Very nice, I really enjoyed the sample piano track, and the roland inspired soundbank sounds very well balanced, I like it 😁

I'll have to try them out on mine when I get around to reinstalling it in a PC (or I guess, the X2 can do USB?)

If I had the SDK I would certainly try to convert some SF2 or DLS banks to it; is it a commercial product?

I will try your Roland SB tonight.

I was going to do some comparison videos between my SD-35, GUD and Buran soundbanks anyway, I may as well do one for this as well.

Seeing as it's only 3MB though, your soundcloud recording sounds amazingly good.

Have you used any specific EQ presets for the recordings?

wow that Roland bank sounds really really good!

Thanks for your positive feedback! 😊

appiah4 wrote:

If I had the SDK I would certainly tey to convert some SF2 or DLS banks to it; is it a commercial product?

That's exactly what i plan to do! Would you suggest a specific soundfont?
Unfortunately it is commercial and very expensive..

appiah4 wrote:

Have you used any specific EQ presets for the recordings?

I removed my preset for recording! I personally prefer a bit more bass and less treble.

Hummtaro wrote:

Thanks for your positive feedback! :blush: […]
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Thanks for your positive feedback! 😊

appiah4 wrote:

If I had the SDK I would certainly tey to convert some SF2 or DLS banks to it; is it a commercial product?

That's exactly what i plan to do! Would you suggest a specific soundfont?
Unfortunately it is commercial and very expensive..

appiah4 wrote:

Have you used any specific EQ presets for the recordings?

I removed my preset for recording! I personally prefer a bit more bass and less treble.

Masterpiece.sf2 is the best <28MB SF2 I have tested.

This totally changes the game. About X2 card.

Hummtaro, thanks for posting !!!
The banks sound great !

Just tried both soundbanks out on my X2, very nice 😁
Playing some doom midis with all the instruments set to pianos sounds excellent, though I had forgotten how long it takes to get a big soundbank loaded up on the X2

It looks like I need to store my Dreamblaster X2 better - it wasn't detecting when I plugged it into USB, which turned out to be D1 got knocked off the board, you can see there's a scratch next to it:

That was fun to solder its replacement back on (removed one from a dead old laptop board), I'm really glad there were high res pictures online showing the polarity

appiah4 wrote:

Masterpiece.sf2 is the best <28MB SF2 I have tested.

Thanks, i will take a look on this one!

dreamblaster wrote:

Hummtaro, thanks for posting !!!
The banks sound great !

Thank you very much master dreamblaster!

Thermalwrong wrote:

it wasn't detecting when I plugged it into USB

I strongly recommend not to break your dreamblaster as the user experience could drastically worsen! 😵

It definitely did! It didn't detect via USB at all with that bit missing; definintely a good lesson to take better care of uncased electronics

I just got a Dream SDK kit a few days ago. I'm working on porting my main soundfont project over to it.
I'm testing out the smaller sized samples in a sf2 soundfont first and getting some good results with my old AWE64 Gold.
Nice to see another soundbank dev on Vogons.
PM me and maybe we can share stuff.

*edit* just noticed now that this is a old thread.... sorry for zombie posting....

t9999clint wrote:

I just got a Dream SDK kit a few days ago. I'm working on porting my main soundfont project over to it. I'm testing out the smal […]
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I just got a Dream SDK kit a few days ago. I'm working on porting my main soundfont project over to it.
I'm testing out the smaller sized samples in a sf2 soundfont first and getting some good results with my old AWE64 Gold.
Nice to see another soundbank dev on Vogons.
PM me and maybe we can share stuff.

*edit* just noticed now that this is a old thread.... sorry for zombie posting....

Hey, if you are porting PRO7 to the X3M, DO IT! While at it, would you also port Masterpiece to the X3M? Pretty please? 🤣

appiah4 wrote:

Hey, if you are porting PRO7 to the X3M, DO IT! While at it, would you also port Masterpiece to the X3M? Pretty please? 🤣

I'm only porting the parts of PRO7 that I added, not the stuff the original author did. I'm going to be using the Buran soundbank as a base as I was given the sourcecode for that one by Dreamblaster. That way I can avoid licencing issues.

Sorry, but considering the amount of work required to port a soundfont over, I'm probably not gonna port anything but my own stuff. I have a lot of projects going on right now, and only a limited amount of time to do them. That being said large portions of Masterpiece will be in the one I'm making as that one's licence is pretty unrestrictive.

Can someone who is able please port this newly made WTFPL public domain awe32-sized GM compatible acapella soundfont that can be found here: https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/712 over to the dreamblaster. I cannot test this as I do not have a dreamblaster, but I want those who do have one to enjoy a fresh and original set of vocalized GM instrument patches that anyone could love. I dubbed the resulting flashed card the Voxblaster in advance. Oh, btw, an X1 will gladly work with this as the bank is less than 28mib.

stgiga wrote:

Can someone who is able please port this newly made WTFPL public domain awe32-sized GM compatible acapella soundfont that can be found here: https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/712 over to the dreamblaster. I cannot test this as I do not have a dreamblaster, but I want those who do have one to enjoy a fresh and original set of vocalized GM instrument patches that anyone could love. I dubbed the resulting flashed card the Voxblaster in advance. Oh, btw, an X1 will gladly work with this as the bank is less than 28mib.

Hello stgiga,
if a new bank is made, it will work with X2 and X3M, but not with X1 for several reasons :
X1 does not have USB, there is no bank uploader, and the bank layout is different : X1 has a fixed structure and jumpers to switch between a few banks.
Starting from X2, the newer dream chips (5000 series) are used, which allow USB upload of (dream specific) banks.

Suggestions are welcome, please understand that converting a bank to dream format requires a huge amount of work, so let's be very very grateful for the help by Hummtaro and t9999Clint.
There's a way all X2 users can help : For the new banks, detailed feedback and test reports with games, are very helpful. THANKS !!!!

Is the SDK just for dream format sound bank creation, or can you actually program the chip? If you can program it, why not implement direct SF2 (or other sensible format) support and make all this nonsense go away?

ZipoBibrok wrote:

Is the SDK just for dream format sound bank creation, or can you actually program the chip? If you can program it, why not implement direct SF2 (or other sensible format) support and make all this nonsense go away?

This is not possible, the dream synth has a different architecture, by design.

dreamblaster wrote:

ZipoBibrok wrote:

Is the SDK just for dream format sound bank creation, or can you actually program the chip? If you can program it, why not implement direct SF2 (or other sensible format) support and make all this nonsense go away?

This is not possible, the dream synth has a different architecture, by design.

According to datasheet, the chip consists of four programmable DSP cores and a 16-bit CPU. At least based on that, the synth architecture (whatever it is), does not look like hardcoded.

ZipoBibrok wrote:

dreamblaster wrote:

ZipoBibrok wrote:

Is the SDK just for dream format sound bank creation, or can you actually program the chip? If you can program it, why not implement direct SF2 (or other sensible format) support and make all this nonsense go away?

This is not possible, the dream synth has a different architecture, by design.

According to datasheet, the chip consists of four programmable DSP cores and a 16-bit CPU. At least based on that, the synth architecture (whatever it is), does not look like hardcoded.

Not practically possible for many reasons.
The dream synth lib is great, but it is not open source, and rather oriented towards manufacturers. Some acceleration features, protection features and tables are in ROM (not flash). Dream protects their interests and copyrights (for example for a piano manufacturer), and will not violate other patents (for example creative patents). I am under NDA with Dream, so let's not get into further detail here.

I think the conclusion matters : If you'd want to implement direct sf2 support, there are better cpu choices I assume :
For example x86 or ARM if you want to use just a soft synth.
Or else this ... : Before starting DreamBlaster X1 project based on the dream chips, I contacted creative several times, but got no response at all : https://www.creative.com/oem/products/chips/emu8030.asp I gave up on this path.

So for Dream, i think the only feasible option is to use the dream banks. The synth architecture is really powerful actually, but different from creative chips.
The preferred way to go would be an automatic conversion from sf2 to dream banks, but this is not easy :
I have been experimenting with various conversion paths in the past years, but still without acceptable results.
So conversion still needs a lot of manual work and tweaking. I very much appreciate the new help and inspiration from t9999clint and hummtaro
for making new banks, we plan to come with some great things still in 2019 😀