Game music (current): Midi vs digital audio

The release of Metroid Prime has me thinking about midi game music again. I'm almost positive all of that music was midi. I think I even read somewhere that it was. Soooo.... midi has escaped cartridges it seems. I don't know what kind of synth the Cube has. It might be a software synth for all I know, but it sure has come a long way from the 16 bit days and for certain styles of music is indistinguishable from pre-recorded digital audio. So.... let's look at the pro's of each format:

Midi:

*Songs can loop forever. Great for looooooong levels (like Metroid Prime).

*Songs can change and morph on the fly to fit the mood.

*Takes up much less storage space on the disk.


Digital Audio:

Lyrics. Can't have them in midi land.

"real" instruments (guitar, drums, etc) still sound significantly better with digital audio.

Can have licenced versions of orriginal hit recordings (not a pro for me, but it is for many)


And the cons of each format

Midi:

*No lyrics

*Still can't quite simulate some instruments


Digital Audio:

*Hard to loop cleanly, if at all possible. Most songs need to stop and then start up again, or be mixed into a new, different song DJ style.

*Takes up alot of room. Can't have as much song variety in some cases because of that. Compression helps, but that can start to sound nasty (Listen to Steel Batallion. Ugh... bitrate so low).



So, any thoughts on the two formats?

I'm a huge fan of licensed music, you couldn't have a true 80's experience in Vice City with midi.......well, you could, but why would you want to?

Until game composers learn some skills (as in, no, you're a terrible lyrics writer and you suck with a guitar) or license good music for a change, I see nothing wrong with MIDI.

Metroid Prime still has some vocal sounds in the Magmoor Caverns area, IIRC. Would this still be midi?

Neo: Yes and no.

I'm guessing that Metroid uses something like MIDI. Most systems (Genesis, SNES, etc) use a variation of the MOD format. This format uses samples of sounds to create music. So, they can easily have vocals with one small sample. They can just change the pitch to make it sound like different voices.

Rygar's soundtrack. If only all games were this good.

And you forgot to mention the immediate effect of memorable midi tunes, much easier to remember an excellent midi tune exactly then it is a "full" song.

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(Listen to Steel Batallion. Ugh... bitrate so low).

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If you're refering just to SB's music, that's on purpose.

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Originally posted by Chibi Nappa
I don't know what kind of synth the Cube has. It might be a software synth for all I know, but it sure has come a long way from the 16 bit days and for certain styles of music is indistinguishable from pre-recorded digital audio.

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The Cube uses a DSP to supplement PCM, so it's not all software, although it accepts programmed macro triggers as well as MIDI. Of course, the sound designer can simply stream off the disc as well, but it's actually easier to use Nintendo's proprietary Musyx software (which is win compatible) and put everything together on that without even needing a dev kit - it even supports all 3D surround functions and multiple sequencer instances. Pretty cool.

I prefer MIDI, unless a game uses licensed music.

When CD-DA music has to loop and you get a few seconds of dead air, that's a little annoying. Sudden changes to the music (such as how Street Fighter II speeds up the BGM when one of the fighters is about to get KOed) don't work too well.

IIRC, Soukyugurentai on the Saturn uses MIDI and does it well. I looked at the disc access light once while playing, and noticed that it wasn't on.

i like middi. i like audio tracks from cd as well, but i get annoyed when i hear the gap between loops.

When used correctly, either format is just fine. Games like SotN or FFT wouldn't be the same without their ultimate soundtracks in the form that they're in. Midi is usually always great. I'm a sucker for it.