Marathon music through Timbres of Heaven

[herecomethej2000]

I took the liberty of running the Marathon 1 midi files though fluidsynth with a modern soundfont — specifically Don Allen's Timbres of Heaven 3.1. Is it better then the old quicktime based ogg files? I don't know. The origional music was clearly composed around quicktime. But it is different, and the crisp percussion and modern midi instruments are very satisfying.

Music

[Shocktart]

You couldn't put it on the YouTube?

[Crater Creator]

I listened through these while doing some housework today. Thoughts:

The vocals in 01 sounds watery, but the percussion is good.
The organ in 02 is good; the string instrument not so much.
Some pitches of the vocals in 03 get swallowed up; you can't really hear them.
The violins in 04 sound very synthetic.
The vocals in 05 have an exaggerated 'wah wah' quality that makes the notes indistinct.
I like the instruments in 06, but different pitches seem to vary in volume (I wasn't using an equalizer).
I've listened to Craig Hardgrove's remixes of these songs so many times, it's hard not to think of them as the 'right' version and feel like these are missing something.
Track 10 sounds somehow more profound or mature than the original. I like it.
The vocals in 12 are sufficiently forte piano to maintain the punchiness of the original.
In 13, it's weird, like the virtual singers switch between singing "bow" and "bah". And they're watery. The woodwinds are better than the strings.
The harmony in 14 covers up the melody. The strings are very synthetic like in 04. But I probably just don't like this song in the first place.

[herecomethej2000]

It's midi, not a live recording. As far as midi instruments go, they are among the best outside of shelling out hundreds of dollars. The synthetic sound is primarily because the instrument choice. The midi patch is literally called synth strings. Most of the solo instruments sound more authentic. Normally I would avoid choir ahhs, but it's used heavily here. I hear the melody fine in 14 due to the different register, but again, it's clearly written around quicktime synth, and I wouldn't say everything is better at all.

I didn't do any remixing. Just fed it through, normalize and compress one track which would have been mostly too quiet.
[EDIT]
Actually... Now that you mention it, these midi files really changed up the instrumentation, I forgot where I got them...I found some others in the search which clearly are more authentic.

[herecomethej2000]

there I updated the first post with the more authentic files. Had to compress the heck out of a few as the Timbers drums, though fantastic, were crushing them. And track 14 needed to equalize a lot of high pitched noise. Beats me how it got it. I blame fluidsynth.

[herecomethej2000]

To make it work in game I really had to compress most of the files even further... And that's with the music level at max. If you downloaded it before, be sure to download it again.

[herecomethej2000]

tracks 13 and 9 needed more care. That french horn in 13, cerca 3:55, sounds awesome. These really sound great in game! Is there a way I can make a plugin with replacement music? Or is it hardcoded to look in the music folder?

[Edit]
Ah I see there is no mml for music

[VikingBoyBilly]

It's at least halfway decent.