@kobushi: Thank you so much for your help!
I told one of my playtesters, Ajogamer, who had initially pointed out the sound issues in the first place (he has a better ear for music/sound than I do), about this. He tested it out using the (1993) PC-9821As configuration and he had this to say:
Quote:
We tried out the emulator and settings Kobushi recommended, and while I do think it sounded slightly better with certain songs than in the previous version of Neko Project we were using, it still has most of the same sound issues, unfortunately.
Honestly, I'm unsure if the way the songs plays in Neko would technically be "less accurate" or not, but if I were to try and describe the difference, I'd say that certain songs when played under Neko sound like they not only have different instrumentation, but also have certain parts of a song over or under emphasized. While some songs will wind up sounding similar aside from slightly different instrumentation (which can sound pretty nice in both versions), others will sound drastically different, with certain melodies sounding off, or being barely present in a song.
Rather than try too hard to describe what I mean, it'd likely be easier to give some examples, so I decided to compile a folder with some wave recordings of some of Peret em Heru's songs as we can currently get them to play in Neko (using the settings Kobushi recommended), along with some .MML files of the same songs, and a MML player, in order to show how they sound in D2Win:
https://www.mediafire.com/?2ycduzspzktbj6h
I focused more on songs where there were more significant differences, such as ones where certain instruments or even the entire melody sounds notably off, though I also included some where the differences were more slight, mostly for contrast purposes.
I'm not too familiar with PC-98 Music emulation or the MML format in general, so I'm unsure if the way songs are played in the included music player is truly more accurate, but I do imagine it's closer to how the composer intended them to sound, and is almost certainly closer to how we'd prefer the game to sound on release, since the melodies are more consistently present, with less parts that sound 'muted' or 'erratic', for lack of a better way to describe it.
I apologize for the inconvenience. If anyone can help us shine some light on this would be greatly appreciated.