BloodyCactus wrote:So I picked up a Roland SC88VL in white... pretty nice.
Looks cool in white. It's also one of the less common Edirol-branded versions.
As far as I know the CM-64 mode doesn't give you extra sound effects, it just remaps the internal sounds so that music composed for CM-64 will sound right. I think the extra "sound effects" that Roland added in the CM-32L that were not present in the MT-32 were brought to the SC-55 native map and are part of the drum part on the SC-55 anyway. All the other MT-32 sounds that were not already present in the SC-55 were sampled and added to the SC-55 "CM-64 mode" - however they don't sound as rich or interesting because they lack this L.A. synthesis character.
Since you already own an MT-32, I guess what you could try if you want to play a specific game that uses the extra CM-32L sound effects is:
- connect the two modules in series
- have the game output music to the MT-32
- mute channel 10 on the MT-32
- mute all parts on the SC-88 except channel 10
this way you would have proper MT-32 soundtrack but the drum part with the sound effects would be output by the SC-88
Disclaimer: I've actually never tried it - it's just an idea and I don't even know if it would work 100% correct 😀