These two options are available for MIDI playback in Doom, but what's the difference? The Sound Canvas is a General Midi device, so I don't quite get why it needs its own place on the list.
Do not refrain from refusing to stop hindering yourself from the opposite of watching nothing other than that which is by no means porn.
I always wondered about this as well 😀
I've never noticed any difference, just making Sound Canvas owners feel special perhaps? (as they should!)
Life? Don't talk to me about life.
general midi has 128 instruments only
sound canvas has over 300 instruments, many times more drums, sound effects and lots of other features
wrote:general midi has 128 instruments only
sound canvas has over 300 instruments, many times more drums, sound effects and lots of other features
Yes, but does Doom actually use any of these additional instrument? Because I don't believe there is any difference, meaning the same driver gets used.
wrote:I've never noticed any difference, just making Sound Canvas owners feel special perhaps? (as they should!)
Haha yea that must be it 😀
Doom: Adlib VS Sound Blaster
These two options are available for MIDI playback in Doom, but what's the difference? The Sound Blaster is an Adlib device, so I don't quite get why it needs its own place on the list.
Doom also has the "Waveblaster" option, which is more of the same...
Adlib vs. Soundblaster at least uses different I/O addresses. 😉
A screenshot of all the options 😀
Well I did bring this up in another topic a few months ago...
wrote:wrote:My main concern were games where you get to choose between Sound Canvas and GM though. The OP thought that SC would imply GS usage, which isn't true for all the games I played so far.
The thing to check for here would be the use of tones in the variation banks, or additional drum kits, both of which are GS features.
The 7th Guest, Ultima VIII, and Warcraft II come to mind. I don't know that a complete list has ever been attempted.
Sound Canvas is actually GS rather than GM, but no MIDI music in Doom takes advantage of that. In Duke Nukem 3D the difference is noticeable.
If what you say is true then the game would send different MIDI data depending on which mode is selected in the options. When I have some time I'm going to investigate this further...
On a related note, I wonder why Roland included a seperate GM mode in its devices when GS is "supposed" to be 100% compatible to GM material. Perhaps just to ensure full compatibility to GM only devices when composing?
Then there is the problem of lacking reset commands. I had playback issues ranging from replaced drum kits to whistles etc. replacing other instruments on a Sound Canvas. The lack of standardization on the MIDI author's side really makes it all a bit of a mess. If anyone wants a good example: PASSPORT.MID, should be relatively well known. It always seems to need a reset to play correctly (I forgot which), it sounds completely different when something else was played before; of course the file doesn't include one...
Yea there is a similar issue with Duke Nukem 3D. I believe if you played Doom before it, it has wrong instruments. Or right ones, I can't remember.
There was a thread about this here and I can't remember if this was a NEC/Yamaha issue or a General MIDI bug in general.
You probably mean this...
That's the one. Does the very first Sound Canvas (SC-55) also have this issue?
I don't have that module. From a recent thread I learned that there were different hardware revisions of that unit though. SC-55s without the GM logo mistreat the GM reset as a GS reset.
Yea and the MKII does not I believe.
I have both types might test with Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. This reset issue keeps popping up and I believe that you're fine with the old SC-55 with more games.
Do you know what the extra 37 tones of the MkII actually were? I always keep reading "Yeah, some games used these+the extra polyphony" but no one mentions actual games which are supposed to do so.
The higher polyphony and 18bit vs 16bit might be noticeable in certain situations, but I doubt any of the extra instruments of the MKII are used by a single game.
Made a quick and rough capture (sorry about the IQ quality) with the SC-55 and then SC-55MK2.
For both I reset the unit (complete reset), then run Duke3D, then Doom, then Duke3D again.
From a quick listening I can't make out any differences at all.
Anyway, I've noticed that Grabbag uses the Power drum kit. Additional drum kits were a feature of GS... that fits with my experience with the Yamaha where the default TG300B/GS mode plays stronger drums for that track than the GM mode after starting Doom. As in, the extra banks aren't available in GM and it just defaults to the standard drums. But then I don't get why this track seemingly doesn't show the same behavior on the Roland...?
Ah, by the way... does the instrument display on your SC-55 change to where it has a _ between the instrument number and the name after you start Doom? It does that on my SC-88 when manually sending a GM reset, even if I couldn't find anything that would hint at it in the documentation.
