@timppu:
AWE32 isn't general midi compatible by default from what I've read (it has something called EMU8000), and I know general midi games will sound like what you feed into them already as I said on the previous page. Now it seems you have to expand the RAM on AWE32 to load other (good) soundfonts. Apparently you can also use a daughterboard, or connect an external midi device to it. What I don't know is what could be done back then (up until mid-90s or so), on a DOS or Win 3.1 PC, and this is interesting since it's a retro focused list.

It might be better to focus on completing a tracker and wav file music list until I know enough about these options. But any sound blaster sample-based music examples are interesting, go ahead and post them and I'll sort the lists later.

I've posted this on the first page already. Games with custom SB AWE32/64 instruments:
Battle Arena Toshinden - can't find
Dungeon Keeper (ambient sfx as part of the music)
Eradicator - find music rip
Hi-Octane
Magic Carpet 2 - can't find
Nerves of Steel - can't find
Perfect General II - can't find
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri - find music rip

After all those discussions, I still do not know what are the OP want.
non-MIDI sample-based music have various formats and programming tricks.
A simple "SB mod" can not include or exclude all of them.

Sound Blaster itself is Ad Lib compatible, and there are many popular sound cards in that era are partially compatible with Ad Lib or Sound Blaster.

Text in the OP 4 days ago was not what it looks like now.

Before Sound Blaster (family) became the de facto standard of PC games, many games use various tricks to support as much as different sound cards (including C/MS and Sound Blaster 1.0). [1]

[1]
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/07/pushing-limits-pc-sound-chip-digitized.html
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/non-pc-speaker-digitized-sound-part-ii.html

You didn't write your post four days ago. :P

Can you summarize what's relevant about the first link?

Second link: Ok, better. Super jeopardy and Bill &Ted's music on adlib are relevant to the thread.

Some updates:
-Made a (WIP) page for sample-based sound blaster music (mod music, streaming pcm, sample-based midi) in DOS games. Have 1994-1996 left to check on mobygames and will then compare the list to their AWE32 supported games list.
-Added these OSTs to the mixed yearly lists made so far and a page for 1993

http://minirevver.weebly.com/sound-blaster-pcm-music.html

I'm basically done with checking 1994 but was wondering if anyone knows exactly the setup used in these two, Ecstatica and Dreamweb (there's another upload by the same guy dubbed CD audio for this one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOV-LgV2VBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhhe5mo0Gw0

Multiplat 1994 page: http://minirevver.weebly.com/vgm-1994.html

Bumping this as I've finished a 1995 (multiplat) yearly list and updated the Sound Blaster sample-based music page accordingly. Getting pretty close to finishing a first draft of that page now and then it's time to individually check all the games that I'm unsure about. Please keep the corrections and suggestions coming (use ctrl+f to quickly search for any game)!

http://minirevver.weebly.com/sound-blaster-pcm-music.html
http://minirevver.weebly.com/vgm-1995.html

Another yearly list done, three more to go.

http://minirevver.weebly.com/vgm-1996.html
Updated SB page: http://minirevver.weebly.com/sound-blaster-pcm-music.html

After all these years it's this that I remember least about. Maybe that's a good thing... direct memory access and interrupt requests et al... blæææ! :-D

btw: C&C and RA uses aud files not CD-music like f.ex. Carmageddon (If the CD is multitracked it's most likely the first for data and the rest for uncompressed audio).

It's often easy to forget that in those days (some have been mentioned before), there was a fight to be recognised as the best and easiest, which the game developers could choose from. Also, you can't use certain HW spesific soundfonts today, unless it's actually supported, either by sw conversion or hw controller directly.

For the PC we can simplify to this list (if we step past the pc-speaker with analogue signals):

1. Midi notes or soundbank based. Key notes from a file are fed into an "interpreter" or synthesizer, composer based, with standardized instruments and specs, mostly fixed, The PC marked adopted these from the keyboard scene, like Roland and Yamaha. Today's modern music programs like FLS can use soundfonts or synthesizers as plugins.

The same principal is used on NES, SEGA, SNES alike. Just recently I found a guy who remade another Michael Jackson song in the snes soundfont bank, so they're popular for some of us.

2. Tracker based. Trackers use sequences of patterns (instead of notes) that are integrated into the file. A user can choose samples / make samples.

3. Wave-signal-based. cd/wav, mp3, etc. Everything here is fed directly to the general audio output without much work, besides driver based decoding.

Blast from the past that I think will answer many questions. Really long post about the history and specs:
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/trackers-vs-midi/
https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/trackers-vs-midi-part-deux/

Right, but back then was it not the case that you needed the cd or the in-game music would not play? While some of the menu tracks are installed and will play as streaming wav files (or a variant of wav), in other words your third category below. So far I've been using mainly squakenet's YT uploads for reference here, as they seem to go with the oldest settings for most DOS games. Later I'll have to check each game myself I guess.

About these categories, maybe I should've made it clear in the OP that I already know about them? But I will comment on to expand a bit on them (and thanks for the links, there was some new info there on GUS for example):
Well, I've gathered that for the GEMS sound driver based mega drive/genesis games the devs made use of midi when composing and the driver had some unique functions (but also an interface/documentation that in some ways discouraged using the sound chip fully, which is part of why those games all sound the same and it's kind of infamous among MD fans), but a bunch of japanese devs coded the music instead I think, and I guess there were various tracker tools too, as there were for Amiga for example. There was no midi standard in the NES days I don't think, and for example todays famitracker is a much more user friendly tool than whatever they had back then.

2. Well you also have a bunch of effects like pitch bend, arpeggio, vibrato, tremolo, detune etc. and probably more advanced automation stuff in the custom trackers as well. I would guess that the midi approach is why so many OPL (FM/Adlib)-based PC soundtracks sound like they just applied the FM synth like a sound font and didn't adjust things to make it sound expressive and use the strengths of FM.


Anyway. Right now I am simply looking for more suggestions for nice sounding music/ambience in any of these categories of sample-based Sound Blaster music, so that my page can serve as a better guide. I'm particularly interested in good examples from the games with custom instruments for AWE32/64 that I haven't found yet:
Battle Arena Toshinden
Eradicator
Magic Carpet 2
Nerves of Steel
Perfect General II
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

As far as I can tell, Magic Carpet 2 and Terra Nova supported AWE32/64 as generic MPU-401 General MIDI sounds cards (for music). There were no specific new instrument soundfonts created for those cards for these games, in case that is what you meant by "custom instruments".

So if you want to list all PC games that utilized AWE32/64 as General MIDI music cards, then you could probably list all PC games with any General MIDI music support.

Well they are listed in this blog as having custom instruments or sounds: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.se/2012/04/unique-pc-hardware-game-support.html

Could be that those you mention only use them for sfx like dungeon keeper? Edit: I am interested in examples either way.

"probably list all PC games with GM support"
This seems pretty well covered at mobygames, but the point then is to check what sounds good when AWE32/64 is used and to link to any examples I can find. I have a growing "to check" list on my site under "game osts to find".

That is correct, the original installers didn't put the music (excluding the menu music, as you mentioned) on the HDD and the music was always streamed from disc, just like the cutscenes.

Funnily I originally thought that the music was kept in some WAV-like format, a few years ago I grew convinced that the game uses a tracker format (which only makes sense considering the high repetition of samples in the music) but last year or so I found a Facebook post by Frank Klepacki based on which it is some proprietary bitstream format after all. Another source on the web suggested that Westwood's AUD format files actually use some proprietary audio compression method which is interesting since, as far as I'm aware, almost no other games used compressed audio formats at the time and most developers would just downsample their audio to make it fit (often with devastating results as can be heard in Heroes of Might & Magic, among others). I wonder if these AUD files had some other tricks up their sleeves like using timestamps to jump between sections and such.

I actually found some custom player containing the soundtrack as a playlist a while back when looking into what exactly that was for the first game, thinking it was some sort of tracker music but wasn't able to open the files in one to see. Later read on wikipedia that it's streaming music.
"The Command & Conquer soundtrack is the first video game produced by Westwood to feature streaming music as opposed to MIDI.[4] The 22k mono tracks were produced using an ASR-10 sampler, a Roland S760 sampler and a Roland JD-990 synth module."
http://xhp.xwis.net/utilities/

HoMM, you mean like on a floppy version of 2? I think 1 used GM and it sounds pretty clean, on YT anyway.

Listening to HoMM2 it does sound kinda scratchy actually. Vocals sound good to me though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRcprUCjwDc
...This other upload sounds cleaner but a bit subdued with less stereo panning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k-r1bxtqpg&list=PL9E8F60D04647CA55