Originally posted by Spikey
But I don't understand. Why make an imperfect replica? Why not expand on the original MT-32 and use Sound Canvas piano samples in place?

Because I, not you, happen to actually be programming an emulator. I don't care if you don't like it; I have a simple suggestion for you then, "WRITE YOUR OWN!"

I was referring to your project when I said I was impressed, and canadacow's when I said I was unimpressed.

Did I wrong you in a past life Spikey? I would like to remind you that it was also me who correctly extracted the PCM samples from the ROM file. Before you go and call the progress I have made towards an MT-32 emulator insignificant, I challenge you to do one of two things:
1. Write your own MT-32 emulator to the point where I am at.
2. Surpass me in my progress on my emulator.
and do either in the span of just two weeks.

Remember, I'm not being paid to do this and you won't be a paying customer once its finished. If you have a problem with it, either offer a realistic solution or shut up.

It's hideous, and gives General MIDI a bad name.

No, General MIDI gives itself a bad name. Its partially why MP3's so quickly replaced MIDI as a method for sharing music for distribution.

Spikey wrote:

Snover, But I don't understand. Why make an imperfect replica? Why not expand on the original MT-32 and use Sound Canvas piano […]
Show full quote

Snover,

But I don't understand. Why make an imperfect replica? Why not expand on the original MT-32 and use Sound Canvas piano samples in place?
Piano converts exactly from MT-32/GM. It's a good idea, IMO.
Emulating the MT-32's faults as well as it's successes is hardly smart.
But I doubt game players would want 'nostalgic' MT-32 piano anyway.

- Alistair

Here's my two cents on the subject (Your mileage may vary):

I think emulating the Roland MT-32 as correctly as possible is the main point. When that's done then there's the time for possible deviations from the correct emulation, like, for an example, adding piano samples that aren't in the original MT-32.

And for myself I can say that whatever the Roland MT-32 sounded like, that's what I've accustomed to, so that's what I'd like to hear from the emulator, not something else. But that's just me... we can prefer different things after all.

All in all I've got nothing against being able to modify the emulator and/or its samples in anyway anyone wants. But getting the emulator as correct as possible (i.e. as close to the original Roland MT-32 as possible), that's what I'd like.

Hopefully the emulator will be so good in the end that one can honestly listen to it even if one has the original hardware. There's always the nostalgia factor involved though, like having the magical black box on the table in front of you 😀.

All in all, good luck for the project and for everyone involved!

---
Kari Salminen

Spikey wrote:

But I don't understand. Why make an imperfect replica? Why not expand on the original MT-32 and use Sound Canvas piano samples in place?

Because we want accurate emulation of the MT-32. The MT-32 is a synthesizer that (from what I understand) mixes different analog and digital sound generation techniques to make its instrument sounds. To complicate matters, the MT-32 can be reprogrammed via SysEx commands to mix different sounds in different ways for each instrument, thus creating a new instrument sound in the place of an old one. We want this behaviour to be replicated so that games that depend on it will sound as great as they would on a real MT-32 (and not the way they do now on MT32->GM patch mapping workarounds)

Piano converts exactly from MT-32/GM. It's a good idea, IMO.
Emulating the MT-32's faults as well as it's successes is hardly smart.

But it's the point. The games were written to use the MT-32 just as it was, and I for one am excited to be able to hear them as the developers intended. If I don't like the piano on channel 1, I'll route the output to a loopback driver and split that channel off to a General MIDI synth myself. No need to add extra functionality to the MT-32 emulator that would take away from its emulation quality.

But I doubt game players would want 'nostalgic' MT-32 piano anyway.

I would. I want to hear how it actually sounded because I missed out. I was too young and too poor to have an MT-32 back then, and I'm still too poor to afford one right now 😜

Fair enough, folks. I guess it's being made for you, not me.

But I disagree with the "it's so hard to buy a MT-32" nonsense. 70 US bucks plus shipping on Ebay. Yeesh.

Canadacow, I apologise for my comments, I just felt intolerant of the project. But it certainly is a good thing, and I commend you for ROM samples, etc.

No, General MIDI gives itself a bad name. Its partially why MP3's so quickly replaced MIDI as a method for sharing music for distribution.

Again, I disagree with this comment. Wavetable GM gives itself a bad name. However.. ever owned a Roland Sound Canvas device? GM/GS/GM2 sound modules are of incredibly high quality. They include the original MT-32 tones, etc.
MP3 only replaced MIDI because not as many people own the devices. But they still get bought on EBay on a daily basis. GM is NOT dead.
(Note the difference between SB GM, and SC GM)

- Spikey

Spikey wrote:

Personally, I'd like to hear this song emulated. Legend of Kyrandia 1- Outside Brandon's Home <- is the MT-32 version, recorded at 48 KHz, 192 kbps, reverb 10.

Tell you what... if you get me a MT-32 midi file of this composition, complete with SysEx parameters I'll see what I can do to focus on this one song. Also, if you could, please suggest a good DOS MIDI I can use to test it on.

As usual, while I'm still on roll, just a quick reminder to let everyone know there's a new sample out. Now its in stereo and I'm experimenting with reverb. Its sounding more palatable all the time!

http://www.artworxinn.com/alex

Hey, it's almost harmonic now. 😁

Oh and by the way, I figured I should point toward the <title>.

Snover...
Crap, and I posted a bad copy too. Check out the correct new version.

Originally posted by Spikey But I disagree with the "it's so hard to buy a MT-32" nonsense. 70 US bucks plus shipping on Ebay. Yeesh.

Well, it's not lunch money. For those of us whose only planned use is old DOS games, most will probably pass on it. We already have capable hardware, we just need the software to drive it.

Not bad, Canadacow, not bad at all, but the drums sound a little clipped.

Don't suppose you're keeping archival copies of these are you?
(..nah. that would be documentation, and we know how much you love that 😉)

Wow. I... Wow. 😁

Snover wrote:

Not bad, Canadacow, not bad at all, but the drums sound a little clipped.

Don't suppose you're keeping archival copies of these are you?
(..nah. that would be documentation, and we know how much you love that 😉)

Yeah, thats because the drum sounds are being faked for the time being. I have the samples for them, but no patch information. Its not included in the preset data from Quest Studios. I have, however, found them in the firmware ROM from the MT-32. To get them into my program its just a matter of converting the ROM data into sysex info for easy loading into my program. At that point the drums should sound much better.

I have some bad news. Now that I've finally made it this far I'm probably going to slow down on the development. I have finals and whatnot coming up for graduate school and I need to concentrate on that. As such, as soon as I get a chance I'll post a binary so everyone can try it on their favorite program.

Here's the MIDI (in MT-32 format)- attached to the message.
No SysEx data with this song, uses default MT-32 instruments.

Just wondering what you mean by this:

Also, if you could, please suggest a good DOS MIDI I can use to test it on.

And Nicht, yes true true, but there are a lot of diehard Sierra/LucasArts/Westwood/et al gamers out there. 😀

- Alistair

I listened to the mp3s in the emulation website and I must say I'm really impressed with the capabilities of the original mt32. The emulation sounds hardly listenable, but at least some of the instruments sound pretty good.

Fop wrote:

I listened to the mp3s in the emulation website and I must say I'm really impressed with the capabilities of the original mt32. The emulation sounds hardly listenable, but at least some of the instruments sound pretty good.

Barely listenable??? There is one chanel, totally detuned that spoils everything. Without this, it would sound really good. Not similar to the original, but enjoyable, I think.

Good work, CanadaCow 😀

Fop wrote:

I listened to the mp3s in the emulation website and I must say I'm really impressed with the capabilities of the original mt32. The emulation sounds hardly listenable, but at least some of the instruments sound pretty good.

Considering that I've gone from ear-damaging to "hardly listenable" in the short span of a couple of weeks, I'd say its only a matter of time now before I begin to home in on the real MT-32. Even more so, the inaccuracies you are hearing now are because the parial numbers are incorrect. I've been patiently waiting for either me to win an MT-32 auction on eBay, or for someone to record the unmodified partials in order so I can get the order right.

Originally posted by Spikey ...but there are a lot of diehard Sierra/LucasArts/Westwood/et al gamers out there.

I'm coming at it from a slightly different angle. All my early Sierra titles were Amiga versions. For titles like "Conquests of Camelot", they used a MOD-like format with samples from the PC Roland version for the music. Unlike later on when they didn't put forth any effort into their ports...

Having said all that, the hardware won't last forever, so emulation is the only way to preserve the past. Better sooner, than later...

Time for my daily update.....

Grand news everyone, I've posted a binary to my website here:
http://www.artworxinn.com/alex/

I've also tweaked the sound more and it's getting better all the time. Don't expect very many updates for a while though as finals are coming up and papers are becoming due. If anyone wants to take their time to tweak the patchlog.cfg file, be my guest. The first number is the address in hex of the beginning of the sound. The second is just an ordering number. This goes from 1-54. Do not change this. The third category is the name of the instrument. Don't use any spaces in the name or you'll through the program off. Lastly, the final number is the corresponding partial number used by the MT-32. If none is there its simply assumed that the sample is equivalent to its actual order (for a lot of these I know this isn't right!). Have fun!

Finally, I'm open to suggestions about the sound of the emulation, but please only comment if you have a good suggestion on how to fix it. I do not want a billion emails that simply say "X" game doesn't sound right. I'm not to that point yet and I don't care about specific game issues yet.

Zorbid wrote:

Barely listenable??? There is one chanel, totally detuned that spoils everything. Without this, it would sound really good. Not similar to the original, but enjoyable, I think.

Good work, CanadaCow 😀

Well, that one channel made it barely listenable for me. It just sounded like more instruments were wrong to me. Didn't mean it as an insult or anything 😉 I'll try the binary with Dune, which has great music IMO.

It's hard to even recognize as the same music 🙁