AI is nowhere near able to take a hardware ROM and convert to software emulation or even create valid blueprint of it. Just like anything that came before it, it's a tool and good at some things, n0t at others. Even with AI, all of the bugs, misunderstood bytes and broken dsp in mame are still there. The only thing I've used AI for was to document mame's code to understand what needs to be coded in dsp and the parameters for some of the midi dispatcher and build the plugineditor UI because I hate coding UI. I also used it to write a quick script to brute force me about 1000 dpcm decoder variations to finally work out what mame doesn't emulate correctly and has DC offset issues too.

As for XG being dead, the main issue is now even midi drivers for say my MU2000 no longer work on Windows and yamaha removed them, so even hardware is becoming less desirable to use if you want specific XG sounds. That's what most people love about XG, is that many sounds are so familiar they want something convenient. So far no rompler of samples really sounds correct or better than an MU2000.

Well then there's your route: update the MIDI drivers for modern Windows, even Linux. Don't need to understand Yamaha's methods to do that, just a decompiler.

What happens with AI is people contribute complete projects to it with notes. The AI alone does not do the job... there is a filter which identifies high value code and recommends it to the analysis teams for inspection and curation. In the case of the MAME project the filter would flag the code by noticing the name "Yamaha" and the team would extract the DSP bits and specially train the AI on it make it more competitive with real engineers. Because it's incomplete they might not prioritize the project immediately, but if someone did a decompilation and put it on Github somewhere then they'd use it to fill in the gaps in the MAME driver...

As I said in the beginning. Th MU Hardware has many limitations and SYXG50 is cracked and decrypted with many restrictions because it was never designed for 3rd party hosts and most hosts don't' support sysex anymore to the VST layer and XG was obviously extended beyond GM. Software opens up to improve not only sonic quality but many other things. MPE, oversampling, advanced filters, improved imaging, more advanced interaction with host modulation, audiorate modulation etc.

As for AI, it already knows everything about a Yamaha swp30, there's nothing to teach it with. It wrote a script to geneerate 1000s of decoded dpcm, I worked out what mame missed, AI learned nothing new, not even what dpcm mode mame missed.

i have had little issues using vst midi synth as system driver and getting the sysex through, which is needed to playback GS and some XG stuff.

and mame is still quite off.

s-yxg50 was designed to be loaded into SOL2.

Also since your mu2000 can't be used in windows anymore, do you have a solution for that for playing back all ye olde XG midi files?

AFAIK, the MU2000 drivers for XP were removed, but the subsequent Windows OS are still supported, though someone probably has the XP drivers somewhere.

The sitch has been developing rapidly of late.

see
https://www.facebook.com/groups/xgcentral/pos … 92757837467575/

Microsoft is tightening security around Windows in advance of serious cyberattacks probably coming America's way. It's becoming a problem for a lot of people, not just Yamaha users.

Wait... are you Sam Hocking? Guess you're already aware then.

here's the driver.

https://usa.yamaha.com/support/updates/usb-mi … driver-win.html

released 2026-05-22, but it no longer claims compatibility with windows 11. it just says windows 10 64 bit driver.

3.1.4 did work on 11 before MS change, but now you can no longer download it, because it no longer works.

So yes, the problem is real, which mean we actually DO need an E.S.P. for XG Level 3.

The only way to fix it is to buy an additional windows 11 supported usb midi interface, and hook that to the normal midi ports.

Ironically, Roland makes the working USB to normal midi interface. 😀

I followed the link and looked for it in the Wayback Machine but it wasn't there, so I saved it to there.

If someone had bothered to save the page when it had the Win 11 driver then perhaps it would still be accessible... sad 🙁

Oh well, I'm sure Yamaha won't let the sitch linger.

hey, does the muxg2k have peg and aeg?

Yes, it has a more advanced AEG, PEG too I've also added FEG per Element, which is part of the voices but Yamaha never exposed it.

Yamaha, released a new midi driver for win 11 a few days ago. It probably just needed signing and updating so the removed the previous version.

I'm glad Yamaha finally got it resigned. Can confirm that the 3.1.5 driver was updated to work. When i first saw the page, it didn't mention windows 11 support. it does now.

So people with an mu2000 can rest easy now. I still want the mu2000EX VSTi, though.

i hope the variation and insertion effects will be here in the future.

I'm in two minds about the fx. It's a lot more work and imo the native FX are not very good, you have better already in your DAW or via 3rd party available to you once in a VST/CLAP/AU/AAX

As long as one can get XG-compliant FX and whatnot, through a regular player - like Falcosoft's - I'm satisfied, though I don't know what is what when it comes to those things. I just want something that works.

My intention for this plugin/standalone isn't really gaming, it's music and easy voice selection and editing in the box. But we'll see. All the midi is there, it will be the exact fx missing, not the voices. But I have added about 50% of them.

Many of us still enjoy the glorious XG MIDI files and for gaming, nothing was ever done beyond the Level 1 XG, because that's what the widely used soundcard/daughterboard/soft-synth/entry-level module covered, so we've got that taken care of with the cracked VSTi, more or less. There are also many who want to do advanced XG music, but can't, because there's no real hardware left beyond the most basic stuff that only covers Level 1 or 2.

From my POV, hardware effects (particularly reverb, chorus more so than variation effects) are the 'secret sauce' which gives these synths half their sound, so the usefulness of emulation substantially falls if it can't actually emulate things like effects. Also DAC, I'm so disappointed in the SC-55 Nuked project not having that as an option or focus. But still, it's useful if done without, and a whole lot better than nothing! I just hope @hockinsk will have avenues for release if negotiations with Yamaha fall through, Internet Archive, etc. Too many of these projects get 99% complete, then get C/D'ed, and it's all for naught.

In particular, the reverb, chorus, filter, and envelope stuff *must* be correct, because these parameters modify the original samples to create the default patches.

Can we do better inside a daw? sure. but to playback existing midi data, the already existing stuff needs to be implemented correctly. and that's what i want. I'd like to see this project playback the entire XG ff7 soundtrack correctly.

I would like to see this project to end up being dual licensed, with yamaha being given a separate license that lets them (and them only) do whatever they want with it (like sell us an s-yxg2000), while the free download will not come with roms, and have a basic license that requires that you own the synth that you dumped the ROMs for. Yamaha's ESP only comes as a free license with the actual hardware, so this new project should work the same. if you own real hardware, you can use it, while if you don't you can't. I think that as long as it works that way, Yamaha won't have an issue. I am curious if enough can be dumped from the actual synth using sysex instead of a rom dump, though i'd guess you can't extract the samples this way.

Then Yamaha could maybe make a new s-yxg50, s-yxg80, s-yxg100, s-yxg125, and s-yxg2000. with the prices going up as the numbers do. S-yxg2000 i could see having a similar price to Sound Canvas VA, with s-yxg50 being anywhere from 20$ or so to free. Most people who just want to play midi files would use the remade s-yxg50, while serious xg music makers would want the 2000.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on Yesterday, 12:42:

Many of us still enjoy the glorious XG MIDI files and for gaming, nothing was ever done beyond the Level 1 XG, because that's what the widely used soundcard/daughterboard/soft-synth/entry-level module covered, so we've got that taken care of with the cracked VSTi, more or less. There are also many who want to do advanced XG music, but can't, because there's no real hardware left beyond the most basic stuff that only covers Level 1 or 2.

Their patents expired... if it's just the FX you want, you can tear down a Level 3 unit and inspect it. But it's 1990s tech, and is now standard in every paid analog synth VSTi released in the past 10 years. (was just looking thru the spec the other day... you basically get everything in there with any non-free DAW)

And it won't be exceptional either... if anything, it'll be a cut-down approach to their stand-alone FX units (can only cram so much stuff into one case).

zaphod77 wrote on Yesterday, 14:17:

I would like to see this project to end up being dual licensed, with yamaha being given a separate license that lets them (and them only) do whatever they want with it (like sell us an s-yxg2000), while the free download will not come with roms, and have a basic license that requires that you own the synth that you dumped the ROMs for. Yamaha's ESP only comes as a free license with the actual hardware, so this new project should work the same. if you own real hardware, you can use it, while if you don't you can't. I think that as long as it works that way, Yamaha won't have an issue. I am curious if enough can be dumped from the actual synth using sysex instead of a rom dump, though i'd guess you can't extract the samples this way.

Then Yamaha could maybe make a new s-yxg50, s-yxg80, s-yxg100, s-yxg125, and s-yxg2000. with the prices going up as the numbers do. S-yxg2000 i could see having a similar price to Sound Canvas VA, with s-yxg50 being anywhere from 20$ or so to free. Most people who just want to play midi files would use the remade s-yxg50, while serious xg music makers would want the 2000.

The issue with a "ROM-free" version is this: if there is no obvious method of dumping the ROM (as in, such a device is not marketed), then Yamaha can assert that real purpose of the software is to enable non-owners of the ROM to use XG thru piracy. But further, because they have compressed/encrypted the samples they have the option of asserting the DMCA also by way of it's "no copy-protection tampering" clause.

So it really depends on how much value they think XG still has. If they going in some AI direction which we don't know about, they could be unpredictable.... They might be even more protective of their "secret sauce" than XG itself, because they probably think their FX is still marketable even if XG isn't (if their methods were understood Behringer would likely jump at the chance for a clone).

Sam it may be tempting to bow to pressure and give anonymous people what they want, but you might well be better off contracting your work to small-time studios. That would not count as distribution because you would be engineering the solution on a case-by-case basis and the software would only be a tool to that end.