"Game music has come a loooooong way since the early days of PC speakers and basic MIDI cards. Is this as good as it gets, or is there some other audio and musical advance still on the horizon to impress us?"

Submitted by: Darrell

Answered by: Gary Spinrad (composer, Sierra On-Line)

"Of course! Most games are running at a sample rate of 16 bits 22050Hz, mono. From there, the obvious leap is the one to 16 bit 44.1KHz stereo. Many games have mucked about with stereo, but they sacrifice something in the process, be that bit rate or sampling rate. As storage and CPU goes up, so will the quality of the sound.

"Then, of course, there's always surround sound. Mmmmmm..."

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