CMF
| Creative Music File | |||||
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| Developer: | Creative Labs | ||||
| Header: | Custom | ||||
| Content: | Instructional | ||||
| Instruments: | Internal | ||||
Target Output
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| Released: | 19??-??-?? | ||||
| First Game: | ? | ||||
| Extensions |
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The Creative Music Format (CMF) was created by Creative Labs in order to play music on their Sound Blaster series of sound cards. The file structure is similar to MDI and ROL, as it contains all the necessary information to be sent to an OPL2 chip. However, unlike ROL, CMF files have the instrument definitions built into the file. This means you don't need a separate BNK file, but it also means that CMF files are intrinsically larger than ROL files.
Despite Creative Labs' attempts, the CMF format never really took off as well as AdLib's ROL format, probably because Creative Labs never released a CMF editor program to compete with the AdLib Visual Composer. Without an editor, CMF files could only be made by converting songs from other formats, a process which often lost some of the sound of the original.
Few players properly play CMF files. The most accurate CMF playback comes from Creative Labs's Play CMF program since it was developed by the same group that created the CMF format. However, the program is lacking in features. There is another program called MuchMusic for DOS which plays CMF back very accurately, and supports looping.
Players
- AdPlug - DOS, foobar2000, UNIX, Winamp, XMMS
- Camoto - Linux, Windows
- MuchMusic - DOS
- Multi Media Machine - DOS
- Play CMF - DOS
- Winamp - Android, Macintosh, Windows
Converters
CMF to ?
- CMF to MIDI - DOS - MIDI
- SBTimbre - DOS - IBK
? to CMF
- ROL to CMF - DOS - ROL
- Vinyl to CMF - DOS - MUS (AdLib), SND (AdLib)
Games
|
Released |
Title |
Sample |
| 1991-??-?? | The Magic Candle II: The Four and Forty (DOS) | |
| 1992-03-?? | Word Rescue (DOS) | |
| 1992-??-?? | Dyna Blaster (DOS) | |
| 1992-??-?? | Jill of the Jungle (DOS) | |
| 1992-??-?? | Kiloblaster (DOS) | |
| 1993-??-?? | Solar Winds (DOS) | |
| 1994-??-?? | Traffic Department 2192 (DOS) | |
| 1994-??-?? | Xargon (DOS) | |
Technical
- All CMF files begin with "CTMF".
- There are two versions of CMF files, 1.0 and 1.1. They're similar, but there are internal structure differences.
- CMF files uses MIDI format to store music notation data.
Links
- shikadi.net/moddingwiki/CMF_Format - Shikadi.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Music_File - Wikipedia.
