Westwood (I think at least, after Dune 2) chose the best of way in handling music, and (if I remember correctly) was only due to drm that you needed the CD, like most other based on CD distribution. But yeah, this way it would sound the same on every PC, no matter the soundcard controller, as long as the pc had the necessary reqs to run the game. CD players back then were nastily prone to REALLY slow seek, and would ultimately halt most games when finding and playing a new track. Carmageddon and Descent 2 among others (but D2 could play other music styles when the cd was not found?)...

EDIT: you already mentioned the utilities :-)

Early on there were mostly hardware synths and simple note-based instruments and as an amateur there weren't many options in ways of customizing. That came later on when people began to hack their way through. I seem to remember that NES also had a standard soundfont (remember this is Nintendo, but I might be wrong). Not sure about Amiga other than it started there, but with the PC becoming more and more common for people it just a matter of time before someone started customizing, and this platform actually allowed for competition.

Being a software sampler I can understand why it never caught on. The Amiga were miles away in front with most things and just as the common PC became powerful enough with the tools needed, most went on to waveform or just pre-synthesized (then it only became a matter of the quality of the sound chip for the final touch), largely thanks to Windows 95, more standardization, and the fact that the FM licence got free in 95 (from the middle of the 70's). Still, those few games that uses tracker has the best game music.

btw: I have a tendency to write a bit verbosed in case others are reading a particularly thread and wants to follow.

Also, just a tip... maybe cleaning up or perhaps create some order after type and not collide with the top text. You mention tracker twice on your page.

I might have missed it but do you have a DOS PC with SB AWE? Because DOSbox only has SB16 support and it would sound different when using midi (as opposed to tracker and pre-synthesized waveform)

The .AUD files in C&C (and other Westwood games that used the same audio stuff) are using IMA ADPCM compression (so not something invented by Westwood) and its definitely stored as audio data (and not a tracker format or midi or anything else unless you count ports like the N64 version which did things differently). The need for the CD in the drive is purely for DRM, the files it reads from the CD are just regular files and the game simply doesn't copy them when you install it (you can copy them to the game folder and it will read them just fine)

I mention tracker twice in the introductory text to further explain tracker music a bit (someone thought it sounded identical on any card, which wasn't the case back then), but if you have a suggestion for how to word it better then go ahead.

I know the game list itself on the SB page is kind of a mess currently - the final layout will look more like this:
http://minirevver.weebly.com/ym2612opn2-mdgen-w-sn76489-mcd-32x-fm-towns.html

I don't have a DOS PC with an actual SB AWE card, no. I try to find proper examples, but obviously this stuff isn't that well documented online so any real hardware examples that I'm missing would definitely help.

Do you think I should group it together with the rest of sample-based SB music or not though? Those later mod soundtracks like Crusader: NR are pretty comparable in how advanced they sound.

As I recall there were re-releases of HoMM 1 and 2 that had lower music quality than the original releases, 8 bit 11 khz mono crap or something like that, there was lots of noise. Not sure why the music had been downsampled, maybe both games had been squeezed onto a single disc or something. And we actually had this crappy quality on GOG, not sure if it's been fixed.

The C&C games are not sample based, they contain actual full audio files for the music (excellent music it is too, composed by the legendary Frank Klepaki.

I believe the console ports of C&C (N64 port especially) used something more like samples/synthesis due to hardware and space limitations but the PC version has full audio files (22050hz, 16 bit, mono) you can extract and play with the XCC tools.

Well, not in the tracker way but the music is made using three samplers as I mentioned above:
ASR-10 sampler, Roland S760 sampler and a Roland JD-990 synth module (which uses sample-based wavetable synthesis). I don't think anything is played live either, not sure though.

I'll keep it('s in-game music) in the redbook cd audio category for now.

Software based trackers (i.e. like for xm, it, mod) are not the same as the standard for midi notes: pure wavetable-lookup (hardware "samples" or wave characteristics) vs sample-based vs low quality FM synthesis. Samples could be built into Read Only Memory where they couldn't be edited called a rompler.

In the end some cards ended up supporting more than just FM synthesis + PCM streams (like that on the Sound Blaster). Later came emulators. In any case: every company had their own instruments and implementation, some have better filters, dsp and effects than others.

Module files, for tracker music composition, has samples included in the file and are such processed in the player. Since there are no de-fact standard on how those samples are ultimately handled, and played (+effects/filters) it would actually play out differently depending on the player (+dsp), soundcards dsp/DAC (and it's post-processing), what is actually saved in the file, the loudspeakers, and lastly our ears (which tends to change with age xD). There were more variations back then and windows changed all that on the application level (DOS vs Win access to a sound driver). With more memory came more power to customize(tm). Alas, the main difference is how the signal is processed and which route(s) it takes to its DAC.

Those four are handled differently on a PC as they're basically for composing music, naturally.

(AD)PCM and other streams are in their own category for storing digital music, but those can be seen as the final product.

Are you taking in to account what or how the music is made by, or delivered and played at the user in-game? In the C&C case the music are played as from a normal IMA-ADPCM stream. btw: Only the 8-bit death screams are in Westwoods own proprietary format.

I'm mostly interesting in this because of the history aspects. Seeing how it evolves. I didn't now about what the type of samplers was used in creating C&C music...

http://www.wi.leidenuniv.nl/audio/pat7-95.txt
http://www.crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en&what=articles&name=showarticle.htm&article=soundcards/&page=13
http://repetae.net/computer/opledit/tech/adlib2.txt

Maybe this is of interest (specs for every Sound Blaster card):
creative labs sb info.rar (vogons.org)

I also remember something from the vogons forums about documentation. Some claimed that something every programmer knew about, can't find it now, though...

I don't know anything about the technicalities of how the sound cards worked back then, I just know I miss those sounds very dearly =(

I actually found that my television sounds better after I smashed the shit out of it with my guitar and then made a mural with all the pieces.

Yeah I hear ya, it's been fun but also bittersweet rediscovering these soundtracks recently.

Well, I was trying to answer 4 cases; 1. the double tracker, the wording of it. 2. about how its delivered/played at the user, 3. a suggestion on how to organise them, 4. That they all would sound alike/unlike dependent on the HW. Obviously I seem to have failed there lol...

But yeah, pcm streams would go through a different path than for a tracker or any of the midi's when taken the quality of the out-puted sound into account, and also sound a bit differently on earlier low-quality cards.

You complained about mentioning tracker twice in the intro text so I asked about wording that part better, not for yet another explanation on differences between mod, midi, streaming wav, fm which I already know about. The HW is the sound blaster card revisions, going with the best possible example for each particular game that I can find.

Streaming wav should be at the same quality (bit depth and sample rate) as the others provided it's the same card, no?

I've added a first draft for 1997 and updated the SB page accordingly:
http://minirevver.weebly.com/vgm-1997.html
http://minirevver.weebly.com/sound-blaster-pcm-music.html

Finished a first draft for 1998 and updated the SB page accordingly.
http://minirevver.weebly.com/vgm-1998.html