VOGONS


First post, by jheronimus

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Hi, all.

I'm going to build a Socket 7 machine soon for the purpose of playing LucasArts and Sierra adventures and a bunch of other late DOS games. I've been reading a lot on MT-32 family, but these modules are extremely rare and expensive in my country (Russia). So I was wondering whether it is possible to get the MT-32 sound without the actual hardware. E.g. can you get a Sound Blaster AWE32 CT3990 to emulate MT-32? Can any of its daughterboards do that? Or maybe there is a software way of achieving that?

One way that I've found is using another PC, but maybe there is a more elegant way?

Thanks!

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Reply 1 of 8, by HighTreason

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Get a cat and an asthmatic and hang them over a washing line, tying the rope to the cats tail and around the asthmatic's chest. It should sound yield a similar sound to that of the MT-32. Prod them with a stick if the sound stops. When the sound is no longer produced, you will need to replace the cat and the person. This method also saves electricity.

In reality, I guess you could use a SoftSynth on a modern PC and somehow pipe the MIDI from your old one to the application on the new one. I have no idea what software and hardware is available these days though, given I barely know what VST's are and my newest software displays a copyright date from the 1990s.

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Reply 2 of 8, by alexanrs

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Have a look at this thread, specially the later pages. You'll need another PC, sure, but it doesn't have to be a big desktop/laptop. There are plenty of small ARM devices that can run Linux and do what you want.

Reply 3 of 8, by PhilsComputerLab

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jheronimus wrote:

Hi, all.

I'm going to build a Socket 7 machine soon for the purpose of playing LucasArts and Sierra adventures and a bunch of other late DOS games. I've been reading a lot on MT-32 family, but these modules are extremely rare and expensive in my country (Russia).

I made that video 🤣

The cheapest way is running DOSBox and Munt.

As soon as you want Roland LA music on real retro hardware, it can become expensive. First you need an intelligent mode compatible MPU401 interface, or use SoftMPU with a standard UART compatible MPU401 interface.

Running it on a spare computer is what I went for, it works very well, but you then need a decent USB MIDI interface. I like how this idea is now being applied to smaller computers and controllers, check the thread as alexanrs mentioned.

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Reply 6 of 8, by bjt

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For games that only use the default patches (e.g. Monkey Island), you can get a very close result using the MT-32 patch bank of a Roland SC-55 or similar.

Many games use custom sounds however, and these will only sound correct on a real MT-32 hardware or on MUNT.

Reply 8 of 8, by bristlehog

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Some sound cards can emulate MT-32 (e.g. Turtle Beach Multisound Classic, Sierra Semiconductor ARIA, Orchid SoundWave 32, Sound Blaster AWE32/AWE64, Roland SCC-1), but they do it in more or less lousy way.

You need either the actual hardware, or a PC with MUNT. There are no other ways I can think of.

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