I think that's unfair, because the way ROMplers work is antithetical to electric guitar sound. It works by intermodulation, but a ROMpler has no way to produce that when you're playing two tones, since it's purely additive. For real, the sound made by a guitar amp for several tones isn't the sum of the individual sounds. Except, there's a trick. Look into the GM patch map, guitar section, notice one called "Guitar Harmonics" - ever wondered what it's for? Now you're supposed to layer this over your guitar riffs and chords to make them gel together more, and you may have to pick a fairly random note or be creative with it. It doesn't sound good alone, but it helps fill it out and make your distorted and overdriven guitars suck less, even if it's not fully authentic. Now unfortunately the Doom soundtrack doesn't make use of this trick, at all. Apparently the knowledge of how to do it made its way around in Japan but hasn't reached the West. You can get hyperoptimised soundfonts which don't do much well except a handful games, but who needs an e1m1 only soundfont? I feel Arachno kind of leans in that direction a little even if it's not actually bad. Though i guess if e1m1 sounds like CT1MB or QS700 then no need to consider any further :D
Absolutely 100% correct. Best overall DOS gaming Soundfont! Timbres of Heaven is one massive file, however, I’ve found some anomalies with it for certain DOS games. Some instruments overpowering others, etc.
I'm a young guy and like it. But my only complaint is that there's not much bass drum so the drums sound a bit empty to me as a drummer. Might just be the recording. Sounds phenomenal for DOS
sc55 patch93 & EmperorGrieferus seems the better ones to me. More balanced overall and with the right amount of punch... I always used patch93 but EmperorGrieferus seems cool too, I need to test it. EDIT: oh EmperorGrieferus's is a modified version of patch93's one, now I get it
Deemster's version of the Roland SC-55 soundfont that ships with Windows also sounds pretty nice considering the small file size. He added reverb and chorus to the instruments without resampling.
The author of TOH is aware of it and therefore states that, unlike other soundfonts, this one doesn't require normalization. Actually, the loudness is about 4 times larger than usual.
Played Doom back in 93 with 3 different sound setups. The first was through PC speakers. It was as bad as you'd imagine. Next paycheck I got an SB16 and it was relatively amazing. In 95 I got an SB AWE32 and I stuck an extra RAM chip on it. I was blown away by how good it sounded.
I remember listening to the old beeps and blips of the PC speaker - I know it sounds lame to most people, but that super basic Windows 95 MIDI sound (gm) combined with the proper sound effects were like heaven compared to the tiny little tweeter!
SGM is by far the best sounding soundfont I've ever come across. I still use the samples constantly despite having access to Kontakt samples. They're so warm and analogue-y sounding, and are EXTREMELY versatile cause they don't have too little harmonic information, but not so much you need to compress it to hell. SGM works great with 0 compression whatsoever, it's amazing
@@Trimint123 They didn't use a soundfont to emulate the GUS. It is actually emulated on the fly using the original GUS .pat files. The GUS was a soundcard that DOOM originally supported, but it's weird how they selected it even if: 1. Most people heard it on a SoundBlaster card back in the '90's. 2. Bobby Prince used an SC-55 to originally compose the soundtrack 3. GUS had a mapping bug in vanilla DOOM that can be fixed, but still exists by default
POV: You're Doom Guy, and want to go on your demon killing spree as usual. So you bring an mp3 player to listen to some good ass rock music, but can't decide which one bops the most.
This is very cool! Thank you for this. I knew there were different versions of the music but I had no idea there were all different soundfonts you could choose from also. I really like Airfont_380 at 2:40 and ESS Tech 3 at 7:09.
i think the Gravis Ultrasound.sf2 is the one that Doom1+2 have on the Doom3 bfg edition. the percussion sounds like someone making pop noises with their mouth
I would go with either 18:03 or 19:20. First one sounds nearly identical to the real thing but has a bit too much reverb for my tastes while Patch93's has the right amount of reverb and has always been my go-to for DOOM or other games that use MIDI. EDIT: Went with the former. Sounds crisper and way more closer to the MusicallyInspired recordings with the right amount of reverb. Patch93 did me well though.
I personally use ChoriumPro v2.4 with Drums!BySlavo overriding the drum kit, it works well with most SC-55 based games and does the choir based doom tunes pretty decent as well.
Thank you so much for this!! I love doom and wanted to emulate its music but with other more modern soundfonts around it for one of my own songs and this was an insanely helpful guide!!
Holy sheet, Power GM sounds awesome for MIDI rock! Honestly I feel like it's a shame the guitar sounds this way on 32MbGMStereo, because it's an awesome soundfont to work with otherwise, it has one of the best Synth Brass 1 patch out there in my opinion.
And there are SF files where there are 600 or about a thousand tools? How are these files created? How do you get samples from the same Sound Canvas? I don't want to be picky and fussy, but I could use an SF based on the Roland SC 8850 where there are 1700 instruments.Although for my level, about 300 pieces are enough, for example, GeneralUser, there are so many tools there.
@@daemonspudguy I have no idea, but you could probably search around for "E1M1 in (x amount of) soundfonts" and eventually stumbled onto it. That's how I found it, anyways.
See if you can select a "MIDI device" in FL studio. If that doesn't work, look for somewhere to set a track instrument. (I've heard that FL studio supports MIDI but isn't really optimized for it, by the way)
18:03 and 19:59 are the best, 18:03 drum was not loud enough, to much reverb, and 19:59 guitar font was not that cool. The combination of them would be great.
OPL > everything else (GUS is a good 2nd place) You: Why? They sound absolutely nothing like real instruments, they sound like computer noises To which I say, that's exactly the point. I love that synthy feel of midi that feels like the raw sound of a computer. Why bother with pseudo-realistic soundfonts that sound inferior to true CD/mp3 quality anyway? I like midi for that synthy sound.
EDIT FROM ORIGINAL ARACHNO COMMENT: List of soundfonts here that are just shittier version of Arachno: GeneralUser DooM JNSGM2 Masterpiece MUSTHEORY Reality_GMGS_falcomod
opl3 128 sounds like garbage lol EDIT: it's not using the same midi bank as doom and that's why, i'm assuming it's the default bank because a ton of games use it
Yeah, no OPL soundfonts seem truly accurate, I think it may be impossible to get a perfect recreation due to some technological difference under the hood that I don’t quite understand.
Soundfonts are shady software the way I found out about this Soundfont is The VLC Player now I think the VLC software is shady cuz The VLC software forces you to download Soundfonts to play midi files
@@patrick7799 That's some shady English, first and foremost. Plus, if you cannot use a computer properly doesn't mean that legitimate software is "shady".
