But Legend of Xanadu II is about as good as it gets and sounds like late 90's big budget Square RPG music, only without all the reverb and misc distortion, even though it's pure WSG sound without any samples:
http://superpcenginegrafx.net/misc/loxii46.mp3
Are you sure the "tom toms" in that first track there aren't at all sampled? I mean, if they are they certainly aren't the best I've heard, but I am a little suspicious. Maybe I only feel that way because some of the rest of the music seems to drop out. Maybe it's just a more-than-one-channel effect...
I actually tested
other tracks before, ones which sounded
more likely to have been using samples, but now I'm not sure about this one.
It definitely isn't using adpcm, so if it is sampled, it would be the only CD game I've heard of using samples through regular PCE channels at all, but in this case also using all the rest for chip tunes while
also using the adpcm channel for all other samples.
The other tracks I tested broke down to distinct chip sounds as I played each channel individually and each instrument sounded like WSG.
For this track (recording linked below), I played the boss fight in Magic Engine on my laptop and recorded the audio into my desktop PC. Once I gain control, I go into the menu screen to pause the fight while the music continues to play. I then turn off the channels one at a time until only the one playing the suspicious beat remains. Then I play each channel individually for a bit, so you can hear each instrument on their own. Then after playing the channel with the drum beat for a while, I turn the adpcm channel on and play the boss battle for a bit, giving you the contrast of good quality adpcm samples against that beat. Then the beat alone plays for a bit:
http://superpcenginegrafx.net/misc/loxiitest1.mp3
