Data Flow

So well...

The CD that's been playing the last 80 minutes or so was one that has a compilation of all three games' tracks...

Started with a DOS OPL-2 FM rendition of Descent title (Descent.mid), went on with "Contribution", a mix of game03.mid, Descent II tracks (both MIDI renditions and Redbook audio), and so on.

Jerry's 128 kbps MP3 files (quite decently encoded, by the way, though inevitably somewhat woody-sounding) decoded, a copy of tracks off the Definitive Collection Descent II CD, and the Descent II & Descent MIDI files mixed/rendered here. All of that remastered for the CD - with some additional reverb for the old Descent mixes, and all tracks processed by Izotope Trash analogue filter emulation and Waves Stereoimager+ stereo image shaping.

The Izotope Trash DX plugin can improve dynamics with its analogue filter emulation, also its speaker cabinet emulation adds a bit of extra brightness which livens up CD audio.

Waves Stereoimager+ has a Blumlein shuffle implementation, arranging different frequency bands according to psychoacoustic model of perception (humans are most sensitive to upper low/midrange frequencies, midrange usually appears as "wider" and more detailed). Blumlein shuffle also adds a high-frequency crossfeed, which helps listening in headphones.

All of this sounded surprisingly quite lively, even though the old game mixes (game04.mid, game05.mid, game09.mid) all were mixed a tad too bass-heavy (the amp they were mixed on had the bass cut to less than half/treble boosted to maximum). Game09.mid even was quite groove-inducing B)

Jerry's tracks sounded quite warm and engaging after processing, which brings the suspicion of him having mixed with his own AKG headphones (K-340?).

Here's the tracklist:

1. Descent Introduction (OPL2 FM, reverberated).
2. Jerry Berlonghieri - "Contribution".
3. Descent - Game03.mid - "Lunar Military Base".
4. Brian Luzietti - "Crawl"
5. Descent Game01.mid - "Lunar Outpost" (Reason mix).
6. Playstation/Mac Descent (Descent game02.mid) - "Lunar Military Scientific Lab".
7. Descent II Introduction (Descent2.mid).
8. Brian Luzietti - Descent II Title.
9. Bob Brown - "Cold Reality"
10. Descent Game10.mid.
11. Jerry Berlonghieri - "Top Hush"
12. Descent Game12.mid - "Callisto Mining Colony".
13. Jerry Berlonghieri - "Solar Ignite".
14. Descent Game04.mid - "Venus Atmospheric Lab".
15. Jerry Berlonghieri - Descent 3 Credits.
16. Descent Game05.mid - "Venus Sulphur Mine".
17. Descent Game09.mid.
18. Jerry Berlonghieri - "Retribution".

Volume 1;
Volume 2;
Volume 3.

Update

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Digital Silence - 30 seconds.flac - just that;

Moog Soft Sine Pad - Stress Test.flac - a recording of a Moog Mini V Soft Pad, composed of sine waves - a stress/effective dynamic range test for any speakers/headphones;

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Audiotest is a relatively small test CD. It lacks phase checks, instrument demos, channel separation checks and the like. Only the basics...

Read more...

A small essay on digital & analogue recording, as well as what really matters with sound & frequency processing.

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Sound is an impulse. An impulse of energy - in this case, the energy is moving air or some other resonant material. Vitality, energy, harmony - all that in the West is treated separately, in Chinese is called "ji" - the life essence itself. Music is a direct incarnation, reflexion of that.

The charge, potential, power of sound impulse is usually notated in frequency terms by humans.

Digital processing involves the conversion of any analogue of an image (or sound) into bit-coded representation. Initially there are only two solid states of a bit - on or off (true/false, yes/no, 1/0, etc.). With more bits assigned, the complexity can be increased, e. g. with several bits representing the position of a character in a mapped alphabet, other bits representing the position of a character within a line, other bits drawing the character onscreen, etc.

In digital representation, a whole of a picture or a fragment of sound is represented in smallest possible fragments - quantums. In the case of imagery, the smallest component of a represented picture is pixel. In the case of sound, it is sample. A pixel is a smallest square dot represented by a bitmapped image; a sample is a fragment of a second, capturing variation from one state of a sound wave to another. The more samples per second, the higher the frequency of sound wave captured, the higher the resolution (and precision) of the digital soundwave, the more natural the sounding.

Read more...

Apache 2 has a "Fancy Indexing" option for file lists.

It can be configured to sort files by extension (not directly though).

The trick is simple - sort files by description by default, with alphabetic descriptions added for file types. So *.exe-files with an "Executable file" description would always be sorted before *.zip-files with a "Zip archive" description.

For the server configuration file (usually httpd.conf):

LoadModule autoindex_module modules/mod_autoindex.so - this ensures the Autoindex (directory reader/indexer) module loads, it is required by the Fancy Indexing.

Include conf/extra/httpd-autoindex.conf - this is the included configuration file itself.

In httpd-autoindex.conf:

IndexOptions FancyIndexing HTMLTable VersionSort DescriptionWidth=* FoldersFirst IgnoreCase NameWidth=*

IndexOrderDefault Ascending Description

The IndexOptions directive takes:

FancyIndexing - ensures directory sorting is enabled and can be toggled by the sorting type column headers;

HTMLTable - creates a simple single table for the file list. It can cause strange behaviour in really old browsers, but it is necessary for proper UTF-8 read formatting (which can alternate between left-right and right-left);

VersionSort - enables version sorting (where 1.11 will be displayed after 1.8.1);

DescriptionWidth=* and NameWidth=* - the asterisk removes any width limitations - the column will be as wide as the widest name or description;

FoldersFirst - display directories first, not mixed alphabetically with files;

IgnoreCase - ignore case (default behaviour is to sort all capital-letter names first);

The IndexOrderDefault directive is set-up to sort directories by description in ascending order.

The AddIcon directive adds an icon for a new file type.

The AddDescription directive provides a description for a file type:

AddDescription "Zip archive" .zip

With appropriately-described extensions, the file list should be sorted by extension:



Some notes: Apache 2 prioritised directives according to the order they were read in. httpd.conf had icons and descriptions for generic filetypes loaded first:

AddIcon /icons/binary.gif .bin .exe .lib .stub
AddIcon /icons/world2.gif .wrl .wrl.gz .vrml .vrm .iv
AddIconByType (TXT,/icons/textdoc.png) text/*
AddIcon /icons/compressed.gif .Z .z .tgz .gz .zip .rar

Those should be moved to a position after the newly added icon/descriptions.

Some little quirks in the way Apache 2 treated extensions: if a description for *.xml came after a description for *.xm, all *.xml would be treated as *.xm . Apache 2 also read only the first extension for sorting, not the last (so .avi.torrent would be sorted with *.avi, not *.torrent), but it generated descriptions correctly, by the last extension.

HeaderName /Fileindex.html
ReadmeName /Filefooter.shtml

Those directives specify the header and the footer for file indexes. The header can provide the background and body setup (fonts, colours, images, etc.). If server-side includes (SSI) are on, files marked as SSI-capable (*.shtml, etc.) will be parsed for includes, so common environment strings like server signature, local time/date, etc. can be inserted into the header or footer.

FM Bell Ringtone 1, also ringtone for the "Greens" theme.
FM Bell Ringtone 2;
Ephemeral Piano Ringtone 1;
Ephemeral Piano Ringtone 3, message tone for the "Greens" theme.

There's a version of Oggenc for OS X: http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/OGGEnc-Download-15491.html

LAME for OS X: http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html

Read more...

Winforce 1.4 is a process/window manager for Windows 9x/NT.

Here's a screenshot:



Ever since Donut Studios' site went down, Winforce has become another "great-but-nearly-extinct" app.

Here's a bootleg release.
Unreleased or difficult-to-find Final tracks that have never been included in a standalone album.



Tracklist

1. Final vs. Solaris - Voidbeat 1 (4:33)
2. Final - Hide (7:27)
3. Final - Far (8:39)
4. Final (Justin Broadrick) - Two Chords (9:19)
5. Final - Failure (4:16)
6. Final - Alien Soundtracks (6:58)
7. Final - Dream 1-3 (6:52)
8. Final - Sticks And Stones (6:49)
9. Final - Cookie (9:21)
10. Final - Exit (9:00)

Direct link in case the S-Chapel server goes down.

WMA, the Windows Media Format, is a format created (well, actually, mostly blueprinted from MP3 with some addition of their own code) by Microsoft for compressed audio transmission (well, actually, more oriented towards sale and lockout of "copyrighted" music).

WMA subsystem, codecs, and associated software (or rather, litter) are bundled with most current versions of Windows.

There is a way to remove WMP.

The problem with WMA is that to play back the WMA files, the player actually has to contact the WMA interface which checks whether there is a licence installed for the files' playback. In other words, with the rest of the WMA subsystem taken down, and with a WMA plugin for a player such as Winamp or XMPlay, it won't be possible to play anything.

Fortunately, there is the mighty MPlayer, a universal media player capable of pretty much anything, originally developed for Unix operating systems. There is also MPUI, a Windows GUI for MPlayer. MPlayer runs great on Windows, taking advantage of any codecs if installed, and includes a "demoronised" version of WMA and WMV codecs which will play back any WMA or WMV file regardless of whether it's licence-protected or not.

For those who have lost their licence files (in a reinstall or somesuch misadventure), or have (rightfully and truthfully) removed the WMP monster altogether, this is a major boon.

To decode to wave, MPlayer has to be run with a "PCM file" output specified, like so:

mplayer -ao pcm:file=smile.wav

The resulting wave file can then be recoded to some other (free) format, or if quality loss is a problem, encoded to a lossless format like FLAC.

- Life Is Easy.

Silverspring was a GM/GS bank in Soundfont 2.1 format. It was entirely composed of public domain samples (or free-for-use instruments). Originally, there was a bank needed for playing back the classic games' (Descent, Heretic/Hexen, Doom series) MIDI soundtracks. Silverspring was compiled for that.

It was meant as a near-64 MB (depending on version and completeness, the bank size varied from 56 to 80+ megabytes) bank for SB Live cards under NT4. A friend also used the bank (and larger derivatives) under the MacOS X Quicktime synthesiser.

Under NT4 and NT5 native Creative drivers, there was trouble with MIDI playback: the SB Live cards are limited to a 32 MB memory allocation (they can only play back 32 MBs of samples at a time). The "professional" version of SB Live, the EMU APS Live, was specifically limited to 32 MBs max. RAM cache. The SB Live, though, had "unlimited" memory cache limited by RAM size. The Creative Labs drivers never implemented the caching model correctly (keep only 32 Mbs accessible by the card, dynamically managing the rest as PC-only Soundfont cache), always having some kind of trouble with MIDI playback - under NT4 it was instruments/layers dropping out of playback, and the card eventually filling with garbage its own playback channels (after about an hour of playback, the wave channels became inaccessible), under NT5 the engine seemed to be improved a bit, but layers of instruments weren't played back if there were too many of them, pitch often wasn't kept up with (especially noticeable with orchestral string instruments), and the overall sounding was more artificial and plastic compared with NT4. All-in-all, Liveware 3 for NT4 was maybe the last decent-sounding release, in spite of memory management problems (it could play a piece with all the instrument layers in place and as intended, even if the card would bang out after playing back several complex pieces).

There was the kX driver project, but its Soundfont engine didn't support stereo playback, it didn't support Soundfont 2.3 features, it had trouble playing back more than one layer per instrument, trouble switching to non-standard sample frequencies, etc. etc.

It's been a certain surprise the bank is still requested and used by some people (it should sound more or less decent on the Audigy cards, which have no 32-MB limitation and related trouble).

A few days ago, a message came from a Korean Soundfont folk with a New Zealand address, asking for the extras that came with Silverspring 1.5 and any current download links. Well, "current download links" there are none (there used to be a German mirror that eventually went down because of multi-gigabyte traffic), but he did provide a link to a Soundfont review site where Silverspring was commented on.

There the downloaders wrote the bank had poor basses and drums, but the best MIDI guitars in a Soundfont.

Different releases of Silverspring had different guitars (and there was a larger, "more hi-fi" version of Silverspring with different drumkits and attenuation tunings called "Savria" that was made specifically for playing Kevin Schilder's MIDI soundtracks to Raven Software fantasy games): the first version of distorted electrical was called "Quite-distorted Guitar", a multi-layered monster that had a raspy sounding (this piece from Descent shows it off), the second was a triple-layer (left, right, and centre-panned, delayed mono-sample layers) distorted guitar inspired in Justin Broadrick's delayed and reverberated guitar sounding of his Godflesh rock project. The overdriven guitar through most versions was a "Well-overdriven Guitar" instrument, also multi-layered with some barely-noticeable distorted electric muted guitar chords thrown in for a more "metallic" sounding. It was dropped for release 1.5, replaced with a Casio Overdriven guitar that had some trademark reverberation/chorus/layering effects on it. Here is a sample of the Well-overdriven, Bobby Prince' soundtrack to Doom level 1-8, "Sign of Evil".

Basses and percussion... Some of the basses in the public version of Silverspring were replacing the commercial bass instruments that were used for mixing and rendering some pieces; the picked bass instruments different Silverspring versions had, were usually replacing a Sonic Implants sub-bass. The fingered bass in different versions was good though (with its characteristic "Velvet-Undergroundish" sounding), as were the two synthesised basses (the first was a Moog, the second a very-lowpass resonating saw wave bass). The percussion kit was a modified Sound Canvas kit with more stuff thrown in to make it sound more natural (and almost always was replaced by a Natural Studio Kit 5 in actual mixes and renderings, also in the Savria version). Silverspring was used as a "base" bank to build upon, and stack instruments on top of it.

A version was made for the NT5 SB Live drivers, dropping some instruments' complexity, losing layers and so on, with a new drumkit and less complex guitar instruments.

It never quite got through, although it did have good sounding on some pieces (by that time, that was enough), mostly with the Doom/Descent MIDI tracks.

A recording quite never captures the sounding of a good "live" synthesiser (there's always some quantising and dithering involved in 16-bit wave recording that the less discrete "live" playback with instruments mixed with 32-bit interpolation and audio depth doesn't have), but here are some samples...

Descent Level 4 track, one of the earliest versions of Silverspring, all instruments are from the bank. Track-by-track mixing in a wave editor.

Oxygene 10 (Lost Soul), a mix by Howard Farrar for the AWE64 card; usually, Silverspring handled MIDI pieces sequenced for "classic" hardware well; the version is 1.5.5 (NT5), the last one. Additional instruments are an experimental synthesised strings patch that didn't make it into the bank (made with Wavecraft, an analogue emulation non-realtime synthesiser), Yamaha OPL3 FM Bass 1, and Elka Synthex Jarre harp. Recorded under NT5 with SB Live and a custom EAX preset.

Borkesis - a piece from Hexen soundtrack, "live" recording under NT5. All instruments are standard.

...the soundtrack to "Lava Pits", a Heretic level. The only bank instruments here are the synthesised strings, the base fretless bass patch, and the melodic tom.

And a very beautiful piece, reverbed twice, from the Heretic soundtrack, the finale of episode 2.

There was a Canadian musician, Christopher Payne, who composed some albums with instruments from Silverspring and related banks. Also, there was a musician friend who used the instruments from the bank for his own works; he used to have a university band called "Kernel".

There should be other musicians who have played with the bank (although, it was mostly intended for listening to classic games' MIDI tracks with cheap hardware).

An acquainted composer once said the pieces sounded good (mixing-wise), but "compressed". They really might; after all, a lot of lowpassing and other trickery was used for the instruments, with a lot of EQ shaping done during mixing in the track editor. Though, for a Soundfont bank, Silverspring still had some of the more realistic sounding at its time.

Work on an already worked-over project is always akin to flogging a dying horse, so Silverspring most likely won't ever have a "really final" version.

This track's from the soundtrack to Homeplanet, a space sim-like shooting/tactical game.

Surveyor.