Using DLS & ARL Sound Banks with Vortex 2 \ VOGONS

Using DLS & ARL Sound Banks with Vortex 2

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First post, by boxpressed

Posted on 2015-11-07, 22:26

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I've added an AU8830 to yet another system and decided to play around with its soft synth for DOS games. Does anyone use this as their preferred solution for GM and DOS gaming?

The Aureal 2041 driver set I have comes with a set called AU30GM.ARL. It sounds okay but also muffled, inferior to some of the better hardware sets I have.

Apparently, DirectX 7.0 came with a DLS set based on Roland GM called, simply, GM.DLS (it is in the Windows/System32/Drivers folder). It also sounds okay, nothing to write home about.

I also found FURY.DLS, which offers a different sound.

You can adjust effects such as reverb and chorus in tons of different ways with the Vortex Control Panel app, and you can select from 64, 128, or 576 voices. You can also turn off all effects. Just in case some users get GM this way, I was wondering what good settings were for these options.

Reply 1 of 6, by Stretch

Posted on 2015-11-08, 01:10

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I use AU30GM.ARL with reverb set to the middle and 64 hardware voices.

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Reply 2 of 6, by PhilsComputerLab

Posted on 2015-11-08, 03:07

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The highlights of the Vortex 2 are a proper MPU401 interface in DOS, as well as a wavetable header. I admit that I didn't even know that it has a soft-synth, at least not for MPU401.

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Reply 3 of 6, by boxpressed

Posted on 2015-11-08, 05:54

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I might be using the term "soft synth" incorrectly. I'm talking about the source of the instrument patches for the GM music. The Vortex 2 loads sound banks in DLS or ARL format, kind of like the SF2 format for Creative cards. You could think of them like sound fonts, although the format is different from Creative's Soundfont tech and not compatible.

I was just thinking that if there were a really nice DLS GM set, the Vortex 2 would be an even better solution for DOS gamers.

Reply 4 of 6, by F2bnp

Posted on 2015-11-08, 08:34

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Audio Compositor is a really cool program that allows you to convert SF2 to DLS, among other things. It's pretty handy and it does a really good job. All of the soundfonts I tried sounded identically to their SF2 counterparts on Creative cards.

Reply 5 of 6, by vmunix

Posted on 2015-11-08, 17:19

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F2bnp wrote:
Audio Compositor is a really cool program that allows you to convert SF2 to DLS, among other things. It's pretty handy and it does a really good job. All of the soundfonts I tried sounded identically to their SF2 counterparts on Creative cards.

oh really ? I would like to get Roland soundfonts like samples from tr909 808 303 etc, I'm sure such thing should exists for soundblaster sound fonts, now if I could convert that to dls would be interesting.

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Reply 6 of 6, by boxpressed

Posted on 2015-11-14, 18:19

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I found this webpage on DLS on archive.org. A couple of the download links are still live. Unfortunately, the ZIP files seem to be incomplete or corrupted.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001110154400/ht … rednet.com/dls/

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