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MIDI Instruments/Programs for ZC?


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#1 garlicbread

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 07:20 AM

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum section, first time poster and I didn't see anything else related to music elsewhere.

 

Does anyone know a program I can use that has ZC's exact same MIDI instrument set? I'm new to the whole MIDI creation thing, and when I make tracks in different software and save it as MIDI, a lot of my instruments seem to not work with ZC, so they're just muted, or changed to piano.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!



#2 Russ

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 09:55 AM

ZC doesn't have a separate MIDI instrument set. It just uses whatever the default set on your system is, so you should be fine to just make MIDIs with whatever tool you're using. The piano thing is actually a bug; clicking out of the window turns all MIDI instruments to pianos. If you don't click outside the ZC window, that shouldn't happen. If it's happening anyways... then it's probably that the bug is somehow worsening and oughta be reported.

#3 garlicbread

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 03:33 PM

Interesting. So, if I work on a MIDI file, it may sound different to everyone else by the time it reaches their computer?

 

Also, do you know of any commonly used programs exclusively for a system's MIDI instrument set, then? I'm currently using MixCraft, which is not exclusively MIDI. I'm sure there are sounds I'm missing out on that would be viable with my system, but also sounds that are unusable that are already with the program.



#4 Colin

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 03:48 PM

I always used Anvil Studio when I composed MIDIs and it is essentially exclusively MIDI. I think there's technically a paid addon to include some audio channels but I never used that.

 

And yeah, MIDIs technically could sound a good degree different on someone else's computer based on the sound font they're using. For the most part though, I think most people will be using the same sound fonts so you shouldn't have a ton to worry about.


Edited by Strato, 17 January 2018 - 03:49 PM.


#5 Russ

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 07:05 PM

Interesting. So, if I work on a MIDI file, it may sound different to everyone else by the time it reaches their computer?

This is correct. I got bored with default Windows soundfont, so I downloaded a much better soundfont, and suddenly all the MIDI music in ZC sounded higher quality. Then at one point, I downloaded an 8-bit sounding soundfont, and at that point everything sounded NES-ish. Because a MIDI is just a series of instructions telling the computer "Play this note in this instrument in whatever your default soundfont is", there's no way to guarantee what it will sound like for the end user. You'd need to use a format like mp3 or ogg for that, but those are much larger files because they actually contain audio recordings, rather than just instructions.

#6 Avaro

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 09:32 PM

This is correct. I got bored with default Windows soundfont, so I downloaded a much better soundfont, and suddenly all the MIDI music in ZC sounded higher quality. Then at one point, I downloaded an 8-bit sounding soundfont, and at that point everything sounded NES-ish. Because a MIDI is just a series of instructions telling the computer "Play this note in this instrument in whatever your default soundfont is", there's no way to guarantee what it will sound like for the end user. You'd need to use a format like mp3 or ogg for that, but those are much larger files because they actually contain audio recordings, rather than just instructions.

 

Aaaa! And then you make some midis sound different from what the author wanted (with the soundfonts i've tried so far, each one has made a few of my midis sound worse).



#7 peteandwally

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 10:01 PM

Different sound fonts might map midi channels to different instruments. For example, if you make a midi track that has piano, flute and a floor tom on channels 1,2 and 3, someone else could have a different sound font that has french horns on channel 1, nothing on channel 2 and a gunshot noise on channel 3. Since there is no standard mapping, there's no guarantee that any specific user will hear what you intend them to hear.



#8 Saffith

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Posted 17 January 2018 - 10:45 PM

You shouldn't have many problems as long as you stick to General MIDI. Extended MIDI can vary a lot, and it definitely won't work when Allegro's built-in driver is used (as it is on Mac and Linux).

Getting something to sound exactly like the author intended is pretty much impossible, though. As long as your soundfont is reasonably well balanced and doesn't have some instruments off-key, that's about the best you can do.

#9 kurt91

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Posted 19 January 2018 - 02:26 PM

Out of curiosity, any particular soundfonts that you guys would recommend, either for standard audio quality or the more quirky ones like that one that makes everything sound like a Genesis is playing it?

 

By the way, what would you guys think about if a quest was packaged alongside a specific soundfont with directions on how to set it up, as a way to ensure that the person playing the game hears the audio exactly how the author intended?



#10 Espilan

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Posted 20 January 2018 - 03:10 AM

Out of curiosity, any particular soundfonts that you guys would recommend, either for standard audio quality or the more quirky ones like that one that makes everything sound like a Genesis is playing it?

Chorium RevA is a pretty standard option. I don't use it much anymore but it'll get the job done if you're not looking for anything of especially-high quality.

SGM-V2.01 is a large one with good quality. Be aware, though, that by large I mean "above 200 megabytes".

OmegaGMGS2 is another large one and is what I currently use, but it's an even bigger file than SGM-V2.01.

OPL-3 FM 128M is great if you want some old sounds, like Sound Blaster 16 old. It's somewhat large, but not to the same degree as the above two.

 

By the way, what would you guys think about if a quest was packaged alongside a specific soundfont with directions on how to set it up, as a way to ensure that the person playing the game hears the audio exactly how the author intended?

Soundfonts themselves vary considerably in size and some can get to be rather large (two of the ones I linked to in my recommendations are more than 200 MB each), so personally I'd recommend against including them in packages. If you really want your quest MIDIs to sound a specific way, I'd suggest providing instructions on where to obtain the soundfont in question and how to set it up, sort of like how quest MP3s have been handled thus far.


Edited by Espilan, 20 January 2018 - 03:16 AM.


#11 Timelord

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Posted 20 January 2018 - 07:50 AM

Out of curiosity, any particular soundfonts that you guys would recommend, either for standard audio quality or the more quirky ones like that one that makes everything sound like a Genesis is playing it?
 
By the way, what would you guys think about if a quest was packaged alongside a specific soundfont with directions on how to set it up, as a way to ensure that the person playing the game hears the audio exactly how the author intended?


I don't see a particular problem with that, aside from relying on the user to set it up; and understanding that it will not be the same across all three operating systems.

It's otherwise no different that having supplementary enhanced music.

We used to include special sfx.dat files with quests, before the 2.50 era, to change sound effects.



#12 Russ

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Posted 20 January 2018 - 01:29 PM

We used to include special sfx.dat files with quests, before the 2.50 era, to change sound effects.

Soundfonts are a whole lot harder to set up than dropping a file in the ZC folder though. If you want to ensure somebody hears the music EXACTLY the way you want, enhanced music is probably the better option.
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