easily because I am used to seeing an actual score with notes, not command codes and alphanumeric codes for tones. Perhaps I just haven''t looked hard enough for the "right" traking program, but it seems the benfits of each format are not present in the other. Oh, the joy i''d express if there was a MOD tracker with Cakewalk''s interface.

This MIDI vs MOD debate is becoming irrelevant, as technologies like DirectMusic become more popular with developers, and the amount of available RAM increases in newer consoles and PCs. More and more developers are calling on composers/sound designers to author realistic custom instrument sample sets that can be buffered in RAM, like SoundFonts or DLS, and triggered via MIDI. This is the best of both worlds, ''cause you''re getting the fine level of editing and control that MIDI sequencing brings to the table with instruments that sound as realistic as you want.

Check out the music to "No One Lives Forever", composed by Guy Whitmore of Monolith. That''s a DirectMusic-authored score using a measly 6MB DLS soundset, and it''s fully interactive. It has cool sounding twang guitars and brass hits, what you''d expect for a groovy ''60s spy score.

>Oh, the joy i''d express if there was a MOD tracker with
>Cakewalk''s interface.

That would be DirectMusic Producer. Plus you get to mix and edit using traditional MIDI continuous controller data, and of course all of the interactive playback benefits that DirectMusic brings you.

DirectMusic Producer . . . Is that a part of a DirectX SDK and if so which one? If it''s the DirectX 8 SDK I can''t use it because it screws the DirectMusic MIDI timing up on my system (cute problem, eh?!) Anyways, I was looking for a format that was a bit more cross-platform friendly.

Yeah, definitely a Catch-22..

Be mindful that you simply won''t find an authoring solution that works on every platform. And DirectMusic does technically support two different systems, Windows and XBOX, so there''s that. But if you''re working on a PS2 or Gamecube title, both of those consoles have enough RAM that you can sneak in and load about 4MB-6MB of custom samples or loops and really get the music sounding better, keep the interactivity up and not get too much of a performance hit on the system. This is ESPECIALLY true on the Gamecube. It has 16MB of what they call ARAM, which is either auxiliary RAM or audio RAM, depending who you ask. There''s no reason why you can''t get a decent sounding orchestal/percussive thing happening at 22KHz on that machine.

I guess the bottom line is get friendly with programmers and see how much tool devtime you can get out of them. Even if they write a simple MP3 crossfade engine that can key to AI states, you''re better off than simply streaming stereo mixed or bleeping and blooping through the onboard wavetable.

Good luck..

Cakewalk recently came out with Sonar and Sonar XL...
this new sequencer is fully direct x 8 compatible and uses DXI (direct x) soft synths, so you can use direct x and not have to worry about the weak MIDI based sounds.. finally, someone made a step in the right direction for game dev music =)

Uh, I don't follow you. How exactly does SONAR help game music? DXi soft synths don't have anything to do with DirectX development.. please help me understand what you meant.


Edited by - edlima on April 12, 2001 1:24:06 AM

I have to say that I looked at the cakewalk web site and, to my surprise, I saw a new product. SONAR. Maybe I''ve been on Mars in a cave with my eyes shut and my fingers in my ears, but. When was SONAR released. From the perty pics I''ve seen on the site it looks as though it has the same look as cakewalk but with easier sample use? I may be wrong but it looks good. How much is it? I can only try using it........(we all can only try it)

Why do you put an ''an'' before ''hour'' and not ''a''. I thought only words starting with a vowel had an ''an''. Well that''s what it''s like in Australia (you americans are strange to us aussies, MAH FELLA AMERICANS, see what I mean(do you all speak like that?))

Why do you put an ''an'' before ''hour'' and not ''a''. I thought only words starting with a vowel had an ''an''. Well that''s what it''s like in Australia (you americans are strange to us aussies, MAH FELLA AMERICANS, see what I mean(do you all speak like that?))

We don''t pronounce the ''h'' in ''hour'', so it''s kind of like ''our'' (kind of). And no, not all of us speak like you mentioned.

Through this massive effort , using the Sonar program, you can link the DL of dirext x to the dxi library, allowing you to have an entirely fresh library to port midi files through, with a much ebtter sound than those really lame midi sound sand the even more lame DL catalog.