AdLib Music

Synthesized PC music format which came just after horrible beeping PC Speaker. :) Most popular years: 1989-1993.

Common Platforms: PC Dos
Common file types: AdLib

Where to download tunes

Adlib music archive - This very new site became the biggest resource of AdLib music at the time. Though it has only 29 very well ripped game archives at the times, it is really biggest site dedicated to AdLib music. Lot of great AdLib tunes isn't currently anywhere on the web, which is really pity - so I hope this will be changed soon.

Some more thoughts

The first sound card, which offers really good synthesized music in games of that time is AdLib. The music chipset is based on synthesised sounds of Yamaha OPL-2 synthesizer, and this is very big step ahead comparing to horrible beeps of PC Speaker before. Especially as Creative Labs became market leader with Sound Blaster, the AdLib music became real standard in PC games (First SoundBlaster used the same Yamaha OPL-2 chipset, which was completely compatible with AdLib, SoundBlaster Pro used OPL-3, 100% backward compatible with OPL-2). Great PC game tunes like Goblins (1-3), Mega Race, Inca, Whale's Voyage or Sierra Adventures came with pure AdLib music. Especially european composers took the AdLib standard long time alive, because AdLib music was relatively more easy convertable from Amiga tunes than upcoming MIDI standard. AdLib music, though with lower quality, was the same on any sound card and environment, so this was biggest difference of the upcoming MIDI standard, which soon replaced the quality music in PC games.

Players and other useful links

AdPlug - Winamp2 plugin and DOS player to play AdLib music