That's true, sound cards can't get any better. I junked my £400 roland around 5 years ago because the on board realtek does it all and with lower latency.
Yeah true, it's funny you never hear today OMG I am buying the new soundmaster blah blah 512bit 166khz. People are just getting a generic card, or it's always installed in the motherboard anyway. Maybe except sound freaks and professionals, idk? Meanwhile, it still matters to get a new graphics card (for performance though, because also the pixels are perfect, high enough resolution, more than 24bit color I can't see any difference, maybe except banding in too much gradients). I guess it's because sound data is just 1D, not much to do there anymore and the CPU can even soft synthesize sound filters with 1% CPU, and pixel data is really 2D so there is more to do there.
this is where my fascination with electronic music started. I always have a hard time explaining it to people. most kids recorded songs off the radio, my nerdy ass had the tape recorder hooked up to our Compaq Presario to dub the descent soundtrack. lol.
I used the microphone on my TalkBoy, pressed right up to the speaker, to record the soundtrack on cassette. I must've listened to that tape about a thousand times. Even today I still remember the part in the Level 11 song where I sneezed during recording. :D
Even though I lived through it, it's still weird that you could get the same game/music sound completely different from PC to PC back then (without even adding Amiga into the mix). Like you come to UA-cam to listen to the soundtrack of your favorite game and you instantly think "Hey, that wasn't how I remember it". And then you spend the next hours searching for the one that sounds exactly as you remember it.
This is how I remember this sounded in my early youth watching my older sibling play Descent on our MS-DOS computer. I have heard these MIDI tracks played by other sound cards and even operating systems and it just never sounds right to me.
Gone are the days when we had rememberable and catchy game soundtracks that we wanted to listen to even when not playing the game. These days all game and movie soundtracks are the same boring symphonic epic crap.
I remember Hyperion Methane Mine having fart-like sounds in it, like it does (58:42) Also I like Neptune Storage Depot testing the limits of the soundcard (1:18:52)! That was one of the hardest levels too.
btw, the videos here are close enough to the "tape recording from MS-DOS" ones, although not exact. In most cases it could be considered an improvement.
To think that sound card upgrades and competing chipsets were why game devs had Sound Test menus as a necessary function, not as the bonus jukebox features they get treated as by many fans these days.
48:00 in that moment i realized am playing something very very very unique n awesome with badass soundtrack ! descent was the first game i've played multiplayer by modem. coop and pvp was extremely fun !!!
I remember playing this game back in '95 with the almost-lame FM Synth driver (I didn't have the ducats to get a SoundBlaster), and absolutely fell in love with this soundtrack even in that form. Soon after, I finally got a hand-me-down SB, and listened to the soundtrack all over again, and noted that the "feel" of the songs were distinctly different though the tracks were more deeply instrumentalized with the better sound synthesis (relatively speaking). Later, I got an AWE32, and noticed another "change" with the "feel" when using the Roland MIDI plug-in. Now, I am aware that the way you should "hear" these tracks is with the Roland synth, as that's how many of the tracks were originally composed with, but my heart still loves many of the old FM synth versions of the tracks. Still, one of the best soundtracks for any game I've ever heard. I think the only other game whose soundtrack had such an impact on me has been the more recent release of Undertale.
Nice Classic PC Sound here. Also liking the clarity on the high end here. In general I'm partial to the SB16, but this sounds similar to me, leastwise off the top of my mind. I see the Yamaha chip there, so that might be why, of course. Cheers. Edit: Here's my card. → i.imgur.com/22Ei8DJ.jpg
Is it sad or awesome that I still have a Win 95 with a soundblaster in my basement? Be that sad or awesome, playing this game on it with a Wingman Extreme joystick is truly amazing.
I would like my old Windows 95 PC as it had an even better version, although I only have tape recordings of what it sounded like. Quite a lot like this but slightly better. I'll see if I could post the others on (channel "thefourman")
So glad i got a terratec card back then with a great wavetable, sounded sooooooo much better than fm sound. Level 18 btw still is the greatest descent music of all times. And that track got a great studio remix on ps1 and mac versions.
A Sound Blaster FM-Synthesizer sound card is technically not supposed to be a MIDI player. MIDI is supposed to sound like the Roland SC-55s and Yamaha MU80s and whatever the hell Casio made.
Strictly speaking, MIDI is just an interface for transmitting control commands, so "the way it sounds" is entirely up to what hardware or software you control with it. MIDI in itself doesn't generate any sound. It's still being used all the time in music making. That "classic MIDI sound" concept in computer games is pretty much due to the General Midi (GM) library of sounds, which was packed into a bunch of 90's sound cards and external boxes like the SC-55 and others mentioned earlier. And yes, to my ears too, most of the early 90's game soundtracks sound better on the FM chip..
Ari Nikula, MIDI sounds differently depending on your synth. And this is a fundamental flaw in adopting MIDI for game soundtracks. The composer can never know how it will sound on various synthesizers. He also can't take the full advantage of any particular synth. Instead, the arrangement is brought down to some 'common denominator' which is a pretty limited set of boring samples. Not so with FM synth found on Sound blaster. It allows creating long-lasting, complex sounds. And was the same everywhere. Everybody who had Adlib, SB or a compatible would hear the same sound. So those composers who learned well how to take advantage of the FM synth created really rocking soundtracks. Think of Dune 1, Dune 2, Descent. Nothing beats the FM synth experience with them.
I should play that game (didn't much in the past because of the true motion sickness it produced). But I recognize few of the soundtrack, as I was playing a lot of Doom user maps, which reused some of the soundtracks.
Thanks so much for the reply. Your expertise is amazing, but that wasn't that track I remembered. The one I remembered instantly began with a sliding-down effect (slur) that continued downward for a couple bars. I'll listen to the whole soundtrack tomorrow and hopefully find it.
@@BilderbergCEO May be your memory is playing tricks on you? Or the track was played differently on your hardware, but I'm 100% sure that Descent's audio settings used 44:00 Level 12 music (by the way, already mentioned above 21 is its slightly different variation, a remix).
It isn’t lag it’s time cpu time delay max bus throughput this was noted on the Pentium 75 which was originally specification for this program audio output was supplied by a 33 mhz bus which was linked to peripheral component interface it even did it on a In my experience it was an Evergreen K62/450 I F
the little yamaha chip you can see on the board is a variation on the same synth chip (OPL) that's in those consoles and a ton of other keyboards and stuff
Sooo been wondering, would it be OK if we used this soundtrack as a DXA addon for Descent, and possibly for another large, upcoming specific mission? I think players would appreciate the difference between this sound as emulated in DOSBox and created by the real thing. Would be fun to have your permission to get these files. Ideally, we'd also need the D2 songs done in the same way, but no idea how much work that would require on your end :(
Gone are the days where you anticipated a sound card upgrade as gleefully as a video card, and with equally noticeable results.
That's true, sound cards can't get any better. I junked my £400 roland around 5 years ago because the on board realtek does it all and with lower latency.
Yeah true, it's funny you never hear today OMG I am buying the new soundmaster blah blah 512bit 166khz.
People are just getting a generic card, or it's always installed in the motherboard anyway. Maybe except sound freaks and professionals, idk?
Meanwhile, it still matters to get a new graphics card (for performance though, because also the pixels are perfect, high enough resolution, more than 24bit color I can't see any difference, maybe except banding in too much gradients).
I guess it's because sound data is just 1D, not much to do there anymore and the CPU can even soft synthesize sound filters with 1% CPU, and pixel data is really 2D so there is more to do there.
@@Optimus6128 late but the Roland GM/GS Synth still lives inside Win10.
this is where my fascination with electronic music started. I always have a hard time explaining it to people. most kids recorded songs off the radio, my nerdy ass had the tape recorder hooked up to our Compaq Presario to dub the descent soundtrack. lol.
I used the microphone on my TalkBoy, pressed right up to the speaker, to record the soundtrack on cassette. I must've listened to that tape about a thousand times. Even today I still remember the part in the Level 11 song where I sneezed during recording. :D
we all did this :-)
used to the same from my Amiga in the 80s and 90s :)
You're not alone and I think that's why every single one of us is here right now.
This is the best video game soundtrack ever.
+oulosvie I agree.
you didnt hear many video games soundtrack. i dont thing it bad bro!! anyway i agree too!!!
Maybe not the best, but essential. I'd really miss this soundtrack from my audio collection.
When it came out it was epiq.
Unreal Tournament is awesome too
ah I love how this recording lags in some parts just like I remember.
Gravis Ultrasound does the same thing but a lot of GM/GS devices don't even on 100% real hardware like this I've noticed.
I always wondered about this - it is unlikely that the OPL-2 was not ready to receive a command on time. Interrupt lag seems silly too.
My actual real ones I tape recorded in 2001 (on TheFourman channel) aren't laggy and are very slightly different but not by too much.
Still listening to this! Thank you for uploading the original Soundblaster midi track.
Even though I lived through it, it's still weird that you could get the same game/music sound completely different from PC to PC back then (without even adding Amiga into the mix). Like you come to UA-cam to listen to the soundtrack of your favorite game and you instantly think "Hey, that wasn't how I remember it". And then you spend the next hours searching for the one that sounds exactly as you remember it.
This is literally exactly how it sounded when I discovered this game in 1995.. Thanks for the upload
i played back in the 90s with this sound ( soundblaster 16 )
Exactly as I remember it from the mid 90's...the nostalgia! Makes for some good listening at work, thanks for uploading.
Look at those resistors. Beautiful.
Level 01 geniuos genial very midi-genial !!!!!!!!!!!!!! descent95 forever
Great soundtrack! One of better soundtracks using MIDI implemented to YM3812 OPL2 sound chip.
There are two versions of MIDI files in this game, one for general MIDI and the other especially tailored for the FM synth.
This is how I remember this sounded in my early youth watching my older sibling play Descent on our MS-DOS computer. I have heard these MIDI tracks played by other sound cards and even operating systems and it just never sounds right to me.
I'm in serious pain from being brutally punched in the nostalgia. ;)
Gone are the days when we had rememberable and catchy game soundtracks that we wanted to listen to even when not playing the game. These days all game and movie soundtracks are the same boring symphonic epic crap.
Check out Overload. It has a pretty good soundtrack. Released end of May last year.
I remember Hyperion Methane Mine having fart-like sounds in it, like it does (58:42)
Also I like Neptune Storage Depot testing the limits of the soundcard (1:18:52)! That was one of the hardest levels too.
btw, the videos here are close enough to the "tape recording from MS-DOS" ones, although not exact. In most cases it could be considered an improvement.
That moment you realize you REALLY want to download.... T_T
To think that sound card upgrades and competing chipsets were why game devs had Sound Test menus as a necessary function, not as the bonus jukebox features they get treated as by many fans these days.
48:00 in that moment i realized am playing something very very very unique n awesome with badass soundtrack !
descent was the first game i've played multiplayer by modem. coop and pvp was extremely fun !!!
i played it on my local network over bnc. 8 players THAT was fun :-) It is playable over tcpip over internet today. but i don't find many players
/Childhood memories come flooding back/ :)
I remember playing this game back in '95 with the almost-lame FM Synth driver (I didn't have the ducats to get a SoundBlaster), and absolutely fell in love with this soundtrack even in that form. Soon after, I finally got a hand-me-down SB, and listened to the soundtrack all over again, and noted that the "feel" of the songs were distinctly different though the tracks were more deeply instrumentalized with the better sound synthesis (relatively speaking). Later, I got an AWE32, and noticed another "change" with the "feel" when using the Roland MIDI plug-in.
Now, I am aware that the way you should "hear" these tracks is with the Roland synth, as that's how many of the tracks were originally composed with, but my heart still loves many of the old FM synth versions of the tracks.
Still, one of the best soundtracks for any game I've ever heard. I think the only other game whose soundtrack had such an impact on me has been the more recent release of Undertale.
i played it over my synthesizer. sounds even better. later i played it on my synthesizer and mastered it on my pc. the good old times
Nice Classic PC Sound here. Also liking the clarity on the high end here. In general I'm partial to the SB16, but this sounds similar to me, leastwise off the top of my mind. I see the Yamaha chip there, so that might be why, of course. Cheers.
Edit: Here's my card. → i.imgur.com/22Ei8DJ.jpg
Is it sad or awesome that I still have a Win 95 with a soundblaster in my basement? Be that sad or awesome, playing this game on it with a Wingman Extreme joystick is truly amazing.
cool :-) but thanks god you can play these games with dosbox oder you can play the remake of descent all nice.
I would like my old Windows 95 PC as it had an even better version, although I only have tape recordings of what it sounded like. Quite a lot like this but slightly better. I'll see if I could post the others on (channel "thefourman")
So glad i got a terratec card back then with a great wavetable, sounded sooooooo much better than fm sound.
Level 18 btw still is the greatest descent music of all times. And that track got a great studio remix on ps1 and mac versions.
I always felt like the sound blaster sounded better for this game than the General Midi.
A Sound Blaster FM-Synthesizer sound card is technically not supposed to be a MIDI player. MIDI is supposed to sound like the Roland SC-55s and Yamaha MU80s and whatever the hell Casio made.
Strictly speaking, MIDI is just an interface for transmitting control commands, so "the way it sounds" is entirely up to what hardware or software you control with it. MIDI in itself doesn't generate any sound. It's still being used all the time in music making. That "classic MIDI sound" concept in computer games is pretty much due to the General Midi (GM) library of sounds, which was packed into a bunch of 90's sound cards and external boxes like the SC-55 and others mentioned earlier.
And yes, to my ears too, most of the early 90's game soundtracks sound better on the FM chip..
Ari Nikula, MIDI sounds differently depending on your synth. And this is a fundamental flaw in adopting MIDI for game soundtracks. The composer can never know how it will sound on various synthesizers. He also can't take the full advantage of any particular synth. Instead, the arrangement is brought down to some 'common denominator' which is a pretty limited set of boring samples. Not so with FM synth found on Sound blaster. It allows creating long-lasting, complex sounds. And was the same everywhere. Everybody who had Adlib, SB or a compatible would hear the same sound. So those composers who learned well how to take advantage of the FM synth created really rocking soundtracks. Think of Dune 1, Dune 2, Descent. Nothing beats the FM synth experience with them.
worth every penny
slow sound card i hear :)
but i love this soundtrack on Sound Blaster 32 :D just install dosbox and download descent and will be max pleasure :D
26:13 for Mega Hulk memories
I should play that game (didn't much in the past because of the true motion sickness it produced).
But I recognize few of the soundtrack, as I was playing a lot of Doom user maps, which reused some of the soundtracks.
Shit, I realize I never passed Level 6.
Now THIS is the soundtrack I wanted to find, not the one from MAC.
If I remember correctly, there was a really cool track that was played when adjusting the audio settings. Does anyone have that?
Yes, it was the Level 21 music (01:15:00)
Thanks so much for the reply. Your expertise is amazing, but that wasn't that track I remembered. The one I remembered instantly began with a sliding-down effect (slur) that continued downward for a couple bars. I'll listen to the whole soundtrack tomorrow and hopefully find it.
Did you find it?
Diamond Wolf, nope, I never found it.
@@BilderbergCEO
May be your memory is playing tricks on you? Or the track was played differently on your hardware, but I'm 100% sure that Descent's audio settings used 44:00 Level 12 music (by the way, already mentioned above 21 is its slightly different variation, a remix).
nostalgia
If this represents accurate how soundblaster played back midi, they've always been such crap vendors.
If you played this youre getting old.
Damn
This is just bliss, I know Roland's technically better, but...
It isn’t lag it’s time cpu time delay max bus throughput this was noted on the Pentium 75 which was originally specification for this program audio output was supplied by a 33 mhz bus which was linked to peripheral component interface it even did it on a In my experience it was an Evergreen K62/450 I F
LEVEL 14!
Stunning!!
recuerdo que estas canciones me daban miedo pero me gustan
Wavetable is great and all but FM still has a niche of its own. So many wavetables are lacking that FM synth potential. FM rules indeed.
un-stop power
if your sound card doesn't have a volume wheel I don't want to hear it!!!!
some jellous low end isa card disliked it
All these kinda metallic sounds remind of me of Mega Drive/Genesis. Same components?
the little yamaha chip you can see on the board is a variation on the same synth chip (OPL) that's in those consoles and a ton of other keyboards and stuff
Sooo been wondering, would it be OK if we used this soundtrack as a DXA addon for Descent, and possibly for another large, upcoming specific mission? I think players would appreciate the difference between this sound as emulated in DOSBox and created by the real thing. Would be fun to have your permission to get these files. Ideally, we'd also need the D2 songs done in the same way, but no idea how much work that would require on your end :(
Hope you don't mind if I give this a download. The only other analog soundblaster version of these tracks I can find has a bunch of skipping.
"Next time on Dragonb- I mean Descent!"
Will you reactivate your channel? It's one of the best (if not the best) in the genre.
Nox....I remember....