[Metal Gear Solid] What is this sounds library ?

[Asuyuka]

Nobuo Uemastu is my star composer from these times. Huge fan, check his music (final fantasy 1 to I don't remember when he stopped).

He never really stopped, he only took a break. He worked on XIV A Realm Reborn with Naoshi Mizuta and some other guy.

I was never much of a fan of him as a kid, but he is probably my second strongest musical influence, oddly enough.

Uematsu's sound, which is basically an Emu Proteus 1 + the Roland SC88 is the sound I've been trying to recreate in software for years, and finally was able to do that with Digital Sound Factory's stuff and the Hyper Canvas.

Even the french horn used in Final Fantasy X's battle theme is the same one in the Hyper Canvas, it just has a lowpass filter applied to it (which you can do in the Hyper Canvas).

Uematsu for some reason never mentioned that he used the sounds of the Proteus 1 (and probably the Proteus 2), and for years, everyone, myself included, thought all those sounds came out of an SC88.

I wonder what he used in Final Fantasy 7? Am I right in thinking the Playstation used tracker style files, not wav audio tracks? Or did it support both? You can download the soundtracks for PS games as little tiny files and play them on a phone app such as DroidSound.

If I remember, it was also some Roland, likely also a JV2080. I know Hagane will eat me if I'm wrong, but hey.

The PSX could do both. Games like FFVII used a tracker style format, where as other games, like Razor Scooter, could do streaming audio. If you knew what you were doing, you could listen to RBA off the disc through the PSX.

[HaganeSteel]

Nobuo Uemastu is my star composer from these times. Huge fan, check his music (final fantasy 1 to I don't remember when he stopped).

He never really stopped, he only took a break. He worked on XIV A Realm Reborn with Naoshi Mizuta and some other guy.

I was never much of a fan of him as a kid, but he is probably my second strongest musical influence, oddly enough.

Uematsu's sound, which is basically an Emu Proteus 1 + the Roland SC88 is the sound I've been trying to recreate in software for years, and finally was able to do that with Digital Sound Factory's stuff and the Hyper Canvas.

Even the french horn used in Final Fantasy X's battle theme is the same one in the Hyper Canvas, it just has a lowpass filter applied to it (which you can do in the Hyper Canvas).

Uematsu for some reason never mentioned that he used the sounds of the Proteus 1 (and probably the Proteus 2), and for years, everyone, myself included, thought all those sounds came out of an SC88.

I wonder what he used in Final Fantasy 7? Am I right in thinking the Playstation used tracker style files, not wav audio tracks? Or did it support both? You can download the soundtracks for PS games as little tiny files and play them on a phone app such as DroidSound.

Pretty much. That's the proprietary format I was talking about earlier, yeah. PSF and PSF2 files. They were basically like MOD files. The Playstation did support redbook audio, but it was rarely used.

For FF7, I'm pretty sure he used a Roland SC88 Pro almost exclusively (unlike in later FF soundtracks where he used a lot of Emu Proteus sounds). A horribly truncated, processed version of it.

The strings between the SC88 and the SC88 Pro are somewhat different. The SC88 Pro uses the same strings that are on the SR-JV80 Session expansion board (these are also used in the Hyper Canvas).

You can make those FF7 string sounds in the Hyper Canvas by turning the attack and release all the way down.

This same string patch is used for the cello section of "Hopeless Desire" from FFX, where he layers it with Emu Proteus 1 Hall Strings/Strings Orch for the violin section.

[Arglebargle]

Interesting. So legally, how would that work, taking patch samples off a hardware sound module and bundling them into a tracker file? IS there a legal issue at all with that?

[Vertti]

Very interesting thread.

Do you what kind of hardware SNES composer used? The same as with working PS1 or maybe something else?

[HaganeSteel]

Interesting. So legally, how would that work, taking patch samples off a hardware sound module and bundling them into a tracker file? IS there a legal issue at all with that?

It was legal. I'd rather avoid a legal debate, but if it wasn't legal, I don't think the entire industry would've done it.

Very interesting thread.

Do you what kind of hardware SNES composer used? The same as with working PS1 or maybe something else?

They used a lot of stuff.

The hardware synths that were popular during the SNES era were the Roland SC-55, the Roland SC-88/Pro, the Emu Proteus 1/2/3, and others like the Korg M1 and probably Wavestation were used. This may have been what ENV1 was talking about when he said Capcom used the Wavestation in some of their stuff.

Roland and Emu were the most popular because the Proteus 1 was really hard to beat for its time, and the SC55/88 had huge value for money.

I'm also pretty sure they had FM synths or something, but I could be remembering that wrong.

[martygras]

Holy crap! This is an awesome thread.

[HaganeSteel]

I'm glad I can help.

I really need a job.

[oneummon]

Thank you for your input on Einhander quiz. It's a shame you can't get the rompler 'sound' using vsts (I guess there was some proteus soundfonts somewhere ages ago?). Anyway, it would be facinating to emulate late nineties game music era without buying the HW.

Never tried SampleTank, does it cover the 'rompler sound of nineties' of Emu and Roland at all?

[HaganeSteel]

Thank you for your input on Einhander quiz. It's a shame you can't get the rompler 'sound' using vsts (I guess there was some proteus soundfonts somewhere ages ago?). Anyway, it would be facinating to emulate late nineties game music era without buying the HW.

Never tried SampleTank, does it cover the 'rompler sound of nineties' of Emu and Roland at all?

SampleTank has since become the standard in Japan for game music. Mostly, Miroslav Philharmonik, which is currently being used by Naoshi Mizuta and Yoko Shimomura.

I don't own SampleTank, but it is definitely a good option.

There are a number of ways to emulate the 90's game music sound in software.

First, Digital Sound Factory sells all kinds of Emu and Ensoniq stuff for Kontakt, Dimension Pro, and even Soundfont format. For $50 dollars, you can get the entire Proteus 1/2/3/Orbit/Phatt bundle in soundfont format. It's not perfect, but all the sounds are there.

The Proteus VX software is also free, but lots of people have trouble getting it to work right. It is not good software at all, but if you can run it well, then it's a true Emu synth.

I bought the Emu Proteus 2000 from the Cakewalk store for Dimension Pro for $20 dollars. That gives you those classic Emu strings and drums, percussion, etc.

Second, we have Dimension Pro. Dimension Pro doesn't emulate the sound of the 90's, but it is a really solid rompler now. You can pick up Emu packs for it for $20 dollars a piece. A lot of people will say the Emu packs aren't very good because you don't get the Z-plane filters of the Proteus 2000, and so the synth presets sound different. That's a legitimate argument, but if you're a fan of the Proteus 1, and you're just after those Uematsu strings and drums like I am, that won't matter.

Third, we have the Korg M1 VST, which is capable of getting a very nice gamey, MIDI sound, but you have to program those sounds yourself for the most part. I'm fairly sure Naoshi Mizuta uses the M1.

Fourth, we have Luxonix Purity, which is modeled directly after the Emu Proteus modules and probably the Korg Trinity. This is also $50 dollars. Of all of these options, this is probably the strongest next to SampleTank and Dimension Pro. But this synth might be a bit polarizing - Asuyuka loves its drums, for example, but I think they're really weak compared to Emu, and it's somewhat tough for me to use this over my Dimension Pro and Emu stuff. This thing has a synthesis engine that is to die for, though, and the sounds are spot on.

Lastly, the Roland TTS-1, which is a DXi that can be bought for $50 dollars with Cakewalk Music Creator, is basically an SC88 Pro in software form, minus a bunch of sounds like the ethnic and Asian drum kits, as well as a few other extras. The core sounds are all there, and they are virtually the same as in the SC-88 Pro.

[Davias]

Thanks for all the good info here

Great to know what Uematsu used at the time.

For the snes games, one day I converted a snes mod file to xm module with an old dos program. Then I loaded that xm into Renoise and extracted the waveforms into wav files (there were mostly single cycle waveforms except for the drums that were samples, I wonder from where these singles cycles came ? or maybe they just draw them by hand since the resolution was very poor... the game is F-Zero).

Then I loaded theses waveforms into Harmor for some crazy fun I wonder if it is illegal, anyway it is almost impossible to recognize the original single-cycle sounds. They were used insanely creatively into the original module already

[Arglebargle]

TTS-1 is the sound canvas module? Interesting. I have the TTS, pretty sure it came with Sonar.

[HaganeSteel]

TTS-1 is the sound canvas module? Interesting. I have the TTS, pretty sure it came with Sonar.

Yup. TTS-1 is the same as the Hyper Canvas and consists of the same sounds Uematsu used in Final Fantasy.

Its strings are useless, though, because they hiss so badly. That's why I can't use it as much as I'd like to.

Everyone who owned the SC-88 Pro seemed to have this same problem of its strings being god awful, because everyone seemed to combine the SC-88 Pro with the Emu Proteus 1's strings. Like, everyone. This led me to mistakenly believe the SC-88 had strings in it that were really from Emu, and I found this out by emailing Tim Swartz.

So basically, Uematsu did not tell everyone the whole story when he was interviewed many years ago. He said he used the SC-88 and made no mention of Emu, and this led the entire community to believe - for years - that all those sounds came out of the SC-88. He probably didn't realize so many people would be asking these questions.

[Arglebargle]

Huh. Man these are some interesting tidbits of info. So if I can ask another nooby question, how did they take the sounds from a hardware module and put them in a tracker file for the PS or SNES? Did they do a short recording and edit it down? Must have been hard to edit it down to the cycle so it looped decently.

[HaganeSteel]

Huh. Man these are some interesting tidbits of info. So if I can ask another nooby question, how did they take the sounds from a hardware module and put them in a tracker file for the PS or SNES? Did they do a short recording and edit it down? Must have been hard to edit it down to the cycle so it looped decently.

Yeah, that's pretty much my understanding of it, but I don't know for sure.

They had dedicated "synthesizer operators" back then. The audio teams were actually pretty big, with a sound engineer and a sound programmer on top of however many composers and sound effect artists were employed for that soundtrack. Some of these people were "composers in training".

How exactly Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano, for example, composed the FFX soundtrack, all using the same set of sounds, and those sounds coming from at least 2 different sound modules, is still a mystery to me because it sounds like they all had direct access to the way they wanted the PSF2 files to sound. That's believable since they were Square in-house composers at the time, but how it all went down, I couldn't tell you.

But for everyone else, back then, the sequencer of choice for a lot of composers was Digital Performer. Now it seems they use the same exact stuff we use.

[Jedinhopy]

What sample libraries was used in MediEvil 1 & 2?