I do, until they break. If it appears beyond repair I either try an extreme measure (like the oven trick with graphics cards) as there's nothing to lose or else salvage what I can and neglect it until it finds it's way to the trash can.

Also, wuss 😜

@HighTreason

The reason to me the GUS doesn't sound as good as an MT-32 when it's emulating an MT-32 it's because it is trying to emulate it using its instruments arranged and organized like an MT-32. It sounds good, but for me not as good as an MT-32. Anyway, this is not taking the piss out of the GUS which i sincerely love, great sound quality, good wavetable music for its time and excellent PCM abilities. You mentioned the PAS before which was great too, although today its only a little bit inconvenient because of its -5v requirement.

I guess this is all down to personal experiences. The only thing interesting in the AWE64 Gold for me is the EMU8000 capability. Anything pass that is meh... I mean here's this company who dominated sales with their lines of cards, and their flasgship cards were never something truly awesome past the introduction of the first Sound Blaster. BTW, you mentioned games with custom patches for the MT-32 didn't worked properly when you tried them, you sure you used a proper intelligent MPU-401 interface?

The reason why Roland has such a folowing in the retro community, it's because that's what developers did use the most. Roland. I have an SC-55 and a MU-80, and as a GM unit i think the MU-80 is so much better. Even some games sound better for me on the Yamaha than on the Roland but what can i do?

I have no gripes with the YMF-71x chipsets either, in fact i'm actually sad that this chipset wasn't used commonly on high quality PCB implementations. Because it's a very highly integrated capable chipset IMHO.

The SCC-1 would be interesting for me because it sports an intelligent MPU-401 interface. Pass that and how is it better against a Yamaha SW60XG?

All in all, its a matter of taste and experiences.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

My GUS experience is different. Got the card, installed it. Listened to a few demos, then tried a few games I know and packed it away never to be used again 🤣

AWE 64 Gold + MPU401AT + MT-32 (Old) + CM-32L + SC-55 is, as I already mentioned earlier, and most know, my recommended setup.

I've collected all my YouTube sound comparison videos on my website. Here are some famous Sierra games: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/sierra-games.html

+1. Roland is the way to go. Anything else is very convoluted and has very little application in games IMO.

@carlostex; Indeed, as I said, what use would opinions be if they were all the same. For reference sake, I was using the SCC-1's MIDI OUT port to interface the MT-32 to the computer. I was using an SW1000XG to control it with Cakewalk when composing and patching myself though, either that or the AWE64 Gold as they were in the same machine (As each other, not the SCC-1, that's in a different one) but in either circumstance it should have worked. I've heard various reasons from fans and collectors, even that it was a bug in some MK1 units firmware or some such. The same goes for the jammed reverb and patch, I was told that this was related to the overflow problem and some freak occurrence with some other IC... If they'd used a better quality DAC it probably wouldn't have happened but as usual, they cheaped out and charged a premium. Being unable to stand the thin, whiny sound it made I wasn't particularly bothered about it in games anyway. To be honest the only stuff I had that supported it were Sierra games in which I dislike the music anyway (Aside from Larry's theme) and Dark Forces which sounded better on the GUS and - dare I say it - the SCC-1... The latter isn't saying much as it sounded better than the MT-32 on an OPL chip. As for the Sierra titles, I found out that I could patch them to use GM... Shame it didn't patch their terrible setup utility but that's another story.

Try the MU80's XG mode, there weren't many games that supported it but if you learn how to use it properly you can do crazy things with it like realistic electric guitar and a ridiculous amount of effects. Plus some 90's bubblegum pop was made with them, I think Sega used an MU1000 for Sonic Adventure too, may have been a 128.

I suppose the fact my machines probably spend more time running demos than playing games is possibly a factor here too. No demo I know uses an MT-32 or a SoundCanvas, but plenty of them use the GUS and one or two even use the Spectrum rather resourcefully. The best thing with the PAS for me, is the novelty of being able to potentially blow up speakers with it, a 4-Watt amp on the card? Did they not think that might be a little overkill? No such thing as overkill in my book.

@PeterLI: What a surprise.

95% of vintage computing enthusiasts fire up games on old machines and play them. They will also occassionally play MIDI files . For this vast majority Roland is the best choice. As evidenced by support in games and strong demand.

You are in the 5% with very off track requirements. You are comparing apples to pears. Reminds me of a friend in the 1990s who swore by GUS. At LAN Parties he could never get games to work or they crashed. Those with vanilla SBs and Roland (including myself) got playing right away. He wasted hours.

This discussion is very similar to the Windows versus Linux one.

Not really, my setup is the best all-rounder.

No offense, but if your friend couldn't get games to work with the GUS he's a moron. The GUS could run most games without any serious issues and if you want to talk games, what about Epic? Very GUS oriented. In short, my setup would get through the LANParty and blow everything else away at a Demoparty. Where do you think the major upsurge in quality came from? The scene had some influence in that, probably a notable example is Epic as they are one of the only companies from that era that are still operating. You don't see iD/Apogee/Sierra pushing out a new 3D engine any time soon.

HighTreason wrote:

As a last note, it has a typical Roland trait whereby it ignores something they helped standardize, in this case, violating the MIDI specification.

What, exactly, are you referring to?

HighTreason wrote:

I suppose the fact my machines probably spend more time running demos than playing games is possibly a factor here too.

Of course, the GUS was very popular with demos. Now what is wrong with the Sierra setup utility?

And no, you can't just patch games with MT-32 support to support General MIDI. Maybe a handful of titles had patches like that released but all the MT-32 gems from Origin, Sierra and Lucasarts simply sound totally wrong with non MT-32 MIDI devices. Monkey Island being an exception because it only uses the default Instruments.

Here's a challenge for you: Try Wing Commander, Fate of Atlantis, Space Quest 3 or Gods with the GUS and see if you can get MIDI to work well 😀

The thing is every Sound Card shines in something. For me the GUS shines with demos and tracker based games. But it does not shine when the game supports the MT-32 or General MIDI. There are simply better options available. The good thing is that we don't need to limit ourselves to a single card or a budget (well neither Roland or GUS hardware is cheap these days...) like in the old days. Personally I look at it on a per-game basis.

@Cloudschatze; Channel 1. It does nothing. Some devices are not flexible which makes me think they did it on purpose to encourage buying more Roland equipment. A bit like the JX-3P requiring that stupid PG-200 gizmo that stopped you using the MIDI port until you were done programming.

@Mau1wurf1977; The utility throws a fit with my K5 for whatever reason, I dunno, but having to use a patch just to change the MIDI port irks me somewhat. Why should I take your challenge up? You didn't take up mine and it takes more work than mine... Or do you have no confidence in the build quality? In which case, why should I believe anything you say?

Price. You've hit the nail on the head, I was going to write about it before (Given how apparently everyone at a LanParty had Roland/SoundBlaster setups) but who in the 1990's had this stuff? Nobody. It was too expensive, think about it, out of everyone I knew there was only one guy on a Roland (He had an LAPC-1 as far as I know, I was young and only vaguely remember what it sounded like) and there were even people who still didn't have any audio cards at all given the cost of them... Another win for the GUS, it was a cheaper overall solution. Moving out of the PC sector and into the Synth sector though, Roland are stupidly priced, Korg probably cost more though, depends on what you try to buy... Drum machines are the worst for it, the Roland TR-808 fetches thousands of dollars whereas the Casio RZ-1 is hundreds at most - and has a sampler so I can wind up TR-808 fans 😉.

In reality, I look at it on a per-game basis too, I just like a debate every once in a while. You could never convince me to use an MT-32 again, but I'm not about to go around stopping other people using them, well, unless they choose to test the build quality... I will, however call bullshit when I see it and in my application at least, they were terrible.

-----

As I said, there's no malice behind this, I do just enjoy a debate every once in a while and I haven't got anything else to do right now.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

For me the GUS shines with demos and tracker based games. But it does not shine when the game supports the MT-32 or General MIDI. There are simply better options available.(...) Personally I look at it on a per-game basis.

We must keep in mind that a lot of stuff was composed on Roland hardware. Still, the GUS is quite capable MIDI wise and that is quite seen in games that properly support its instrument set. So i totally agree with your last statement, its better to look game by game, application by application.

BTW, for later games i 'd rather have a GUS than an AWE64 Gold...

@HighTreason

You like MIDI keyboards and stuff? Have you tried Kurzweil?

Anyway we're deviating from topic

Well I was able to find a CT2900 on ebay from a seller with several refurb cards in stock. $12USD including shipping. That takes care of having a SB16 on hand.

I owned the Roland SCD-10 and later SCD-15 as soon as it came out. Most other people owned Sound Blaster cards or SB clones. It always worked right away. No loading of samples / TSRs and so on (that is why I did not like the AWE32 and reverted back to the SB16 with SCD-15 back then). And no: GUS did not work very well with many games. The TSRs were very buggy. And Roland is not that expensive. You can own a module for < $100 and nowadays with SoftMPU and replica MIF-IPC-As and clone intelligent MPU-401s those are <= $150 as well. I never cared about the demo scene and never will. I enjoy(ed) games.

BTW: a LAPC-I is a CM-32L on a card: a MT-32 with extra samples. There is no alternative to the MT-32 in the early music age with regards to quality.

Also: Yamaha, Creative and Roland are still around. GUS / AdLib and so on all bit the dust and are gone. That tells it all.

PeterLI wrote:

Also: Yamaha, Creative and Roland are still around. GUS / AdLib and so on all bit the dust and are gone. That tells it all.

No it doesn't tell it all. Roland is a company with long history with music instruments. So is Yamaha. These 2 companies did not need to survive on their PC/musical equipment only. Creative had the right product at the right time, so they managed to have the industry support, set the standard and later started aquiring loads of other companies.

Sorry but your argument is kinda lame.

HighTreason wrote:

@Cloudschatze; Channel 1. It does nothing.

The MT-32 doesn't respond to Channel 1 by default, but any of the eight (non-rhythm) parts can be set to receive on any of the 16 MIDI channels, via SysEx. (There's also the key-combination that will shift the default assignment down one channel, for a 1:1 correlation.) This is explained well enough in the manual.

Concerning the reason for not assigning a part to receive on Channel 1 at power-up, the simple explanation is that the MT-32 was designed as an accompaniment module for Roland's digital pianos, which, by default, are set to transmit/receive on Channel 1.

carlostex wrote:

Sorry but your argument is kinda lame.

Not at all. Survival of the fittest.

Who cares what it cost in the 90s? My point was that when looking at current prices, neither Roland nor GUS are cheap by any means. So the price argument goes out the window.

Why would you use a MIDI port other than 330? That's just being silly. It's like saying the GUS doesn't work in a PCI system so it's crap. Use hardware the way it's intended and you don't have any issues. I haven't had any issues with AMD processors and Sierra games. Roland modules do work with modern machines through USB MIDI adapter though, a huge plus.

And standing on a MIDI unit? How can I take that seriously?

PeterLI wrote:

Not at all. Survival of the fittest.

Except only one of the successful companies you mentioned survived the test of card by selling sound cards. And their success is part merit, part AdLib incompetence.

Do you think that if you ask random people around the world the first thing they're gonna say is: "Yeah, Roland the company who made the MT-32 and set the MPU-401 standard". Or "Yeah, Yamaha i didn't know they made engines and whatnot i only know their totally awesome FM synthesis implementations".

What i'm trying to say is just because AdLib and Advanced Gravis died, doesn't mean their products weren't/aren't relevant or just as valuable.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Why would you use a MIDI port other than 330? That's just being silly.

How is it silly? Is there something special about port 330h? Why wouldn't a musician or someone else have good reasons to have different MIDI devices on different ports? The reason why 330h is default for MIDI is probably the same why 388h was the default for the OPL2 on AdLib. That's what they chosed at the time and it stuck with others for compatibility. I for instance put my AWE64 Gold AdLib port on 398h so i don't hear that fizzy CQM.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

And standing on a MIDI unit? How can I take that seriously?

Agree 100% with you, this is totally silly.

Well let me help you Mau1wurf1977. This should be educational so, please close pay attention.

We all know that Smurfs and Lemmings are the actual 'goblins' that the Japanese manufacturers secretly put inside of all products that they export to the outside world. They have done this for centuries and it is in some ways related to ancient Chinese black magic (hint, watch the movie Big Trouble in Little China starring Kurt Russell). Now, some manufactures put Smurfs in their products, some put in Lemmings and still a few others put in whatever is available at the lowest cost at that time. Therefore, for a lot of product lines, it really comes down to a debate of which is better... Smurfs or Lemmings. I even have a bumper sticker that praises Smurfs while condemning Lemmings. I guess you know where I stand now. Lemmings are dumb, yet surprisingly strong for their size. Imagine a small metal box full of strong little Lemmings, if you were to stand on said box, they would have little trouble in supporting your weight I think. So I firmly believe the challenger is a supporter of Lemmings. It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Oh well... hope you had a laugh anyways.

carlostex wrote:

How is it silly? Is there something special about port 330h? Why wouldn't a musician or someone else have good reasons to have different MIDI devices on different ports? The reason why 330h is default for MIDI is probably the same why 388h was the default for the OPL2 on AdLib. That's what they chosed at the time and it stuck with others for compatibility. I for instance put my AWE64 Gold AdLib port on 398h so i don't hear that fizzy CQM.

It's silly because we all KNOW that 330 is what ended up the de-facto setting for most games. If you choose a different setting then don't be surprised if something doesn't work.

I'd pretty much quit this, but you guys are easy to get riled up. Some of what is written generally fails to counter facts and instead takes the long route around finding minor things that have nothing to do with anything - So I'm not even going to dignify it with a response and a couple of you have already long since invalidated your own arguments anyway.

The reason I am using port 300 is that my Sound Blaster 16 is using port 330, it was there first and I could not be bothered to tear it out and alter it, nor did I fancy having to reconfigure the vast library of software using it's interface to talk to the MU90R and CZ-5000 as the SCC-1 doesn't send some more obscure SysEx messages for some reason, likely caused by the module on the card or mismatched manufacture IDs. Also due to it's lack of power, any lag transfers over to the device on the end of the cable so I only use it to send a few minimal bits and pieces to the B-side if needed. Thus, the SCC-1 is at port 300h... No doubt you'd suggest I screw around with the system, spend some of my infinite supply of money or whatever other infeasible and time consuming solution you could come up with. Aside from Sundays which are boring, I'm generally preoccupied with real life stuff and don't need to spend my day dicking around with settings I could have just left alone.

The fact that the machine uses a K5 has nothing to do with it, I don't remember claiming it did, I was merely differentiating the machine out of habit "The K5" as in "The box that has the K5, SoundCanvas, SB16, stupid amounts of RAM and a Virge in it that has faulty memory somewhere around the 3.5MB marker."