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Community => The Lobby => Topic started by: Saga Musix on February 18, 2008, 22:31:17

Title: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on February 18, 2008, 22:31:17
Yeah, old question, sure, but how's it nowadays? I think we already had this kind of question back then in the "old" mod archive, but how's it now?

XM or IT?
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: m0d on February 19, 2008, 14:17:34
I have no idea :)
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: woolters on February 19, 2008, 17:48:56
Tough choice

I prefer .XM, but that is mainly because I got used to its effect commands. Switching to .IT means learning all commands all over again.
And there are some commands that .IT doesn't have (I think), which .XM does. But then again, same goes for .IT. ;D
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on February 19, 2008, 18:08:27
when coming to commands, IT is far superior to XM imo, i can't think  of anything that XM can do but IT doesn't, except pan slides in the volume column :)
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: drspa44 on February 19, 2008, 18:44:51
My tracker, being a bit ancient, has the odd trouble playing ITs. They always sound a bit different to what they are supposed to sound like. It plays MODs, S3Ms, XMs fine but has always distorted other formats. For this, I vote XM - even though IT seems to be the "wave of the future!"
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: raina on February 19, 2008, 20:52:20
Oh wow, like this topic still didn't surface too often without doing it on purpose..
Dunno what .IT would look like now if it wasn't for all the features introduced in .XM but its development continued for longer so it's only natural .IT is the superior format. Too bad there's no decent tracker for working with it. ;)
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Ceekayed on February 20, 2008, 19:30:55
Jojo: IT does pan slides in the volume column too, in a way. ;)

And yeah, it never should've been a debate whether of .it or .xm is superior since .it is techincally far superior and that's a fact, not a matter of opinion. Whether fasttracker or impulse tracker is better is debatable though. Each to his own.
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on February 20, 2008, 20:21:51
Jojo: IT does pan slides in the volume column too, in a way. ;)
well, i'm not speaking of pxx... ;D

one feature of the XM format one may also like are the delta-stored samples which make it harder to grab samples directly from XM files (f.e. modules stored in one big file are not visible anymore).
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: pailes on May 17, 2008, 11:05:53
Oh wow, like this topic still didn't surface too often without doing it on purpose..
Dunno what .IT would look like now if it wasn't for all the features introduced in .XM but its development continued for longer so it's only natural .IT is the superior format. Too bad there's no decent tracker for working with it. ;)

I second that. The early versions of IT were just an improved ST3, and for a very long time XM was still the format with more features. As time went by IT took over the features from FT2 and introduced new features as well.
I guess Triton was just too busy programming games at that time ;)

FT2 was the first tracker to really leap ahead from the old regular module formats which only offered samples without any fancy instrument attributes like envelopes, auto-vibrato etc.
Also FT2 had a way more professional look and it takes way more time to code an FT2 style GUI than a simple text mode interface.
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: barryvan on May 20, 2008, 11:40:08
OpenMPT has certainly... "extended" the IT format a lot. I use OpenMPT exclusively now. Of course, all of its extensions mean that it's essentially a new file-format, but still, it's got its roots in IT. :)
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Koli on May 20, 2008, 20:38:38
I prefer XM, mostly because it had better hardware support in the ol' DOS days. Getting IT's filters to work back in those days was quite tough because of the variety of sound cards available :)
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on May 20, 2008, 23:18:42
the variety of soundcards was not really the problem. almost all soundcards weren't able to do hardware mixing at all (GUS and AWE are exceptions) so everything had to be performed in software anyway. When IT filters were introduced (this was very late, 1996 or even 1997 IIRC), the IT format was already quite advanced, but CPUs were still slow, so you had to have a MMX-capable CPU in order to get filters in Impulse Tracker. But seriously, I think it's very blindfold to judge a format by hardware support. I mean, would you as an artist despense with sexy filters just because of the hardware? Especially nowadays, when every IT player (well, except WinAmp -_-) can handle filters?
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Koli on May 21, 2008, 00:50:00
To be honest I haven't come across many IT modules that make "very good use" of the filters, so I can't really judge on it  :)
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on May 21, 2008, 13:50:19
oh, you're definitely missing a lot then ;P
Listen to Zanoma's files (http://modarchive.org/member.php?69484) for example... There are just 4 of them, but they nicely show how good filters can work. (Listen in ModPlug)
Oh yeah, and of course my tunes... ;D
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: raina on May 21, 2008, 20:40:33
Doesn't IT play them? Are they not real .ITs?
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on May 22, 2008, 01:46:11
they sound better in modplug because Zanoma also made use of S99 effects (Reverb) which can only be played in Modplug Player / Tracker.
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: raina on May 22, 2008, 18:17:12
Yeah, old question, sure, but how's it nowadays?

So is it about .XM and .IT or something ModPlug introduced and decided to call the same? Doesn't that make .XMs have filters as well and what, maybe VST? I don't know, I seriously have no idea about Windows trackers.
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on May 22, 2008, 18:40:51
well, this (not-so-serious) question was meant to compare the original formats, not MPTM (modplug's own format which should replace the custom IT extensions in "an unknown phuture"*)...

*where's that line from? :P
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: drspa44 on May 23, 2008, 18:04:24
(modplug's own format which should replace the custom IT extensions in "an unknown phuture"*)...

*where's that line from? :P

Unknown Phuture by Elwood  ;D
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: pailes on May 25, 2008, 17:13:05
You guys are always talking about IT "filters" but as a matter of fact there is only one type of filter in IT. And that's a low pass resonant filter. There is no IT "filters" or whatever, it really sounds like IT had a crazy bunch of them. I just wanted to get this straight.

Another word about hardware support:
At the time IT introduced virtual channels with NNAs (and later the low pass filter) the de-facto scene standard sound card was still the GUS and many, many composers had one. But all the fancy IT features were only available with software mixing and I think that's one reason why a lot of people did stick to FT2 and XM.
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on May 25, 2008, 18:27:19
You guys are always talking about IT "filters" but as a matter of fact there is only one type of filter in IT. And that's a low pass resonant filter. There is no IT "filters" or whatever, it really sounds like IT had a crazy bunch of them. I just wanted to get this straight.
haha, okay then let's call it IT filter and OpenMPT filters - OpenMPT also got highpass filters :P
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: pailes on May 25, 2008, 18:43:51
I thought this thread was about Impulse Tracker and FastTracker II.

Renoise can also import XM/IT/MOD files and you can add plenty of digital fx but I guess that's not the point :P
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on May 25, 2008, 19:15:04
that wasn't meant to be a serious contribution :P
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Greippi on July 13, 2008, 14:46:54
IT. It's more advanced, and I like the text based interface of Impulse Tracker!
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: pailes on July 13, 2008, 17:12:50
IT. It's more advanced, and I like the text based interface of Impulse Tracker!
Unfortunately the more advanced format doesn't automatically turn a bad song into a good song ;)
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: dr_mabuse on July 24, 2008, 13:41:08
i prefer XM & MOD format... And for Interfaces, i really "hate" to learn 564258249856 keyboard shortcuts for operations you can do with a mouse 100 times faster  ;D

The Protracker / Fasttracker interface is unbeaten if you ask me  ;D

EDIT: Doesnt mean, IT format sukks  :police: ... But i didnt feel "home" in ImpulseTracker & Clones..
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: Saga Musix on July 27, 2008, 19:25:33
Well, it's certainly a question of taste if you prefer mouse or keyboard. I myself also prefer keyboard shortcuts which are pretty fast if you know them, and in OpenMPT you can even create them yourself (no need to learn new shortcuts!).
Title: Re: XM vs IT
Post by: raina on July 27, 2008, 20:16:19
It's a common misconception that FT2 was mouse driven. While working, there's practically a keyboard shortcut for everything and experienced musicians hardly use the mouse. But the fact that you can ALSO do more things with the mouse probably made it more accessible to beginners.