MT-32 emulator available again!

[Kaminari]

Why would you want to play General MIDIs with an MT-32 emulator?

[fighter]

something happened to the yamaha xg software synthesizer that i used until now and now it sounds choppy and there is nothing else than that ugly microsoft windows one that sounds like crap

[collector]

Of course General MIDIs are going to sound like crap on an MT-32, real or emulated.

[fighter]

hmm
is there a good emulator that can play all midis? with nice sounding instruments? not ugly like microsoft one?

[Kippesoep]

Edirol/Roland Virtual Sound Canvas does a good job, but it's payware. For free, open source software, look for Timidity (on SourceForge), which emulates a Gravis UltraSound.

[fighter]

thanks a lot kippesoep! this virtual sound canvas sounds GREAT!!!
the instruments sounds so clear! after that i heard some midis
strange that none of the sites i checked before said anything about it
edit: wow, since sb16: the sound blaster live sw sinth, yamaha xg50, microsoft one, sonic and knuckles for pc sounded bad, but now with virtual sound canvas it sounds better even than sb16!

by the way i have a question
which games are using mt-32?
i know about kyrandia and monkey island 1 and 2
what else?

[Kippesoep]

The VSC is based on a Sound Canvas SC-88Pro (which I just happen to have standing on my desk right next to the trusty MT-32), which is an absolutely great MIDI module. The emulation isn't perfect, but it's close. I actually am working on a simple patch for DOSBox based on these two sound modules, which I hope to complete in the next week.

MobyGames has a list of games supporting MT-32.

[timppa]

by the way i have a question
which games are using mt-32?
i know about kyrandia and monkey island 1 and 2
what else?

Many many many LucasArts, Origin, Microprose, Dynamix, Sierra, Interplay etc. etc. etc games. In my estimation about 80% of PC games supported Roland MT-32 in the early 90s, so look mostly for PC games from 1989-1993 or so. Later it was superseded by General MIDI.

As far as I can tell, King's Quest IV was the first game with Roland MT-32 support. By the time Dune II and X-Wing were released, MT-32 support was starting to fade away. Dune II was an interesting game in that some of the music in it sounded better with MT-32, and some with Roland Sound Canvas (GS/General MIDI).

The best sounding MT-32 games were IMHO from Sierra, Dynamix, Oriigin, Interplay and LucasArts (in this order). For some reason Microprose games sounded "odd" with Roland, for example Civilization. Microprose didn't simply have as good musicians I guess.

However, possibly the best sounding Roland game I ever encountered was Lethal Weapon from Ocean (yes, the movie game). The intro music just blew me away, I couldn't believe MT-32 could sound that good. Other two unknown games with brilliant MT-32 music were Utopia and King's Table: Ragnarok. And let's not forget the last level in Dynamix' Nova 9, it also blew me away. Oh and I never forget the faces of my Amiga-owning buddies after they heard how much better the music in Speedball 2 PC sounded compared to the Amiga version, which was supposed to sound so good...

I get an urge to run quite a few old PC games from my collection... Too bad there was a problem with Nova 9 on Pentium machines where you could not advance from the second-last level to the last level.

[timppa]

MobyGames has a list of games supporting MT-32.

And even that list seems to be incomplete, they were missing e.g. Lethal Weapon and Ragnarok games I mentioned, even though those games are in their database. I think the reason is because some games (those included) didn't advertise their Roland-support at all: if the game auto-detected a Roland when you ran the game, they would use it. Otherwise it would use Soundblaster/Adlib/PC speaker. There was no installation option to choose your sound card, so obviously people who had a mere SB/Adlib did not necessarily know about the Roland support. To me Roland support seemed much more widespread in PC games at around 1989-1993 than many people realize.

[dh4rm4]

Certainly. It was the defacto standard in game studios for many years, even after GM had standardised and was available in cheaper soundcards. The MT32 is still used to this day in many music production studios. Just as the Yamaha DX7 is still favoured by those who want a clean FM synth sound, so to is the MT32 used by those who prefer the character of LA Synthesis over GM's tendency to be wavetable.

[jynx]

What's the current status of MUNT? I downloaded the windows driver available at http://www.artworxinn.com/alex/downloads.htm , but it sounds very, very wrong under DosBox .72 . What shall I do? Also, where was I supposed to stick the PCM ROMS when I installed the driver? I put them in the directory from which I installed MUNT. Hope I did right.

[Myloch]

Sadly the Munt project seems a bit dead right now...

[wd]

Sources are available, feel free to continue it!

[Myloch]

yeah, I know. I'm not a programmer. I'm using it as is (and I'm quite satisfied), however if someone in the future will continue to work on it, that man would be my hero!

[wd]

Learn to be a programmer, that's how it works

[Myloch]

eheheh everything happens in life, so who knows?

[Thunder]

I'm tempted to try and develop it further and integrate it into the midi playing program i've been writing. I'm a decent enough C/C++ coder and I have a CM-32L but I don't know much about the theory involved. Aside from the comments in the code and the code itself, does anyone have any notes on the ideas behind the emulator?

I can't say for sure right now if I'll develop it further, it depends how much time/motivation I have.

[Thunder]

I've had a bit of a stab at integrating the munt API and i can get make some noise, but it's mostly garbage, but you can regonise the tune.

Is there any doco or does someone know how to actually use the API properly?

I've given the scummvm source code a quick poke with a stick, but it's not immedatly clear what it is doing with the call to ->render()

[sev7en]

Dear All,
did you have update about the MUNT project for latest MS's OSes?


Cheers,

[Dominus]

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