spiffythedog wrote on 2022-10-20, 08:36:

jharrison wrote on 2022-10-12, 17:39:

I know one (small) example is Quest for Glory IV.

At the North side of the Mordavian village (the monastery scene), there is the gravedigger Igor carving a tombstone. His hammer strike sounds proper on a CM-32L, but on an MT-32, it's some other sound (I recall it's something like a horn or a brass instrument).

That particular sound effect is played through MIDI for whatever reason even if you're running the game with a separate PCM card.

Looks like you've uncovered something pretty interesting. Testing with MUNT and QFG4CD's MT-32 driver, I've found that the hammer strikes (sound resource 13, which uses the 'FireDartMS' patch when the MT-32 driver is selected) sound exactly the same regardless of the ROMs used. I've also found that the action is completely silent when GM is the selected music driver! This is because the developers only included resources for the FM and MT-32 versions of the sound. I'm guessing they forgot to include a GM equivalent or they were going to use a digital PCM sample like Spikey suggested but never implemented it (audio resource 900 is the only one I found that comes close to the required sound effect). It makes me wonder if there are similar cases of this happening with other sound effects in the game?

EDIT: More testing - looks like the floppy version doesn't contain this particular sound effect.

My understanding is that QFG4 is typical of the games of the era - some effort was made to map the sound effects and music for the MT-32, but it ends up as a mixed bag with lots of errors and sub-optimal outcomes. I have heard of this example before, though, so I'll have to check it out. 😀

EDIT: I just tested with the CD version, and with MT-32 ROM, CM-32L ROM (to confirm spiffy's findings), and it was exactly the same. Same for GM driver, and also for when PCM is enabled it's silent. So a very weird one. FireDartMS sounds awful and clearly the wrong sample (CstlGate or many others could have worked, maybe).

If jharrison can provide more information about their CM-32L claim, that'd be awesome, otherwise I'm chalking it up to a misunderstanding.

I wasn't claiming anything, merely speculating. 😅

Sorry, jharrison was the right username, not digger! My apologies. 😀

If jharrison can provide more information about their CM-32L claim, that'd be awesome, otherwise I'm chalking it up to a misunderstanding.

It's completely possible I'm mis-remembering the specifics of this. At the time I noticed this, I had both devices on a mixer where I could switch between them, and the CM-32L had a different and much more believable sound than the MT-32.

I notice in the install program, there are separate options for GM and MT-32/CM-32L and I don't recall which I used when I tested this.

Now you have me curious so I'm interested in getting this set up again...

the CM-32L had a different and much more believable sound than the MT-32.

The two devices should sound 99% the same on a non-MT-32 composed game. CM-32L has a theoretically lower noise floor and of course the additional sound effects over an original MT-32, but these differences won't amount to 'much more believable sound' or probably anything even noticeable, TBH.

Still curious for you to set it up and check it out, though. 😀