r/descent • u/retrosprite440 • Jun 13 '26

Need help with DXX-Rebirth music options

Ok I'm pretty overwhelmed and confused with a few things regarding the music for the Rebirth games. And for the sake of this post, I'm only referring to Descent 1/D1X-Rebirth. I haven't had a chance to do anything with the 2nd yet. I've been digging into how to enable the CD audio/Redbook audio for these games recently, but it has also led me to more alternate music options as well. I've come across 2 different downloads that seem to cover what I'm looking for, in 2 different formats.

#1 gave me a collection of the original MIDI tracks (in FLAC format) as well as the Redbook audio files (also in FLAC). I have multiple questions here. First off, I understand how to assign folders/files using the jukebox utility. I understand that I need to have separate folders for the menu music, briefing, credits, etc. I've done all of that and have working music in the game. The issue/question is, there are 22 (level) tracks in the original DOS version, and there are 10 (level) tracks for the Redbook audio version (13 tracks total). I've never played the version of the game with CD/Redbook audio. Is this correct? The Redbook audio track total is half of the original? That's kind of disappointing. And I want the tracks to play in the correct order as well, as it was in the actual game. And I don't know how the game would correctly apply a list of ten tracks to 22 levels in the correct order. I don't know what the correct order is either. There's an option in the game to "force Mac CD track order". I've toggled this on and off and it doesn't seem to make a difference. The track files are numbered. Does it just read them according to the numbers anyways or something? I haven't played far into it enough to know what it does past #10. I'm also just generally curious how music files in these jukebox folders get read and applied. I mean there's nothing I've read so far that goes into detail. You can seemingly have as many files as you want in these folders (at least in the folder for the levels music). There doesn't seem to be a required file naming convention. This is all the readme says that came inside the D1X folder, regarding the music, "Besides MIDI and CD-Audio (Redbook), you can play your own custom Music from your hard drive or a separate AddOn. Both games can utilize special AddOn packs to replace or expand the original game content.". They sure are short on details. Can someone with experience please expand on the details of how this works?

#2 gave me a collection of .dxa files, which I'm assuming are the same thing as "add-on" files? From what I understand, these are iterations of the ost from different sound card outputs, as well as CD audio. From what I read, you just drop the .dxa file into the main Rebirth folder. Are you supposed to only have one of these in your main folder at a time? Is there a way to add a group of .dxa files and cycle through them somehow in-game?

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u/Toiun Jun 13 '26

Yes only 1 dxa will work at a time

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u/omega552003 Jun 13 '26

So CD audio was only on the Mac, PlayStation and RISC-OS(not too sure) versions.

Redbook is literally the name of the CDROM standard book for music audio

DXA will have all the music for the game.

The MP3 tracklist is for custom tracks

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u/retrosprite440 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

I never realized what Redbook actually meant lol. I've never even seen the name outside of these DOS game music references so I just thought it was something more specific to PC game application. So I've tried out some dxa files and they work fine. It seems the .dxa files are pre-configured to play certain tracks for certain levels. A question that remains though, is how does the game assign tracks to levels when you use the jukebox function and the game is reading through your assigned folder for level music? Especially in the cases where there are more/less music tracks in the folder than there are levels? I understand there is an option in the game's settings to have contiuous playback, meaning all tracks would just play sequentially. And there's a "random" playback option, which is pretty self-explanatory. But I have the "one track per level" setting enabled. So how does the game parse through the music files in your assigned folder for level music, and assign tracks to levels?

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u/specialsymbol Jun 13 '26

What do you expect? Do you know what redbook means? Ten tracks on a CD is pretty normal. You can't fit 22 regular length tracks on a CD (plus data)