Is DOSBox Staging better than real Retro PC? Part 2 Audio Sound and Music
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- I tested the latest version of DOSBox Staging, one of many flavours of DOSBox. In this video we take a look at the audio, sound and music and find out of modern DOSBox has surpassed the real thing, the DOS Retro Gaming PC!
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Resources:
DOSBox Staging: dosbox-staging.github.io/
DOSBox: www.dosbox.com/
Roland Sound Canvas VA: www.roland.com/au/products/rc...
YAMAHA S-YXG50: veg.by/en/projects/syxg50/
Arachno soundfont: www.arachnosoft.com/main/soun...
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Fun fact: Dune uses the HERAD (HERbulot ADlib) sound system created by Remi Herbulot, and the soundtrack was written by Stephane Picq. These two were absolute technical masters of FM synthesis. HERAD is the only sound engine which implements the full feature set of the OPL2 chip, there is functionality which HERAD exposes that just isn't possible anywhere else. The games KGB and MegaRace also use HERAD. The only other person who I think even approaches this greatness is Bobby Prince who wrote the Doom soundtrack, he really knew his way around the Roland SC-55 and Yamaha OPL, being one of the very few PC music composers who bothered to vary the instruments instead of using the pre-made instrument set.
Thanks for the info! I remember reading about KGB before. It is a game I actually pleyed back in the day, but that's all I remember.
The presets were horrible. I don't miss that sound at all.
@@philscomputerlab All the French games from Amiga and early DOS era are masterpieces.
I wonder if Dune2 also used that, the music sounded particularly good in that game using Adlib FM synth
@@boardernut Dune 2 was produced in the US by completely different team. Frank Klepacki did the soundtrack.
I'd definitely be interested in a comparison between DOSBox Staging vs. DOSBox-X vs. original DOSBox.
Yup, a video highlighting the differences between DOSBox forks or what makes them unique would be great.
i like How DOSBox-X adding xBRz Bilinear Render , it looks amazing !
A review of various dosbox wrappers, including those with game cataloging features, would be great as well
11:30 ... damn, just awesome. What a great combination of the well known tune with the C64 "sound".
That was a great comprehensive overview of the main audio enhancements we've introduced to DOSBox Staging lately! Congrats again, and I'm glad to see you enjoy using "our product" 😎🎧 I particularly liked that you mentioned the mighty Roland D-50, and I've finally learned what the number 32 in the name of the Roland CM-32L represents!
I got a good chuckle out of watching the Elite Plus example; not only do we get SOUND in space, now there's REVERB too! 🤯
I 100% agree on the need for the ability to easily adjust the mixer levels while playing a game; it's one of my long-standing pain-points. Well, I guess it's not much of a secret anymore that OSD (On-Screen Display) and On-Screen Notification support is coming to DOSBox Staging in the foreseeable future (think of the user interface of a TV, a modern console, or one of the more polished console emulators). That will include many exciting things, such as a vastly improved keymapper and (drumroll! 🥁) a brand new mixer! Yikes! Stay tuned! 😎🤘
Excited for what's coming 🙂
I'm very grateful for dosbox staging, it's so much better ! Especially love the Adlib Gold with Surround Module support. It sounds so good, so rich !
9 comments and no response? Lemme fix that.
Great showcase Phil! I love my old hardware, but I also love where we are at with emulation. The work of all these devs is how the DOS era will be preserved forever.
I had the Tandy 1000EX, and at the time had no idea most IBM compatible computers sounded so bad. When Sim Earth came out and required a hard drive, a family friend helped us build a clone to get us on the standard parts path. For a few months games sounded worse, but when the Sound Blaster came out we ordered one.
I emulate my DOS games and I have to say the future is looking bright. Now, I wish there was some technology that perfectly emulated the CRT experience.
the closest I've been getting to obtaining that extra-crisp bright vivid colorful sharp definition is to use ReShade (in the games that support it) For example Doom... there should be a way of running ReShade with dosbox, never tested it... try with different dosbox renderers (ddraw, opengl, direct3d)
Crt royale shader on a plasma or oled is pretty close
Its awesome how passionate you are about audio. As always, great to see a vid of yours pop up on the feed 🎉
You are committed to the community as far as you can go, thank you!
Install on Mint doesn't work but I'll give it a go this weekend. It may have solved my dosbox issues.
I've been following your videos for many years and this is the first time I've seen you in person. (or at least its image). you are a legend of retro computing. Greetings from Brazil
Wow, thank you!
There is a free and legal (but not open source) alternative to the Roland Sound Canvas VA software. Cakewalk is free and includes a MIDI synth called TTS-1 which just so happens to have licensed the real Sound Canvas instrument set from Roland, it sounds identical. Expect to spend 30-60 mins getting it up and running though. I installed it a few years ago thanks to a RUclips video I saw, I tested it with DosBox and PrBoom-plus and it worked great. NB: This synth and parts of Cakewalk are really old, my retro gaming PC runs Windows 7 x64 so YMMV. If you have any problems consider running it in a virtual machine.
Loving your retro content lately, Phil! 🍻
Phill and LGR, very good youtuber's...
Discovered this channel and your videos about DosBox (which I've used in the past) and your ultimate 386 gaming PC.. Great! So much fun to watch. Gives me a warm and nostalgic feeling inside.. ; ) When I was young, 486 was my main childhood computer. Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Commander Keen, etc.. We only had PC Speaker sound, but I loved it. But was always a bit jealous when I came over at friends with glorious Sound Blaster and speakers. Makes it sound extra nostalgic and mysterious now.
Yea that's how it was back then. A friend bought a sound card? All friend check it out. Wow. Amazing. All friends also buy a sound card 😅
Just disovered your 2 part video on Dosbox, loved it, subscribed !
thanks for all your hard work this is amazing i can't wait for tinkering and experiment with many of my childhood games especially Descent i have some old hardware but this sure helps to preserve so many memories and the spirit of the time
No matter how many times I hear the Roland MT-32 I'll never get over how incredible games sound with it.
It's my dream dos hardware piece, but I would need to win the lottery to be able to afford one.
Dosbox staging has made some enormous improvements, massive kudos should go to the team working on it cause these new features are amazing.
I was blown away by the voice sample of Mach3 when I first played it on my AT-clone (IPC) with only a PC speaker. It was a business only setup, but since my father worked as a city planner, he required high-resolution graphics with as much colours as possible, so while my sound experience was quite poor, the graphics were astounding for a late 80's PC-compatible :-D. Now I own both the Roland MT-32 and the Sound Canvas 55 to have a great MIDI experience whenever I feel the urge to fire up some classics that support it. Just hold while I insert another buckazoid...
Awesome!
With some clever programming and 100% deticated cpu usage, you could actually play sampled digital audio on your 8088/80286 PC speaker. There are some other games that also used this technique. Battle Chess and some golf game from that time is what I can remember.
Another great video! Love the large variety and comparisons.
Thanks so much!
Like many other youngsters I had no access to MT-32 or SC-55 in the early 90s and I had to settle for SoundBlaster clone. But in the early 2000 all those Roland MIDI modules and Gravis Ultrasound cards were dirt cheap and I finally got several of them when DOS gaming was not hip anymore. Everybody was dumping ISA sound cards in favor of Windows 98/XP compatible PCI sound cards and EAX or A3D surround. Now I have LAPC-I, MT-32, SC-55, GUS Extreme and loads of different SoundBlasters and their clone cards.
I love my old stuff but I'm still super happy that everyone else can hear those glorious MIDI and FM sounds in emulation as they sounded back in the good ole days. No need to spend fortunes in old hardware!
I remember those times! Hardware cheap as chips.. How things have changed...
@@philscomputerlab Yup. There is a curve for all hardware where it is first brand new, popular and expensive, then dated, unpopular and dirt cheap and finally expensive again because of rarity and nostalgia. Logically we should always buy in the low curve but irony is that there is a reason it's dirt cheap: nobody really wants it right then and there. Very few people usually notice or bother to hoard that stuff at the right moment. I guess "after 10-20 years I'll probably value it more!" is too much of a stretch for us. Especially when we were in our 20s and were blinded by rapid technological advancement.
That Mach 3 intro instantly took me back to Saturday afternoons on the Tandy HX1000.. nostalgic hit lol
Fantastic overview of retro sound options, Phil!
That Doom Arachno soundfont did it for me. I'm digging this!!!
Man, I remember when I was overjoyed to go from PC Speaker to a sound blaster...how things have changed since those days.
Its "ok" but nothing to compere it when u go from PC speaker to a Gravis Ultrasound :)
I was awestruck when I first heard Roland MT-32 music. I even remember it to this day. I came to a computer shop where I previously bought my first PC. I wanted to replace my first tiny computer loudspeakers for my Sound Blaster compatible sound card (*It was Aztech PRO 16 really) for something a little bit better and the guys there were testing MT-32 with some Sierra and Lucas Arts games they had. It was also the first time they had it in their shop, so they were also quite excited and gathered around it. I remember I stayed there for like an hour listening to all the tunes, some of which I had heard on my Aztech before and I was like: "Dudes, forget the loudspeakers I came for, I want this awesome magical music box you have here!!!" And they were like, ha-ha, dude, sure, hope you brought a bunch of green paper with you, cause it ain't cheap, chief". And then they told me the price. lol
Great video Phil! I would say this is the best way to experience the old software we still love without the issues and cost of having original hardware. As much as I love my old equipment it is such a lovely experience having the games and music applications (trackers) load exceptionally fast and work and sound great. I also liked the comment regarding the lifetime key with the Roland VA SoundCanvas VST "How long will that lifetime key last", this is exactly what I said to them as it needs to keep reauthorizing every 30 days, if they turn the server off I am left with nothing...
With regards to the sound, the DOSBOX Staging team are going to keep upgrading the sound so that if you select a SB1.0 or SB16 etc it will sound as close as possible to that card as possible (filter/frequency curve), something to look forward to but it already sounds more or less perfect.
Thanks, Phil. This video has taught me two things: One, DOSBox Staging is excellent; And, two, I need a real MT-32.
Remember to check what version has the best compatibility with the games you'd like to play. The old version and the later version have subtle differences in sound. The old version also lacks a headphone jack, so if that's important for you go for the newer model. If you find a CM-500, go for that one instead, but it has been rare as hen's teeth these days and stupidly expensive, so...
@@LarixusSnydes CM-500 is nice in theory since it has GM built in, but you'll need to mod the hardware a bit if you want to fix the MT-32 vibrato speed.
@@ozzyp97 Good to know, but this module is getting extremely rare with prices to match, so I don't see myself performing the vibrato mod on them anytime soon😉
Great content Phil. When it comes to PC retro gaming you are truly the king!
Wow, thanks!
That game blaster really has grown on me throughout the years
I loved hearing all those midi devices and what devs did with with them back in the day. Great video!
GODS uses those 33 extra effects on channel 10.
I played soo much of Bodukan when I was young. I had a IBM computer with a internal speaker. I would never imagine that the game had such sound using the Roland 😊
19:17 Oh my god... that hit me hard! Privateer was one of the greatest games of my youth. Thank you for the video. I might look this up and revisit some old games :-)
Very cool stuff. 🙂
My first add in sound card, from 1992-1995, was a Pro Audio Spectrum by Media Vision. That's the card I played most of the games in this video on. It emulated Sound Blaster but also had its own mode that a small number of games supported.
Also used one of those! It was great. Can you remember any games that had actual PAS16 support?
Also used one of those! It was great. Can you remember any games that had actual PAS16 support?
Thanks for another great vid Phil and promoting DosBox as an option in case you don't have the retro HW. Anyway like you said no emulator can replace the joy of dealing with your own physical, noisy AT or ATX retro machine :) For me the way of bringing my preferred Gravis MIDI sound flavour into the Pentium IV Win98 machine (=no ISA slot) was instaling Gravis PAT compiled as 32 MB sound font for SB Live 5.1. Now I have both the Reverb from SB and the sounding of Gravis which is awesome :)
Lemmings with Adlib at 60% reverb and 60% chorus sounds fantastic ....... it's a total game changer - I'm gonna have to play through Lemmings on DOSbox Staging with the sound setup like that.
For me any Lemmings port will have to compete with the Amiga version. That is the one I grew up with. Oh, and the standalone browser version is also fun.
Great video, time for an Ultrasound special..😉👍
Descent on the Sound Canvas sounded amazing. I went back recently and played through Descent and it really holds up well.
How long does a Descent playthrough take roughly?
@@armorgeddon Looks like 14-20 hours. I'm going by a website that tracks that sort of thing since I'm really bad at estimating it myself.
@@TheRonHockman Thanks for the answer. I didn't expect those websites to also track such old games. I also didn't expect 14 to 20 hours for Descent, wow.
Fortunately, emulations are getting better every year. I'm a big fan of the real thing myself, but I certainly can't get the flexibility that emulation gives me when using my old hardware. Thanks for the many years of interesting content.
I have an SC-155 which I am learning to use at the moment, whether for pc dos games(connected to soundblaster Audigy card & rack), as with my other instruments such as the Rm1x, the CS10 keyboard, and the Korg Volca bass all recorded on AW16G managing analog multitrack and midi. I have been at the start for a few months, but I have already been able to take advantage of the SC-155's multitrack allowing existing music to create variations, really cool.
Great to see you on camera Phil
Great video with the latest options, love how it's getting REALLY close to the original experience, minus the signal noise and driver setup hassle.
I have a lot of the original hardware (AWE 64 Gold, MT32, SC155), and I am really interested how close it actually is. I might do some comparisons myself to see if I can hear the difference, or measure it in any way.
Do a direct recording for a blind test. And go even further and upload them so that other people can hear the difference as well.
Great video, Phil. I am also from the same era like you with my 386dx40, but i never had the full overview of all that multiple sound options. I would also go with a soundblaster 16 and a soundcanvas for midi, which i can also use with my Atari St.
Yea SB 16 and Sound Canvas is a great combo.
So much effort was paid of - such amazing video ♥
Although not common, the Tandy 1000 was sold in Europe. Tandy had stores in various countries, including the Netherlands and Belgium.
Amazing I had no idea! Curious if they sold in Austria or Germany because I cannot remember seeing anything in the magazines...
Huge Tandy fan and I’d love to learn more about EU market sales. Any links?
My dad derisively referred to Tandy as the RadioShack computer.
Great stuff! I'm personally still using MUNT and Coolsoft Virtual Synth along with DOSbox staging but I'm going to try the dosbox staging emulation
Nice video, I've known DosBox Staging for a while but haven't tried it yet. I play a lot of retro games, I'll give it a try. Thanks for the video.
The newest version of DOSBox is huge step forward.
Holy shit I really needed this video. Setting up a SC-88 Pro in my DJ rig. Thank you!
HI Phil, I have been watching your videos for 8 years and you look exactly as you sound !
Wow, thanks
Excellent video comparison!!!
Many of the sound cards I had only heard at that time, because they were too expensive to buy (just for gaming).
Recently I watched a whole Space Quest III longplay just to enjoy how it sounds on real Roland 32. It seems with this new DOSBox Staging I could experience it for myself - the way it was meant to be.
This is really cool. I do just like seeing my MT-32 or MU-1000 do their thing while they play music back or the silly message that some games put on the MT-32's screen. If I didn't already have the MT-32, I'd gladly emulate it. I just lucked out and bought one years ago because I'd always wanted one as a kid. It was before the prices really went nuts-- I'd never spend what most people are asking for them now. Same is true for my SCB-55, sw1000xg, SW60xg, DB50xg, AWE32... I just kind of liked to try different MIDI dodads when they were fading from popularity and just scooped them up (a couple of them I bought new, though). So I'm kind of lucky in that I can play games with different modules just to hear what they sound like, but Staging sounds amazing! I mean, I might have to finally semi-retire my real DOS machine and give it a shot. Thanks for the video!
Yeah, that is one downside of wmulation, or even the wavetable upgrades. Though there is the nice convenience of not having to track all the cables needed for the MT-32. I have one of those and an SC-88 pro, but nice to just use the Orpheus II and X2GS set up I got recently!
@@slaapliedje Funny you should bump this. I was bored the other day and finally gave Stages and Munt a go. Damn. Munt is *really* good. I have an early (no headphone jack) MT-32, and it is pretty nice to play some demanding tracks without clipping, dropped instruments, but still true-to-original instrument sounds. It even has an emulated display that I keep open on another screen. Years ago, I didn't think the MT-32 would ever be emulated (early on because of complexity and then because of a lack of interest), but here we are.
I can also just route MIDI to my USB-connected MU-1000 in Win10. My DOS machine became even more niche. I'm thinking about an SC-8850 now, though :D
Descent on the Yamaha sound FANTASTIC, I hope someone uploads the entire soundtrack with that... :)
Nice video Phil. Sound is the most important thing in a DOS gaming PC. Nothing more annoying than playing Lemmings on a bad FM implementation
In my opinion, audio is definitively better through emulation. Original sound cards are buggy and noisy, and the emulated version is just the same thing, but better. There are extremely strong arguments in favor of original hardware regarding video output (CRT motion sensation, completely different looks, input lag) but I don't think the same can be applied to sound. That being said, there is a market for vinyl enthusiasts, so if there are people who prefer to hear their music with scratches and noise, perhaps the same thing exists in retro gaming.
DOS game music so totally sick, Phil. Awesome video! 😎😎😎
The attention to detail in sound emulation in dosbox-staging is next level. Now, when it comes to GM, I use the fatboy soundfont. It sounds great for pretty anything I've used it for.
Nice, I will try that soundfont next time I have an opportunity!
Yeah, I've been trying to get my hands on a Sound Blaster Pro 1, and it's actually harder to find than a SB 2.0 (non-pro). I've literally got handful of the latter that I've picked up over the years whenever I've seen them going for a reasonable price, but I've only seen a few SB Pro 1 cards and they've all been asking or selling for crazy prices. I've seen more of the original SB 1.0 cards go up than SB Pro 1 cards.
That Adlib gold card sounds awesome in Dune, I loved that game growing up and it's pretty awesome to hear it in stereo!
Ultima VI sounds pretty awesome coming out of a SID too.
I'm glad I spent the money to buy a bunch of gear (including among others a MT-32 and SC-55 MkII, both of which I never had growing up). but honestly it seems so much easier to just use DOSBox Staging. If I were getting into retro computing today, I wouldn't bother with real hardware, I'd just use this instead. And even $69 (presumably yankee bucks?) for a SC lifetime key is pretty great compared to what they're selling for these days.
Anyway, it was fun to see all the different options for sound in retro games. I'm more into a big electronics phase at the moment, and I don't really have room for both hobbies, so it's great to see there's some great options for getting a real retro sound out of a modern emulator (especially since I'm running a mac as my daily driver these days).
Phil's making my main PC pump out the retro beatz!
Awesome, thank you for producing such detailed content.
Excellent video Phil.
I remember it back in that days. Nobody of us know how MT-32 actually sounds like, we have been only speculating, so therefore it was such as huge surprise when I have got one later on.
It couldn't be emulated via soundfonts (only it's basic presets), as in reality it was virtual analogue synth + PCM with "endless" programmability.
SB AWE 32/64 had literally awful basic 1MB ROM GM bank, there was a huge potential in dos games to use it's standard 512KB RAM for custom patches-samples, but I don't remember any single games to utilize it (maybe FFVII).
Gravis Ultrasound I remember as super amazing for trackers (MOD, S3M, etc..), it sounds quite warm and natural, however for MIDI it was useless a it didn't had Reverb/ Chorus effect processor.
Yamaha XG was phenomenal standard with amazing effects and filters, I always wanted SW1000XG, after I heard SW50XG and XG MIDI I was totally sold on it, later on I manage to get MU100R, anyway it have also GM/GS emulation mode and also "MT-32" preset bank emulation.
Anyway best fun is if you try DOS games (GM/GS MIDI) with profi class synth modules like Yamaha Motif-RACK or Roland Fantom XR, it doesn't matter how big soundfont your will upload into DOSBOX these two will blow it out of water.
Another interesting Philday Video.
Oh man the S-YXG50 sounds lovely.
G'day Phil,
Ah the memories of playing Lemmings, especially when you get stuck & frustrated with a level so just let out all 100 & turn them into exploders to watch them go off like Popcorn 😂
😅
The music of Epic Pinball with GUS was magic.
Sooner than later I'm going to have to learn to use Dosbox. Having to say goodbye to original hardware as it fails from age is hard and using the old stuff daily it's just a matter of time. I'm going to definitely get into this this week while on holliday.
Worth it!
Would be nice to see the Gravis Ultrasound review in your channel... any way, great video
You pretty much nailed it. The hardware is really expensive and if you lucky to have the MT32 ROM's, you all set. As a kid I remember that I was "over the moon" when the first AWE cards supported MT32 emulation. It worked for a bit and would then just lock-up horribly but I missioned through that. The Ensoniq SoundScape to me was also a beautiful card (GM Support) but the Sound Blaster support just was not there. My Dosbox emulation is here right next to my DCS world so I'm happier then a pig-in-poo.
back when the PC speaker was king, this top level Midi audio, was a valuable, but it was top level musicians/audio, kit, audio recording setup stuff, not the sort kit you would of had laying around next even a game PC back then if there was such a thing, PC where expected to do a lot more than just play games,
@@dh2032 Yup. And as a kid, you see the options in the game setup, you do research on what it is and find out how much it costs, your heart just sank into your shoes. I only heard the MT32 for the first time in 1993 and I was blown away.
I'm definitely going to have to try this. One of the things mainline DOSBox can't handle is how Wizardry 6 and 7 drive the OPL chip, resulting in very glitchy sound. I followed your guide to set up my main PC as a virtual midi synth with the Roland CM-64, SC-55, Yamaha XG, and 2 different sound fonts. Arachno is one of them. I forget the name of the other, but it's huge! But that doesn't necessarily mean better. I do have a physical CM-64, but it's in storage. Don't really have the space to set up a stack of 3 midi modules and switches. Just like I don't really have the space for multiple machines. I've been very impressed with the quality of emulation these days, having followed it since the mid 90s. Now, if only a flavor of DOSBox would add EMU8000 support to fully emulate an AWE32/64, I would be very happy. As it is, I can use PCem or 86Box for that.
The biggest soundfont that i found is Musyng Kite and it really is great sounding one
@@Ambiphonic the one I was talking about is the Crisis General Midi 3.01. It’s over a GB in size.
@@christopherbaar4498 Thx i'll check it out.
I deleted my previous comment that the sound problems in Wizardry 6 persist even with Nuked OPL. My copy of the game was from GOG, which configures it for PC speaker and does not include the installer needed to change the settings. Fortunately, I also have the Ultimate Wizardry Archives CD, which does have the installer. Once I changed the settings, it sounded perfect!
Good stuff, great content, thanks a bunch, Phil!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video as always, Phil! Your coverage on these sorts of things always goes above and beyond! Since your first video I've been tinkering with DosBox Staging, and I am incredibly impressed especially with a 4K monitor and the fakelottes.tweaked shader. For Sound Canvas VA and the Yamaha S-YXG50 VST's, what host program do you use? Still SAVIHost or did you find something else?
Hi, I'm not Phil, but I use SAVIHost and am quite happy with it. It has both 32 and 64 bit versions so you can host either 32 or 64-bit VST plugins, which is very nice. Its record feature can come in handy too.
Yes that's still the method I'm using 🙂
@@NilsByte In the video, I just played a MIDI file with MIDI player as this is my main computer and didn't want to muck around too much 🙂
Phil, it's finally great to see a face to the voice in your recent videos 🙂
It's great indeed! I still prefer my eMac and a real MT32 but wonderful application. You can mix MT-32 for music and Soundblaster for FX in some games. Dosbox Staging supports HiDpi on Macs by the way, 1280x720 HiDpi looks great with the right scanlines shader."
The external MIDI players are nice but they make the games sound weird, the sound quality is kinda disconnected from the visuals. I grew up with Sound Blaster, so the Adlib sound fits DOS games much better imo.
Great video! Someday can you also do some tests with dosbox-x? I never know the difference in terms of sound emulation capabilities between all the dosbox flavors.
DOSBox Staging has the best audio features of all DOSBox variants currently.
Happy Friday Phil!!!
Somewhere in my closet I know I have an SB AWE 64 Gold. That thing was soooo good for its time. Moved from it to an XFI card from what I remember (which I also still have somewhere).
From memory it all sound accurate to my ears, and I have been around since the PC Speaker/ZX Spectrum/Amiga 2000 days. Although indeed with the small touches it sounds better than they did original.
First soundcard was a SB Pro 2 followed by a SB AWE64, than a Live! and X-Fi was the last one. To be honest, Creative has been getting a bigger and bigger pain in the behind driver wise to the point that I stopped bothering buying a soundcard altogether.
Crazy how much of a difference there is!😮
That audio selection for Budokan brings back some memories ^_^
Oh my….. I wrote that comment before you showed the Budokan Roland demo….. holy crapzoids! That’s friggin amazing.
I love skip from pc speaker directly to roland ;D but it also shows how great pc speaker version was so it is still both recognizable and actually good in it's own right
In the 90s, a sound card was something that I couldn't afford. I didn't realize that the music and sfx were so capable and I missed out on hearing the highest quality.
Thanks for sharing this with us Phil.
It comes to my mind, what if you make a game recomendation video? As in, for those of us who want to get into retro gaming (particularly DOS and Win98, early 2000s perhaps), what games would you recommend?
Also, you have a lot of videos putting together PCs, but do you think it's possible that in the future you make a dummy guide to retro gaming? The dos and dont's, tips, useful resources, that could make for a neat video. Thanks for the great work!
Good ideas :) I haven't tried a games focussed video yet!
thanks for new video! I love how you compares all the sound & music options for DOS games. although I have real MT-32 and SC-55mk II and several retro PC for DOS & windows 98, I DO use dosbox emulation/ PCem emulation for DOS games because it is so convenient. I don't have ambition to run every single DOS games for perfect condition. I play old DOS game for my own nostalgic reason - childhood memories. so it doesn't matter which format I use.
I appreciate that DOSbox emulates some of fancier sound card like Adlib gold or Gravis ultrasound(I tried to buy it is rare now). It is very easy to run DosBox for Tandy sound or parallel port sound card to bring back my memory without spending too much money.
for me I play old DOS games maybe 3 times a month ?! so it is practical to play through DosBox rather than setting up real retro PC, which I already have but I become super lazy LOL
Gotta switch to DOSbox staging after these last two videos. This is everything I've been waiting for.
Thanks for the detailed comparison of sound options for retro DOS games. BTW, autofocus between 20:40 - 20:55 seemed to be very unstable; check if your autofucus locks on your face (eyes in particular).
Apparently this camera, Lumix G7, has really poor autofocus. I will try a different AF mode next time and see if it makes a difference.
Thank you for the analysis.
My only comment is how beautiful that background is, Another World is a masterpiece.
P.S. on eBay news, recently surfaced a sealed/boxed GF4Ti 4600, the bid closed on $1200.
(pretty much nonexistent item)
Great video!
Is this the beginning of the Phil's Computer Goatee?
😅
I loved to listen to Amiga tunes with 100% stereo on headphones ;) It sounded weird when I started, but I used to it and I loved it. I projected that aberration to all other chiptunes, SID-s and Atari included. My favorite (game) chip music of all time is probably Master of Orion soundtrack on GUS ;)
Turrican 2! So beautiful 😍
When the game blaster music started I thought I was about to listen to accidentally hard panned recorded audio then i realized.... thats just how the gameblaster works. (Probably like how Amiga just has two left channels and two right channels, but no "center" besides using a left and a right at the same time.)
Crossfeed is absolutely necessary on stuff like that as your video confirms.
I got to the end of the vid and was like "where's the Dosbox sounds?" Then realised that it was Dosbox all the way though and not the cards he was holding up, damn those sounds are accurate.
Thank You, shared to my Twitter Retro friends :)
Dude, you totally sound like the Goldmember (from Austin Powers In Goldmember [2002]), which is really cool! Are you dutch? Very nice video!
Austria 😅
1 thing most of these videos leave out: Back in the day every second household had a midi capable keyboard or synth somewhere and you could connect that to your PC as a Wavetable Midi Module in addition to your Soundblaster. You could even use the line in of your soundcard if you didn't have a small stage mixer or something similar. The game music produced by those was as different as the keyboards where.
One game to always mention whenever the topic of FM synthesis comes up: Tyrian sounds amazing on OPL2, but pretty lacklustre on anything General MIDI.
Also, sounds like the Sound Blaster Pro 1 should be a target for hobbyist cloning. The original Sound Blaster got cloned with the Snark Barker, after all.
I will say that through a really good sound system, that the real thing has a certain lush character to it that Munt or Nuked just don't have. And this is mostly down to the analog stages being different of course. And only partly down to the actual emulation itself. The emulation options are pretty dang good though. And especially though a decent quality DAC are more than good enough. It really makes it not worth seeking out the vintage roland or Gravis hardware. Especially when you can export extended midi to a modern computer from a vintage one, and emulate what ever you want while still using a real 386.
I would say this has really come to its own only in the last year or so with things like 86box and PCEm becoming more popular. Its wonderful to hear.
If you already have physical midi modules you can connect them to dosbox with cheep usb to midi cable, it's pretty great.
Yes you are right!
As cool as emulation is, there is a serious thrill when PCM audio comes through a physical PC Speaker, especially when you're only expecting beeps and boops. Fantastic showcase! With the way things are going, DOSBOX may yet end up being probably the most realistic way to taste all aspects of 80's and 90's DOS gaming without breaking the bank, especially with sound from the biggest names being as easy as just swapping between them with little to no effort. Honestly that alone was why I started retroPC building too, not to mention though some games like Bedlam2 and Mechwarrior didn't have good compatibility, but that was also in 2016 and those games are definitely supported and playing at full speed now.
As much as I like my synth collection, man there is no way to get your hands on an MT/CM-32 these days without putting out some $700AUD. Might just have to accept that emulation is the best way forward.
Super cool video ❤