DOS Lemmings music

[Darnn]

Hi.

First of all, this site is awesome. I can't believe how much info there is about Lemmings. For some reason I missed it the first few dozen times I was looking for file format info (though I did find The Lemmings File Archive and didn't pay enough attention to it).

Now, on to business: I want to extract the DOS Lemmings music (from adlib.dat).

For years I thought I'd never even get to hear it again properly, but checking with DOSBox recently it seems to play the game just like I remember it. I was overjoyed, and set about recording the music with DOSBox's wave output recorder. When I took a good listen to the files I recorded, though, they sounded a bit off: The drums and some of the bell sounds (pardon the not-exactly-technical terms) are way too loud. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but this makes me want to exctract the actual music tracks from the game and convert those to mp3 or ogg, rather than recording DOSBox's output.

For the record, here's a sample file from what I recorded.

By the way, I've seen the MOD rips on The Lemmings File Archive (kudos, Mindless, for that and everything else), and while it seems the melody info is the same as in the game, the instruments sound different, so I'd still rather know what to do with adlib.dat to get the actual tracks from it.

Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work, you guys.

[Mr. K]

Hm.  I don't think we know much about Adlib.dat.  I think ccexplore hacked it at one point, but that's all I know.

HOWEVER! We have an alternative.  I have a 486 in the basement that has had Lemmings on it forever and plays the music correctly because it's on genuine hardware.  And I just got another computer down there, meaning that I should be able to record the 486's output onto the other machine and save it.  I'll give it a shot once I find my spare 2-way audio cable thing.

[covox]

I've already ripped the DOS original music (on a trusty Pentium 133 with DOS 6.0 and a state-of-the-art Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA card). The ONML tunes are soon to follow, along with the sound effects.

http://rebui.ld.net.au/covox/lemmings/music_classic_dos.tar.bz2 - 41mb, OGG

(this link will be dead when I get around to uploading it to sourceforge)

[Tim]

Darnn,

I have just grabbed the lemmings and ohno more lemmings music from the original CD, but now I do not know how or where to upload the soundtrack for everyone to retreive it.

Anyone know? I am sure most of you would want to have this music. There are 23 tracks from this CD.

Tim.

[covox]

http://rapidshare.com are very good about uploading large files. (or at least, rapidshare.de was until it ran out of space)

[ccexplore]

By the way, I've seen the MOD rips on The Lemmings File Archive (kudos, Mindless, for that and everything else), and while it seems the melody info is the same as in the game, the instruments sound different

Yes, that's because it's from the Amiga version of the game rather than the PC-DOS version.

so I'd still rather know what to do with adlib.dat to get the actual tracks from it.

I'm much too busy to help you with this at the moment, but I do have info for the adlib.dat format, and since you only need to change instrument volumes I believe that's a relatively easy thing to do.̆ That being said, I didn't notice the drums/bells being "too loud" on my machine with DOSBox, so I can't say whether your problem is specific to your sound card and/or speakers (and make sure you're using the most recent version of DOSBox, just in case).̆ I'll look into this again maybe the next weekend or something.̆ Note that since no one wrote a program to view and edit adlib.dat, you'd want to get yourself familiar with a hex editor (or write your own program).

[ccexplore]

HOWEVER! We have an alternative.̆ I have a 486 in the basement that has had Lemmings on it forever and plays the music correctly because it's on genuine hardware.̆ And I just got another computer down there, meaning that I should be able to record the 486's output onto the other machine and save it.̆ I'll give it a shot once I find my spare 2-way audio cable thing.

It would actually be interesting and useful if you can upload all that music from the genuine hardware onto some place, even if temporarily.̆ That way we can compare how faithful DOSBox's reproduction of adlib music is and maybe get the DOSBox developers to fix any issues we found.

[Darnn]

ccexplore:

I am indeed running the latest version of DOSBox. While playing the music sounds pretty normal on my speakers, I only start to really notice the loud parts when I use headphones. You can listen to the track I uploaded to see if it sounds the same as on your machine.

My rip and covox's rip sound different, at least. (By the way, thanks for that.) Here is a screenshot of Goldwave displaying the first few seconds of both files. Mine is the lower one. I'm not sure exactly what this means, but in covox's rip the things on both sides of the dotted line are basically symmetrical, while in mine they aren't.

In any case, I'd love to get the specs of adlib.dat. I've never done the whole hex editor thing, but it sounds like I could handle it. I read the guide on the MultiEx Commander site: http://multiex.xentax.com/

If I'll be able to figure everything out from what you have I'll make a plugin for that.

timfoxxy:

PM me. I have some webspace.

Thanks for all the replies.

[DragonsLover]

Lemmings CD Soundtracks are available HERE!

A big thank for Timfoxxy!

I'll remove the file in one week because the FTP server is reserved for Dungeon Keeper stuff.

[DragonsLover]

I just hear them. Sweeeet! They are kinda like an improved version of the classical Midi musics from Lemmings95.

However, I noted some bugs: Track 9 and Track 17 have both a little bug. In Track 9, there's a little quiet during the song. Track 17, a tiny part of the song is accelerated. You'll know what I mean when you'll hear the song.

Everything else is really cool!

Oh, another thing : they completely missed the end of Track 23. Also, there are no songs from Oh no! More Lemmings, sadly.

[Mr. K]

HOWEVER! We have an alternative.  I have a 486 in the basement that has had Lemmings on it forever and plays the music correctly because it's on genuine hardware.  And I just got another computer down there, meaning that I should be able to record the 486's output onto the other machine and save it.  I'll give it a shot once I find my spare 2-way audio cable thing.

It would actually be interesting and useful if you can upload all that music from the genuine hardware onto some place, even if temporarily.  That way we can compare how faithful DOSBox's reproduction of adlib music is and maybe get the DOSBox developers to fix any issues we found.

http://www.ksoftgames.idiotstudios.net/lemmings/index.php?topic=140.msg2206#msg2206
Covox did already... however, on listening to them, there are slight differences compared to my 486 (which has a Sound Blaster Pro in it as opposed to an AWE64), so I might record them anyway.

[Tim]

Lemmings CD Soundtracks are available HERE!

A big thank for Timfoxxy!

I'll remove the file in one week because the FTP server is reserved for Dungeon Keeper stuff.

There is an extra / in the link there, DragonsLover. Ill post the proper link here.

Tim.

EDIT: Ive realized that the bugs in the two tracks could be due to scratches on the CD. However, the game still works perfectly. Weird.

[covox]

Somewhere in my overflowing spares boxes I have a SBPro (with the 1x CDROM that plugged into the board, those were the days...). I do remember Lemmings sounded a bit different, for example the first few bars of "A Beast of a Level" sounded more grainy. I always just chalked that up to the card being slightly rubbish, along the same lines that MIDI files played with several of the voices missing.

I suppose the ideal compromise would be to find someone with an actual AdLib Gold card, then compare the output of that to the Sound Blaster, and the YM3812 emulator DOSBox borrowed from MAME. 

[ccexplore]

I suppose the ideal compromise would be to find someone with an actual AdLib Gold card, then compare the output of that to the Sound Blaster, and the YM3812 emulator DOSBox borrowed from MAME.̆

I know for a fact that the Lemmings music doesn't use any of the extra capabilities in the Adlib Gold card's chipset, and far more people have SB cards, so it's really more a concern of the real SB output vs. the DOSBox emulation's output.

[edit:  that being said, I guess the sound card's final output is analog, so I guess there could be differences in the two cards in the DAC]

[covox]

ONML soundtrack ripped. http://rapidshare.com/files/2310603/music_ohno_dos.tar.bz2.html