Yes! CM-300 = SC-55 in an ugly box 🤣

Grab it!

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Instead of trying to be "as close to SoundCanvas" as possible, it clearly surpasses it.

Thankee 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

RG100 did something similar with an AWE64, the only thing you can't get under DOS I believe is EAX (Reverb), but that should be possible if the game runs from within Windows.

Under DOS the AWE32/64s support standard reverb and chorus (MIDI controllers #91 and #93); but the reverb can be a lot more when using additional EAX reverb effects (which AFAIK the AWE32 and AWE64 doesn't support at all).

Although, the EMU8K based sound cards (AWE32/64) support NRPN MIDI controllers which can add a lot more reverb as well (even under DOS, as long as the DOS game/app supports passing those controllers along to the hardware... BTW/FYI, DOOM doesn't).

Ace wrote:

Crap, this is becoming really tedious. Even with the samples DonutKing provided, I can't match the sound of the distortion guitar to At Doom's Gate from Doom(E1M1). It matches for a little bit, then it doesn't match at all.

That's the problem with attempting to reproduce another tone generator/MIDI module hardware with soundfonts. While you can use samples recorded from the original hardware and make a soundfont out of it, you can't reproduce the synthesis "physics" of the original piece of hardware.

That's like the MSGS SW synth... it uses the exact same sample set as the SC-55's sample ROM, but the synthesis physics are different (as well as not supporting reverb, short of using additional hardware; such as the SBLive's EAX effect features), so it doesn't sound exactly "right" compared to a real SC-55.

It's also similar to the Yamaha XG compatable hardware (DB50XG, MU50, etc...)... one could feesibly record samples from these tone generators and then make a soundfont from them, but the EMU (soundfont) hardware doesn't support the effects processors that the XG compatable hardware includes. Those effects processors are what gives the XG hardware it's quality (i.e. the base unprocessed distortion and overdrive instruments/samples are absolutely horrid without using XG effects processors, yet sound AWESOME when used with them).

(edit) This describes it quite well... from the readme included with Dejan Kamensek' "Kamac DISTORTION GUITAR" soundfont:

Power-chords still don't sound like they should. But that is not the problem of my SoundFont but is consequence of how sound is created in Synth. If you play two strings simultaneouly on distorted guitar, you do not hear simple mix of what you would hear if you played each string separately, but in addition many new harmonic components (sums and differences of all frequencies of each string, their multiplications,..), so that the sound is really complicated. This happens because distortion is highly non-linear function. To get that same sound in Synt, it should probably have hardware Distortion Effect Inside and feed it with one-string guitar sounds. EMU8000 unfortunately doesn't have it. It could also be done with appropriate software, which could intercept the gutar midi notes and generate distorted guitar sound by itself, but I'm not such a good programmer to write something like that on my own.

Yamahas SYXG-50 software synth does have such effects built in. It sounds quite good, but guitar samples are not so good (it uses only 2MB of sample memory for about 700 different voices)! But the problem is, that only XG midis which support that features sound good.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yes! CM-300 = SC-55 in an ugly box 🤣

Grab it!

I'm not gonna let a golden opportunity to get a real Roland Sound Canvas slip by. I've already contacted the seller of the CM-300 and will meet up with him/her whenever we decide on a good place to meet so I can pick up the CM-300(he/she put it up for sale on the local classified ads along with a CM-64, but I'm more interested in the CM-300. I'm not too fond of the MT-32, and the CM-64 is a CM-32L, which is MT-32 compatible, combined with the sample-based CM-32P).

I'll be sure to record all games I have with General MIDI support running on the CM-300(Doom, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Descent, etc.).

So now, the Roland Sound Canvas soundfont project has officially been dumped.

Ace wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I'm not too fond of the MT-32

WHAT? That's blasphemy 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Ace wrote:

I'm not too fond of the MT-32

WHAT? That's blasphemy 🤣

It does sound like crap if you try and use it as a general purpose midi module.

On the other hand, stuff developed specifically for the Roland LA-synthesis modules and tracks that use Sysex messages to update the device in real time can sound absolutely fantastic.

I actually saw the MT-32 in action on a Japanese Sharp X68000 computer and man, it can sound really damn good.

But my priority is the Sound Canvas. There are 3 people selling MT-32s and equivalent boxes, so I can take my time with the MT-32. However, for the Sound Canvas, there's just that one person selling the CM-300, nothing else.