Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-15, 14:49:

This has been brought to my attention by forum user grommit2007 some time ago. All credits go to him. Apparently, all SBLive/Aud […]
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This has been brought to my attention by forum user grommit2007 some time ago. All credits go to him. Apparently, all SBLive/Audigy/X-Fi drivers include the AWE32 sample rom in some form. The actual file is called either SFMAN.DAT (for SBLive and Audigy 1 drivers) or CT1MGM.ROM (for Audigy2/ZS/X-Fi drivers) and usually resides in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. You can force the card to use this file by manually loading SYNTHGS.SBK which can be found on AWE32/64 driver CDs or downloaded from Phil's website. Here are the steps:

1. Download SYNTHGS.SBK from Phil's website, create an C:\AWETEST folder and place it there
2. Open SoundFont Bank Manager
3. Click on Bank and highlight the existing soundfont, then click Replace
4. From the dropdown menu select SoundFound 1 Files (.sbk) and point to C:\AWETEST\SYNTHGS.SBK

This is a bit flaky and may not always work, depending on your driver version. I haven't found a reliable way to do this all the time, but it should eventually work and you will get the following screen:

Audigy_AWE.jpg

Now, go to your favorite game (e.g. Doom) and select General MIDI for music and you're all set. If you're curious how this sounds, here are recordings of Doom's E1M1 on a real AWE64 card and on an Audigy 1 using the method described above:

• Doom E1M1 - Real AWE64 card
• Doom E1M1 - Audigy card in AWE mode

I'm not sure if this has any practical application besides satisfying people's curiosity, but there you have it. I haven't done any extensive testing with this, so feel free to post your own experiences here. Again, I was originally informed of this by forum user grommit2007 and he's likely much more familiar with this procedure.

The inability to load the SYNTHGM.SBK file appears to occur on SoundFont Bank Manager versions when Creative changed the color scheme to brushed aluminium (~late 2004 onwards, starting with Audigy 4 Pro, which I have found to be the earliest card using said SFBM versions). Basically, on later SFBM versions, any loaded SoundFonts have to contain some RAM samples (RAM samples in the context on ROMless cards like the Live! and later means samples not loaded in from SFMAN.DAT or CT1MGM.ROM). It should work fine on older versions before this change (it also works on AudioHQ on the SB Live! and Audigy 1).

I have done further testing and I have found that custom RAM+ROM+NRPN SF2+MIDI files do work with the later cards, I have attached a recording of LETMESAY.MID/LETMESAY.SBK by Niko Boese (converted to LETMESAY.SF2 after loading in SFBM). Note the filter swell (at 1:18) and squelch (at 1:38 and 2:11) that is absent on software SoundFont synths. Also, some of these MID+SF2/SBK combos will sometimes override the samples of any loaded SF you have in order to load the ROM samples.

On my Audigy Rx only the SYNTHGS.SBK method works (also SYNTHMT.SBK works as well for the MT-32 default instrument mapping), due to the aforementioned note on SFBM.

Also, CT1MGM.ROM was introduced with the Audigy 1 onwards, only the Live! series had it named SFMAN.DAT.

grommit2007 wrote on 2023-08-16, 02:12:

The inability to load the SYNTHGM.SBK file appears to occur on SoundFont Bank Manager versions when Creative changed the color scheme to brushed aluminium (~late 2004 onwards, starting with Audigy 4 Pro, which I have found to be the earliest card using said SFBM versions). Basically, on later SFBM versions, any loaded SoundFonts have to contain some RAM samples (RAM samples in the context on ROMless cards like the Live! and later means samples not loaded in from SFMAN.DAT or CT1MGM.ROM). It should work fine on older versions before this change (it also works on AudioHQ on the SB Live! and Audigy 1).

Cheers! I remember you mentioning that before, but I wasn't sure about the exact details. Thanks for the clarification!

I have done further testing and I have found that custom RAM+ROM+NRPN SF2+MIDI files do work with the later cards, I have attached a recording of LETMESAY.MID/LETMESAY.SBK by Niko Boese (converted to LETMESAY.SF2 after loading in SFBM). Note the filter swell (at 1:18) and squelch (at 1:38 and 2:11) that is absent on software SoundFont synths. Also, some of these MID+SF2/SBK combos will sometimes override the samples of any loaded SF you have in order to load the ROM samples.

That's really cool! I wonder if it might be possible to make Final Fantasy 7 sound correct on SBLive/Audigy cards by manually loading SYNTHGS.SBK together with the game's own soundfont. I remember that by default, FF7 sounded a bit off on those cards compared to how it plays on a real AWE64.

And thanks again for sharing these discoveries with us all!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-16, 06:44:

Cheers! I remember you mentioning that before, but I wasn't sure about the exact details. Thanks for the clarification! […]
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grommit2007 wrote on 2023-08-16, 02:12:

The inability to load the SYNTHGM.SBK file appears to occur on SoundFont Bank Manager versions when Creative changed the color scheme to brushed aluminium (~late 2004 onwards, starting with Audigy 4 Pro, which I have found to be the earliest card using said SFBM versions). Basically, on later SFBM versions, any loaded SoundFonts have to contain some RAM samples (RAM samples in the context on ROMless cards like the Live! and later means samples not loaded in from SFMAN.DAT or CT1MGM.ROM). It should work fine on older versions before this change (it also works on AudioHQ on the SB Live! and Audigy 1).

Cheers! I remember you mentioning that before, but I wasn't sure about the exact details. Thanks for the clarification!

I have done further testing and I have found that custom RAM+ROM+NRPN SF2+MIDI files do work with the later cards, I have attached a recording of LETMESAY.MID/LETMESAY.SBK by Niko Boese (converted to LETMESAY.SF2 after loading in SFBM). Note the filter swell (at 1:18) and squelch (at 1:38 and 2:11) that is absent on software SoundFont synths. Also, some of these MID+SF2/SBK combos will sometimes override the samples of any loaded SF you have in order to load the ROM samples.

That's really cool! I wonder if it might be possible to make Final Fantasy 7 sound correct on SBLive/Audigy cards by manually loading SYNTHGS.SBK together with the game's own soundfont. I remember that by default, FF7 sounded a bit off on those cards compared to how it plays on a real AWE64.

And thanks again for sharing these discoveries with us all!

On that note, I have extracted the music from Hi-Octane, Magic Carpet 2 and Battle Arena Toshiden for DOS and have noted the following observations:

Hi Octane and Magic Carpet 2's .sbk files are structured in such a way in that they replace certain instruments in the base GM banks, as such SYNTHGM.SF2 or SYNTHGS.SF2 (or even CT2/4/8MGM.SF2) have to be loaded beforehand. In other words, BULLFROG.SBK is a Bank 1 SoundFont which draws down certain instruments from the base GM set. These games use Miles MSS with 4 sets of XMI files for FM, GM, MT-32 and AWE.

Battle Arena Toshinden's .sbk file (FATMAN.SBK) is structured in such a way that it is basically SYNTHGM.SBK with certain instruments replaced entirely, as such it has to be loaded into Bank 0. Due to this, you cannot load CT2/4/8MGM.SF2 and play back the extracted AWE MIDIs (the game uses 2 or 3 sets of HMI MIDI files, for GM, AWE and FM IIRC).

WRT to FF7, it does not detect the Audigy Rx as a supported SF device, despite the SFMAN APIs being present in the driver for some reason (they work perfectly with FSMP x86 for auto SF loading and removal). This is on Windows 11 Pro x64, for reference.

I am curious as to whether the APIs are still present on the Live! and Audigy in Win9x though, and if testing can be done to see when this problem first occured.

I will record Battle Arena Toshinden, Magic Carpet 2 and Hi-Octane playing on my Audigy Rx with their AWE specific MIDI files and SoundFonts and post the recordings to this thread later.

grommit2007 wrote on 2023-08-19, 22:32:

WRT to FF7, it does not detect the Audigy Rx as a supported SF device, despite the SFMAN APIs being present in the driver for some reason (they work perfectly with FSMP x86 for auto SF loading and removal). This is on Windows 11 Pro x64, for reference.

I am curious as to whether the APIs are still present on the Live! and Audigy in Win9x though, and if testing can be done to see when this problem first occured.

From what I remember, the automatic soundfont loading in FF7 did work on a SBLive under Win98, but the end result sounded a bit off compared to a real AWE card. I might retest this when time permits.

I will record Battle Arena Toshinden, Magic Carpet 2 and Hi-Octane playing on my Audigy Rx with their AWE specific MIDI files and SoundFonts and post the recordings to this thread later.

Nice! You can compare those with the recordings that Cloudschatze made on a real AWE card in this thread: Re: AWEstruck...

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-20, 09:44:

From what I remember, the automatic soundfont loading in FF7 did work on a SBLive under Win98, but the end result sounded a bit […]
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grommit2007 wrote on 2023-08-19, 22:32:

WRT to FF7, it does not detect the Audigy Rx as a supported SF device, despite the SFMAN APIs being present in the driver for some reason (they work perfectly with FSMP x86 for auto SF loading and removal). This is on Windows 11 Pro x64, for reference.

I am curious as to whether the APIs are still present on the Live! and Audigy in Win9x though, and if testing can be done to see when this problem first occured.

From what I remember, the automatic soundfont loading in FF7 did work on a SBLive under Win98, but the end result sounded a bit off compared to a real AWE card. I might retest this when time permits.

I will record Battle Arena Toshinden, Magic Carpet 2 and Hi-Octane playing on my Audigy Rx with their AWE specific MIDI files and SoundFonts and post the recordings to this thread later.

Nice! You can compare those with the recordings that Cloudschatze made on a real AWE card in this thread: Re: AWEstruck...

With regards to the above captioned, I have been busy over the past few months, however I managed to record the entire soundfont MIDI demo folder (at the native 16-bit 48KHz rate of the EMU10K2, as well as loading the soundfonts according to the instructions in the readme file in the same folder) that is present on most AWE64 driver CDs, as well as the Windows MIDIs from Win95-98SE and Me-present.

Due to the size of the files (and the fact that they are uncompressed WAV format files recorded with the What U Hear output device set at 16-bit 48KHz, which is equivalent to recording from the SPDIF output) I would have to share the link to them as a Google Drive link.

Once I have time to record the SoundFont MIDI compatible DOS games output from my card, I will upload them here. Having compared the output (which I did not record at the time when I discovered this a few years ago) to Cloudschatze's recording, I can tell you that Magic Carpet 2's intro sounds subtly different (the cinematic and main menu themes in particular). Hi Octane's sounds almost identical to an EMU8000 based card aside from the lack of reverb and chorus (I left the settings for it on the defaults).

grommit2007 wrote on 2024-04-09, 02:47:

Due to the size of the files (and the fact that they are uncompressed WAV format files recorded with the What U Hear output device set at 16-bit 48KHz, which is equivalent to recording from the SPDIF output) I would have to share the link to them as a Google Drive link.

Alternatively, you could open a SoundCloud account.

They offer free hosting of audio files, up to a certain limit, but it should be good for about an hour of music.

1.
It's interesting that I have not noticed this topic so far. I remember when grommit2007 wrote to me back in 2018 to investigate the situation. The SB Live! with Liveware drivers and Audigy 2 ZS with Daniel_K drivers tests were done by me and I have found the conclusion:

30 Dec 2018, 00:23 To grommit2007 […]
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30 Dec 2018, 00:23
To grommit2007

Hi,
I have finally succeeded in loading ROM referencing soundfonts with Daniel_K Audigy 2 ZS driver + Soundfont Bank Manager.
The point is newer Audigy drivers are broken at least 2 ways.
1. Contrary to older SB Live drivers when you try to load an SBK soundfont with ROM reference, loading always fails. While the old SB Live driver cannot load SBK files directly, it always offers a conversion dialog to convert the SBK files to SF2.
2. You cannot load even SF2 converted files that reference ONLY ROM samples. At least one embedded sample has to be present in the converted SF2 file.
The consequence of error 2 is that you cannot use SYNTHGM (neither SBK nor converted SF2) with newer drivers.
But if you convert SYNTHGS.SBK/SYNTHMT.SBK to SF2 either with the old SB Live driver or Vienna then these 2 SF2 files can be loaded to newer Audigy drivers.
And SYNTHGS is actually a superset of SYNTHGM so it contains all GM ROM instruments and perfectly compatible with it.

I attached the converted SF2 files that can be used with new Audigy drivers so you do not have to make the conversion.
Bye

These are the above mentioned converted SF2 files that can be loaded even with newer Daniel_K drivers on Win10/11:

BTW, these .SF2 files also work with older drivers so overall they are more compatible than the original .SBK files.

2.

grommit2007 wrote on 2023-08-19, 22:32:

...
WRT to FF7, it does not detect the Audigy Rx as a supported SF device, despite the SFMAN APIs being present in the driver for some reason (they work perfectly with FSMP x86 for auto SF loading and removal). This is on Windows 11 Pro x64, for reference.
...

Just for your information:
By default Creative and even Daniel_K driver installers only install the 32-bit SFMAN components even on 64-bit Windows. But the 64-bit SFMAN components can be found in the drivers and can be installed manually. Here is how:
Re: Falcosoft Soundfont Midi Player + Munt VSTi + BassMidi VSTi
Although I do not think that besides FSMP x64 any other software exists that can use x64 version of SFMAN 😀

I use the method outlined in this post because it works with xmplay. Soundfont Librarian can convert .sbk to .sf2 with ROM Samples