What is Love on Sound Blaster 16 [real OPL3] Adlib tracker 2

Рет қаралды 21,691

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 61

@stanislav.baranec 11 жыл бұрын

Hehe, encore's bloody nightmare track.... came out pretty well at the end, however, so it's something to be really proud of for him :)

@WhiteFalconus 3 жыл бұрын

There is something magical about FM synthesis.. probably partly nostalgia, but this sounds so fresh even today.

@Autotrope 20 күн бұрын

The OPL3 is magic in the hands of the right musicians

@markpenrice6253 7 жыл бұрын

...definitely NOT "the" What Is Love I was expecting. But, as it's Howard, about as appropriate :D

@SysOpQueen 2 ай бұрын

SAME

@xargos 7 жыл бұрын

I'll still never understand why people complain about the OPL3. Or the OPL2, for that matter. They're quite capable synths when put in the right hands.

@DxDeksor 7 жыл бұрын

Well since most developpers used it badly, the music quality was average at best with 90% of games so people thought they were bad

@markpenrice6253 7 жыл бұрын

Which is why I now think we lucked out when buying our first 486, with a Voyetra ESS688 board that initially seemed like a bit of a cost cutting measure... but if the choice had been that or something with an OPL2 instead (or an OPL3 with Windows drivers that hadn't been updated for the new synthchip), the ESS was probably the better option. Its capabilities were somewhere between the two Yamaha chips, but different enough that it had to have specific drivers and GM patches written for it for windows playback... DOS games suffered a bit as it usually had to run in OPL2 (or 2xOPL2?) emulation mode, except in the few cases it was specifically supported, but, eh, it's still not like we _lost_ anything. Of course, an OPL3 with well made drivers/patches (or ESS1688 with custom support rather than emulation) would have been the best, but I can't say that MIDIs played back through Windows 3.1 players really sounded that bad. Often I ended up wondering what all the fuss was about and why people moaned so much :D Sometimes being different is a pain, but the flipside is that it can bring benefits when people are forced to put the effort in to address you with a bit more attention than the generic masses...

@rexierabbit3280 5 жыл бұрын

I love the OPL3 and later, but I've always felt the OPL2 is too bland and generic. Even when used well, the music had very little life. OPL3 is 100 times better.

@autumnbrushtail 2 жыл бұрын

@@rexierabbit3280 I think generic is a little harsh to OPL2. I think it really is just General MIDI just giving it little variety in sounds. Granted, I haven't used OPL2 too much, but even when messing around with the first four waveforms of OPL3 and sticking to 2 operator instruments, I've managed to make some really nice sounds that sound about on par with what you might hear from an OPN chip (think Mega Drive or PC-88)

@madhatter8508 Жыл бұрын

Most people are unaware that OPL3 can do 4-op FM

@rpocc 8 ай бұрын

I picked this particular song for my article at Vogons with multiple OPL3-compatible soundcard reviews and tests. A great one, quite close to the original cong and very well-aranged from the sound engineering point of view.

@bormisha 10 жыл бұрын

Wonderful bells. Sounds like a real DX7. Very well done!

@AlyxxTheRat 5 жыл бұрын

The more underrated What Is Love

@bangerbangerbro 2 жыл бұрын

NGL I came to this video expecting it to be by Haddaway and to complain that it could have been any other What Is Love like the one by Howard Jones and you should put who it is by in the title and then it turns out it is Howard Jones. Makes more sense i suppose with all the DX7 type noided. Excellent Job by the way on recreating all of it!

@kyoudaiken 10 жыл бұрын

I think he/she has synthesized the two channels separated. So left at first run and right second run.

@DxDeksor 7 жыл бұрын

Even though the picture show an adlib card, an adlib card will never be able to play this. As the title says, that's an OPL3 which outputs stereo sound rather than mono. The original adlib only has an OPL2

@markpenrice6253 7 жыл бұрын

The Adlib Gold card had an OPL3 on it, and *Adlib Tracker* (which is what the title says, if you look) is able to compose music for both the standard and the gold. Or indeed any other compatible card, IE basically every Soundblaster worthy of the name.

@DxDeksor 7 жыл бұрын

Sure, but the card shown here doesn't correspond to the title which says "OPL3" and the sound it produces. This is the original adlib that features an OPL2

@markpenrice6253 7 жыл бұрын

Not disputing that, mate. Just pointing out that the only thing pointing to an _original_ Adlib is the image, and maybe it's expected that we wouldn't necessarily identify that as such straight away. Whilst the title says both "Adlib Tracker", AND "OPL3"...

@HalfLife-hq8eu 2 жыл бұрын

@@DxDeksor AdLib Gold?

@markpenrice6253 7 жыл бұрын

**sees comments about panning** huh, I don't remember hearing that when playing it **plays again to be sure** ...no, still not hearing it. But then I am using a laptop with a couple of relatively narrow-separation front-firing speakers. Maybe I should go find some headphones to plug in? (I can just about detect some L/R/centre positioning of certain instruments, but nothing finer than that, nor any sweeps)

@whizzkidpro 8 жыл бұрын

Fantastic! - And for an 8-bit card too. I've been using similar cards with the OPL3 chips in the past.

@tetsujin_144 2 жыл бұрын

Well, the pictured card is an 8-bit Adlib card but the video title says it was played on a Sound Blaster 16. Doesn't make much difference with OPL music, though.

@ColgateLP 8 жыл бұрын

Wow i like the Stereo panning in this one! btw. the sound of it has a noticeable similarity to the YM2414 from the Yamaha EOS YS100/200 Keyboards very round and full. You did a lovely job on this tune.

@Schule04 8 жыл бұрын

+Mellow Notes I didn't make the tune myself, only recorded it. I played it back on a real yamaha OPL3 with adlib tracker, it's one of the default files included with that program.

@ThePixelPolygon 8 жыл бұрын

+Mellow Notes The AdLib card used the Yamaha YM3812 Chip. It should come as no surprise.

@BlazeRhodon 8 жыл бұрын

+Mellow Notes YM2413 OPLL is cost reduced version of YM3812 OPL2 but it sounds pretty much the same. And YMF262 OPL3 used for recording this track is improved version of OPL2.

@trippypages7309 8 ай бұрын

👍👍🏻👍🏼👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿

@martynas5076 6 жыл бұрын

The adlib sound card has the opl2 chip not opl3.

@Schule04 6 жыл бұрын

The picture is only symbolic.

@madcat8369 7 жыл бұрын

Nice track !

@babylfsh 7 жыл бұрын

"Real OPL3" *Picture of Opl2 card* YM3812 was not opl3. The chip you probably have is a YMF262

@Schule04 7 жыл бұрын

It's just a stock picture. Here's what this sound "card" actually looks like: www.northwesttechnical.com/images/ADVANCEDEV5P-A.jpg

@freddyvretrozone2849 4 жыл бұрын

Vibra16, not an OPL3

@leolaus 3 жыл бұрын

@@Schule04 that's a motherboard tho

@Schule04 3 жыл бұрын

@@leolaus Yeah, but it has a sound blaster vibra 16-S integrated. From a software point of view it's identical to the sound card. And yes, it does have a real OPL3 on board unlike the later vibra cards.

@leolaus 4 жыл бұрын

Neat!

@meanmole3212 7 жыл бұрын

How come this song has so smooth stereo panning effects? Wikipedia page of Yamaha YMF262 states that it supports only "simple stereo (hard left, center or hard right)". Are my ears lying or does Adlib Tracker 2 have some advanced playback options for stereo effects similar to XMPlay's surround mode 1/2?

@Blendedasian 7 жыл бұрын

he might be mimicking full pan control with two exactly equal operator channels (one for left and one for right), then controlling each of the two with differing amplitudes.

@markpenrice6253 7 жыл бұрын

^ this. IE exactly the same as you do with any other hardware that only offers hard panning by default, which was far more common than built-in smooth panning. Sacrifice a channel to play the same thing on left and right with different volumes. If you could spare the bus traffic you could probably try rapidly changing the stereo assignment between L/centre or centre/R (between L & R would be weird and pointless, unless you were using duty cycle settings that would somehow produce additional positions that way) and hoping that the listener's ears and brain would interpret it as being somewhere between the two. With a very simple oscillation you could get five different positions at least. With 33-67, 25-50-75 and 20-40-60-80 percent duty cycles you could place the sound in 7, 9, and 11 different spatial positions, the latter of which might be enough to make panning sweeps seem reasonably smooth, especially if applied to discrete notes in a sequence rather than to a steady pad sound. However given how much of a delay the OPxx chips usually mandated between sequential updates to the FM registers, the oscillation might start to become a little too audible (and system performance harming) even at that level, never mind the division level that would allow 15 different pan positions (what I would personally consider the minimum for a smooth-ish sweep, given that it's about what you could achieve with a uniform volume level from e.g. a twin 2149 PSG solution / single PSG with its individual channels fed to L, centre and R instead of summed together). And that's kinda desperate given that we have so many channels to play with in this chip, moreso if a pair of 2-op channels are used for the variable panned voice (thus only consuming as many as a regular hardpanned 4-op one). It's an effect that can be achieved without too much drama, even in cases where the one chip is meant to be the sole source of all sound rather than one part of a multifaceted silicon ensemble. Heck, I'm not entirely sure what characteristics are assignable on a channel vs operator basis at this point, but it might even be possible to run a non-FM (ie straight sine chorus) 2-part voice as variably panned all by itself if the two tone sources can be set up identically except for one being panned left and the other right (or one of them being centre), with different volumes. And similarly, although rather less practically for any reason other than reducing the number of note-change commands sent to the chip, a 4-op running in either 2x2op or 4x1op mode (or indeed "2+1+1" mode) instead of the typical 1x4, 1+3, etc setups, could do something very similar, and even achieve some fairly wild phasing effects with certain components of the overall tone appearing to move left and right versus the rest... Comparing Adlib Tracker to XMPlay and its ilk is a false equivalence. Module players work entirely within the PCM realm (well, apart from those which can replay dual FM-PCM modules, but those files are rare as heck), and the addition of spatial stereo / surround sound effects are something that happens entirely within software, and is easy to do because the modules run in PCM space anyway, seeing as it's a program controlling the playback of various samples at different speeds, stereo positions etc. Adlib can't do that, because none of its sound generation is software based, and nor is it PCM; the sound is produced from pure silicon synths in response to instructions from the shared data bus, and doesn't pass through any other part of the computer which could further alter it in any way before hitting the speakers. If you wanted to process it, you'd have to capture the synth output back into the machine first, apply whatever PCM-space magic you felt like, then play it back out to the speakers via the PCM hardware. Which is something that I think some later sound cards actually did offer with their rather silly "3D audio effects", but on the whole it would really just be quite cumbersome and not even achieve the desired effect, as it would only apply the same after-the-fact thing as those modplayer surround-sound adjustments... ie crossfading the left and right channels by a certain amount, and adding a bit of stereo reverb so the sound from one side seems to "travel" to and then echo back from the other over the course of a few milliseconds, emulating the sound of a pair of not massively separated speakers in an auditorium. The need for those additional processing options does actually come from a hardware source - as the origin of MOD tracking was on the Amiga, which had 4 hardpanned (L _or_ R, without even a centre option) hardware replay channels, of a certain fixed bit depth, maximum/minimum replay rate and finesse of rate steps, ditto for volume... and so-on - but as soon as the technique stepped on from that one particular platform (and in fact, even some Amiga software was able to sidestep it, sacrificing a little bit of bit depth and frequency response by only keeping two raw hardware channels running and mixing a further two to six on the CPU into a stereo pair to pump out directly on the remaining hardware lines, one set to L and the other to R), the shackles were broken. And so the music which could be quite challenging to listen to through headphones unless you had a mono/stereo switch for them or a downstream processing unit could now be made a lot more comfortable by applying some filtering that made what was presented to your ears with the 'phones sound a lot more like what you'd get from regular open-air desktop or hifi speakers, which inherently add a lot more overlap just because the distance between them is typically not as much as the distance from either to your head. Adlib, you are rather less likely to listen to with headphones simply because of the nature of what it is and when it plays, and as there's many more channels playing at once than with an Amiga module, the potential jarring effect of any one of them being panned 100% left or right is much less... plus of course they can be centre panned anyway, so instead of half of the instruments being on one side and half on the other, most will be in the middle and any left/right positioning would be more for effect than out of necessity. It's not as much of a problem, same way that using the surround sound effect when playing any more up to date module than early .MODs and some other similarly Amiga-focussed formats is a total waste of time and likely to make it sound worse rather than better, because those PC-originated alternatives are able to perform arbitrary panning of each individual PCM channel anyway. And surround sound postprocessing won't let you put a particular instrument out of the whole set in a particular arbitrary place in the stereo field - all it can do is reduce the global stereo width and apply a bit of echo so that the otherwise pretty harsh separation doesn't jar your brain so much if you have headphones on.

@szymonmatuszczak5321 6 жыл бұрын

The AdLib card which is on the picture was dual OPL2, not OPL3, wasn't it?

@Schule04 6 жыл бұрын

No, the pictured card is the first AdLib with only one chip. The audio was recorded from a Sound blaster 16 with OPL3. As far as i know, there never was an original Adlib card with a dual OPL2.

@leolaus 4 жыл бұрын

What music bank are you using? DMXOPL3?

@ratix98 2 жыл бұрын

I think they are using adlib tracker since its in the title. So its probably custom instruments.