Does Anybody Listen To .mods?
lolfighter
Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">mp3 my ****</div> So I like .mods a lot. Yeah. For anyone who doesn't know, .mod is the old amiga extension used for music files in games. .mods were revolutionary because they allowed you to store long musical themes in relatively small files. A .mod is not a typical sound file, but a collection of sounds (instruments) and patterns in which these sounds are played. You take for instance a single "c" on a piano, record it, then change the pitch of the sound to get all the other notes. Now, with just one little sound file you can make a piece of piano music just by playing the same sound in different pitches. Saves you a ton of diskspace. Take one of my pieces, "Mood Swing" (a general characteristic of .mods is that they all have crappy names), a 64-channel song with a relatively big collection of instruments. At 3 minutes and 4 seconds, it fills a whopping 469 kb. Show me any mp3 THAT small.
Anyway, I LOVE .mods. They have progressed far since the old-school 4-channel background themes of the amiga. They aen't all .mods, in fact, true .mods are few and far between. Instead, many advanced formats have been developed, far too many to list, but three of the most popular are .s3m, .it and .xm. Why do I love 'em? Because most of them can be freely distributed (meaning there's no music industry to scold me for pirating their music), they easily fit on a floppy if necessary (who uses floppies anyway?), and you aren't forced to stick to what the music industry wants you to hear. Listening to .mods shows me just how much unrecognized talent there is out there, and just because they don't do vocal. Oh, did I forget to mention that? .mods do not include vocals, as those fill far too much. You could easily do it, but then the file would be just as big as any other music file, and it doesn't fit with the general style of .mods.
Anyway, I know I'm not alone (or there wouldn't be so much buzz on the internet), but how many of you listen to .mods? Btw., did you know that the music of UT or Deus Ex is in the .s3m format? You can convert the .umx files to .s3m files with UnrealEd!
If I have piqued (sic) your interest, try <a href='http://www.deliplayer.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.deliplayer.com/</a> for a good, free soundtracker that can playback almost all .mod formats out there. Mac users will wantto try <a href='http://www.quadmation.com/pphome.htm' target='_blank'>PlayerPro</a> instead. Tell your friends!
If you need music, try the link section of <a href='http://www.deliplayer.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.deliplayer.com/</a>, you'll find some great sites there.
So, if you're looking for something different for a change, try .mods! You'll like it.
Final note: Yes, the basic principle resembles MIDI. The difference is that a .mod-file carries its own instruments, allowing for much greater diversity.
Anyway, I LOVE .mods. They have progressed far since the old-school 4-channel background themes of the amiga. They aen't all .mods, in fact, true .mods are few and far between. Instead, many advanced formats have been developed, far too many to list, but three of the most popular are .s3m, .it and .xm. Why do I love 'em? Because most of them can be freely distributed (meaning there's no music industry to scold me for pirating their music), they easily fit on a floppy if necessary (who uses floppies anyway?), and you aren't forced to stick to what the music industry wants you to hear. Listening to .mods shows me just how much unrecognized talent there is out there, and just because they don't do vocal. Oh, did I forget to mention that? .mods do not include vocals, as those fill far too much. You could easily do it, but then the file would be just as big as any other music file, and it doesn't fit with the general style of .mods.
Anyway, I know I'm not alone (or there wouldn't be so much buzz on the internet), but how many of you listen to .mods? Btw., did you know that the music of UT or Deus Ex is in the .s3m format? You can convert the .umx files to .s3m files with UnrealEd!
If I have piqued (sic) your interest, try <a href='http://www.deliplayer.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.deliplayer.com/</a> for a good, free soundtracker that can playback almost all .mod formats out there. Mac users will wantto try <a href='http://www.quadmation.com/pphome.htm' target='_blank'>PlayerPro</a> instead. Tell your friends!
If you need music, try the link section of <a href='http://www.deliplayer.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.deliplayer.com/</a>, you'll find some great sites there.
So, if you're looking for something different for a change, try .mods! You'll like it.
Final note: Yes, the basic principle resembles MIDI. The difference is that a .mod-file carries its own instruments, allowing for much greater diversity.
Comments
I've mentioned this several times, but my favourite mod music is from Cursader: No Remorse - oldies game. The music was done by the same guys who did the music for Deus Ex.
<a href='http://gamemusic.emugaming.com/music/PC/Crusader%20No%20Remorse/Credits.MOD' target='_blank'>Crusader: No Remorse - Credits</a> - Kind of like "The Dark World" theme from Zelda
<a href='http://gamemusic.emugaming.com/music/PC/Crusader%20No%20Remorse/Menu.MOD' target='_blank'>Crusader: No Remorse - Menu music</a> - I don't think I'll ever get tired of this, has this eerie sadness to it, yet the feeling is that you're not giving up hope
<a href='http://gamemusic.emugaming.com/music/PC/Crusader%20No%20Remorse/Mission%2001.MOD' target='_blank'>Crusader: No Remorse - Mission 1</a> - Stealth mission feeling...
The only other game I have mods/misc. formats are for Star Control 2, One Must Fall: 2097, Pinball Dreams, Separation Anxiety, and Final Fantasy VI & VII
This is probably the best site for all game music formats that aren't mp3s. It includes mods, ITs, XMs, S3Ms, SPCs etc
<a href='http://www.mirsoft.info/gamemods.php' target='_blank'>World of Game MODs</a>
It produces more watery noise than an MP3, and sometimes even sounds scratchy.
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Yesssss... Finally someone who regocnises (umm.. Typo?) a good game. Too bad Crusaders are DOS-based so they don't run in Windows...
Check out www.chiptune.com for lots of mods, ITs, XMs, S3Ms and other stuff. Also Sinclair oldies can be found there!
Do you have any idea what a MOD file actually is? You see, MODs are just package files that contain the samples used to create the song, and the instructions for the player on what sound is played at which point of the song. MP3 and MOD are not comparable in any way as formats, since an MP3 is a lossy compression technique, and MOD is something entirely different.
The difference lies in the fact that a MOD's size is determined by the size and quality of the samples used to create the music, not the lenght of the song. For example, a 20 minute 128Kbps MP3 is approx. 20MB in size, while a 20 minute MOD might be less than one MB, depending entirely on what kind of samples were used and whether they were 8 or 16 bit, 22 or 44KHz etc. The quality of the song (and the way it sounds) is completely up to the composer and the samples he used as the base of the song.
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I used to do MOD music (I still have some 30-40 tracks composed with Scream Tracker 3 and Impulse Tracker on my HD), but I switched to Buzz when I got tired of the limitations set on me by the aforementioned programs. I like Buzz because it's a tracker at heart, but allows me to work with a precision unseen in any other free sequencer. These days I only use high quality samples and the result is that my songs are about 20-30MB in raw Buzz format, so converting them to WAV and encoding them as MP3s prior to release is the only way to go.
As a whole, I miss the old-school MOD scene a bit. Rarely have I seen anyone create such works of beauty with such simple tools.
You can use the program <a href='http://modplug.com/modplug/index.php3' target='_blank'>ModPlug Player</a> to play them, it supports most mod formats.
1 of my fav mod genres are chip tunes, they simply sound amazing! <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
For amazing mod files, look here: <a href='http://www.aezay.dk/module/' target='_blank'>http://www.aezay.dk/module/</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--SiLeNcEr-7+--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SiLeNcEr-7)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->ogg > mod. There is no disputing it, it is simply so.
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Hey dude, you cant compare those formats at all!
[edit] And what the hell is mactone? [/edit]
As stated previous in this topic, a mod file uses samples. A song could then use a drum sample 80 times in the entire song, but its only saved 1 time in the file. Ogg file will have to save the drum sound 80 times.
The old mod file had some restrictions, but the it format (ImpulseTracker) is the most evolved mod type. If the author choose good quality samples, he could make a 1.5 Mb file last for, lets say 8 min and it would be very good quality.
If you would include vocals in a song, then yes ogg are better than modules, but if you only use instuments I would rate modules higher than both mp3 and ogg.
Why do you compare ogg and midi files to modules, you cant! Do you even know how modules are constructed? If yes, you would also know that they cant be compared.
[edit] And I know how they are made [/edit]