leileilol wrote:

Play Doom on E2M2 on an AWE32 or AWE64 card. SPOILER: It's going to suck.

That's what the Roland Sound Canvas is for 😜

I know that Monkey Island 2 also supports MT-32 and compatibles (I uploaded another video with Roland sound).

I picked this game mostly because it's popular and widespread and seems to be one of the more complex FM songs.

I knew all to well however that you can always use MT-32 and compatibles to avoid the FM synth sound...

Hearing Monkey Island / Monkey Island 2 from an OPL2/3 based card after a real MT-32 makes baby Jesus want to cry 🙁
.... we were all young and naive once.....

Well, I'd argue the Roland cards are exotic cards. The price makes them exotic. But there we go with the discussion again, you see? It is nothing more than a way to idle away time.

I was going to slap together a VLB box to dump a bios for Anonymous Coward in the near future, so when I do that and if I can find that time for it I'll record the output of the spare cards I have laying around and see about putting them together in a video. Maybe this will draw others out of the woodwork willing to make recordings of their clone opl cards.

Monkey Island 2 does actually have excellent FM quality.

Also as much as I love the Roland sound, Lucasarts either rushed this game or didn't bother because a ton of sound effects are missing:

- No sound when you remove the shovel from the sign
- No sound when the barkeeper cleans the glas
- No sound when the barkeeper spits into the glass
- No bat sounds when you see the voodoo lady
- No digital yell when you use the voodoo doll

and many more...

So although the music is great, the game feels a bit "lifeless" due to missing sound effects. It's only with ScummVMs "Mixed Adlib Mode" that you can hear Roland music AND Adlib / SB Sound Effects

EDIT:

Samudra I have 3 clone cards so far.

ESS AudioDrive
AWE 64
Ensoniq AudioPCI (which uses wavetable to emulate FM 🤣)

Mau1wurf1977, you have a Monkey Island youtube video with various sound cards, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NJuEzHuKuQ

I have spotted another. It's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a324ykKV-7Y

Thanks Mau for this video, such a cool idea. I have to say that the differences between those 3 cards sounds really subtle to me, and I would therefore not have a problem using any of them (at least for MI2).

I'd be interested to see something like this that compares a real OPL2 sound card's FM music to DOSBox's various OPL emulation cores/modes.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Monkey Island 2 does actually have excellent FM quality. […]
Show full quote

Monkey Island 2 does actually have excellent FM quality.

Also as much as I love the Roland sound, Lucasarts either rushed this game or didn't bother because a ton of sound effects are missing:

- No sound when you remove the shovel from the sign
- No sound when the barkeeper cleans the glas
- No sound when the barkeeper spits into the glass
- No bat sounds when you see the voodoo lady
- No digital yell when you use the voodoo doll

and many more...

So although the music is great, the game feels a bit "lifeless" due to missing sound effects. It's only with ScummVMs "Mixed Adlib Mode" that you can hear Roland music AND Adlib / SB Sound Effects

I hate games that don't support using both MT-32 and Sound Blaster effects. I've actually been really close to trying to hack apart Sierra's/Dynamix's sound drivers for Betrayal at Krondor because of this.

leileilol wrote:

Play Doom on E2M2 on an AWE32 or AWE64 card. SPOILER: It's going to suck.

I have a CT3670 next to me, if someone wants to record a genuine OPL2/3 I'll upload one from this card.

HunterZ wrote:

I hate games that don't support using both MT-32 and Sound Blaster effects. I've actually been really close to trying to hack apart Sierra's/Dynamix's sound drivers for Betrayal at Krondor because of this.

Yea it's a shame. Though Sierra actually has been quite good with regards to sound effects on the MT-32.

e.g. The sound effects in Space Quest 4 are amazing and they actually just recorded them for Sound Blaster users 🤣

Sound Effects are the (only?) weak area of these Roland modules. In Wing Commander I often thought "hmm wow this sounds a bit funny" whereas on the Sound Blaster the effects seem to fit more.

But the outright lack of Sound effects in MI2 is likely because of time constraints. E.g. the sound of bats can be heard in the graveyard but not in the swamp. And other effects that are missing could have easily been implemented, but I guess they ran out of time / money / resources or something like that.

OPL sound effects probably tend to be better than MT-32 ones because OPL chips are sound generators first and music devices second, while the MT-32 is the other way around.

General MIDI sound effects on the other hand... 🤣

HOW MANY DIFFERENT WAYS CAN YOU USE #127 - GUNSHOT!?

Yea GM sucked for sound effects although most games around that time supported digital speech AND midi music...

It's just that I never ever ever heard anyone or any reference whatsoever that in MI2 you miss out on sound effects with a Roland module. It was quite a shock and taught me that no matter how much research you do, there are always surprised around the corner when you finally play with the real thing 🤣

It's probably because very few actually had Roland gear in those days and those who did just never noticed.

I know this is old, but was this video removed? None of the links worked. AFAIK, YouTube don't remove videos or change their links even after 6+ years! Take down notice for the music?

Phil moved to a new channel and a bunch of the old videos were lost. I've been missing some of them, too.
Look for them here: https://www.youtube.com/user/philscomputerlab … y=monkey+island

Thanks, firage.