Something wrong with the music on a mac?

[dotheneurotic]

I just started playing this on a macbook pro and I'm pretty sure the music was a lot better when I played it on a pc in the 90s. I remember it sounding almost like a real orchestral score and now it sounds really primitive and synthetic. I'm pretty sure it's not just my imagination. Any insight on this?

[monkeymadness]

As far as I know the music has been "upgraded" on steam. For most people that is a downgrade for them because they want the original sounding version. Although it might be your imagination about the whole orchesta thing, they did make it sound more synthetic with the upgrade. I actually own 3 copies of the game and I tried them all out today to make sure this was the case. We had an old floppy version that I can now run on DOSBox. Then we got a computer that needed a CD, so we picked one up. I run that one on ScummVM. And then I bought the Steam version in a pack with Loom, the Dig, and the Last Crusade. I don't really care much about the music change myself and it is only ever so slight. But as far as overall performance ScummVM does the best. Good music, lack of glitches, easily transfers to my android phone, etc. If you have a CD of the game you could run it on ScummVM and see if you like it better.

[bliss]

ScummVM may emulate better MIDI hardware, but won't necessarily replicate what your old PC sound hardware could do. Note that ScummVM needs modification to run Steam games.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/6010/discussions/0/846963711059804171/

[dotheneurotic]

Thanks for the info! I'll be sure to test it once I find my old CD. Still, if what you say is true, isn't it strange that now, in the 21st century, when a sound card no longer determines the way individual instruments in the score actually sound, they still haven't "fixed" this issue? If they went through the trouble of making the games work on modern PCs and even macs without the aid of a third party emulator, then why not make sure that everyone hears the best version of the music, as if everyone had a virtual AWE32 or something like that? I'm not a programmer so I have no idea how much work it would actually take, but wouldn't it be reasonably easy to do that nowadays?

[bliss]

you're right, it's absolutely possible. I once had a wavetable emulator under Windows 9x and it sounded amazing in comparison. It took up all my CPU time, but so did a 128kbit mp3 back then. I guess they either didn't care or didn't think it would be cost effective to integrate such a thing into the game though.

[Nasenhupe]

The music in the original version was MUCH better than this. Loved that game back in the 90's because of the stunning music and when I bought the Steam Version I was instantly disappointed and never went on playing it here.
Better get ScummVM and download the game (legally) from the internet. AFAIK the ScummVM version has the original music themes!