Golden Days: Sound Blaster Pro Edition

A resourcepack that transforms Golden Days’ Beta-style audio into an authentic MS-DOS Sound Blaster experience.

🔉 Why This Exists

Golden Days recaptures the magic of Minecraft Beta—both in look and sound. But why not push that nostalgia a step further? This pack applies a Sound Blaster Pro–style downsampling and noise process to Golden Days’ already classic SFX, delivering the gritty, warm buzz of early ‘90s PC audio. If you yearn for the tinny, “crunchy” timbre of DOS-era games, this is for you.

🎛️ Technical Deep Dive

Compared to our previous Euphonium-based project (ambience-focused), this time we're processing sound effects. The essence is the same—Sound Blaster Pro–style 8-bit audio—but with some key differences in the effect chain:

22.05 kHz Sample Rate

• Matches the Sound Blaster Pro’s hardware limit for games (half the 44.1 kHz CD standard).
• Reduces high-frequency aliasing, just like the original DAC’s analog low-pass filter.

8-Bit Depth + TPDF Dithering

• The SB Pro used 8-bit DACs for digital audio (e.g., VOC files).
• Dithering: TPDF (Triangular Probability Density Function) with Shibata noise shaping mimics the card’s analog noise floor, avoiding "digital grit" while preserving dynamics.

Brown Noise Layer

• Mixes a louder -45dB brown noise track (rather than -50dB) specifically for SFX, to emulate:
  • The SB Pro’s analog output stage.
  • CRT monitor interference (iconic for DOS gaming).

Low-Pass Filter @ 7000 Hz

• Slightly lower cutoff than the ambient filter (7500 Hz), dampening high frequencies more aggressively.
• Closer to how many early DOS games handled SFX channels for that crunchy vibe.

Overdrive + Gain Reduction

• Overdrive 4: A stronger distortion than the ambient version’s overdrive 2, channeling the SB Pro’s op-amp “bite” in sound effects.
• Gain -1: Prevents clipping after dithering and noise injection, preserving dynamic range.

⛅ Exception for Rain

• Rain is still ambient in spirit, so it uses the original chain from our Euphonium project (-50dB noise, lowpass 7500 Hz, overdrive 2). This keeps that subtle atmospheric quality consistent with the older approach.

📼 Authenticity Notes

• Tested against recordings from Duke Nukem 3D (SB Pro) and DOSBox-Staging’s SB emulation.
• The chain (sox effects + noise shaping) mirrors how games like Doom mixed PCM audio.

⚠️ Limitation: Always-Binaural Audio in Minecraft

Minecraft always uses binaural mixing to position sounds in 3D space. Although there is a toggle for HRTF (head-related transfer function), it doesn’t actually disable the underlying binaural engine—only the specific HRTF algorithm. This means that any noise embedded in an SFX is perceived as coming from that sound’s in-world location, rather than being a constant, global “floor” like on real Sound Blaster hardware.

Right now, there’s no known way to remove binaural processing entirely without forcing your entire system into mono output, which would be historically inaccurate (since Sound Blaster cards did support stereo).

⚙️ Compatibility

• Designed for Golden Days 1.11.0 (other versions untested!).

🖇️ Credits

• PoeticRainbow for creating the original Golden Days.
  • This add-on is not managed by PoeticRainbow or affiliated with the Golden Days team.
• Tools: sox for DSP, find/bash for batch processing.
• Inspiration: VOGONS community, SBEMU, and real SB16 hardware tests.

"It’s not a bug – it’s a feature (of 1992)."