Awesome build!

You clearly know a lot about sound, so I'd like your opinion on those Primax speakers you have in the video. Would you recommend them? I often see them for sale and they look cool, but I don't know about sound.

Thing is, I've recently played some OPL3 music through better speakers almost by accident and realised I am suddenly able to enjoy it. The sound was just more complex and interesting as I could hear all the channels of OPL3 much more distinctly. The speakers were wireless Bowers & Wilkins Z1 — big name, but this particular model is no benchmark by any means. It is still much better than the cheap Creative speakers I use with my retro machines.

The Primax (or whatever they might be branded as) speakers are terrible! I use them mainly because they look the part and I need some form of monitoring when making music with this system. For a reality check every once in a while I have everything hooked up to my proper studio monitors at the other end of the room. So no, I wouldn't recommend them. OTOH they can be found for like $2 in thrift shops and I like their funky design aesthetic. Short answer I guess is if you have nothing else they will do their job but in terms of sound fidelity, they're just cheap boxy-sounding full-range speakers.

Yeah, it figures. Seems like with some rare exceptions period correct speakers don’t really sound good.

Cool stuff, I'm a big fan of oldschool GM/XG for 'real' music production too. A lot of those modules sound really nice when used properly. It's a shame GM got kind of a bad rep from crummy low-effort game conversions.

I built my Shuttle XPC specifically to sit in my setup and act as a Yamaha SW100XG "sound module", although it ended up becoming my primary Win98 music/games/everything machine in the process. Still need to finish my 100% XG track. 😀

What sequencer are you running?

EDIT: BTW I quite like your tracks, especially Road to Adventure - really shows off the XG soundset. Great job!

jheronimus: If by speakers you mean "multimedia speakers", then mostly no. I have a pair of Creative speakers (designed by Cambridge Soundworks) that actually sound good for what they are, but being tiny they lack any bottom end whatsoever and are more suited for casual use rather than making or listening to music. In my experience it's generally a better idea getting a decent compact stereo system from the era and hooking it up to the computer in question rather than messing around with so-called multimedia speakers.

xjas wrote:

Cool stuff, I'm a big fan of oldschool GM/XG for 'real' music production too. A lot of those modules sound really nice when used properly. It's a shame GM got kind of a bad rep from crummy low-effort game conversions.

I built my Shuttle XPC specifically to sit in my setup and act as a Yamaha SW100XG "sound module", although it ended up becoming my primary Win98 music/games/everything machine in the process. Still need to finish my 100% XG track. 😀

What sequencer are you running?

Totally agree, "used properly" being the operative words here. No one would argue that e.g. a GM oboe is superior or even equal to modern sample libraries for mimicing the real instrument, but that doesn't mean a GM oboe in all its cheesiness can't be used as a synthetic instrument in and of itself. In my experience, it's when you try to attempt realism with GM/XG instruments that everything falls apart. Approach everything as synth voices and it's much easier getting passable sounds out of whatever old hardware.

For this I'm using REAPER 4.78. Not a period piece of software, but I value my time. When setting this system up I tried using the ancient version of Cubase Score I used back in the day but quickly lost patience with its clunkiness.

Cerendir wrote:

In my experience it's generally a better idea getting a decent compact stereo system from the era and hooking it up to the computer in question rather than messing around with so-called multimedia speakers.

Nice tip. I've been thinking of getting something like Roland MA-12 (never saw one for sale in my area though) or maybe some modern bookshelf speakers in white, black or woodgrain. That's a cheat, sure, but a neutral design wouldn't look out of place.