The Changing Face of CD Music and CD Games By Richard Hewison PC games can only play CD audio when they are not accessing the CD for computer data. This obviously limits the points in a game when CD audio can be played. Recently, games like "Command & Conquer" have devised ingenious methods for getting around this problem, but generally speaking CD audio is limited to title screens and convenient stop gaps (like in between levels). However, what you might not realise is that quite often there is loads more CD audio on your PC CD-ROM than you ever get to hear during the game. I decided to go through my CD-ROM collection and discover how many games had CD audio tracks and if so, what were they like? First thing to point out is that playing a PC CD-ROM in a normal hi-fi CD audio player might destroy your speakers. PC (and Mac) CD-ROMs store all the computer data on Track 1. All hi-fi CD players will think that Track 1 is an audio CD track. Some will realise it isn't and mute the sound when you play it, whilst others won't. Listening to computer data on a CD-ROM through your hi-fi is similar to the old screeches the Sinclair Spectrum used to make. If you have the volume up when playing this racket, you could blow your speakers. There is one very simple solution - don't play Track 1! Skip straight to Track 2 and play it from there. If there isn't a Track 2 then the CD-ROM doesn't contain any CD audio tracks. Simple. Ploughing through my collection, I found a large number of games with quite extensive CD audio tracks. Some of these games do make a point of mentioning this on their packaging, but others don't. One of the best examples comes from one of the earliest CD-ROM games, namely Virgin's "The 7th Guest". The music is orchestral in style, with vocal chants and cues from the in-game music too. The music style suits the haunted house theme perfectly. Shame about the game really! (By comparison, the sequel "The 11th Hour" comes on four CDs and contains no CD audio at all!). Activision's "Return to Zork" is another CD blessed with a full orchestral score - and very good it is too. Nearly all of Mindscape's recent PC CD-ROM games include CD audio. I get the impression that they are using the same composer though. The music found on the Win '95 game "Al Unser Jr Arcade Racing" is boring and highly repetitive. Slide in the "Warriors" CD (a 3D beat 'em up) and you'd think you were listening to the same music! Loud, repetitive and mostly tuneless. Things improve when you listen to the Games Workshop license "Warhammer - Shadow of the Horned Rat". This is more synthesiser music but in a fantasy war tempo. It does become a little repetitive after a while, but it isn't too bad. "Alien Olympics" has nearly 40 tracks, but some are very short. It includes quite a few well known tunes, one track mixes in around half a dozen nursery rhymes, whilst others include re-workings of famous classical music themes. My second reason for writing this short article is to introduce the concept of enhanced music CDs. Some of you might have heard about this development over the last six months or so. Instead of CD-ROMs including CD audio as a bonus, the music industry is now introducing audio CDs that contain computer data as a bonus. You might be thinking "Hang on a minute. That's the same thing isn't it?". Not quite. The approach is different. The main problem with CD-ROMs is the "Don't play Track 1" scenario which I have already described. The music industry definitely doesn't want to get blamed for blowing peoples' speakers (although with some so-called "modern music" I think they are already committing that particular crime!). The answer was to gather around a table and come up with a new concept. An umbrella term was coined (Enhanced CD) and under that concept you will also find CD Extra. At the moment, nearly all of the current "Enhanced CDs" use a method known as 'hidden track' to store the computer data. In theory, you buy a music CD and take it home. Whack it into your hi-fi and it will calculate e.g. 74 mins worth of music, but it will only play 44 mins of it. The remaining 30 mins of space is taken up by computer data. This data is not occupying the traditional Track 1, so the hi-fi won't try and play it. The speaker problem is solved. However, current PCs (and Macs) expect the data to be on Track 1. If you stick this CD in your CD-ROM drive and try and look at its contents, you will be told it isn't a computer CD (or you will get a list of the CD audio tracks only). In Win 95 it will automatically treat it as an audio CD. To get around this problem, new software drivers are needed for your CD-ROM drive. Unfortunately, all does not come up smelling of roses. There is some mild confusion at the moment regarding the issue of compatibility. I mentioned that the Enhanced CDs use the 'hidden track' method. CD Extra discs are multi-session and use another method to incorporate CD audio and CD computer data on the same silver disc. Whilst the 'hidden track' CDs might not work on some drives (NEC for sure, and any ATAPI based drives also don't like it), the CD Extra format should work fine. For example, to test out both our PCs' drives I borrowed a disc that was labelled CD + (the early name used for the 'Enhanced CD' format) and I bought another (the soundtrack from the Nixon movie, by Oliver Stone) which was labelled 'Enhanced CD'. Whilst both discs worked fine on our SCSI double-speed CD-ROM drive, neither worked on our Quad speed IDE (ATAPI) drive. I then received a CD Extra disc which worked perfectly on both the SCSI and the ATAPI drive. A number of people in both the computer and the music industry have forecast a major headache for the music industry, which isn't used to all the incompatibility problems the software industry is plagued with. However, when Enhanced CD/CD Extra does work it can be quite amusing. Certainly, people who might have access to a CD-ROM drive but who aren't into computers may find the extra data on the CD entertaining. The software being written for these CDs is being kept deliberately simple. What you get is usually some lyrics on screen, the ability to play the tracks and read info on the music as it plays, or you might get some digitised movie clips too. So far, the software has originated on Mac and has then been ported over to the PC and run using Director 4.0 and the PC version of Quicktime video (for Windows). For example, the "Real World Notes" CD is CD Plus compliant, and contains two "Interactive Tracks". The first is for both PC and Mac, whilst the second (the Real World Christmas card) is only for the Mac. Anyway, the PC track contains a simple 4mb Windows .exe file which you can run from the standard Windows file manager. You will then be presented with an odd looking screen showing a digitised patch of lush green grass and a collection of mushrooms! No instructions are supplied - it's a matter of experimenting with the mushrooms (ahem...). You soon discover that 9 of the mushrooms are fixed in place, whilst the other 9 can be picked up and put down again where ever you like on the grassy area. You then notice that each movable mushroom has an identical looking mushroom that can't be moved. By picking up said mushroom and dropping it on its twin, a video clip from the Real World Music get together is played! Once you've done this for each mushroom (9 mushrooms so 9 separate digitised video clips) you select the big mushroom in the bottom corner to exit. You are then played a bonus 10th video clip (a four minute Peter Gabriel video no less) before the program finishes. It sounds simple, and it is - but the main reason for buying the CD was the audio tracks so this is a bonus. The soundtrack CD to "Nixon" is also of the 'Enhanced CD' format. This gives you info on the movie, interviews with the director (Oliver Stone) and the composer (John Williams), film biographies for the cast and a digitised version of the 3 minute movie trailer. Being a collector of film soundtracks I quite like this idea, but only where there is genuine spare room on the CD for the computer data. I can see the music publishers rubbing their hands and recording enough music to fill a CD (74 mins) and then only releasing 2/3 of the tracks and adding computer data on the remainder, then re-releasing the music CD with the bonus tracks at a later date! (Sneaky so and so's these publishers). - o -