First post, by GL1zdA
Rank
Oldbie
- Rank
- Oldbie
I'm still thinking about building my RetroPC (actually, I have 3 semi finished projects). While there are many components to choose from, everyone seems to agree, that a Roland Sound Canvas should be an integral part of a RetroPC, because the best games have their music written for Roland. But I see some problems here.
- SCC-1
This one seems to be very rare and might not have the MK-II banks. To use it with digitized sound you would need a external mixer. Not very convenient.
SC-55
As with the SCC-1, the main problem is mixing the digital sound and MIDI music.
RAP-10
Gives you digital sound (if the game supports it), but does not give all the SC-55 banks.
SCB-55 on SB
The daughter board can be attached to a Sound Blaster, which would give good digital sound compatibility and great MIDI. But the SB is noisy, and the less noisy ones have the hanging notes bug. Spending a lot of $ on a DB and using it at crap quality would be a waste of money.
SCB-55 on professional or semi-professional sound card
On the other hand you can use a quality sound card (Terratec, Hoontech), but this would require SB emulation, drivers etc. (Correct me if I'm wrong about the driver issue).
SCB-55 on a PCI card
I could use a Diamond Monster MX300, but this card in a 486 or Pentium would be just a DB host. Using a PCI sound card in something older than PII with Win9x seems to be a travesty.
SCB-55 on a DosBOX PC
This is my newest idea. Since DosBOX provides lots of great hardware, maybe I should simply put a Monster MX300 in my XP PC, add the SCB and let DosBOX play MIDI through it? DosBOX would take care of the digital SB and with the SCB would make the perfect setup. I know that at some point a XP box will be considered a RetroPC, but all in all it seems it would be easier to setup a box for XP (Motherboard with integrated ATI graphics, a CPU and a DIMM or two), than setup a 486 or Pentium box (SIMMs, AT PSU, AT Tower, HDD/FDD controller - it's hard to get here some good parts).
What do you think, especially about the SCB options? How are you using your SC modules?
