Anyone interested in Apple IIgs AGI music?

[Maxor127]

I played my first Sierra games on an Apple IIgs and the sound was superior on it compared to the old DOS games.  As far as I know, the AGI versions of Sierra games for other systems used PC Speaker sound, but the IIgs had MIDI sound in its AGI games.  I only really checked out this site today but it made me think of a feature on an old IIgs emulator that allows me to capture sound from games.  It doesn't emulate perfectly from what I remember from the original machine and I'll need to fiddle with the sound options some more to find the best results, but I could fairly easily get the opening sequence music of all of the games that were available if anyone is interested.  I was going to attach a sample mp3 but I guess that's not allowed.  I could post a link to the file.  I'm not sure how familiar any of you are with the IIgs music, but if anyone is interested or if this has already been done, then let me know.

[Tom]

Please do post a link.  This sounds like something worth including on my AGI page.  I always heard that Apple produced better music than the PC, in the early days.  I had heard that it was better than FM synth.

[HondaSiR]

Hi Maxor127, welcome to the boards! My very first computer back in the 80's was an Apple II+. I had it equipped with a mockingboard sound card so that I can take advantage of games that supported it (Skyfox, Ultima 3 and 4, etc.). All the IBM PC had back then was the PC speaker, and boy did that add-on card make a difference in gaming. It was way better than IBM's first sound card called the GameBlaster (not sure if this is IBM's first FM board, although I remember distinctly that its FM sounds were horrible!).

I've never had an Apple II-GS though, I upgraded to an XT after giving away my Apple. I would surely like to hear the MP3 samples that you have to offer.  

[Alistair]

Yeah, welcome to Maxor.

I love Sierra AGI music. Some of my favourite Tom Lewandowski work can be found there.. (my all time favourite is the SQ AGI rework).

Apple II GS I've heard some of, people have posted stuff at the major SQ site (which I assist at).
I didn't think much of it, glorified Adlib, I seem to remember. But what DID interest me is music I hadn't heard before. If you can upload high-quality renditions of the music (the ones I've heard were awful with hiss) I'd be appreciative.

- Alistair

[Maxor127]

Here a link to a sample of the KQ3 opening title music: King's Quest 3 Intro I'm getting this from an emulator using a sound capture feature that saves it as a sound file which I then covert to MP3.  So it probably won't sound as good than if I somehow extracted sound from the actual data files or used a real IIgs.  I'm not a sound expert or anything.  There's an old shareware program I used to use that I might be able to edit anything I do in the future.  Tell me what you think of the sample posted.

[MusicallyInspired]

Wowsers! That's quite different from the Tandy 3-voice+sound effect version! There's harmony in the notes and it doesn't give that out-of-tune effect on the last note. And that bass part there gives the whole piece a completely different atmosphere. More please! I'm very interested!! Especially in Manannan's theme, it sounds like from the start of it where the file ended that it would sound different as well. I'm quite interested to hear how different.

[Maxor127]

I'll try to create a sample of the full opening and introduction music tonight.

[Maxor127]

I made mp3s of a bunch of IIgs intros.  I tried to make them sound as good as I could.  Occasionaly it might not play right for a sec because of the CPU suddenly starting up or something but it's hardly noticeable.  At first I had recorded these with some high-quality option that produced stereo sound, but I thought in most cases, the stereo sounded worse than mono because I don't think the tunes should be separated and played in different channels.

King's Quest - Intro
King's Quest II - Intro
King's Quest III - Intro
Police Quest - Intro
Space Quest - Intro + Roger waking up from closet - This has a bonus at the end featuring the Arcadia alarm.
Space Quest II - Intro
Thexder - Partial Intro + Level music - I had trouble with Thexder.  I was using a cracked disk image that I downloaded, but I don't think the intro plays right on it.  And when I try saving my original disk as a disk image, it asks for the master disk.  I'm not even sure if my original disk works anymore.

That's all for now.  Not sure I could improve on what I have now at all.  Some other Sierra games for IIgs are Black Cauldron, Leisure Suit Larry, Mixed-Up Mother Goose, Manhunter: New York, and Silpheed.  I think those are all of the AGI games ever made for IIgs (except for King's Quest IV).  I'm mad they never made Manhunter San Francisco for it as far as I know.

[HondaSiR]

The samples are good enough for me! I gave all of them a listen (except Thexder, it says page not found on my machine). Wow, they hint of nostalgia and a trip back to the days of the Amiga computer. I think the Apple IIGS and Amiga shared the same built-in sound chip capable of 3 to 5 channel sounds and one effects channel. It is way better than a GameBlaster card on an IBM. I particularly liked the PQ sample with its gunshot effects, not really accurate with a real gun or shotgun, but good enough for the players back in those days.  

[Maxor127]

Thexder is fixed now.  It didn't like that I typed THEXDER in all caps.

[HondaSiR]

Thexder is working now, and it has a nice female voice with the music sample. So the IIGS is capable of digitized speech eh? And quite a clear one. As a gaming platiform back then, the Amiga and IIGS were miles away from the PC/XT and PC/AT (they didn't need any add-on music cards).

[MusicallyInspired]

Wow, those are quite different. It's amazing how good they sound! It sounds 10 times better than FM! Thank you very much! I'm seeing a new side to the composition of these pieces, now...Particularly the KQ3 one. Thanks again for these!

[Kaminari]

Hmm, there's quite some confusion here :)

This is no MIDI sound. The Apple IIGS featured classic Apple II beeper sound as well as a groundbreaking 32-channel FM chip from E-MU/Ensoniq (you know, the guys who were later bought out in 1993 by Creative) called DOC -- Digital Oscillator Chip. This is obviously what we're hearing here.

Apple and Amiga sharing the same soundchip? Hardly the case: the Amiga featured its own custom chip called Paula. While having only four channels, it was a much better PCM chip capable of software multichannel.

[Cloudschatze]

Hmm, there's quite some confusion here

This is no MIDI sound. The Apple IIGS featured classic Apple II beeper sound as well as a groundbreaking 32-channel FM chip from E-MU/Ensoniq

Not quite...

"The Apple IIGS' sound was provided by an included Ensoniq 5503 DOC wavetable sound chip, the same chip used in Ensoniq's Mirage and ESQ-1 professional-grade synthesizers. The chip allowed for 32 separate channels of sound, though most software paired them into 16 stereo voices, as did the standard tools of the operating system." -Wikipedia

[Tom]

Yeah...somethings going on.  I received some errors earlier this morning, and noticed the server crashed over night.  The error messages I found were related to phpBB, so I may have to restore.  Won't know until I get home and can look at it, tomorrow.

[Ari]

These sound awesome! Really!
I especially liked the KQ3 theme. There seem to be more music channels than in the PC Bleeper or Tandy 3-voice versions. Very interesting!

[Marten]

Mannanan's Theme from the KQ3 intro seems too fast.

But it is very nice to hear how some of these games played on the IIgs.  I'd always heard that the Silpheed IIgs adaptation was the best version for the PC... but sadly never got to see it with my own eyes (or hear it with my own ears!).  I'd be curious to see a sample of that if you ever track it down.

Thank you very much for sharing these recordings with us.  Although done through an emulator which causes a few pauses here and there, as you observed, it at least gives us some better ideas for how the melodies were meant to be constructed... they were trimmed down for the 3-voice Tandy/PCJr, and then completely castrated for the monovoice PC speaker.

Also interesting to me is that the King's Quest theme sounds entirely different from any I've heard before.  Tom has mentioned that the beginning trumpets for King's Quest III are derived from the original KQ theme (back when the PCjr was introduced), and I know that later versions of KQ play Greensleeves, but this seems to be a different theme  from either of those.

[Kaminari]

A wavetable doesn't mean MIDI. The very first MOD soundtracking format on the Amiga (appropriately called 'SoundTracker') used a fixed array of samples -- a software wavetable -- which had nothing to do with MIDI messaging. That's a bit like saying the Super Famicom had a MIDI soundchip. The philosophy behind the technology is no different, sure, but that's not MIDI per se.

[Alistair]

A wavetable doesn't mean MIDI. The very first MOD soundtracking format on the Amiga (appropriately called 'SoundTracker') used a fixed array of samples -- a software wavetable -- which had nothing to do with MIDI messaging. That's a bit like saying the Super Famicom had a MIDI soundchip. The philosophy behind the technology is no different, sure, but that's not MIDI per se.

Yep. I suppose you could apply the same logic to other Adlib-esque formats like Apogee's IMF, right?

- Alistair

[Ghost_Rider]

Here I go again... Mr. Off Topic...

I remember when I was in grade 7, Apple IIgs' were pretty much top of the line.  I remember going "oooooooh aaaaaaaaah".  Amiga 2000 still kicked their butts for audio though.   :wink:

That's when I really started getting into computer tech, I used to teach the grade 1's and 2's how to use the Apple IIgs'.  I remember thinking, good speed, decent programs, pretty good graphics... sound... blah.