Monkey Island 2 music problem

[leagues11]

So I've downloaded scummvm quick and easy, got the program and the music working fine, but the music is really... well... crap. I know that MI2 had a really nice opening theme but instead I'm getting this MIDI computer-reproduced crap. What happened to the pipes, and other instruments?

Can I tamper with the scummvm options in some way to get the music sounding like it originally did?

[Alien426]

Did you by any chance use AdLib sound mode?

Due to the nature of midi, you may not be able to make it sound like it did on another computer...

[leagues11]

Yeah, I did and that didn't work either.

The funny thing is, that if I try to run it NORMALLY (without scummvm) it all works fine, but there isn't any music whatsoever. Even stranger is the fact that Monkey Island 1 works perfectly on my PC without any alterations.

I'm playing the Monnkey Island Madness disc, by the way.

[Joshi]

MI1 also works fine for me and I only need q+e for MI2. When you first played MI2, with the music you remember, what machine were you playing it on?

[leagues11]

Well, I really just downloaded the real opening theme from the scumm bar and compared it to the one I have.

[Thrik]

Quick crash course on MIDI:

MIDI is simply a set of digital instructions that speak to sound hardware. In this case, the MIDI in Monkey Island 2 is speaking to your presumably cheap sound card, which doesn't come with very good samples on it.

Samples are the sounds which are supposed to resemble real instruments, that all MIDI devices come with a huge range of — one sample for each instrument, in the case of most cheaper devices. This sample is then repitched to each note on the musical scale.

Cheaper MIDI devices such as 99% of average consumer sound cards will come with terrible samples that sound completely fake, and thus any music which uses the samples will also sound terrible.

More expensive MIDI devices, however, come with considerably better samples, and in a lot of cases they are direct high definition recordings of instruments which are then made suitable for MIDI use. I must put emphasis on the word “expensive”, as it can a bit silly once you move into “begins to sound real” territory.

The versions on the SCUMM Bar were recorded from a high quality sound card, which comes with some very good samples, and thus the music sounds a lot better than it will on whatever sound card you have.

In short, you need a far better sound card if you want high quality MIDI in Monkey Island 2.

[Ben31]

I have the same problem. I downloaded the first 2 recently and ScummVM. SOMI works perfectly but i was horrified when playing LR. Some music is close to the original but some is awful. Although i dunno if it is the same problem because theres music in places which i dont remember there being music. One horrible peice is on Dread's ship. That scares me..

[Thrik]

It's not a problem; it's just how MIDI works. Monkey Island 1 was fortunate because they actually played the music back through a high quality MIDI device and then recorded it as an mp3/wav/something as far as I'm aware, while with Monkey Island 2 they never did as the music is a lot more complex and of course uses iMuse (which is the complex technology that made the music blend together instrumentally).

If you want better, you'll need to dump your sound blaster or whatever. :~

There are ways of improving your MIDI a little with software patches (Yamaha XG springs to mind), but I'm not sure if it works properly with ScummVM. Feel free to try and report, though!