Twilight Zone - Pinsound - Improving the Granner Mix | All modding!

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1

#1 3 years ago

OP

WIL

spblat

North Coast Pinball

Portland, OR

8y 53,550 301 19 18

As you may know,

OP
Quoted from Pinwizkid:
TZ was originally slated to be the first game to use the DCS system, but the system was not completed in time, and all of the audio had to be converted to play on the Yamaha YM2151 system at the last minute. Luckily, Chris saved a majority of the DCS audio on a tape which had been buried for 20 years... until now!

It's not perfect, but it's wonderful.

Quoted from spblat:
I’ve been playing it for a month now and while I miss the original jackpot music a bit, I think the original DCS score is absolutely brilliant. The mix of original low res callouts and amazing new stereo music is a bit jarring, and there are a range of (correctible) timing issues, but I think the good far outweighs the bad.

In this thread I'll document my efforts to bring the Granner mix closer to an ideal state. Feel free to use this thread to document your efforts as well! In my mind the "ideal" TZ mix would contain Granner's original DCS music, the original callouts in higher resolution (a man can dream) and other small issues fixed (examples below).

Issues with the sound pack available from pinsound as "Twilight Zone DCS Chris Granner":

1) The jackpot sound sounds like pinmame and isn't faithful to the original sound (this applies to the original pin sound mix too). Lots of discussion about it here:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/twilight-zone-owners-club/page/151

And here's a jackpot explosion that sounds pretty good!

Quoted from Alby87:
Here are the Wav file. Please keep in mind that Pinmame emulation don't recond the cleanest of the files
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=20693145007693380307

I believe placing that sound in sfx/1117896962-jackpot_score_pt_2_ should do the trick. I'll confirm later.

2) The original jackpot music, in my opinion, is iconic and amazing. The jackpot music in Granner's original DCS score is wonderful, but it's not the same tune. I'm inclined to replace it with the original music. The pinsound folder where this music lives is

music/1212594564-multiball_jackpot_

3) The mutiball restart music is wrong in the Granner mix in that the cue expires before the timer does, and then it has to restart. It's here:

music/2067125016-multiball_hurry_up_

The Granner mix sounds like this, and you can see the music expires before the timer does:

Should be easy to fix. I'll report back to confirm. What else would you do to improve the Granner Twilight Zone mix?

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#2 3 years ago

OP

WIL

spblat

North Coast Pinball

Portland, OR

8y 53,550 301 19 18

Those three changes were easy!

EDIT: Here is the downloadable "hurry up" recording. I did some copying and pasting to make the original DCS version longer.

https://clyp.it/rlxfz35e?token=29fdb5902fae7121a8f6fc4ba88b923c

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#3 3 years ago

J_C

Only68s

Pinside member

Saratoga Springs, UT

4y 66,300 381 15 6

Nice work! Are you going to put your edited file up for DL?

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#4 3 years ago

OP

WIL

spblat

North Coast Pinball

Portland, OR

8y 53,550 301 19 18

I am. My clyp.it account is having a temporary problem. Expect a downloadable multiball restart file today.

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#5 3 years ago

ROB

Rdoyle1978

Pinside member

6y 117K 16,984 14 6

good work! I've replaced a lot of the callouts with clips from the TV show. Lots of Rod stuff, but also Talky Tina and lots of official Twilight Zone music stuff. I haven't gotten the volume right on all the callouts but IMO it's getting there.

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#6 3 years ago

OP

WIL

spblat

North Coast Pinball

Portland, OR

8y 53,550 301 19 18

That is awesome. I hope you’ll share when you’re happier with it!

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#7 3 years ago

ROB

Rdoyle1978

Pinside member

6y 117K 16,984 14 6

OP
Quoted from spblat:
That is awesome. I hope you’ll share when you’re happier with it!

I should just hand it over to somebody else - I don't have the time or patience lately to deal with it unfortunately

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#8 3 years ago

OP

WIL

spblat

North Coast Pinball

Portland, OR

8y 53,550 301 19 18

Quoted from Rdoyle1978:
I should just hand it over to somebody else - I don't have the time or patience lately to deal with it unfortunately

Me me pick me

And if I can cross-quote you:

Quoted from Rdoyle1978:
And in Granner's defense, the DCS mix WAS officially unfinished, and Granner himself has expressed some reservations with how the mixing works on PinSound (on Whitewater in particular). He only got part way through before he had throw it all out and create a new soundtrack for the original hardware. Further, the actual "Granner Mix" really isn't. He provided the DAT tape with all the assets, but someone else pulled everything off the tape and inserted it where they thought the right music went. There are probably a couple of errors (e.g. the jackpot music)
IMO that DCS Pinsound mix in terms of the actual music is a 'best of both worlds' situation.

Hugely important point. I think we're quite lucky to have access to the DCS music that he made prior to being forced to start over. To be sure, Chris Granner deserves all the credit for what we like about the so-called TZ Granner mix, but none of the blame for its shortcomings.

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#9 3 years ago

ROB

Rdoyle1978

Pinside member

6y 117K 16,984 14 6

OP
Quoted from spblat:
Me me pick me
And if I can cross-quote you:

Hugely important point. I think we're quite lucky to have access to the DCS music that he made prior to being forced to start over. To be sure, Chris Granner deserves all the credit for what we like about the so-called TZ Granner mix, but none of the blame for its shortcomings.

Hear hear. This DCS mix is what made me buy a PinSound in the first place. Man, I think I only had ONE machine back then! How time flies...

I will pull the mix and send you (via Dropbox I guess) what I've done thus far - it's a LOT of hours of changes already, but still in a 'draft' state.

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1

#10 3 years ago

OP

WIL

spblat

North Coast Pinball

Portland, OR

8y 53,550 301 19 18

Quoted from Only68s:
Nice work! Are you going to put your edited file up for DL?

Link in edited post #2 above

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#11 3 years ago

DOH

awesome1

Pinside+ Frequent

6y 103K 2,125 6

Quoted from Rdoyle1978:
good work! I've replaced a lot of the callouts with clips from the TV show. Lots of Rod stuff, but also Talky Tina and lots of official Twilight Zone music stuff. I haven't gotten the volume right on all the callouts but IMO it's getting there.

Quoted from Rdoyle1978:
I will pull the mix and send you (via Dropbox I guess) what I've done thus far - it's a LOT of hours of changes already, but still in a 'draft' state.

OP
Quoted from spblat:
In this thread I'll document my efforts to bring the Granner mix closer to an ideal state.

Any chance a downloadable entire sound package will be available? I'd love to give it a try!

Appreciate all of the hard work on this spblat & Rdoyle1978!

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#12 3 years ago

OP

WIL

spblat

North Coast Pinball

Portland, OR

8y 53,550 301 19 18

Someday. I don’t yet have those updated call outs in my hot little hands and in the meantime I have been making Getaway mixes. Follow my “game room” thread for updates on that. I’ll post here when I resume TZ stuff

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/spblat-s-game-room

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#13 3 years ago

DNA

dnaman

DNAMAN

9y 81,350 1,749 26

I've just discovered this post and can say that I too purchased my first Pinsound for TZ. I like the options so far but Rod's callouts are completely lost in the mix.

If anyone is willing to share the current WIP that would be fantastic and greatly appreciated. Thank you spblat & Rdoyle1978 for your efforts thus far!

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3

#14 3 years ago

ROB

Rdoyle1978

Pinside member

6y 117K 16,984 14 6

Quoted from dnaman:
I've just discovered this post and can say that I too purchased my first Pinsound for TZ. I like the options so far but Rod's callouts are completely lost in the mix.
If anyone is willing to share the current WIP that would be fantastic and greatly appreciated. Thank you spblat & rdoyle1978 for your efforts thus far!

Working on my TZ tonight dealing with a host of switch errors - I can grab that USB drive and Dropbox it. Much quicker than trying to find it in my mess of files in the studio