Minecraft: Sound Blaster Pro Edition

A resource pack that transforms Minecraft's default audio (excluding music) into an authentic MS-DOS Sound Blaster experience.

🔉 Why This Pack Exists

Modern Minecraft sounds are too clean and sterile! After working on our previous packs Euphonium and Golden Days, where we added analog noise and reduced sound quality, it was time to process the game's standard sound library. Now all sound effects and ambient sounds have acquired that retro characteristic that was typical of early 90s computers. Want to feel like you're playing on a DOS system? This is exactly what you need.

🎛️ Technical Features

The pack applies various effects to two main categories: sound effects and background sound. The main concept - emulation of 8-bit Sound Blaster Pro audio with a sample rate of 22.05 kHz - remains unchanged, but with slight differences in noise levels, filtering, and distortion for optimal processing of each sound type.

22.05 kHz Sample Rate

• Matches the hardware limitations of Sound Blaster Pro for games (half the CD standard 44.1 kHz).
• Reduces high-frequency distortion, imitating the analog low-pass filtering of original SB Pro equipment.

8-Bit Depth + TPDF Dithering

• SB Pro used 8-bit DACs (for example, in VOC file format).
• Dithering: TPDF (Triangular Probability Density Function) with frequency-dependent noise addition Shibata recreates the card's natural noise, avoiding digital harshness while preserving audio details.

AMBIENT SOUND PROCESSING

For rain, thunder, underworld and cave noises, background lava and water loops, portals, burning flame, gliding flight, respawn anchor humming, stalactite droplets, conduit flow, sea core effect, and bubble streams:

• Brown Noise @ -50 dB: Subtle hissing to emulate background interference.
• LPF @ 7500 Hz: Smooth cutting of high frequencies to create the classic SB Pro atmosphere.
• Overdrive 2 + Gain -1: Light distortion reminiscent of SB Pro's output stage, with slight volume reduction to prevent clipping after adding noise and dithering.

SOUND EFFECT PROCESSING

All other default sounds (mobs, player actions, block interactions, interface sounds, etc.) receive more pronounced "crunchy" processing:

• Brown Noise @ -45 dB: Louder to emphasize the sharp effect of short sounds.
• LPF @ 7000 Hz: More distinctly cut high frequencies with characteristic "bite" of the DOS era.
• Overdrive 4 + Gain -1: More aggressive distortion to convey the "grit" feel of SB Pro operational amplifiers in active action sounds.

📼 Authenticity Implementation

• Testing was conducted on real SB Pro recordings from Duke Nukem 3D and DOSBox-Staging emulation.
• The software processing chain (sox effects + frequency-dependent noise addition) closely imitates technologies used in many DOS games (for example, Doom) for mixing PCM audio.

⛔ Music Not Included

Music from Minecraft is not contained in this pack. It will be processed in a separate project that recreates tracks using OPL2-based soundfont, accurately reflecting FM synthesis technologies of the early 90s (for example, AdLib, Sound Blaster Pro).

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⚠️ Feature: Binaural Audio Processing in Minecraft

Minecraft always applies binaural mixing to position sounds in 3D space. Although there's a switch for HRTF (head-related transfer functions), it doesn't actually disable the binaural engine - just bypasses individual HRTF algorithm processing. This means any noise built into a sound effect is positioned within the game world from that sound's location, rather than being a constant global background presence as on actual Sound Blaster hardware.

Currently, there's no way to completely remove binaural processing except forcing the entire system into mono output, which would be historically inaccurate (since Sound Blaster hardware supported stereo sound).

⚙️ Compatibility

(n/d)