Re: Sounds (various ideas - long)

["Michael B. Martin" <martinm@mbmartin.bevc.blacksburg.va.us>]

> > > If you still want to make the whole game .au, perhaps we could do 
> > > something I've seen done before with .wav files.  The result would 
> > > actully be better since *most people* don't have wavetable for midi. :>
> > > I don't know how flexable .au is compared to .wav, but what was done was 
> > > a small .wav was recorded for each instrument, a instruction file (In 
> > > this case, midi was used, but any form of instruction for music would 
> > > work) was used to determine what kind of instrument was played at what 
> > > note, pitch, volume, whatever.  It would then take each .wav file, and 
> > > play it with the distort instructions (I don't know about .au, but .wav 
> > > can be changed on the fly to make the sound sound different in many 
> > > ways), sounding like a wavetable card was playing midi files in the end. :>
> > > But like I said, it depends how much can be done with .au, and the sound 
> > > port should be kept open for the entire song, it would sound poorly if 
> > > the port was opened, then closed for each .au file.

What this is describing has existed for many years (originally on the
Amiga, I believe).  There are music formats (the Pro-Tracker ".mod"
format being the oldest and best known) which are designed to operate
in exactly the manner listed above.  A digitized sample is stored for
each instrument and then played back at the appropriate sampling rate
to set the pitch, with (typically) several other tricks, like
volume/pitch slides, looping, etc.  This music format has the
advantage of being relatively compact while still giving good music
quality (and as long as the player hardware is sufficient, the sounds
are faithfully reproduced, unlike with, for example, MIDI files, whose
sound depends on what synthesizer you use).  Incidentally, this
is also known as "wavetable synthesis" on the modern Intel-based PC
sound cards.

> Ya, I had the same thought.  But my question is do you think its worth 
> adding?  How big would say 128 (standard # of MIDI) Instrument files be?
> In my opinion, space, speed, whatever shouldn't matter.  If alot of us 
> want to give up the space, and the need for speed, then great, lets do 
> it.  People can always turn off the music part and not download the 
> wavetable music collection. :>
> 
> 
> -Matt (Who is very anxious to see something like this done for background 
> sound. :>)

Well, the best (General MIDI) wavetable sound cards I know of use up
to 4 MB of sample ROM (2 MB is generally considered inadequate for
good instrument quality).  But I don't know how many instruments that
includes (some cards claim over 300 instruments, I think, but I don't
know how much storage those require).  I have a GUS, so on my system
the instrument samples take up several MB (samples are stored on disk
instead and loaded on demand into sound card RAM).

-Michael