VOGONS


First post, by Dhall

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Greetings,

I would like to ask for your help on how to get dosbox to use edirol Virtual Sound Canvas 3.23

I got the VSC installed and I can set it as a default midi device in windows, it also plays midis well, so I think the program works properly.

In the Dosbox readme I read the following:

add a line
'config=id' to the [midi] section in the configuration file, where
'id' is the number for the device as listed by LISTMIDI.

I used the mixer /listmidi command in dosbox and it gave back "Roland VSC" with the id of "1"

In the dosbox.conf, after the [Midi] section I changed config= to config=1.

I tried doom/heretic on general midi/sound canvas and it still uses the windows wavetable.

Where did I go wrong? What did I miss? Thanks in advance!

Last edited by Dhall on 2012-04-09, 19:10. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 6, by Mau1wurf1977

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That's pretty much the gist of it. Good job on reading all the documentation.

Any chance you are editing the wrong config file?

PS: If you can set the VSC as default midi device then you can leave the midiconfig entry blank or set it to 0.

Under Vista or W7 you need a utility to change the default MIDI device though.

Reply 2 of 6, by Dhall

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Thank you for your answer. It turned out, that it actually worked and it was me, who could not perceive the difference immediately. I don't know, maybe it is my fault, or I have too high expectations. I've always had the impression (based on other people's opinions) that the Sound Canvas was the best there is. Probably Doom and Heretic are not the best games to fully utilize the capabilities of the Roland. With that said, I was a bit disappointed because the sound of the Vsc is much closer to the windows midi than I expected. In Doom a Yamaha db50xg daughter board sounds miles better. I have a Gravis Classic and a Yamaha daughter board but a Roland card is much too expensive. Maybe it's just that it is emulated and an actual card would sound better? We'll see. Thanks for your help anyways.

Reply 3 of 6, by bloodbat

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The Windows MIDI patches were licensed by MS from Roland and, in theory, sound fairly close to the virtual Sound Canvas, they are, after all, a version of it.
You can listen to the DOOM files played with a real SC here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316i0uV32WE
and compare yourself.

Reply 4 of 6, by Dhall

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Played by a "real SC"? What do you mean?

In the video Mau1wurf1977 clearly states that it is a virtual sound canvas.

Reply 5 of 6, by Mau1wurf1977

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Dhall wrote:

Played by a "real SC"? What do you mean?

In the video Mau1wurf1977 clearly states that it is a virtual sound canvas.

There is a discussion in the comments section about the VSC, but the recordings are from a real Sound Canvas SC-55 😀

If you are mostly using DOSBox you should definitely look into using Sound Fonts.

If you have a Creative card you can use my guide here:

Creative Labs X-Fi + SoundFont + W7 64bit + DOSBox + General Midi Games

There are some recordings and IMO Sound Fonts are the way to go if you are looking for something new that goes beyond Sound Canvas.

For non Creative cards there are also options to use Sound Fonts like BASSMIDI for example.

I can highly recommend the ChoriumRevA Sound Font.

Reply 6 of 6, by Dhall

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Sorry guys, apparently I'm blind as a bat when it comes to reading the description and not the comments. Thanks for directing my attention toward sound fonts.

However..I'm worried about the beaver competition.