appiah4 wrote:

Where's the link to the updated Roland bank?

I've updated the main post! 😀

Some quick recordings I did, Doom in GM mode and Monkey Island in MT32 mode..

It is awfully close to a real Roland SC device, it made me pack my Sound Canvas up and move it to safety in the storage. This bank replaced the Buran soundbank on my X3MB (which in turn replaced the hardware Sound Canvas) I use with with my computers.

Monkey Island in MT32 mode is also exceptionally good IMO;

these do sound very good, nice!

I haven't been using my X3M for a while. Looks like it's time to change that! That Roland soundbank could be just what I was looking for: small, but good. Maybe a pity for the huge amount of X2 memory wasted, but who cares. Gotta try Doom, Heretic and Duke3D with it.

Any preset you can recommend for the Roland soundbank? Maybe one you made by yourself?

Otherwise, I have come to adopt 8MBGM Enhanced 1.8, a variation of the 8mbgm Creative soundfont:

http://www.bredel.homepage.t-online.de/Soundf … ts-english.html

It was made for classic LucasArts adventures in mind, but I found it also sounds superb with Doom, Descent or Duke3D. In fact I still have to find a game where it sounds bad. Maybe the choir ohs and ahs and the trumpets could be a bit more powerful, but it's also part of the characteristic retro sound to not be absolutely flawless. And all this with less than 30mb filesize.

I'm glad that you all like the soundbank!

appiah4 wrote:

It is awfully close to a real Roland SC device, it made me pack my Sound Canvas up and move it to safety in the storage. This bank replaced the Buran soundbank on my X3MB (which in turn replaced the hardware Sound Canvas) I use with with my computers.

I think the single instruments are very far from the quality of a real SC-55 but the overall apperance sounds quite similar.
This thingy is still based on the low quality sampledata from this Microsoft Software Wavetable Synthesizer everyone hates.. 😕

Trelokk wrote:

Any preset you can recommend for the Roland soundbank? Maybe one you made by yourself?

Mhm, i haven't created any presets yet. Maybe someone could create one, trying to come even a step closer to Roland SC-55 😮

Trelokk wrote:

Otherwise, I have come to adopt 8MBGM Enhanced 1.8, a variation of the 8mbgm Creative soundfont:

I will test that one! I'm still looking for good soundbanks that are simple enough for me to convert. 😀

Hummtaro wrote:

I'm glad that you all like the soundbank! […]
Show full quote

I'm glad that you all like the soundbank!

appiah4 wrote:

It is awfully close to a real Roland SC device, it made me pack my Sound Canvas up and move it to safety in the storage. This bank replaced the Buran soundbank on my X3MB (which in turn replaced the hardware Sound Canvas) I use with with my computers.

I think the single instruments are very far from the quality of a real SC-55 but the overall apperance sounds quite similar.
This thingy is still based on the low quality sampledata from this Microsoft Software Wavetable Synthesizer everyone hates.. 😕

Being free of the 32 sound limitation, ability to add reverb and chorus and manipulate the EQ makes hell of a difference to me.

Attached preset is what I made for use with Buran soundbank, but I use it with my X3Ms for other soundbanks as well, including Roland.

Slightly off topic but still relevant enough I think.

Use case: I have my X3M connected to Yamaha MU50 via MIDI pass-trough connection. With external audio mixer I can dynamically slide in and out between two MIDI modules.

Problem: appiah4 your X3M profile is fantastic one but in my use case described above X3M doesn't sound like classic SC

So what kind bank/profile you suggest for X3M in order to get most authentic SC-55-ish experience next to my MU50?

I have tried the Roland GM bank and gotta say it's not for me. Instrument quality is just too poor for my taste, regardless how faithful it might be to the SC or not (I doubt it really is). Guess there's just so much you can do with those 3MB. Went back to the latest Buran soundbank which still has some instruments that could have different volume/character, but at least they sound clear and powerful.

This doesn't mean I don't acknowledge or appreciate the efforts put into this, of course. Maybe with samples of higher quality this can still get to the level where I would personally need it to be. Nevertheless it's great that more soundbanks are finally surfacing. The Dreamblaster is versatile and has yet to unleash its full potential.

In case you manage to pull off a more or less accurate conversion of that 8MBGM Enhanced soundfont, I may still be interested.
There's still the legendary vcgs4mv4.sf2 from 1998 to consider, just barely 4MB filesize, but insanely well balanced. Maybe it doesn't sound overwhelming, but you hear all the instruments at near-perfect volume. Too bad it's still a commercial soundfont and I am not sure if it's OK to convert it to another format.

Oh, and anybody who ever manages to convert the Hoontech soundbank GS_8MB.94B (available here on Vogons) to Dreamblaster format shall receive a golden chicken nugget. I have tried really hard to find a way to convert this to SF2, but TTS is all I managed with a Terratec tool. Just in case you don't know it, that one used to be THE soundbank to use for Dream synthesizers like the EWS64 or Maxi Gamer. With this soundbank, games like Doom sounded so good it made you want to turn up the volume. Descent was also good (synth drumkit was apparently taken from a TR-808) and it even prevailed with orchestral soundtracks from games like Tie Fighter or Dark Forces.

@vutt: Dreamblaster will probably never sound exactly like an SC-55..

But if i had to provide a preset, it would probably be something like this.
More punch to the middle, less dominant high-range..
Bass could be a bit less but we have only two bands.. 😀

@Trelokk:
The Roland GM bank was intended to be my learning project because it is well known and also good balanced even if the quality is not very good.
Unfortunately it was very hard to analyse and get behind all of the problems and limitations of this conversion way..
I also tried several times to convert other banks but gave up most time because of too much uncorrectable errors..

The first version of this Roland bank was mostly done by hand. I had to rework every instrument to get a usable soundbank..
In last months, i have made huge progress which now allows much faster conversions but still limited to simple banks with few splits, no layers, no stereo, no filters..

I would also like to convert bigger soundfonts, at least something like Masquerade55, but every additional layer and split also adds more work.
I'm not very talented in this kind of work and currently i do not have the time for this.

Maybe i could try some dumb convertions by ignoring additional layers. But this will still need work..

It's surely a challenge, especially when the result is still supposed to sound good. Simply converting the soundbank of a famous synth also doesn't automatically give you good sound. Many things and tweaks happened on hardware side which is hard if not impossible to reproduce.

I also don't know how to feel about just trying to clone existing soundbanks. It's easier and more convenient to use a software synthesizer with the sf2 you like instead of having to plug a small box to your computer all the time. Ideally there should be a soundbank that sounds like nothing you can download anywhere right now, unique and compelling. Still there's some justification to mimic an SC55 if it means you can retire your original unit, provided you are lucky enough to have any.

Maybe my demands are too high, but I am dreaming of a Dreamblaster that blows the old synths like the SC-55 or XG50 out of the water. It has that potential, but it's all about the soundbank. GUD and Buran are heading in the right direction, even though they are also based on existing soundfonts.

Hello all, thank you Hummtaro for the sound banks, I am looking for SC-55 sound so I installed the Roland sound bank for my X2 but I have an issue, using Prince of Persia 2 with roland mt-32, the instruments are different (like a midi in windows) and I dont like this , but if I change the setting to General midi, now it sounds like a real SC-55, WOW!!!!,

Using other games that support Roland mt-32, like monkey island 1, 2, prince of persia 1, instruments sound different again!!, since they dont support general midi, how can I make games to sound like a real SC-55? thank you in advance.

there is a threat but I am not able to make it work
Can I use DreamBlaster X2 for MT-32 emulation

well I got all the questions answered by myself thank you all guys

I'm glad you got it working, diablonet.
Here's a comparison of soundbanks, at pc-sound-legacy youtube channel : https://youtu.be/8rG2GjVTawU

Hello all I did a Prince of Persia 2 audio comparison with many music processors including X2 sound banks https://youtu.be/gPGndRYfGtA

Hello all.
Is it possible to make big single (up to 64 Mb) acoustic steel giutar soundbank for X2? Grand piano SB sounds quite well, so I'm wondering about guitar...
Thanks.

diablonet wrote on 2020-02-27, 00:52:

Hello all I did a Prince of Persia 2 audio comparison with many music processors including X2 sound banks https://youtu.be/gPGndRYfGtA

Nice! Thank you. 😀

chuuux wrote on 2020-02-27, 04:27:

Is it possible to make big single (up to 64 Mb) acoustic steel giutar soundbank for X2? Grand piano SB sounds quite well, so I'm wondering about guitar...

I already had the idea to make more solo banks! Maybe i will look into it this year..
But this would be a lot of time consuming work. So i can't promise it will happen..

Hummtaro wrote on 2020-03-07, 18:45:

I already had the idea to make more solo banks! Maybe i will look into it this year..
But this would be a lot of time consuming work. So i can't promise it will happen..

Great! Looking forward to this.

I'm wondering what "VAR127" means. I just saw that the .txt doc with Buran says "this version 1.0 now also supports MT32 (through variation 127)", then when I searched this topic came up which the OP mentions "VAR127" several times.

The one thing I didn't like about using something like the Dreamblaster was that I would have to choose a soundfont which more closely resembled the output from either the MT32 or SC-55, with no easy way to switch between them for the different games which used each... does this "variation" mean that I can switch on the fly between those two Roland units? Or am I completely misunderstanding all this (which could VERY well be the case, I'm still super new to all this).

Dochartaigh wrote on 2020-03-19, 02:55:

I'm wondering what "VAR127" means. I just saw that the .txt doc with Buran says "this version 1.0 now also supports MT32 (through variation 127)", then when I searched this topic came up which the OP mentions "VAR127" several times.

The one thing I didn't like about using something like the Dreamblaster was that I would have to choose a soundfont which more closely resembled the output from either the MT32 or SC-55, with no easy way to switch between them for the different games which used each... does this "variation" mean that I can switch on the fly between those two Roland units? Or am I completely misunderstanding all this (which could VERY well be the case, I'm still super new to all this).

The variation is a different mapping of mostly the same sounds, not a completely different soundbank.
by setting ctrl 0 to 127, and then executing a program change, it uses MT32 mapping instead of General MIDI mapping.
a special build of softmpu supports /mt32 option, which will automatically use MT32 mapping.

This is not unique to the Buran bank, other devices support this too.
For example DreamBlaster S2 and S2P use the SAM2695 chip, and this has MT32 mapping support, in ROM.
See below the 2 different mappings :

General MIDI:

MT32: