Yes, but good luck doing that MIDI-IN part

Personally, I want to try this but by passing MIDI through... TCP-IP

Hmm...

My USB MIDI adapter has MIDI-IN, but were do you go from there...

Fascinating...

I know your angle is doing the midi synthesis on a modern pc but here's one the other way round:

my little Midi box

which I guess shows it should work in principle.

Don't those front boxes for more recent sb's have a midi-in?

Interesting...

Yes many modern sound cards come with a MIDI-IN. I think the trick is to route the MIDI-IN signal in some way to the software MIDI program / SoundFont.

The SoundBlaster Live and Audigy front panel have MIDI in. No clue about XFi but I would assume so as well.

I suppose turning a PC into a midi box would be a decent idea. Aftr all, dedicated MIDI modules are more expensive and less versatile. I'm pretty sure there's plenty of audio software that accepts MIDI input as well.

I see...

Well the Live and Audigy also support loading SoundFonts. I wonder if that's all you need to have..

In fact all the X-Fi cards support loading SoundFonts, but I don't know if it will listen to a MIDI-IN signal...

All my gear is packed away because I'm moving soon, but yea this sounds like a fun project!

I remember back in the day, I had a MIDI keyboard that had a cable that was DIN on one side and the game port plug on the other to hook this thing into my sound card and it came with software to let me use the thing. Couldn't you just find the right software and hook a computer into the sound card the same way?

Yup that's exactly what I'm thinking. Because AFAIK (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, MIDI is MIDI no matter if it comes from a keyboard with someone playing or from a sound card from another computer.

That's exactly where I was getting to. Now it's just a matter of grabbing an appropriate cable and then finding some software that accepts MIDI instrument input; maybe something that can use VST plugins since there seems to be an endless number of good VST synths out there.

...and with a sound card like a Live or Audigy, you can also enjoy the benefit of all the nifty effects those cards can produce.

This sounds like it could be a fun project. My Compaq Deskpro is about the size of a library dictionary and definitely has enough computing power (pin-modded Tualatin for the win!) and a decent enough sound card (Audigy 2ZS). The old computer also makes very little noise and I'm sure if I downgraded the CPU, I could get rid of fans altogether. Maybe when I get another computer to replace that old thing as my entertainment computer, I'll give the project a shot myself.

hi

i have something like you describe in operation already.

it's an old PIII 866 with an awe64, sw1000xg/p + plg100dx
and audugy2 setup.

this machine runs dos/win98/xp for multiple tasks, however,
it's default mode of operation is as a hardware midi synth.

it normally boots into XP (remote desktop access is
enabled btw) and from windows startup it runs MIDI-OX which accepts
midi input on the SW1000xg midi-in (awe64 or audigy
can also work) and then plays that on the sw1000xg midi
synth port number 1.

with midi-ox you create a profile and then in a shortcut to midi-ox
you tell it to load that profile as a parameter.

with APM enabled the hard disk also shuts down so the
machine is relatively quiet and in effect emulates a mu100
albeit in my case in a 4u rack case.

bye

edit:typo

Nice!

Looks like MIDI-OX is the key to all of this.

Looking at their website:

It displays incoming MIDI streams, and passes the data to a MIDI output driver or the MIDI Mapper.

That's pretty sweet 😀

hi

midi-ox is incredibly powerful and can do practically
anything you can imagine with regard to midi routing.

i suspect most people here have accumulated a whole
bunch of retro noise generators (i certainly have) and
building a pc to host some hardware cards is
definitely a good way to utilise some of that kit.

you also end up with a general purpose noise blaster
and in my case i drive it from a modern pc but driving
it from an even more retro pc is just as valid and
perhaps even more useful, especially if you have
a non pci 486 for example.

cya and good luck.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Now I was wondering if something like this is possible:
Vintage PC > MPU401 > MIDI cable > MIDI-IN > Modern PC > SoundFont

I tried that a few months ago. Bought a USB Midi Adapter cable and connected my retro PC with a small eee PC netbook. The headphones jack from the eee PC I connected with the line-in of the ISA soundcard.

The eee PC can then be configured as a Midi module with various Synts. The synths have to use the USB Midi adapter as the midi input source.

Worked fine. It was the first time I reproduced MT-32 sound (Emulator).

Awesome!

What software did you use and which one would you recommend?

Did you use Fluidsynth or Bassmidi?

I don't think MidiYoke was necessary for what I was doing.
These software synths were tested to work with the two PC setup:
- Fluidsynth v1.11 with 4MB and 8MB soundfonts
(console version: fluidsynth -a dsound -m winmidi -o midi.winmidi.device="USB-Midi in")
- Timidity with 4MB and 8MB soundfonts.
(console version: timidity -e -iW 2 -c SF2\8MBGM.CFG -A 90,100)
- MT32 Emu (10-07-2011)
- Roland Sound Canvas VST plugin, running on SaviHost.
- Yamaha S-YXG50 VST plugin, running on SaviHost.
- SynthFont VST plugin, running on SaviHost.

Any Synth should work as long as the midi input can be selected somehow.

Very nice! Thanks

I have used such setup already years ago, but mostly the other way around.
I have used Dosbox on a fast PC and routed MIDI to a PC with real retro hardware as Roland SC, GUS PnP, WaveBlaster or Dream chipsets (with different SFs on this side). The point was that you can of course load soundfonts to SB Live, but there is often no emulation of old chipsets due to copyright issues.

So it is possible to setup network between Dosbox and a real retro PC and replay music for the dosbox client on the retro PC using a Dream chipset while the client running on the retro PC uses f.e. Sound Canvas that is in the same retro PC just at a different resource.

I had this idea too but never actually tried it. At some point however i had my GM midi Casio keyboard connected on the mpu 401 of my sound blaster and used it to play music in games. It was pretty funny 🤣