I'm pretty sure somebody else on these forums dug one of these up a year or two back. I believe the conclusion was that it was not a wave blaster, but something older. Since the box implies that the midi blaster can be used with older SBs and SBPros, it would suggest a non MPU-401 midi interface. That would make claims of being general midi compliant pretty interesting.

There was a post on the QuestStudios forum in which internal photos of the MIDI Blaster were provided. Alas, the forum, post, and photos are gone. It uses an early Dream chipset, however.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Since the box implies that the midi blaster can be used with older SBs and SBPros, it would suggest a non MPU-401 midi interface. That would make claims of being general midi compliant pretty interesting.

The MIDI interface used, whether MPU-401-compatible or not, really has nothing to do with General MIDI compliance. I think game developers are responsible for confusing this point by tying the requirement of an MPU-compatible (UART) interface to the "General MIDI" music selection in games.

Now, the MIDI Blaster's 20-voice polyphony, on the other hand, is arguably non-compliant with the General MIDI spec.

I ask because I will have one in my possession in about a week or so - I plan on opening it up and taking photos to post along with demoing some common game tracks. Wavetable.nl has a few samples taken from the Midi Blaster; like stated above, it does not sound like a Waveblaster, however I very interested in it.

Yes, it's definitely not based on the EMU8000 synthesis engine found in the Wave Blaster II & AWE range of sound cards.
Having said that, and after listening to the sample soundtracks of Doom E1M1 & Dark Forces, it doesn't sound too bad to me (certainly better than some of the other "wave table" sound cards from that era).

But what Cloudschatze stated in his post is also true. Having only a 20-voice polyphony does not make it General MIDI compliant.
So, any games that has a soundtrack where more than 20 instruments are being played back simultaneously, will probably cause issues.
However, although there are probably one or two game titles with very rich MIDI soundtracks, I don't think the majority of games even had so many instruments that played back simultaneously (I'm speaking under correction).

jesolo wrote:

Yes, it's definitely not based on the EMU8000 synthesis engine found in the Wave Blaster II & AWE range of sound cards. Having s […]
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Yes, it's definitely not based on the EMU8000 synthesis engine found in the Wave Blaster II & AWE range of sound cards.
Having said that, and after listening to the sample soundtracks of Doom E1M1 & Dark Forces, it doesn't sound too bad to me (certainly better than some of the other "wave table" sound cards from that era).

But what Cloudschatze stated in his post is also true. Having only a 20-voice polyphony does not make it General MIDI compliant.
So, any games that has a soundtrack where more than 20 instruments are being played back simultaneously, will probably cause issues.
However, although there are probably one or two game titles with very rich MIDI soundtracks, I don't think the majority of games even had so many instruments that played back simultaneously (I'm speaking under correction).

I do agree -- it doesn't sound too bad; I can't wait to experiment. Any idea of a program that can tell you how many instruments/sounds are in a mid ?

I would love to find a WaveBlaster 1 card as I do long for the Protus style sounds, however the addition of the MidiBlaster warrants me getting all of my modules out of storage and hooking them up -- I've built up a collection of 'obscure' modules that I would like to finally document and experiment with.

Unfortunately, my MIDI knowledge is very limited. I'm not familiar with all the different software, etc.

I bought a Wave Blaster II around 2007 from a eBay seller based in Hong Kong (as I recall).
At the same time, the seller also had a Wave Blaster I for sale, but I never bought the unit.

These days, Wave Blaster daughterboards (especially the first ones) are extremely rare - you can perhaps put out a request on Amibay to see if someone is willing to part with one (for a reasonable price, since I wouldn't invest a fortune in a Wave Blaster daughterboard, if you can get a Yamaha, Roland or even a Dream Blaster X1 instead for more or less the same price).

Digging up this old topic from the grave. 😀

I still own this very same MB 10 and while I don't know what kind of chipset it uses, I DO know that it is officially not even GM compatible, since it has only 20 voice polyphony (GM requires at least 24).
It doesn't sound too good, but that doesn't mean I don't like this relic from the past. 😀

Salient wrote:

I DO know that it is officially not even GM compatible, since it has only 20 voice polyphony (GM requires at least 24).

GM also requires Reverb and Chorus, which many cheap wavetables didn't have. Still those were sold as being GM-compatible. I think it's fair to say that something is GM-compatible as long as it understands all MIDI messages that are defined by GM.

derSammler wrote:

GM also requires Reverb and Chorus, which many cheap wavetables didn't have.

Reverb and Chorus were never requirements of the GM Level 1 specification.