Have you been able to make it work like a real Roland Sound Canvas? I have not.

I checked the Doom2 MIDI capture. Didn't detect any special commands anywhere. Percussion log looked like this:

1[00008B]  00 ____ 96 29 76
2[00008F]  00 ____ 99 2C 7A
3[000093]  00 ____ 99 2F 75
4[000097]  00 ____ 99 30 75  <-- crash cymbal 1
5[00009B]  00 ____ 99 32 66  <-- ride cymbal 1
6[00009F]  00 ____ 99 28 7F
7[0000A3]  00 ____ 99 29 5E
8[0000A7]  07 ____ 91 22 7F
9
10[0000AB]  56 ____ 89 28 40
11[0000AF]  00 ____ 89 2F 40
12[0000B3]  00 ____ 89 32 40  <-- ride cymbal 1
13
14[0000B7]  07 ____ 89 30 40  <-- crash cymbal 1
15[0000BB]  00 ____ 86 29 40
16[0000BF]  00 ____ 86 28 40
17[0000C3]  07 ____ 89 2C 40
18[0000C7]  07 ____ 89 29 40
19
20
21
22[000533]  00 ____ 96 29 6E
23[000537]  00 ____ 96 28 7A
24[00053B]  00 ____ 99 2F 75
25[00053F]  00 ____ 99 30 75  <-- crash cymbal 1
26[000543]  00 ____ 99 31 7F
27[000547]  00 ____ 99 32 66  <-- ride cymbal 1
28[00054B]  00 ____ 99 28 7F
29[00054F]  00 ____ 99 29 5E
30[000553]  07 ____ 91 22 7F
31
32[000557]  39 ____ 89 31 40
33[00055B]  0F ____ 89 2F 40
34[00055F]  00 ____ 89 30 40
35[000563]  0E ____ 89 28 40
36[000567]  00 ____ 89 32 40
37[00056B]  15 ____ 85 28 40
38[00056F]  00 ____ 89 29 40
39[000573]  07 ____ 86 28 40
40[000577]  00 ____ 86 29 40
41[00057B]  08 ____ 85 26 40

Plain GM stuff for whole soundtrack. Fl. Key Clicks I'm not sure about yet - need to upgrade midi parser engine.

So I assume it's either the Soundfont or ADSR code of synth used. From my experience, I could never get BASSMIDI to sound the way I want with any soundfont (especially reverb, chorus slider) - Roland VSC w/ sysex fix is closer.

Very interesting! Do you know any games that would use ADSR stuff? Frankly I don't think they would go that deep into the hardware when not even using any GS. I would rule it out because it's not shown when I play back the standalone midi file, yet the recordings still show that difference.

Note how it's multiple instruments that differ, not only the cymbals. The reverb on those drums sounds quite different as well.

Well, if anyone finds a solution that allows Windows 7 to play it properly, report back here. I don't believe the Roland VSC works in Win7?

Here is a site with Doom2 midi files and mp2 recordings via a Roland SCC1 sound card. The mp2 shows the cymbal sounds are somewhat "extended" for the time points in question (Doom2 Map1); likewise on YouTube. Is the Roland SCC1 a good reference for Doom2 sounds?

From wikipedia: "Roland also released the Roland SCC-1, an 8-bit ISA half-size card incarnation of the SC-55 sound module."

Also, YouTube has a sample from Bobby Prince's album of Doom2 Map1. Can you confirm that the album sounds different than the SC-55 YouTube recording?

Stick to this if you want to know what you'd get on a real SC-55. Both of your recordings have some differences that I can't explain (more reverb, external maybe?)... they both seem to have the same cymbal behaviour though.

Using an SC-55 soundfont (details) with a very high sample rate corrects the cymbal problem. Using ZDoom (Doom2) and fluidsynth with a sample rate of 48000 or lower will result in the "extended" cymbals for the abovementioned time points (several seconds into Doom2/Map1). However, values such as 96000 or higher will result in "muted" cymbals as in the Roland SC-55. This may be worth trying in Bassmidi.

Edit: Don't recommend increasing to a very high samplerate since it causes problems with another instrument sound (and possibly others). Recommend the Yamaha solution from the previous page or the solution in the next post (depending on which Windows OS).

Roland VSC (*Player*) probably won't work above XP. Roland VSC (*VST*) will work in XP - 7+, and is less glitchy + lower latency.

I have to use 2 other proggies together with VST:
- loopMIDI
- SAVIHost by H. Seib

Why do you have to use those other progs? Is there a thread which explains how to set all this up?

Because it's old software designed to run on XP at best... it's surprising enough that NT6 even still has support for MIDI.

Why does Doom2 have a MIDI option for "General MIDI" and for "Sound Canvas"? Does that mean these are two separate drivers which interact differently with the MIDI file? I tested but can't yet detect a clear difference between them. It does suggest that the SC-55 soundfont will produce the "authentic" MIDI sounds under the one driver but not the other.

Well, we've had this topic in the past... don't forget the Wave Blaster option. I think at least for this game the options are all exactly the same.

I gave the answer to the issue in this thread.

So it's either the SC-55 is the only correct example, or the only incorrect example. Interesting. What instrument is it calling? Seems strange the SC-55 would have their (only?) cymbal be staccato while everyone else just let it ring.

valnar wrote on 2013-11-07, 14:56:

OK, so I jumped on the BASSMIDI bandwagon as soon as it came out and loaded up the Roland SC55 sound font. When playing games i […]
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OK, so I jumped on the BASSMIDI bandwagon as soon as it came out and loaded up the Roland SC55 sound font. When playing games in DOSBox, I immediately noticed an improved fidelity. However, just today I noticed something sounded wrong in the beginning of Doom2 (1st level).

About 5 bars into the music, after the bass intro, a cymbal starts playing at the end of the riff. One a real SC55 or Microsoft's wavetable synth (piped into DOSBox), those cymbals are staccato and cut off quickly. With the BASSMIDI + SC55 sound font, those cymbals keep on ringing for a few beats.

1) Can anyone else confirm this too?
2) Why is this happening? Is it because soundfonts don't relay all the proper MIDI information?
3) Can anything be done to make it more accurate with BASSMIDI? Otherwise, it doesn't seem to be the panacea I thought.

First of all, sorry for being a terrible latecomer, I've been working on my custom soundfont for more than 2 years and I can confirm that this is NOT an issue of any synth but the soundfont file itself. The cymbal-chopping work is done by an "Exclusive Class" number (that can be any value) assigned to a sample or a group of selected samples that eventually make them behave monophonically. Almost every garden variety soundset still has this tweak applied in only their hi-hats whereas Roland's original GM/GS soundset makes use of it a lot more. In the case of the hi-hats, those 3 samples (closed, pedal, open) are assigned to exclusive class 1. So far, exclusive class 1 is the group of hi-hat samples that is now acting monophonically thus mimicking the chopping effect that a real hi-hat would make. Not only by each other, but we can also chop a single note by itself by doing a velocity variation in the MIDI file (putting a low-velocity note after the main note.) Moving on, Roland's soundset has included more different exclusive class values on each cymbal. If we had just put class 1 on all these, then the aforementioned hi-hats would get chopped by cymbals or vice versa, making it a whole mess. So, exclusive classes 2, 3, 4, and so on came into play, which isn't used in almost every other soundfont.