What'dya Prefer? MP3s or Midis in Maps

[Beemer]

I personally prefer Midis, just suits the aesthetic for me. Seems as wrong to me as adding HD ULTRA REALISTIC TEXTURES 4K to a game from '93, just seems off.

 

That being said, there is some really great exceptions but generally I prefer Midi

Edited June 27, 2021 by bluemoss

[Doomkid]

Well, in generally classic Doomy maps I prefer MIDI, so that's what I voted for - but in modern maps with advanced features, OGG / MP3  (or tracker modules) feels a bit more natural.

Edited June 27, 2021 by Doomkid

[omx32x]

midis all the way but i dont mind mixing

 

i was quite surprise when playing pirate doom and out of nowhere highway to hell started playing one of my favorite moments in any wad

[Argent Agent]

Tracker modules all the way.

[ax34]

I prefer chiptunes and tracker music. Mp3/ogg are huge, and MIDIs are inconsistent between soundfonts/synths.

Edited June 27, 2021 by ax34

[Loud Silence]

MIDI or FLAC.

[E.M.]

Midis. They have a smaller file size and they fit in better with a classic game like Doom.

[yakfak]

ive made a million midis and a million tracker tunes and I prefer tracker tunes, but general midi's just the sound of Doom by now, yr getting a billion secret downvotes if you don't use it

[Kyka]

definitely midi or no sound. Why? Because everywhere else on earth has mp3's. What sets Doom music apart from every other musical genre and style is that it is midi. And the constraints of midi have given a very unique and interesting vibe to Doom music that you will hear nowhere else on earth.

 

So either nothing (because I like to really listen to the grwols and noises when I am trying to survive playing solo,) or midi.

[BoxY]

I think there's a lot of unexplored potential with using ogg/mp3 music in maps where midis can't easily produce the desired effect, but it does feel odd at times to me. Violence for example uses oggs which work well with the atmosphere, but it has vocals in the map04 track which felt vaguely un-Doomlike enough to me that it was slightly distracting. Trackers are okay, they have more range than midis while still feeling kinda classic. I'm not really in love with the soundtrack of any wad I played with tracker music so far but that's probably not the format's fault.

[Hawk of The Crystals]

Midis; I honestly can't describe the uncanny feeling I get whenever I'm playing a wad and the music is some high quality stuff, like it's really weird, but I know that not everyone gets this feeling.

[out_of_service]

I have no preference. If the music is good, I'm all ears.

[roadworx]

definitely midi; it fits doom much more imo

[Arrowhead]

MIDIs. I like being able to change how they sound w/ all the soundfonts out there...

[Marisa the Magician]

MIDIs are good, but I personally want to see more love for tracker music.

[Steve D]

I'm an Amigan, so of course I'm gonna say tracker music. But it's really hard to find tracker modules that fit Doom, and I don't know any tracker musician who can do custom work, so mostly I use midi.

 

One thing -- a lot of modern midis have high-pitched guitar and/or synth, flute, etc., which can sound squealy with Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, like the sounds of cheap Casio synths from the 1970s. Yes, I'm old enough to remember. ;D Those sounds drive me crazy, so I've started using soundfonts to correct that, but that can lead to other problems, such as wild changes in volume, overwhelming percussion, and even louder squealy guitars. ;D Perhaps there's ways to set up soundfonts in MidiMapper or VirtualMidiSynth to smooth it out, but that's extra work. It would be awesome if more midis stayed within the limits of what sounds good in MSGWS.

[Roofi]

I usually prefer midis , but some russians wads like Whitemare 2 proved me that using mp3 in doom maps is such an underrated thing. The Unreal Tournament's music used in Whitemare map 32 will be carved in my mind forever.

 

 

[Somniac]

MIDIS and tracker music.

[TheBlurCafe]

MIDIs all the way, there's a certain charm to those instruments that can't be quite imitated (I'm mostly talking about the SC-55 version of those).

[Ichor]

I prefer my music to be of a much smaller size than the maps in which they play.

[ENEMY!!!]

I sense that I am in a small minority here but as a generalisation I prefer MP3 to MIDI.  More specifically I have a preference for OGG music because it is possible to achieve a smaller file size than with MP3 without sacrificing quality, but I voted MP3 because it's the nearest option in the poll.  The exception would be if we're talking up to a few small maps, in which case including MP3 (or OGG music) would result in the music taking up considerably more space than the map(s).  In that case MIDI may be preferable purely because it takes up a lot less space.

 

I guess MP3s aren't appreciated so much partly because they have a history of being used less well in idTech 1 style Doom maps (there are of course plenty of good examples of them being used well in more idTech 2/3 style maps) - there are a lot of very good MIDI composers out there for custom Doom maps whereas a lot of maps with MP3s tend to feature music taken directly from other games, rather than original compositions or even remixes.

 

I generally find MIDI format music harder to get into.  It's true that I enjoy listening to a fair number of custom Doom maps' MIDI soundtracks - Ancient Aliens, Eviternity and Plutonia 2 for example - but even in those cases, if I fancy listening to them outside of the game I fire up the MP3/OGG remasters of them rather than the MIDI originals.  Also, it would be very hard to create something along the lines of Aubrey Hodges's PSX Doom soundtrack in MIDI format. 

 

Edited June 27, 2021 by ENEMY!!!

[MelonadeM]

I think this heavily depends on what you're playing. Personally I don't care as long as it's cohesive, from a player standpoint.

 

From a composer standpoint, though, MIDIs are limited (but have a good selection of preset instruments), Trackers are not easy to use (but are way more versatile than MIDIs at not a too big of a filesize increase), chiptune formats have way too specific uses within the DOOM community, and streamed audio is probably the 2nd easiest option for me, but is also the biggest out of them all. Even with OGG compression, it's going to be way bigger than any other option (for good reason, I should stress, you can virtually do anything within these formats)

 

There's also the topic of creativity within limits, streamed audio being limitless leads to less immediate creativity, while MIDIs being a preset list of instruments, it leads to more creativity because you can start to think outside of the box - there's no box to think outside of in streamed audio, it's all just a void you need to get dirty

[Bauul]

It depends entirely on the mapset for me.  Classic vanilla, limit-removing or PRBoom+ mapsets?  MIDI sounds best.  Something more advanced in GZDoom?  OGG can sound excellent (or MP3 for that matter).  For example, Bastion of Chaos with a MIDI track would sound kind of weird compared to the dynamic OGG it has.

 

What I'd like to see is more Doom-style tracks written for OGG.  Just because it's pre-recorded doesn't mean it has to sound really different to the type of music we tend to get with MIDI.  I mean the new Unity Doom's tracks are technically all OGG, and are probably more authentic than whatever anyone's sourceports are playing because they were recoded from an actual physical Roland SC-55.  

 

52 minutes ago, ENEMY!!! said:

It's true that I enjoy listening to a fair number of custom Doom maps' MIDI soundtracks - Ancient Aliens, Eviternity and Plutonia 2 for example

 

Ironically Eviternity uses both MIDI and OGG.  It's relatively little known that PRBoom+ supports OGG playback.

 

7 hours ago, Argent Agent said:

Tracker modules all the way.

7 hours ago, ax34 said:

I prefer chiptunes and tracker music.

7 hours ago, Doomkid said:

(or tracker modules)

 

This is a super basic question, but can someone explain what tracker music is exactly?  I only heard the term relatively recently (despite having an Amiga in the 90s where the term apparently originated from), and reading into it it just sounds like MIDI (pre-existing sounds arranged to play at specific times, with added effects layered programmatically on top).  Can anyone explain the difference?

[BouncyTEM]

2 minutes ago, Bauul said:

This is a super basic question, but can someone explain what tracker music is exactly?  I only heard the term relatively recently (despite having an Amiga in the 90s where the term apparently originated from), and reading into it it just sounds like MIDI (pre-existing sounds arranged to play at specific times, with added effects layered programmatically on top).  Can anyone explain the difference?

On the surface, the two formats have a lot in common - but the biggest signifying difference is, at least from a layman's perspective, tracker tracks *provide* their own samples, so they'll sound consistent throughout every device - this also means that tracker musicians are free to utilize whatever sounds they want, rather than being locked to the MIDI library of instruments. MIDI is completely dependent on what you're playing it through - playing it through Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth is not going to sound the same as a SC-55, or someone playing it through the Fluid soundfont, etc.

[KeaganDunn]

7 minutes ago, Bauul said:

Ironically Eviternity uses both MIDI and OGG.  It's relatively little known that PRBoom+ supports OGG playback.

Can agree with a lot of people on here. It all depends on what you're playing, or going for as a mapper.

Technicolor and Bastion, as Bauul said, would not be the same with a simple 4-minute looping MIDI track as they are large, advanced GZDoom journeys.

For something like a lot of WADs such as Eviternity, Valiant, and various Ribbiks releases that pretty much emulate classic Doom in a modern format (or something like that idk) MIDIs still work great.

 

Although, Eviternity's MAP30 uses an ambient OGG track by Eris Falling, as opposed to the other 31 maps using MIDIs (mostly bespoke for the project), and I felt having an OGG for that final boss was spot-on. So it really all depends on what's happening in the map, as well as your personal preference. If you don't like playing Doom with a metal- or synth-themed MP3 then don't.

 

Spoiler

Or just use MP3/OGG recordings of MIDIs lol

 

Edited June 27, 2021 by Dunn (& Dunn)

[Bauul]

3 minutes ago, BouncyTEM said:

On the surface, the two formats have a lot in common - but the biggest signifying difference is, at least from a layman's perspective, tracker tracks *provide* their own samples, so they'll sound consistent throughout every device - this also means that tracker musicians are free to utilize whatever sounds they want, rather than being locked to the MIDI library of instruments. MIDI is completely dependent on what you're playing it through - playing it through Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth is not going to sound the same as a SC-55, or someone playing it through the Fluid soundfont, etc.

 

Ah thank you!  So to ultra-simplifying, it's like a MIDI track bundled with its own soundfont?  Makes sense!  And it sounds like there are Doom maps that make use of it?  Or is that not the case?

[BouncyTEM]

12 minutes ago, Bauul said:

 

Ah thank you!  So to ultra-simplifying, it's like a MIDI track bundled with its own soundfont?  Makes sense!  And it sounds like there are Doom maps that make use of it?  Or is that not the case?

There are! To my knowledge, it's easiest to find examples of modules being used in a lot of early zdoom mods, like Massmouth 2, Zdoom Community Map Project, etc.. My explanation is itself a simplification as there are plenty of technical differences between the formats, but that is a general jist of it.

 

Unreal and Unreal Tournament made fantastic use of the format.

 

Honestly, it is my preference as far as things go - i'd love to see more levels with tracker songs.

 

Edit: Dead.air is a great modern example of a doom map using modules. All one module made by Xaser himself, no less!

Edited June 27, 2021 by BouncyTEM

[Noiser]

MIDIs are great, but MP3s can work pretty well too:
 

 

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

Mp3's, because after decades playing Doom, hearing the same limited instruments again and again becomes insufferable. Plus, you don't know if the composer made these midis meant to be listened using default Windows midi libraries or stuff like TiMidity++. With mp3 you are absolutely sure you are providing the user the intended experience for the world you created.

Some people argue that mp3s just "don't fit" Doom, and I think it's a ridiculous claim. Quake was released with wav music just 3 years later, and most user-made Doom maps (even in Vanilla formats) are more detailed than core Quake maps. It would be weird to have Wolfenstein 3D with mp3s, but definitely not Doom.

[Wavy]

I prefer MIDI's but depending on the MP3 it can sound alright when it comes to vanilla-style WAD's.

 

But I will say that SNES SPC music is underrated. Though I think only GZDoom and Eternity(?) support it, but I wanted to through it out there.