VOGONS


First post, by thefivetheory

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Hi, I realize various of this question have been asked several times, but I'm trying to get some specific answers if at all possible... I've searched but haven't found an answer to my specific question.

I grew up playing DOS games, like the rest of you, and in particular the Quest for Glory series. I played them at the time with some form of a Sound Blaster (most likely SB 16 or AWE 32). I only recently, within the last few years, discovered that I'd missed out on much better music through an MT-32 (which I've been able to experience to some extent via MUNT), and General MIDI, depending on the game. To be honest, I've always thought MIDI sounded terrible, as I'd only heard the Microsoft GS stuff, so never paid much attention to the option. I've recently started playing around with VirtualMIDISync and soundfonts and have been pretty impressed.

Anyway, the purpose of my post: I decided to buy an SC-55 to play QFG3 and in particular QFG4 with General MIDI music. I swear I saw somewhere that the MkII option was less ideal as compared to the original, so I went ahead and bought an SC-55 on eBay last night. In the hours since my order I've been reading more posts here and have seen it suggested that for QFG4 the MkII is the actual device used for the soundtrack and is likely to sound better. Given that the entire point of my purchase was to make QFG4's music sound as good as possible, I'm now worried I bought the wrong unit.

Does anyone happen to have recordings or examples of any differences between the SC-55 and SC-55MkII in QFG4? What about other QFG games?

Obviously either unit is going to be a huge improvement over the Sound Blaster, and probably the soundfonts, too, but I can't help but think I pulled the trigger too quickly. I'm not sure if I can cancel/refund the order in favor of a MkII...

Am I overthinking this?

Reply 1 of 4, by gdjacobs

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One big change between the SC-55 and SC-55mk2 was in the implementation of capital tone fallback. Search around in the forums and you'll learn more than you ever wanted to about CTF. It's one of those topics which provoke lots of complicated discussion, like people asking about the best sound card.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 2 of 4, by thefivetheory

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Thanks for your response; I ended up being able to cancel/refund that order and purchased a MkII unit instead. Seems like for my very specific purpose (primarily QFG4) it's the "better" option. Maybe someday I'll pick up a MkI unit as well.

Reply 3 of 4, by Cloudschatze

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It's worth mentioning that the demo version of Quest for Glory IV, which features MIDI music later used in the full game, contains a resource bundle that can reasonably be assumed to pre-date the release and/or general availability of the SC-55mkII.

Reply 4 of 4, by kalm_traveler

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Sounds like you already made a decision - but I would add in case anyone else finds this thread in the future: in my case I just listened to clips of the games I was wanting one of these units for and found that for my use case the Mkii had no drawbacks and seemed to be just as easy to find so I went with that.

While I have still not totally finished up my retro rig setup (ended up now with 4 motherboards, 3 or 4 graphics cards, 2 sound cards, etc because I can't seem to make up my mind), I have been making use of the Mkii on one of my modern systems via Roland's USB adapter which is fun.

Retro: Win2k/98SE - P3 1.13ghz, 512mb PC133 SDRAM, Quadro4 980XGL, Aureal Vortex 2
modern:i9 10980XE, 64gb DDR4, 2x Titan RTX | i9 9900KS, 32gb DDR4, RTX 2080 Ti | '19 Razer Blade Pro