You seem strangely inflexible on what exactly you want. Lots of people in this thread have offered great ideas, solutions and suggestions and you’ve bashed every one because they’re not 100% exactly what you want in your mind (which seems to be a moving target anyway).

I’d recommend being a little more flexible and open minded in general. Nothing is perfect and nothing is going to be 100% exactly what you’re picturing in your mind. Being this inflexible and unwilling to compromise can’t be good for you.

zaphod77 wrote on 2023-11-30, 19:33:

if you don't load up media player for ages, it scans all of your mp3 files an whatnot and tries to fill in album information and go grab album covers.

Use Media Player Classic instead.

It doesn't have any of that nonsense. It's just a basic player.

We've gone from external, all-in-one midi and DAC devices, something that doesn't need an external mixer to route the sound back, to "software midi cables" to soft synths to files which have a higher data rate than a traditional hardware synth with physical midi cabling can support.

I am still none the wiser on what the OP actually wants to do.

zaphod77 wrote on 2023-11-30, 17:38:

Yeah, if i had money i'd be seriously tempted to do something fancy, but my motive here is nostalgia on a budget, and right now my laptop isn't that powerful. Hence me wanting a seriously low spec midi player to make up for the cpu being used on the softsynth and midi cable. or a waveblaster style integrated hardsynth to do xg and or gs properly out my headset or laptop speakers when i get the hankering to listen to some music.

Here in South Africa, people are literally throwing away Core2 and 1st/2nd gen i3, i5 etc PCs, so I'm sure it must be really easy to get a reasonably spec'd PC in the States for next to nothing. I agree with Midicollector, you need to broaden your horizon a bit, I love using my real midi hardware, but if I didn't have them, the Dell Wyse with Falcosoft's midi player would be 99% as good, it covers all midi bases (Sound Canvas, Yamaha XG, Soundfonts as well as the MT-32 and variants) with one machine and I'm able to use it with my 520STe and Amiga 2000. It can be set up with a tiny capital outlay, the only expensive bit is the Roland Cloud SCVA, but if you look around, you'll be able to get an older version for nothing.

zaphod77 wrote on 2023-11-27, 22:44:

egytech.mid

Very cool someone still listens to one of my midi files from the 90s back when I was THeDReaMaSTeR. Thank you!