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I've been looking forward to this documentary by noclip. As I'm in the U.S., this soundtrack introduced me to so much UK dance music. It sounded otherwordly. I

I've been looking forward to this documentary by noclip. As I'm in the U.S., this soundtrack introduced me to so much UK dance music. It sounded otherwordly. I first discovered Underworld through this soundtrack, who remain one of my favorite music projects to date. The PS1 disc had all of the audio as CD tracks as well, and as such, this game spent more time in my car's CD player than it did in my actual game console.

jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
Can you even put music tracks on a ps1 game without them being CD audio tracks? I thought that was integral to how playing them back worked.
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  Just throw them in .wav with/out compression (ADPCM for example?). Or use some module formats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file
  - jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
    Is there any additional processing overhead to doing that? I think you can have the console play CD tracks, or subsets of tracks basically for free, which is why most games did that.
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      > Is there any additional processing overhead to doing that? TOtally depends on the requirements and hardware. > CD tracks, or subsets of tracks basically for free Yes, if you don't need to access the CD in this time[0,1] Overall: - having a compression would limit the number of reads (~half for ADPCM for example), for the expense of the quality and the need of the bigger buffers and some of CPU power. PS1 had only 2MB of the main RAM and a CPU with a whopping 33MHz; though it's SPU had the support for ADPCM and had additional 512KB of memory, I doubt there was a way to load a part of a file from a CD-ROM to the SPU without traveling through the CPU first, so it's not very feasible on PS1 but became totally fine on PCs of the era ie any 486 with 50+MHz, or even less if you are okay with a lower quality[2]. - using mod/xm requires just a little bit of pre-reading, but requires both the memory and CPU to produce the sound; you can use the hardware to perform the re/sampling to lower the demand on the CPU, but despite what GUS fanboys said, it's... not that much, at least for the PCs when GUS became a feasible card. But if you are extremely limited on the CPU and you do have a hardware sampler then this is the way. - until 2000[3] the Red Book was the only way to consistently provide a, well, CD quality soundtrack (musictrack?) on the plethora of users PC configurations. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40653912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40653912 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699834 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHjzZl2QQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHjzZl2QQk Quite amusingly, DOS version is downsampled because a common PC didn't have any graphic (or in this case video) accelerators, so it needed to process both the sound and video on the CPU; while CD-i version is running on an anemic 15.5MHz it had the proper, ahem, GPU so it could have a much better sound quality, you can compare them: Thaa's Secret https://youtu.be/RLHjzZl2QQk?t=367 https://youtu.be/RLHjzZl2QQk?t=367 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLjKjNp5N_Q&t=246s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLjKjNp5N_Q&t=246s [3] originally I wrote 1997, because Quake II, and Half-Life came out in '98 (well, technically), but looks like even in 2000 there were some titles which still preferred it this way. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_use_Red_Book_CD_audio https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_use_Red... EDIT: > or subsets of tracks basically for free Not that free. Positioning the head takes time (and we are talking 1x/2x drives - up to a second or two!) and if you don't want to abruptly stop the playback and then suddenly start blasting from the mid... well you don't have any controls over that. You can only prepare for that while mastering the soundtrack and inserting the pauses (with fade-out/fade-ins!) where applicable.

jimbobthrowawy 2y ago

Can you even put music tracks on a ps1 game without them being CD audio tracks? I thought that was integral to how playing them back worked.

justsomehnguy 2y ago
Just throw them in .wav with/out compression (ADPCM for example?). Or use some module formats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  Is there any additional processing overhead to doing that? I think you can have the console play CD tracks, or subsets of tracks basically for free, which is why most games did that.
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    > Is there any additional processing overhead to doing that? TOtally depends on the requirements and hardware. > CD tracks, or subsets of tracks basically for free Yes, if you don't need to access the CD in this time[0,1] Overall: - having a compression would limit the number of reads (~half for ADPCM for example), for the expense of the quality and the need of the bigger buffers and some of CPU power. PS1 had only 2MB of the main RAM and a CPU with a whopping 33MHz; though it's SPU had the support for ADPCM and had additional 512KB of memory, I doubt there was a way to load a part of a file from a CD-ROM to the SPU without traveling through the CPU first, so it's not very feasible on PS1 but became totally fine on PCs of the era ie any 486 with 50+MHz, or even less if you are okay with a lower quality[2]. - using mod/xm requires just a little bit of pre-reading, but requires both the memory and CPU to produce the sound; you can use the hardware to perform the re/sampling to lower the demand on the CPU, but despite what GUS fanboys said, it's... not that much, at least for the PCs when GUS became a feasible card. But if you are extremely limited on the CPU and you do have a hardware sampler then this is the way. - until 2000[3] the Red Book was the only way to consistently provide a, well, CD quality soundtrack (musictrack?) on the plethora of users PC configurations. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40653912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40653912 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699834 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHjzZl2QQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHjzZl2QQk Quite amusingly, DOS version is downsampled because a common PC didn't have any graphic (or in this case video) accelerators, so it needed to process both the sound and video on the CPU; while CD-i version is running on an anemic 15.5MHz it had the proper, ahem, GPU so it could have a much better sound quality, you can compare them: Thaa's Secret https://youtu.be/RLHjzZl2QQk?t=367 https://youtu.be/RLHjzZl2QQk?t=367 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLjKjNp5N_Q&t=246s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLjKjNp5N_Q&t=246s [3] originally I wrote 1997, because Quake II, and Half-Life came out in '98 (well, technically), but looks like even in 2000 there were some titles which still preferred it this way. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_use_Red_Book_CD_audio https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_use_Red... EDIT: > or subsets of tracks basically for free Not that free. Positioning the head takes time (and we are talking 1x/2x drives - up to a second or two!) and if you don't want to abruptly stop the playback and then suddenly start blasting from the mid... well you don't have any controls over that. You can only prepare for that while mastering the soundtrack and inserting the pauses (with fade-out/fade-ins!) where applicable.