Spikey wrote on 2020-11-04, 17:04:

yawetaG, are you able to record short demos any of the bank that has the "pre-GM GM" sound set? Patches that would be interesting would be Overdrive Gt (O.D Guitar 1), Acoustic Bs (AcousticBass), Clarinet (Clarinet 1), and maybe some of the synth patches.

Not yet, I still have to set up my "studio" so I can actually make recordings (I have all the equipment, but setting everything up has been a work-in-progress for the last 6 months or so...).

But you can try U220 demo's on Youtube, as all the banks on the MV-30 make use of the 226 internal tones of the MV-30 (which is basically the same set as on the U220), just with specific settings per patch. So if you listen to a U110 or U220 demo you can get a decent idea of how it sounds.
However, don't listen to a D70 demo, it has some major differences in how its patches are assembled (on the U110/U220 and MV30 you have 1 tone per patch, whereas on the D70 you have four...).

To me, it looks a lot like a SC-55 bank's origin, and is interesting in that the GM spec appears to have potentially come out of this bank.

I think the bank just provides a bunch of instruments that happen to be ordered like in the GM spec. The other banks don't use that order, and in fact you can make your own banks because the banks with patch data are saved on a floppy and the MV-30 is versatile like that.

The GM-like bank also has an alternate version that makes use of the tones included on the optional MV30 card set.

Plus, the font used on the MV's LCD seems the same as what was used in the SC line.

That font is used on almost all of Roland synths from that period. 😁 The actual menu's etc. seem inspired by classic Mac OS, they look quite pretty.

The user interface is also really easy to use and the manual is good (all the opposite of the D70, which has a horrific interface and unreadable manual).

I have a Roland INTEGRA-7, which has the 1080/2080/5080 patches. I guess it doesn't have their GM set though, unless the 5080 GM Set is related to the 1080 one. Are you saying the JV's "GM" set was based on the SC, or the SC was based on the GM timbres of the 1080? Or were you speaking broadly, that the 1080's GM set was just higher quality GM?

All of the patches found in Roland's romplers ultimately make use of the same source data, often just using different compression algorithms. This is fairly easy to check because many patches will have the same names as on older synths, getting progressively higher quality on newer models. Some patches on later romplers originate from optional expansion cards for older models (e.g. JD990 has some patches that originate from the SPLA cards for the Roland D70, while some of the patches from the U220/MV30/D70 originate from two optional cards for the U110).

So the JV "GM" sets are based on the older "GM" sets in a fashion.

The MV-30 is cheap (equivalent of about 100 US bucks), and seems to have the 2 MV cards and 2 U110 cards, so I'll try and get it if I can.

That sound like a good deal. Keep in mind that the MV-30 boots off a floppy disk (the image is available on the web) and won't work without the boot disk. It uses a DD 3.5" disk.

yawetaG: Also, does the MV receive controller 0 (MSB), reverb, chorus, and Data Entry MSB (controller 6)?

Download the manual, it explains everything. MIDI control is quite limited, it uses sysex for most stuff (limited to sequencer section; sound module portion has no sysex control). It reacts to velocity, aftertouch (key & channel), pitch bend, modulation wheel, volume, pan. It does use MSB and LSB, but there does not appear to be any effect control available. There are no separate settings for the GM-like bank; it won't react to GM-specific messages because those don't exist in its MIDI implementation.

It is much more similar in use to a groove box (a desktop synth with live editing/mixing capabilities) than a GM module. Just like the D70 it really is a highly editable synthesizer. Basically the way I use it is by connecting a MIDI keyboard for playing the patches, and use the MV-30's own controls to mangle the sound (it's very good at that, D70 filter oblige). It's not very interesting as a mere playbacker (most patches are a bit boring), but the moment you start to edit the sounds it gets interesting. On one hand you have the filter (it's HARD and LOUD), on the other a slightly limited but quite versatile modulation matrix with a LFO with quite the modulation wave selection. It's easy to make nice evolving synth pads. There is a primitive phrase sampling ability, so you can record a short sequence of key presses and play that sequence by pressing a specific key. It's possible to make a drum set that can use any of the internal tones or one of the phrases you recorded. You can record 16 tracks on the sequencer (8 with the internal tone generator, and 8 using an external module) and then play that back and adjust the volume and panning live.
In short: it's really a nice tool for creating music. However, I suspect it will not work as you think it might for playing back GM.

Spikey wrote on 2020-11-04, 17:14:

Incidentally, does anyone know anything about the PMA-5? It appears to use the headphone jack as a combi jack for headphones/line out. Kinda of a cool gadget, but if the sound is worse than the other SC-55's, I don't need to be a completist. 😀

I own a PMA-5 and while it is a neat little device it does miss some tones when comparing it to the real SC-55.
I think it is best to see it as a portable battery-powered SC-7 (when using as a sound module), a lot of the normal tones also sound more similar to the SC-7 than to the SC-55.

Short reply: Thanks for the reply. I guess the big one is, will it accept a CC #6 message? As in, for Sierra GM games, Data Entry MSB of 12 is sent, which is non standard and varies the pitch bend range. I'm curious if the MV will accept it.

Salient and Crossbow, thanks for the replies about the PMA-5. I wasn't seriously thinking getting it, but it looks cool!

Spikey wrote on 2020-11-05, 06:04:

Short reply: Thanks for the reply. I guess the big one is, will it accept a CC #6 message? As in, for Sierra GM games, Data Entry MSB of 12 is sent, which is non standard and varies the pitch bend range. I'm curious if the MV will accept it.

The only CC numbers mentioned in the MIDI specification for the sound module in the back of the manual are 1, 7, 10, 64, and 121. So probably not.

Thanks Yaweta, I won't buy it then. Cloudschatze has piqued my interest by calling the MV-30 "a way to get hi-fidelity SC-55 playback", but if it has 8 channels AND can't take Data Entry controllers (or many controllers at all), it is probably too much messing around with to bother with.

Spikey wrote on 2020-11-08, 13:03:

Thanks Yaweta, I won't buy it then. Cloudschatze has piqued my interest by calling the MV-30 "a way to get hi-fidelity SC-55 playback", but if it has 8 channels AND can't take Data Entry controllers (or many controllers at all), it is probably too much messing around with to bother with.

I went looking for his post, and he does mention you need two of them:

The compression that he mentions is very much a sonic detriment of the SC-55 though, whereby, even having uncompressed versions of 30kHz/12-bit samples would be an improvement over the derived versions found in the SC-55. With this in mind, and given the similarities, a split-channel pair of MV-30s with the SN-MV30-01/02 cards and GS instrument banks loaded might be an interesting alternative for anyone looking for higher-fidelity, "SC-55-like" playback.

Re: SCC1 vs Roland SC-55 modules.

What is a bit confusing is that the MV-30 basically has two MIDI specifications: one for the sequencer, and one for the sound module section. The sequencer takes controllers 0-121, while the sound module is much more limited. Look at the wrong one, and people can get the impression it can do more than the sound module part actually can.
That said, it could also be the MIDI specifications are wrong (I mean, my SC-88VL also reacts to controllers not actually mentioned in the manual).

But looking at the U220 manual (the MV-30's predecessor) shows that on that synth the various controllers are assignable, while they're not on the MV-30. On the MV-30 all the controllers are fixed (no assignation changes) and you can only modify how much each controller affects various parameters.

I will have a try later this week to see whether I can select patches over MIDI from a Sound Canvas (i.e. if the MV-30 uses the same locations for its patches), and whether it reacts to controllers not mentioned in the manual. In principle some additional things ought to be possible, because you can record them on the internal sequencer...

Thanks a lot!

I attached a couple of MIDI files that need cc6 to play (bend) correctly, Orion's Belt Bar #1 (Tuba) and Roger's Quarters (Overdrive Gt) from the SQ6 soundtrack.

yawetaG wrote on 2020-11-08, 21:04:

I will have a try later this week to see whether I can select patches over MIDI from a Sound Canvas (i.e. if the MV-30 uses the same locations for its patches), and whether it reacts to controllers not mentioned in the manual. In principle some additional things ought to be possible, because you can record them on the internal sequencer...

Used gear: Roland JV-35 (SC-55 Mk. II in keyboard form) + MV-30 with "GM"-bank loaded

Preliminary findings (will update post as I proceed):

• MV-30 reacts to patch changes for non-drum patches from JV-35 control panel just fine (so uses same memory locations*). Note that this applies to all MV-30 banks (so regular MV-30 bank, demo banks, "GM"-banks, "MT-32"-banks).
• No reaction to drum set changes, possibly because the MV-30 only has one drum set in the "GM"-bank.
• No variation patches.
• Synth patches have different names on MV-30 than on SC-55 (and possibly do not fully match with regards to sound). Various MV-30 patches sound rather bad compared to the SC-55 (worst offenders: blown instruments and SFX).
• No support for playing two different patches at once on the same track/channel.
• All 16 receive channels can be selected for each track, but there are only 8 tracks available for the internal sound module. I don't think you actually need a MIDI splitter box to connect two MV-30 together, just hook up the second one to the first one's MIDI thru port and set the tracks to the correct MIDI channels (so 1-8 on the first MV-30, and 9-16 on the second one).
• No reaction on the MV-30 to switching the effects on/off on JV-35, nor effect-related CC. I somewhat expected this one, as the MV-30 has five effect patches that can be freely set based on the available parameters, while the SC-55 only has two effect patches at fixed locations, and the effect options do not match between the two synths.
• Reacts to pitch and modulation wheel, pitch CC (1), panning CC (10, manual wrongly puts this as 64), volume CC (7), sustain (64), reset all controllers (121).
• No reaction to portamento setting.
• No reaction to CC 6 or any other CC number not mentioned above (except probably ones involved in patch selection, but those aren't free to choose on the JV-35) .

* The JV-35 only supports selecting patches on other gear if the patches use the same MSB/LSB as on the JV-35 - i.e. it only works correctly with other SC-55-based gear (and JV-80-based gear in expansion mode).

You could use a MIDI utility box to convert the CC 6 messages to CC 1...

However, I still think you'd have a better GM experience with, say, a JV-1080 module set to its GM bank, because the lack of both sysex and extensive CC control on the MV-30 means it won't be able to properly render a lot of the more complex General MIDI files.

Cool. Please check controller 6 when you get a chance, it seems like the biggie.

Post updated with findings. No CC 6 or any controller beyond CC 1, 7, 10, 64, and 121.

Thanks, Sir. You saved me buying something that would have been cool, but ultimately a waste of time. Appreciated.

Sorry for necro bumping this but I actually just got an MT-300 to add to the stack this weekend. It is a very curious MT device as I can't quite place what it uses for samples?

It came out in 98 if the copyright on the manual is to be believed. It is definitely upgraded from the MT-200 I also have, but not as much as I would have thought compared to it being 4 years newer. Here are the main differences:
- 64 note poly vs the 24 - 28 of the MT-200
- Has about 370 instrument tones compared to the 320 there abouts of the MT-200
- 8 different reverb and chorus effects vs the MT-200 only having about 4 each of those

Aside from those differences and difference in sytling, it is pretty much sounds the same as the MT-200 did, but with a few things I have noticed to m ears. The sound is more full with better stereo separation on the MT-300 vs the 200 and I can definitely tell the difference in the amount of voices it can play as I don't hear any note drop offs through it as I do with the MT-200. Most of the actual samples seem to sound the same but I believe it has more samples that use stereo voices on them vs the 200 and I suspect some newer and possibly higher quality samples?

It still has the same 250BPM tempo max as the 200 and 120, but one thing it can do that the MT-200 can't is actually play game midi files with higher tempos than 250. On the MT-200 they will play but max out at only the 250PBM it is able to do. On the MT-300 they play back correctly yet on the device itself through midi playback (and recording) you are limited to not being able to select higher than 250bpm. So this is more of a programming limitation within the MT-300 and not due to a feature lack as it can do it through direct Midi messages apparently.

However, one thing that is different from the MT-200 and not really in a good way is the recording feature. The MT-200 and the 300 as well as others, have the ability to record what is being received from the Midi IN and then allow you to play it back, edit it, save it. I used this on the MT-200 to essentially 'rip' midi tracks from games. However, the MT-300 while able to do this, hasn't been able to do it without locking after a few measures in. And when it locks up, it is the module itself that locks up and not my computer as it continues to play the Midi file normally but the MT-300 has stopped responding at that point and can only be brought back to life through a power off/on. It seems that the MT-200 you could just select a single channel when you recorded and it did so without issue in most cases. It would still occasionally have temp issues with files that changed tempo on playback an some other oddness due to the amount of data it was being sent. The MT-300 on the other hand, requires you to select which channels or parts you are wanting to record. If I chose more than say 2 or 3 parts at once, then it will lock up when recording. And that wouldn't be a problem accept that I'm not exactly perfect and timing the record and play routine to keep doing it over and over for different parts and keep them in all in sync without a ton of editing aftewards. The MT-200 didn't care and would record all the channels to a single part without too much issue. Of course it also meant that when you editing one of the Midi files from the MT-200, everything is on a single part and mixed as it where.

Still, I'm going to be cracking open the MT-300 to look at the internals of it soon and see what is needed to 'GoTEK' it like I've done with my other Midi players. I still can't quite place exactly what samples it uses though since it has more samples than the MT-200 and SC-55 as a whole but not as many as the later SC-88 stuff that was also released aroun the same timeframe?

Oh.. the MT-300 also seem to lack one drumset that the MT-200 has. The MT-200 is listed as having 10drumsets (9 drum + 1SFX), and the MT-300 is listed as only having 9 (8 drums + 1SFX). Near as I can tell the SFX set is the same as the SC-55. Although the drums are slightly different and seem to have more punch to them.

From what I can tell, the MT-300 is a SC-33 (same 226 tones) with an extra 143 tones (128 extra GM tones with 5 extra variations that are hard to identify, 9 drums and 1 that I can't figure out). Or at least, it's using that "GM2" style patch list, the SC-55 mk II patches minus the MT-32 tones.
No idea what the difference between the regular GM tones and the extra ones (patches 227-359), although the manual says the extra ones "may not playback satisfactorily on other GS sound generating devices". Maybe they're a SC-88 map, or even newer samples? Not sure.
As for effects, I would guess that 8 types of reverb and chorus is the same as the SC-55 or 88 too, although all actual "Sound Canvases" feature that many types.
Also no idea why it has 64-voice polyphony. Maybe it's a cut down SC-88 then?

What would be interesting is if you could check whether either the default GM map or the 'extra' map correspond to the SC-55, by checking some of the synth patches like Bass & Lead, Saw Wave. for example on "Battle of the Badders" from QFG4. And whether they actually sound different to each other, which it sounds like they do.

Another weird thing I noticed - channels 10 AND 11 are specified as drum channels, not just 10.

Spikey wrote on 2021-11-29, 23:36:

From what I can tell, the MT-300 is a SC-33 (same 226 tones) with an extra 143 tones (128 extra GM tones with 5 extra variations […]
Show full quote

From what I can tell, the MT-300 is a SC-33 (same 226 tones) with an extra 143 tones (128 extra GM tones with 5 extra variations that are hard to identify, 9 drums and 1 that I can't figure out). Or at least, it's using that "GM2" style patch list, the SC-55 mk II patches minus the MT-32 tones.
No idea what the difference between the regular GM tones and the extra ones (patches 227-359), although the manual says the extra ones "may not playback satisfactorily on other GS sound generating devices". Maybe they're a SC-88 map, or even newer samples? Not sure.
As for effects, I would guess that 8 types of reverb and chorus is the same as the SC-55 or 88 too, although all actual "Sound Canvases" feature that many types.
Also no idea why it has 64-voice polyphony. Maybe it's a cut down SC-88 then?

What would be interesting is if you could check whether either the default GM map or the 'extra' map correspond to the SC-55, by checking some of the synth patches like Bass & Lead, Saw Wave. for example on "Battle of the Badders" from QFG4. And whether they actually sound different to each other, which it sounds like they do.

Another weird thing I noticed - channels 10 AND 11 are specified as drum channels, not just 10.

Then you found out more than I was able to get from the owners manual or Roland's website about the thing. I'm not sure I have the QFG4 OST in midi format? I have a few sierra adventures but not all of them. I can check. Is there anything else specific that I might be able to get an audio capture from it to see?

I too thought it might be more along the lines of the SC-88 given the timeframe but those modules have way more instrument samples in them and more drums sets than what is listed for this device?

I can confirm that the MT-300 unlike the MT-200 does NOT contain the basic MT-32 instrument set. I confirmed this with the sound of mostly silence on some of the quest studios midi OSTs that are GS specific but also rely on the SC having the MT-32 instrument set in them.

Okay, got the midi files from Quest and ran that song through the MT-300. Here are the results:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cXubwnMb-Xj7 … iew?usp=sharing

Great job. Sounds like SC-55 compatibility mode to me, but I'll listen more closely later (a thunderstorm overhead right now, 🤣).

Yeah, I should have mentioned that it's like a SC-33 because it lacks the MT-32 variation tones. It has the exact same basic set of 226 instruments. The additional ones are the interesting part!

What you'll need to do is run the file through the second set of GM tones (aka GS tones) for a second recording, which I think you can do from the front panel by manually changing each channel? Must be a better way, though.. Maybe you can use a GS reset and that will enable it.

Spikey wrote on 2021-12-02, 05:47:

Great job. Sounds like SC-55 compatibility mode to me, but I'll listen more closely later (a thunderstorm overhead right now, 🤣).

Yeah, I should have mentioned that it's like a SC-33 because it lacks the MT-32 variation tones. It has the exact same basic set of 226 instruments. The additional ones are the interesting part!

What you'll need to do is run the file through the second set of GM tones (aka GS tones) for a second recording, which I think you can do from the front panel by manually changing each channel? Must be a better way, though.. Maybe you can use a GS reset and that will enable it.

I captured it by recording it through the line-in off my PC. I was using Falcosoft's midi player to play the song from windows. Point being that I have the midiplayer set to do a GS reset and when I start the midi file, it stays on GS so it isn't doing anything to switch it to GM like some others do.

Well the point is, that this device has two sets of GM banks, one being a native GM bank and one being a GS "GM" bank. We want to know which is which, and if either is SC-88, etc.

Are you able to tell which it is for the recording you made? From the manual, I think each set has slightly different patch names, so you can figure it out that way.