Kappa971 wrote on 2024-04-07, 23:11:

It's not the sound quality that makes the SC-55 unique

I dont really consider the SC55 unique.

Kappa971 wrote on 2024-04-07, 23:11:

but the fact that every midi music from every single game will sound 100 times more balanced than any more modern soundfont or synthesizer with General MIDI support.

what? the mind boggles. i didnt realise what trash the xv5080 was in comparison, and damn the integra 7 is just door stop, who ever compose on that now instead of the sc55!

Kappa971 wrote on 2024-04-07, 23:11:

I'm not a musician

hmmmmm ok.

the point I was trying to make was, GM has been available to everyone since win95, so its not this unknown thing, where as MT32 was much more an unknown thing for most people, so munt had a specialness to it. something that emulates GM, not so much.... and oh hey, the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth was licensed from Roland with the sc55 sound set.... for win95! theres a reason why things sound like they do in the microsoft gs wavetable synth. pretty good for 1996 emulation.

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-04-08, 00:33:

everquest's music, which was XMI, not midi, was composed for 1meggm.sf2 (the rom samples inside the awe32 card) and the included […]
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everquest's music, which was XMI, not midi, was composed for 1meggm.sf2 (the rom samples inside the awe32 card) and the included synthusr.sbk.

it was NOT composed for sound canvas at all, so no point trying to play it on this emulator.

I know this for a fact.

The midi file you have may or may not be an accurate conversion.

Also, it's not just games that were composed for sound canvas.

Also, most game midi that hits polyphony limits on a sc55 was composed for sc88Pro, which has bigger limits.

I hope the emulator can be extended to emulate sc88pro as well.

I know this was not composed for an SC-55 but for SB. We have already examined the case thoroughly here:
Significant differences with certain MIDI files across Roland synthesizers
The above test had nothing to do with what it was composed for originally.
The point was to show a case where you can clearly hear the difference between a single and dual intsances of SC-55 because of polyphony limit. This example is a perfect case in this sense.
BTW, there is no such sane conversion from XMI to Midi that increases the note/voice polyphony. In theory XMI -> MID(SMF) conversion is lossless (apart from loop points that are not standardized is SMF but exist in XMI).
If you read the above linked topic you will find that the EverQuest theme easily reaches 70+ voice polyphony on non-polyphony restricted synths (even from Roland).

BloodyCactus wrote on 2024-04-08, 00:39:

I dont really consider the SC55 unique.

Well, if for most of the games the music was composed with SC-55, I would say that it is somewhat unique.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2024-04-08, 00:39:

what? the mind boggles. i didnt realise what trash the xv5080 was in comparison, and damn the integra 7 is just door stop, who ever compose on that now instead of the sc55!

I don't understand what you're saying. You can name as many synthesizers used in music as you want, if that makes you feel smarter than the crowd, but here we're talking about synthesizers in DOS games.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2024-04-08, 00:39:

the point I was trying to make was, GM has been available to everyone since win95, so its not this unknown thing, where as MT32 was much more an unknown thing for most people, so munt had a specialness to it. something that emulates GM, not so much.... and oh hey, the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth was licensed from Roland with the sc55 sound set.... for win95! theres a reason why things sound like they do in the microsoft gs wavetable synth. pretty good for 1996 emulation.

Microsoft GS Waveable sounds similar but nowhere near the SC-55. The samples are even lower quality and many are different.

Music composed for the GS standard (not GM), specifically for the SC-55, will sound slightly or a lot wrong on other GS or GM devices.

See my blog post for concrete examples:
https://blog.johnnovak.net/2023/03/05/grand-m … -midi-showdown/

I wanted to record FluidSynth renditions as well, but they're so off the mark that I did not even bother.

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-04-08, 00:33:

everquest's music, which was XMI, not midi, was composed for 1meggm.sf2 (the rom samples inside the awe32 card) and the included […]
Show full quote

everquest's music, which was XMI, not midi, was composed for 1meggm.sf2 (the rom samples inside the awe32 card) and the included synthusr.sbk.

it was NOT composed for sound canvas at all, so no point trying to play it on this emulator.

I know this for a fact.

The midi file you have may or may not be an accurate conversion.

Also, it's not just games that were composed for sound canvas.

Also, most game midi that hits polyphony limits on a sc55 was composed for sc88Pro, which has bigger limits.

I hope the emulator can be extended to emulate sc88pro as well.

Erm the sc88pro came out 1996 , and things take a while to be adopted so it probably wouldn't be widely used until like 97 or 98 mostly in Japanese games and maybe like dink smallwood.

Even the SC88 wasn't used in a massive amount of games , maybe like the demo version of shadow warrior and stuff.

The 55mk2 probably might have more likely been used in later games to solve the polyphony issue. Although chances are some games were composed on far more professional synths and converted
to the roland sc55 without too much afterthought given to it sounding 100% correct.

Point is by like 96 alot of stuff moved to CD music and midi support dwindled so the 55mk1 and 2 are probably the most supported of the lot when it comes to games.

Also one game isn't a huge sample size.

Dunno why many expect this thread to explode. Some developers aren't clout-driven and it's at an early stage anyway...

leileilol wrote on 2024-04-08, 02:55:

Dunno why many expect this thread to explode. Some developers aren't clout-driven and it's at an early stage anyway...

This is the rare case when product on its early stage already performs great.

EmperorGrieferus wrote on 2024-04-08, 03:10:

leileilol wrote on 2024-04-08, 02:55:

Dunno why many expect this thread to explode. Some developers aren't clout-driven and it's at an early stage anyway...

This is the rare case when product on its early stage already performs great.

Exactly. The emulation itself is spot on and there's nothing to improve, really (apart from maybe the odd 0.1% edge case bug).

It's like hardware. The end.

What could be improved going forward is the integration around it, so the standalone app itself, the general performance, and hopefully this will be eventually turned into a library for easier integration into emulators.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-04-08, 02:15:

See my blog post for concrete examples:
https://blog.johnnovak.net/2023/03/05/grand-m … -midi-showdown/

Interesting analysis. I only disagree with your assessment of Stonekeep. That game uses GS instruments in some (all?) of its tracks when the "Roland GS" option is selected in setup. There are a few instances where I noticed wrong sounds being played on non-Roland synths.

For example, the track Ruins of Stonekeep, Part 2 (plays during the second level) uses the "Heartbeat" sound around the 1:18 mark when played back on a Sound Canvas. On some other synths, that turns into a simple drum beat, which sounds awful. Don't remember if Yamaha handles this correctly or not, but many soundfonts which claim GS support certainly don't.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-08, 06:11:

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-04-08, 02:15:

See my blog post for concrete examples:
https://blog.johnnovak.net/2023/03/05/grand-m … -midi-showdown/

Interesting analysis. I only disagree with your assessment of Stonekeep. That game uses GS instruments in some (all?) of its tracks when the "Roland GS" option is selected in setup. There are a few instances where I noticed wrong sounds being played on non-Roland synths.

For example, the track Ruins of Stonekeep, Part 2 (plays during the second level) uses the "Heartbeat" sound around the 1:18 mark when played back on a Sound Canvas. On some other synths, that turns into a simple drum beat, which sounds awful. Don't remember if Yamaha handles this correctly or not, but many soundfonts which claim GS support certainly don't.

Cool, good to know, and we don't have to agree on everything, of course 😀

Admittedly, I haven't played all these games, I was just looking for cool sounding soundtracks in many different styles to exercise the SC-55 and the MU80 hardware and software emulations with a wide variety of source material. In this particular case, I've only played Stonekeep for 5-10 minutes. Very cool game, though, I will surely revisit it some time. Brian Fargo & co. at their best (perhaps).

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-04-08, 07:07:

In this particular case, I've only played Stonekeep for 5-10 minutes. Very cool game, though, I will surely revisit it some time. Brian Fargo & co. at their best (perhaps).

Stonekeep was one of the first PC RPGs that I ever played, so it will always be special to me. 😀

It has a great soundtrack, which sounds awesome on GS capable hardware. Interestingly, the FM synth version of the music was also handled with great care, and even has proper stereo. As most other people, I originally experienced it on a SB16 with OPL3, and it still sounded awesome. Lastly, I think (not entirely sure) that Stonekeep is one of the few DOS games which uses 16-bit samples for digital audio, and actually benefits from a SB16 card.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-08, 07:20:

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-04-08, 07:07:

In this particular case, I've only played Stonekeep for 5-10 minutes. Very cool game, though, I will surely revisit it some time. Brian Fargo & co. at their best (perhaps).

Stonekeep was one of the first PC RPGs that I ever played, so it will always be special to me. 😀

It has a great soundtrack, which sounds awesome on GS capable hardware. Interestingly, the FM synth version of the music was also handled with great care, and even has proper stereo. As most other people, I originally experienced it on a SB16 with OPL3, and it still sounded awesome. Lastly, I think (not entirely sure) that Stonekeep is one of the few DOS games which uses 16-bit samples for digital audio, and actually benefits from a SB16 card.

Indeed, I like the soundtrack very much. The music of the demo that I also recorded is great as well.

That's some good info there, I quite like stereo Dual OPL2 / OPL3 music and in some cases I prefer it to the MT-32 or the SC-55. I started a page about that which includes many of these games together with config recommendations on our wiki. Ultima Underworld, Dungeon Master 2, Elvira and Space Quest 3 come to mind.

there are quite a few games that actually used variation instruments that didn't show up till the sc88 pro, and many of them were made in the 90s.

as for big games that had music composed on an sc88, how about Duke Nukem 3d?

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-04-08, 18:00:

as for big games that had music composed on an sc88, how about Duke Nukem 3d?

That has been debunked.

I fell for that Retro Man Cave video myself, but older documents confirm that Lee Jackson was using a RAP-10, while Bobby Prince likely used an SC-55 for his tracks. It's only with the expansion pack (episode 4) that Lee may have switched to the SC-88, if even then.

huh.

yet he posted ohterwise himself..

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/91038-w … comment-2484124

this makes no sense.

HE says he never had a sound canvas 55, but he did have an sc1, which was essentially a sc-55 on a isa card, with very minor differences.

this is certainly very confusing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-08, 18:08:

but older documents confirm that Lee Jackson was using a RAP-10, while Bobby Prince likely used an SC-55 for his tracks. It's only with the expansion pack (episode 4) that Lee may have switched to the SC-88, if even then.

BONUS.VOC and GRABBAG.VOC has the sounds I recognize from a SC-88 but I have no idea what a Roland RAP-10 has for sounds.

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-04-08, 19:21:

HE says he never had a sound canvas 55, but he did have an sc1, which was essentially a sc-55 on an isa card, with very minor differences.

But not all of Duke3D's music was composed by Lee Jackson. Many tracks were created by Bobby Prince, who did have an SC-55.

And I agree that this is confusing. Lee's own interview (conducted during the early 2000s, maybe even before that) indicates that he used a RAP-10 during the production of the main game. The expansion pack music is up for debate, but it is possible that he had gotten the SC-88 by the time he started working on that.

rap-10 is equal to sc-7, which is a gm only cut down sound canvas.

so it uses sc-55 samples, but is missing the GS variations.

So, where are we at with this? Does it work as a standalone MIDI device, or must it be used with something else?

Does the reverb/chorus work correctly, since someone posted demos last week that sounded like it wasn't implemented?

As it currently stands, the emulator is an application that listens to a given MIDI input device, such as a virtual MIDI port. Reverb and Chorus are implemented, as heard in this demo video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUEkcFTuldg