pouët.net

Unfortunately for you, it now appears as you regards my non-sarcastic answer as the best answer ever :D

And you beat me :(

Doom: Also; it's pretty common knowledge that using just one synth for your entire track will most likely make it sound flat and uninterresting. Using a sequencer you can combine drum-programming using one tool with an external synth, some cool loops, and a shitload of different VSTis (which have different strengths/sound different), and then of course use a wide selection of post-processing plugins and boxes while mixing the whole thing.

KBs synth is great, no doubt about it, but I have yet to hear any 64kb intro-track that didn't sound flat/boring in one way or the other.

lug00ber: Have my lovechild, bigboy. :)

Here's something to chew on: Because frankly in the current state of the demoscene, sad as it is, noone besides a chosen few gives a fuck about music. Let's face it, 95% of the reviews about demos and intros are about what you see on the screen. A good song can't make a shitty demo, but a bad song can break a good one.
And this is the point where I have to disagree with lug00ber too - there is no point in including 320kbps files to demos for one simple reason: the audience doesn't care about the music. It cannot add to one's experience because everyone in the audience (apart from a few) treat a demo as a visual show with optional music. Just consider the popularity of music and graphics competitions compared.

And yes, it is sad, I know, and I as a semi-musician really don't like it this way, but it's a fact.

That is of course only if you make demos to please the audience and not yourself as an artist... ;)

Yeah well, they DO care if it's earshattering, but then in a different way :D

Gargaj: I wouldn't go that far dude. The audience care, but I think they care in a "the music is okay, let's see if they have some effects"-way. Meaning -- if the music is good, it is percieved to be okay, and the viewer basicly goes on to largely ignore the music for the duration of the demo. If the music is really bad, then people start to pay attention to it.

..but then again; I guess that's just how it is -- something visual will always be more noticabe. There is also a logic to why music is largely ignored..

Musicians notice the music, gfx-artists notices the gfx (includes effects), coders notice the code (includes the gfx), 3d modellers and animators notice the 3d (includes the gfx and code) and non-creative people notice the combined efforts of the gfx, code and 3d.

This should make it pretty obvious what parts of a demo is paid attention to by the largest group of people. :)

You basically just said what I said though: A brilliant music is considered a natural thing.

Are you out of your minds? Soundtracks basically make or break a demo.

Soundtracks can never make a demo - not with the current demoscene audience. It can sure as hell BREAK one, yes.

I dunno. Good soundtrack can do marvels for a demo. Just have a look at Mindcandy 2's early and mid 90s demos. As the visuals are not that mindblowing, the legendary music by the likes of Jesper Kyd and Laxity stand out amazingly, set the tone and even really carry some of the demos.

Lately I can think of ASD's productions as having real standout music that sets them apart. Just think what those would be with the standard techno beat?

Now, I don't think you need 320kbps for that (the audio quality IMHO doesn't improve that much).

Thank you to Gargaj for an answer that makes sense. I suppose you have a point about people not caring. I know I find it hard to, guess because demo music too often doesn't agree with my tastes. Stupid early 90s Amiga demos ruined me. Grr!

To lug00ber and gloom, you do a very fine job of explaining why prerendered sound works better than realtime sound. But what I need is a reason that can't just as well be used to argue that prerendered effects work better than realtime effects. I thought that was clear from the context. ;)

Ie. "there's no point in realtime music because you can do the same with prerendered music and it sounds better" is the same argument as "there's no point in realtime effects because you can do the same with prerendered effects and it looks better".

with charlie saying that >=20MB on amiga doesn't make any sense, i don't see a reason to ever touch that limit again. (as long as we don't drastically change the specs for the compo amigas aswell, which is pretty unlikely at this point :).

as for pc, 64MB is a nice round number and it will probably stay for a while. i'm reluctant to make any commitments here, but it should be good for the next 3 breakpoints or so. after that - who can say?


i violently disagree here. a lot of people don't have the vocabulary to talk about music in any meaningful way (or at least that's how it seems to me), but that doesn't mean they don't care. i'm pretty sure that track one wouldn't have won at asm06 if the soundtrack hadn't been as great as it is (it tremendously helps carry the demo over all the somewhat half-baked material in the last third of the demo, for example - no hard feelings, smash/panta :). i'm absolutely convinced that noone would've looked at 1995 or variform twice if it wasn't for their excellent soundtracks (fuckings to kewlers!).

we certainly wouldn't have stood a chance with fr-025 against relais on bp2003 if it hadn't been for wayfinders excellent soundtrack. without it the whole demo crumbles into pieces.

all these examples are basically picked at random - i could easily name a dozen, but i think i've made my point already. just because most sceners aren't good at talking about music doesn't mean they don't care.



trust me, doom, they probably couldn't. to start with, most scene coders don't know jack about audio coding. unlike everything graphics related, where there's a whole bunch of books, tutorials etc. (and most of them crap, no doubt about it), there's woefully little usable material on audio processing in easy-to-digest form. sure, you can learn everything you need by visiting a university-level course in electrical engineering or signal processing (which i can very much recommend, btw :), but if you haven't worked with complex numbers or infinite series before, even the most basic things like digital filters are basically black magic. and i wish you good luck finding ANY coherent material on writing softsynths without spending a looong time searching - because those really knowledgeable on the subject make their living writing softsynths, not writing about them :)

finally, it's not the 70s anymore. people have pretty high expectations on sound quality and musicians have access to really high-quality audio processing software. chances you beat professional audio software in terms of sound quality are pretty slim, and musicians are not going to like it when they have to use your home-grown audio stuff out of little more than your personal vanity.

wow, this has gotten pretty long already. time to hit the "submit" button!

WTF?! What kind of nonsense is that? The soundtrack is almost 50% of a demo and I seriously doubt only a few people stick to that appreciation for a demo.

Hence the success of demoscene streams, mod archives and websites, mod compils back in the days, etc...

I even set a personal coup de coeur for the latest Einklang demo this morning because I just can't get the tune out of my head and because it totally made the demo for me.

I spend my time looking for good unused soundtracks for our next productions because it's so obvious the soundtrack is a huge part (if not the biggest) of the soul and success of a demo.

well, it didn't actually...

that's just what i said. a good soundtrack can keep a demo together but it doesn't ADD to it.

mind you, i agree with you, keops. it's just that in my experience, we're among the few.

(and hey, someone has to be the devil's advocate...)

except you can't. after i started doing kkapture i got pretty deeply into video stuff (going as far as starting a custom intra-only codec, which is still not finished but has replaced jpeg as format of choice in our more recent prods :) and one thing you learn pretty early is that video basically sucks.

i can comfortably watch fr-038 or fr-025 in 60fps at 1280x1024 on my current machine. now find a normal pc (i.e. without raid or special video hw) that is able to play a video at that resolution and framerate without dropping frames.

actually, if someone wrote a codec that was able to do that for demo-style video material, where nearly everything is moving most of the time (movies are a lot easier in that regard!), i'd be impressed. a lot more than i've been impressed about everything i've seen from the scene the last 2 years (because i've tried it and know just HOW fucking hard it is).

anyway, there's always been animations in demos and i see no harm in that, not even demos that are mostly animations (or images). but then, i'm one of the guys responsible for fr-05: konsum, fr-minus-06: ghettorocker and fr-047: malpasset, so i may be biased :)

"that's just what i said. a good soundtrack can keep a demo together but it doesn't ADD to it."
if elevating a demo above being the sum of its parts isn't adding to it, then what the hell is?

I think gloom said a half truth at least. The examples ryg mentioned are all from demos where what goes on on the screen and what goes on in the speakers work together. I'm not thinking about syncing the gfx to the beat, I'm talking about the visuals and the audio has the same mood (fr-025), that the visuals and audio interact (variform) or that the visuals and audio convey the same message (1995).
If the visuals and audio don't connect, one of the two will be the main focus of attention. And I don't see many in the audience with eyes closed at parties :)

So to some extent, people don't care about the music. People do care about a good demo though, and a good demo needs good music who works with good visuals.

lug00ber: yes we don't care, AT ALL, so please go away with your noisy toys and let us make good demos, kthxbye :)



and make a tune for us someday in the meantime ;)

And also, you might want to take this to the power of N with size-restricted compos. People forgive a bad synth.

@lug00ber (and gloom, I guess):



Ok, I'll eat my words. But if musicians are the reason for pushing the limit from 32MB to 64MB, I just have to smile and shake my head. Come on, a 128Kbits/44MHz MP3 is just fine for any demo, seriously. Or use OGG and improve sound quality but maintain the file size.


Which is actually one of my suggestions: Try limiting yourself and see if you don't take anything good with you from that experience (shit, I am repeating myself over and over again, but it's quite hard when people don't seem to understand what I'm trying to say...).

[quote]As for composing I would imagine that Amiga-musicians have experimented for years with what key sounds best in emulated 14 bit-mode, and how you best can structure your track to cover the flaws of a sound chip from two centuries ago. If they would only share these secrets with the rest of the world, music in general would be instantly better.{/quote]

Again, this improves some skills. If you are not especially familiar with EQ'ing, you willl be afterwards, trust me.



Yes, I guess you can't understand that some sceners love the computer they produce stuff for and really would go the extra mile in order to create productions for it. That's just how it is. There's not much you can do in overcoming the limits, other than trying to modify the wellknown standards, as Dr. Doom is trying to do in regards to ADPCM now. Squeezing those extra couple of CPU cycles while improving the sound quality marginally is actually fun to some of us. If you don't want to comprise and try to overcome challenges, why compete in compos? Why be in the scene at all?

Gargaj: From my point of view, many demos from the early 90's that are considered "classics" are remembered today because the music stirs up some powerful feelings. That is one way the music plays a role, I guess.

About the whole discussion here I must say: Have no fear, a good demo will be recognized whatever the limitations are or are not. The size of the demo is just one aspect of the whole experience. Sure, we have historical reasons for favouring small sized demos but this is only one (in 2006, rather artifical) restriction.

I see it as a symptom, not as a decease: The defining standards of a good demo is no longer forced upon us from above. In addition, visual expression of demos are merging into other fields like computer graphics, games-like-3d stuff, web-design'ish stuff etc. In desperation, one could be tempted to set up barriers between the demoscene and the rest of the world, and the most naive barrier is this size restriction thing. Well, it's not very creative. If we need to distiguish ourselves, there are several other ways of doing it.

I personally would like to see more effects that are 'true' demoeffects, whatever that would be. (And here I use the word 'effect' in a broad sence, so if that includes some insane normal-map, so be it.)

By the way; it is very dangerous to start the whole amiga-pc comparison. The amiga is not a single fixed hardware configuration anymore.

Finally, it will be is so much more interesting to discuss this after BP.