#245 Support for SC-55 FLAC soundtracks
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?postid=1099612#post1099612
The intended method for listening to Doom music is through a Roland SC-55 (Sound Canvas) piece of hardware.
In modern times, it is burdensome for such a card to be carried in a system, so the best thing to do would be to import high-fidelity recordings of the music to disk. Once FLAC music that way is stored there, one is to remove the SC-55 device from the system, and to use the imported files as accurate music output for the game.
However, the current Chocolate-Doom engine does not, not even from the command line, provide for any means for this intended music to be played out as a replacement for the supported MIDI-music playback.
The issue lies in the variance between the fact that MIDI playback through mere software VSC-55 does not do justice to the original game, and the one that the philosophy of the project is to, in the long-run, achieve maintenance of the original Doom experience in modern times.
Of course, there would have to be some definite structure assigned to file names.
http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/info/music.php -- the MIDI-files structure could be adopted, bringing the files down to such names as:
e1m1.flac
e2m3.flac
intro.flac
victor.flac
It's a nice idea, and probably not very difficult to implement, as SDL_mixer already supports a bunch of different music formats. I think there should be some debate about format, as using FLAC would seem to be unnecessary overkill. MP3 or Ogg Vorbis would make more sense to me.
There's a slight complication in that the external music file should only ever replace a specific internal MUS - ie. if you run with a PWAD that changes the music, it should use the changed music, not run with the wrong track in "high quality". As I see it, the best way to do this would be to use some kind of content mapping configuration file, eg.
f572d396fae9206628714fb2ce00f72e94f2258f = e1m1.mp3
ee9e51458f4642f48efe956962058245ee7127b1 = e1m2.mp3
In the example above, each line has be a SHA1 or MD5 checksum of the original LMP, and the filename of the file to replace it with.
Doing it this way has several advantages: for example, some PWADs use original Doom MIDIs, which would automatically get played in high quality if the lump is identical. Also, plutonia.wad uses several music tracks from the earlier games (also E4).
Thanks for the informative post.
MP3 or Vorbis should be fine; and, I agree, less of an overkill.
I already have correctly named sound files published by this audio expert going by a name I'm not sure to remember; should I convert those to MP3, or to Vorbis? Because then I could share, so everyone has the same files and by downloading those files too it might facilitate some of your work on this.