depends. If you want to play Games made with Soundtrack made for a MT32 then the AWE65 is not good enough.

The AWE 64 can emulate an MT32 but it’s pretty rubish at it. It fairs a bit better as a GM card.

As Dominus has stated, it depends which era's games you wish to play.
If it is anything post 1992, then you should be fine with the AWE64, since most games post 1992 were written with General MIDI in mind. The AWE64 is fairly good at being a General MIDI compatible device, particularly if you load soundfonts via Windows.

Most games released between 1987 and 1992 only supported the Roland MT-32 (apart from the known standards like Adlib/Sound Blaster) for music playback. General MIDI (being a standard) only became widely used by game developers from around late 1992.

However, the MT-32 has lately become quite expensive to obtain and, in some cases, you also require an intelligent mode MPU-401 MIDI interface.
However, there are emulation software (like MUNT) that enables you to play back MT-32 sounds - refer this link for more information on how to go about setting up such a configuration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvuncHhza5A

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Hello,
Isn't a Sound blaster AWE 64 good enough or do I need a Roland MT-32 also ?

It completely depends on which games you want to play. Yes, the MT-32 was mostly replaced by General MIDI or the SC-55/SC-88 by ~1993-1994, but contrary to what a lot of people think, the MT-32 continued to be supported in many DOS games right up until the very end of the DOS era(I.e., ~1997). The game "Abuse" comes to mind, which I recently discovered supported the MT-32 via the LAPC-I option. The LAPC-I is just an extremely rare implementation of the MIF-IPC + MPU-401 + MT-32 hardware in the form factor of an all-in-one internal ISA card.

If you throw out the names of some specific DOS games you'd like to play with a vintage/retro build, we'll be much better able to guide you along your way.

Also, you should be aware that the AWE64 is total garbage for Adlib/OPL/FM music because post AWE32/SB16, all the Creative cards used their in-house developed CQM chips instead of authentic Yamaha OPL2/3 chips. The only thing the AWE64 was superior at was MIDI sound fonts, which I regard as gimmicky BS. It sounds great in a demo and terrible or weird in practice because games were not usually written with it in mind.

Getting the sound hardware right when building DOS machines is definitely the hardest part. I've spent many months and many thousands of dollars doing that, so I can spare you the headaches and cash if I know what you're trying to do. =)

Roland MT-32 is a pretty unique experience and no other sound cards emulate it properly outside of using MUNT.

I think whether or not you "need" one is an entirely different topic. They are getting pretty expensive. The only thing I can say is go listen to some recordings on Youtube and decide if it is worth it to you or not. I think that a lot of us (myself included), spend too much time and money on the ideal sound setup when in reality any decent SoundBlaster clone will at least get you started.

Yeah, to word it differently, a majority of gamers came by without a Mt32 back in the day 😉

Dominus wrote:

Yeah, to word it differently, a majority of gamers came by without a Mt32 back in the day 😉

Yeah, and had a vastly inferior experience. That's what's so sad about the DOS era -- the range of hardware that the game programmers catered to was so incredibly wide that when coupled with high prices for the best equipment, most gamers at the time never experienced what those games were supposed to be like. I played DOS games in the late 80s with nothing but PC speaker and a CGA card on a monochrome green and black monitor, and I'm sure that I was far from alone. But at the same time, there were people with MT-32s and VGA color monitors.

Now that we're in 2018 and all this stuff is extremely cheap, we can all return to that era and have the fun we were supposed to have from the beginning.

I disagree wholeheartedly that MT-32s are expensive, btw. I got one for less than $200 a couple of months ago. That's something like $94 in 1988 money -- and the MT-32 cost about $600 in 1988. We have an embarrassment of riches with this old hardware, despite the recent "spike" in prices from the absolutely ludicrously low level of about $65.

Hi, just saw this thread when I was browsing through the forum. Just my two cents:
The MT-32 is/was such a beautiful instrument, a real synthesizer. In my opinion, it is/was so much better than what came after.

There are a lot of recordings of game OST on YouTube. You can just try some games with MT-32 and other devices (usually OPL3 or AdLib) and see if you like the way MT-32 sounds. So just type, e.g. "monkey island MT-32" and "monkey island adlib".

Agree with the above. Unless you really want one for historical reasons, running MUNT or FSMP with the MUNT VSTi is a suitable solution for any older MT-32 compatible game. Depending on the game and hardware revision of the MT-32, you will have some minor inconsistencies in how things sound. MUNT with a CM-32L ROM is a great option for most anything.

I agree with most what aquishix stated.

However, not all people can afford to fork out $200 or more on one piece of vintage hardware, regardless of what that item cost back in the day (practically anything related to computer hardware was expensive back in 1988).

While some users are willing to spend that much, for those that aren't or simply cannot afford to, there is a cheaper solution being MUNT. It will cost about $50 to get it set up.

I do need to mention that patience can pay off as well. Few months back I scored a bare bones MT-32 for under $80 shipped. For the first few weeks, I just use a Sega Genesis power supply to power it (Same specs), and then purchased the Roland USB - Midi adapter. Now that adapter is expensive at close to $50 msrp, but it can be found for cheaper and there are other cheaper versions of it by 3rd party manufactures.

I will say that for about 2 years before getting an actual MT-32, I used MUNT and was very happy with it. But I do have to state that hearing an actual MT-32 on my computer just sounds different still than the emulated MUNT sounds. And it sounds different in a very positive way!

I remember drooling over the pics of the MT-32 in the old Sierra catalogs back in the late 80s. Heck I even owned a cassette tape I sent in for free from them that had a demo of their games played on Adlib vs MT-32. It was a marketing tape for the MT-32 of course, and it just rubbed more salt in the wound of not being able to get one back then. But it was still pretty magical to hear what games could (and from the perspective of the composers...should) sound like.

jesolo wrote:

However, the MT-32 has lately become quite expensive to obtain and, in some cases, you also require an intelligent mode MPU-401 MIDI interface.
However, there are emulation software (like MUNT) that enables you to play back MT-32 sounds - refer this link for more information on how to go about setting up such a configuration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvuncHhza5A

Some more (possibly more convenient) ways to achieve the same thing as Jesolo referenced above (also from Phil):
https://youtu.be/vSk9S1bkRS8
https://youtu.be/BQ759oY5EKg

CrossBow777 wrote:

I will say that for about 2 years before getting an actual MT-32, I used MUNT and was very happy with it. But I do have to state that hearing an actual MT-32 on my computer just sounds different still than the emulated MUNT sounds. And it sounds different in a very positive way!

Of course nothing else sounds like a real MT-32. But if audio quality is more important than perfect accuracy, actually Munt(VSTi) can do better than a real MT-32 (full floating point rendering without clips, increased polyphony etc.)

It's getting the MPU-401 MIDI interface that seems to be expensive and illusive.
I have some sound cards with Yamaha YMF chipsets but I dont know which chipsets #'s I need ?

Intel486dx33 wrote:

It's getting the MPU-401 MIDI interface that seems to be expensive and illusive.
I have some sound cards with Yamaha YMF chipsets but I dont know which chipsets #'s I need ?

Any of the YMF chips are good, really -- but even given true Yamaha chips, there's a lot to consider if you want to maximize your bang for buck.

If you have the patience, read through this post: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/07/s … ibulations.html

jesolo wrote:

I agree with most what aquishix stated.

However, not all people can afford to fork out $200 or more on one piece of vintage hardware, regardless of what that item cost back in the day (practically anything related to computer hardware was expensive back in 1988).

While some users are willing to spend that much, for those that aren't or simply cannot afford to, there is a cheaper solution being MUNT. It will cost about $50 to get it set up.

We probably don't disagree much at all, really. I just haven't made it clear that if I were in the position of not being able to afford a true MT-32 setup, I'd go for MUNT as well. It's a much better alternative than settling for anything else. 😉

(Except for GUS for digital sound, of course -- that's necessary. But I'm assuming we're really just talking about the *music* of these games.)

Intel486dx33 wrote:

It's getting the MPU-401 MIDI interface that seems to be expensive and illusive.
I have some sound cards with Yamaha YMF chipsets but I dont know which chipsets #'s I need ?

What about SOFTMPU ? From what I read on Vogons, people are using SS7 and higher machines anyway.
They can't be all real-mode fans like me, can they ? 😉
I bet they use some form of memory manager to get the most of their machines.
On a 286 or an old machne, that's another thing.

You can talk to ab0tj about a HardMPU board as well. I believe all the rev2 Music Quest clones have been sold atm.

Both are cheaper than a Roland, Voyetra, original Music Quest, or CMS MIDI card. Those are selling for quite astonishing prices nowadays.

gdjacobs wrote on 2018-06-24, 03:00:

Those are selling for quite astonishing prices nowadays.

just saw it on ebay... avg. $300 per unit. crazy