It is an OPL3-emulating midi synthesizer driver. It is not a sound card emulator.

leileilol wrote:

It is an OPL3-emulating midi synthesizer driver. It is not a sound card emulator.

I'm abundantly aware it's an OPL3 synth. I asked, because the Adlib Gold used a Yamaha YMF262 (OPL3) chip, and I was wondering if it's quirkiness was accounted for. Kinda like how the Yamaha YM2612 in the Genesis/Mega Drive sound different than the same chips used in Sega System18/32 arcade boards.

Sheesh...

ElectricMonk wrote:

I just skimmed the thread (sorry!), but OPL versions varied wildly (Sega Genesis OPL2 vs Soundblaster OPL2).

Genesis isn't OPL2 either FYI BTW AFAIK. It's OPN2, and there IS a MIDI synthesizer driver that emulates the Genesis sound hardware (mid2smps), though I personally never got it to work, and it seems too centric towards lazy Sonic midi 'remixes' than a general purpose use.

This thread needs a bump.

Why? There is not a lot of active topics here.

Good evening

my little retrosystem to play fm music open end 😉

-> Pentium-MMX / 233Mhz inside you will find my ESS Audiodrive 1869F

i triad to install the OPL3 Synth Driver (HW) for true acsess with the FM Chip of my ESS Audiodrive (Es1869F) in my fresh installed Win98 but first: i have trouble with hardware wizard, while trying to start the process to Add New Hardware, when i click on: "continue" then crashs the msgrv32, so i can't install the driver via officially way in Win98, the same happened under -> Settings -> System -> Device Manager -> Audio-, Audio, Video and Game controller when i click /refresh the entry: "ES1868 Plug & Play AudioDrive (WDM), thereupon the system freezes again by the msgrv32. This matter appears to be as an own problem with my current system and has'nt nothing to do with my ISA ESS Audiodrive 1869F, i triad this without the ESS Audiodrive in isa slot and its happened the same

exists an other way to install the driver? The installing of an*.inf File via context menue is not sufficient, i think.

further i can't play OPL VGM Files via last VGMPlay Version because VGMPlay reorts "no opl Chip was detected" on the other hand, the playback via Adplug in Winamp via 388 Port works, its strange

the gm playback via mplayer.exe works perfect but the winamp plugin 3.09 caused heavy terrible noises but this seems known here, as I read

thats all for now
nice greetings

Time-lapse, fast-foward to the present...

FM-OPL-Midi-Freak wrote:

Good evening […]
Show full quote

Good evening

my little retrosystem to play fm music open end 😉

-> Pentium-MMX / 233Mhz inside you will find my ESS Audiodrive 1869F

i triad to install the OPL3 Synth Driver (HW) for true acsess with the FM Chip of my ESS Audiodrive (Es1869F) in my fresh installed Win98 but first: i have trouble with hardware wizard, while trying to start the process to Add New Hardware, when i click on: "continue" then crashs the msgrv32, so i can't install the driver via officially way in Win98, the same happened under -> Settings -> System -> Device Manager -> Audio-, Audio, Video and Game controller when i click /refresh the entry: "ES1868 Plug & Play AudioDrive (WDM), thereupon the system freezes again by the msgrv32. This matter appears to be as an own problem with my current system and has'nt nothing to do with my ISA ESS Audiodrive 1869F, i triad this without the ESS Audiodrive in isa slot and its happened the same

exists an other way to install the driver? The installing of an*.inf File via context menue is not sufficient, i think.

It has not been tested on Win98 and in fact should not work due to the compiler used (MSVC12) not supporting Win98 target.
I'm considering doing a rewrite and publishing on a separate thread, as I am not happy with the state of the source code right now, in addition to some other playback issues encountered which I cannot seem to fix.

I do want to have one last binary release with this current source tree before I do a refactor/rewrite. Partly because of the need of significant optimization of routines, after seeing that this driver takes up 100% CPU on an Igel Winestra 4210 Thinclient (from Germany) running from HARDWARE OPL3 target. :\

FM-OPL-Midi-Freak wrote:

further i can't play OPL VGM Files via last VGMPlay Version because VGMPlay reorts "no opl Chip was detected" on the other hand, […]
Show full quote

further i can't play OPL VGM Files via last VGMPlay Version because VGMPlay reorts "no opl Chip was detected" on the other hand, the playback via Adplug in Winamp via 388 Port works, its strange

the gm playback via mplayer.exe works perfect but the winamp plugin 3.09 caused heavy terrible noises but this seems known here, as I read

thats all for now
nice greetings

VGMPlay is an off-topic discussion here. Might want to start a separate thread on that. 😀

Any update on adding the Voyetra SuperSAPI! FM driver 4-op patches?

I need to work out a less hack-ish way to add periodic retrigger commands for specific patches (ie: for "Telephone" and other similar patches). Right now I've got a number of hacks to support 2op detuning between 2x2op pairs, a simple linear pitch EG, and vibrato. The biggest problem I have with these at the moment is that they're using floating point maths, and it seems to be responsible for jacking up the CPU usage on slower devices.

thanx, also/even if i dont have all understand

recently i have reveived the Terratec Gold1696, which works in Win98 in connection with VGM Play (detect OPL III) 😊

Greets
Matthias

First off, sorry for bumping an old topic, it's only that I need help with setting this up.

So I got a CMI8738 card going nicely in my computer (Trust SC-5250) and all that, but I can't get OPL to work very well in Windows. It works just fine in Arch Linux, but for some strange reason in Windows it doesn't play all of the notes. It keeps missing them or even worse - it sometimes just gets stuck (until the MIDI is reset).

I really don't know what I'm doing wrong here. I tried with both the open source and C-Media's official driver - both have same issues. (in fact, the open source one is worse since it doesn't allow me to use the MIDI connector)

I'd really like to get it to work since ALSA's default provided patches aren't too good sounding.

As drivers don't have FM resetting function, you need legacy resetting program in DOS console (or DOSBOX)
Swapping in MIDI mapper also corrupt either MIDI and FM synth. See my old post's video and find your way of resetting FM.

Made a video about OPL passthrough and problems

And now I truly declair this method relys in your mainboard's legacy PCI support.
If you have socket 1156 1st generation core series MB or older you're okay to use it.
After H61 or better, you can identify a chip named "ite" or "asm" in middle of your PCI slot or left of your southbridge chip.
This is PCI-E to PCI bridge chip. But this cannot support all legacy PCI functions. If you can do this method on those system, you're lucky.

Only the business model support legacy PCI(not rely on bridge chip). Q67 and Q77 is natively support PCI by its southbridge.
B75 also support legacy PCI so you can apply this method.(I watched lots of B75 board and they don't have bridge chips)

The Q87 have bridge chips but rumored this support legacy PCI. But intel homepage not. Need volunteers 😀

Intel P55 (PCI yes)
http://ark.intel.com/products/42690/Intel-BD82P55-PCH

Intel Z68 (PCI no) and Q67 (PCI yes)
http://ark.intel.com/products/52816/Intel-BD82Z68-PCH
http://ark.intel.com/products/52812/Intel-BD82Q67-PCH

Intel Q77 (Yes) and B75 (Yes)
http://ark.intel.com/products/64027/Intel-BD82Q77-PCH
http://ark.intel.com/products/64030/Intel-BD82B75-PCH

Hello! I've updated the BASSMIDI Driver a number of times.

I also have an issue to report with the OPL3 emulator employed by this driver, as tested with AdPlug for foobar2000. The drum sounds in this IMF file sound wrong compared to the OPL3 chip I had on my old sound card. They should have a noisy quality, but instead they have a sort of tonal thump sound. Both MAME and Ken Silverman's OPL cores exhibit the same bug, and only Dosbox DBOPL gets it even remotely correct.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/47a0nkj03ux6u93/NUBC.WLF?dl=0

Newer version of my emulator available in development version of zdoom as "Nuked OPL3".

Still doesn't do that one drum sample like dbopl does. I can't really test an actual OPL3 because the only OPL3 card I have is ISA based, and I have no ISA slotted machines to plug it into, at least not handy at the moment.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jf4tncgaz2nllx6/NUB … dbopl.flac?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/58g3glw932p2cx7/NUB … edopl.flac?dl=0

Did you really choose "Nuked OPL3"?
In Zdoom only MAME OPL2 has wrong drum.
http://zdoom.org/wiki/Advanced_sound_options#OPL_synthesis

Oh, you're quite right. The code I wrote to initialize the OPL class for AdPlug was missing a break statement, so it was falling through to the MAME core. Hah.

kode54 - EXACTLY which sound card did you have as your old sound card, if I may ask? 😀

Packard Bell Sound Card / 14.4 modem. It was basically an Aztech Sound Galaxy with SBPro and Windows Sound System capabilities, and an actual OPL3 chip.

The SBPro mode tended to completely lock up the sound card if the sound engine from Duke Nukem 3D, ROTT, Shadow Warrior, Blood, etc, was used at higher sample rates than ~14KHz mono, or half that stereo. The effects of this lockup would either render the sound card inoperable, or stuck in a permanent SB 2.0 mode, where it appeared to be a SB 2.0 card only capable of up to 43478Hz mono sound. This effect would stick until the system was hard reset.

Screw port 388!

The address for the FM synth is at 0x50 of CMI8738. It's compatible with every PCI to PCIe bridge. That's why it worked for me in Linux. I noticed this line in cmipci.c.

1#define CM_REG_FM_PCI           0x50

example: if your card is at BC00 then the address of FM synth is at BC50.

So yea, that's what I found out just now 🤣

If it was an already known thing, then I'm sorry.

EDIT: I compiled the driver with the card's direct address. It doesn't seem to work, unfortunately. I can hear lots of clicks coming from the card. (the driver is trying to access the port)

The FM_EN flag is seemingly ignored since it works without it even. It's not the card's issue since VGMPlay works beautifully.