Classic Game Soundtracks / Help
 

Rather long babble, sorry ;)

Since my active Amiga days back then, I´ve been ripping, collecting and listening to many amiga-tunes, most from games, some from demos or cracktros, but also from discmags like CU-Amiga oder Amigo or even tools like Imploder.

Back then I uploaded some of them to my "classic game soundtracks"-website at http://www.nemmelheim.de/cgs_small/.

Since years I wanted to properly convert all of them to modern audio-formats, since replaying them in modern players often does not sound authentic, also, many songs have no proper ending, or like Pinball Dream or Chaos Engine, consist of subsongs which do not result in a complete tune at all.

Although there are already many fantastic websites which have converted tunes ready, none seemed to completely satisfy my rather special needs.

So, the last weeks evenings I´ve spent converting, recording, cutting and editing various stuff. For most I´ve used UADE 3.02 with A500 Filter and 70% Stereo seperation. For problematic ones I´ve used WinUAE and Deliplayer or the original games. Since UADE was quite a pain to compile+install, I´ve used a virtual machine this time ;).

This seemed the best sounding way for me, and more perfect than recording it from my real amiga.

I´m still working on it, test listening and fixing will take time, but sometimes could need some advise, so I started this thread to get some help from you fellow Amigos.

The collection is highly customized personal for me, I only keep the tunes I really like to actively listen to and cut looping songs to a length I find appropriate.

I don´t plan to upload the result to my old website yet, but in case anyone else is interested I of course would share my current result.

And yes, converting perfect <100kb tunes to >100MB WAVs (or later normalized FLAC/MP3) seems ridiculous, but seems the most practical way to me.

Tunes so far:

misc-Folder:

My first question is:
I love everything from Paul Van der Valk. I mean like, really, really love; I can listen to his tunes for hours ;)

What I am missing yet is the soundtrack from Poing. Since it´s somehow procedurally generated there are no modules to be ripped. Did anyone understand/investigate what he did there and how many variation there is? And is there a way to disable SFX, so I could record the music while playing? Pausing is stopping the music...

I've converted a lot of modules from original format to MP3 via VLC for use on my online streaming "radio". I know theyre not always ""accurate" for the purists but works. Mostly... do have the odd one (mainly A Brimbles work) where the MP3 version plays perfectly locally, but when streamed, its all garbled etc.

You come across anything like that with your conversions ?

Nope, but it´s all pure, perfect, local 16-bit wav until now :)

But I had plenty of problems with UADE/Deliplayer (wrong notes, high pitched sounds) with the more exotic formats like Sonic, Hippel, TFMX or "custom" ones.

What allso bugged me was that e.g. even Battle Squadron "Highscore" has high pitch beeps, even when played by the original game in WinUAE @ 3:23. Still got to verify this on my Amiga ;).

If you like Amiga music don't forget to visit this site :cool

https://www.paula8364.com/

lovely project, yes many Amiga tunes deserves a better quality

Flashback Options 2 mod, wondering if this is available somewhere;
not remixed, just in a higher quality

https://youtu.be/mAowhozoaLg

I do, of course I already have, fantastic and totally insane project, respect :bowdown !

But - is it just me or is your search broken?

Altough, Mirror works fine. But here an example problem I also had with sonic arranger in Deliplayer, I head to record each song manually, directly from the game:
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/media/O...2_T001_MIX.mp3

Here an example:
http://nemmelheim.de/temp/battle_squ...highscore.flac

Wonderful tune, but slight beeps around @ 3:23, but I guess it´s also in the original. Sadly Battle Squadron currently crashes on my A1200 after the title screen.

And another one, for comparison, Ambermoon Horse Song, as mentioned above:
http://nemmelheim.de/temp/ambermoon_..._disgrace.flac

Here you go:
www.nemmelheim.de/temp/flashback.zip

Converted with UADE, as Flac and faded out at the ends where needed. Strangely on youtube it´s named "options 2", but seems to be "options 1". Can´t quickly hear any difference to original game via WinUAE, the little blips in the instrument are also there .

That happens on fast configurations when the player doesn't respect delay before DMA sound off and changing audio data. WinUAE doesn't normally emulate this kind of issue, but with chipsethacks=0x8 in the settings it does.

Uuuh, interesting, thank you, never heard of this option before - are there any docs to it?

With Sonic (Ambermoon/Lionheart) and Hippel (Lethal Xcess, Wings of Death) recording in Winuae from the original game seemed to work fine.

Tried adding chipsethacks=0x8 to my config, but no change with Battle Squadron in Deliplayer yet, did I get that right?

But maybe it´s really just in the original ;)

Checked here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8tYw5hBhtc, which promised to be recorded from original hardware, also beeps. But it´s only quite subtle anyways...

I remember those beeps too on my 500, so might be some unfixed bug in the original tune, especially in of one of the instruments

It does but result is either a) nothing changes (well behaving player that does not use CPU delay loop) or b) sound breaks very badly (uses CPU delay loop that runs far too quickly)
EDIT: This hack is automatically enabled if 68020+ or not cycle-exact or approximate 68000/010 mode because most music players use CPU delay loop which would sound horribly in UAE in fast configs. chipsethacks=8 disables this automatic hack.

great thanks :spin
yeah those blips are a bit annoying
i remember i had this one on a tape bitd, and i must be honest the output playback was imo better, i cannot explain better, maybe analog + lower frequencies

maybe it's called options2 cause it's the tune 02 in the game music menu, ingame (disks version test)

on Youtube can be found also as Journal tune

Another Question:
Hero Quest Ingame is such a wonderful tune (thank you, Barry Leitch ;)), but it sounds painfully off key @ 1:25, is there maybe a fixed version of it?

I tried my own rip, the actual game via WinUAE and Exotica, same result. Also various versions on youtube.

http://nemmelheim.de/temp/HERO-QUEST_INGAME.MOD.flac

It is a wonderful tune for about 10 minutes of play, at that point it starts to make me grind my teeth :)

Never tried that, but can imagine ;) . Also never really wanted to play the game, gladly the main song ends after 03:15.

Interestingly it´s more three seperate songs in one and I don´t like the middle oom-pah-pah-part much ;)

https://nemmelheim.de/temp/hero.PNG

I tried to fix it by changing the pitch of this part by -1% in Audacity, but it´s hard to find the exact start and end, so it sounded better but still slighty off.

I don´t know why (no technical clue of trackers), but the portamento of 101 seemed to mess up the following note, so I removed it and changed the note.

http://nemmelheim.de/temp/hero2.PNG

Also killed the middle part, result sounds nice to me. I hope I dont get run over by a Lotus Esprit.

nemmelheim.de/temp/HERO-QUEST_INGAME.MOD_fixed.flac