Many moons ago, I emailed Mr. Prince, and he replied!

> What is the sound card the DOOM sound track was composed on? It sounds different on each one. So we wanna know, how was it "meant" to sound like :D

It was a Sound Blaster 1.0, which first came out in 1989. Creative Labs released almost a version of that card each year, but so many people had bought the 1.0 that the bulk of gamers had that model for several years. And the newer Sound Blasters used the same music synthesizer chip (Yamaha OPL 2 -- an FM type synth chip). A big plus of the Sound Blaster was that Sequencer Plus (MIDI sequencing software) supported making my own sound libraries, and I was able to tweak or "invent" sounds within the limitations of the synth chip. Some time later, I "translated" the sequencer files into General MIDI (GM) files, using the sound set of the GM file spec. Generally, they worked ok, but some of the original FM synth sounds could not be emulated.

As sound cards got fancier, they didn't use the OPL2 FM synth chip, but emulated it. What they didn't figure in all this was that you could bastardize the sound of an FM instrument by playing it well out of normal music range, and you'd end up with a usable percussive instrument sound. I had done just that to create my own drum sets for the OPL2. When those sounds were emulated by the fancier sound cards, they actually sounded a musical tone rather than the bastardized sound. So my snare drum would sound like two little tin drums being played (I used two adjacent musical notes as left and right drum sticks.

As for emulation of the OPL2 FM synth chip, I don't think you can get much better than the synth in DOSBOX (http://www.dosbox.com/).

As for the real thing, you will be able to get the sounds as they were "meant" to be on any sound card that has the OPL2 FM synth chip.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

Bobby

Bobby Prince, composer for Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Duke Nukem 3D, has died