The MT-32 has behaviors that cannot really be emulated well with sound fonts.

Sorry to bump an old thread.

I've been giving this a little thought. Let me know if I'm on the wrong path.

It seems as though the default sound set of the MT-32 could be reproduced as a sound font (perhaps it already has?). After all, the SC-55's MT-32 emulation mode did something similar. What we're really missing is the ability to load custom sound data.

Now for a given game using custom sound data, couldn't a sound font be generated specific to that game? Ultimately, you might have, in addition to the MT-32 default sound font, a sound font for every game that used custom sound data. But, at least when it comes to playing old games, the need for actual MT-32 emulation would be circumvented.

Thoughts?

t seems as though the default sound set of the MT-32 could be reproduced as a sound font (perhaps it already has?).

I think so. I have a soundfont called synthmt.sf2 which I think has the same instrument mappings as the default mt-32.

Now for a given game using custom sound data, couldn't a sound font be generated specific to that game? Ultimately, you might have, in addition to the MT-32 default sound font, a sound font for every game that used custom sound data. But, at least when it comes to playing old games, the need for actual MT-32 emulation would be circumvented.

I think that's how it works on ScummVM if you use its MIDI output (unless you specify that you have a real MT-32).

Additionally, if the game reprograms the MT-32 more than once (I don't know if they do), the instrument mappings would go out of sync.

The problem is that the MT-32 can do things on-the-fly which can't be done with pregenerated sounds. That's one reason the waveform-generating MUNT wobbles between "pretty good," "passable," and "terrible" depending on the instrument being played.

The concept is valid, but the execution leaves things to be desired.