The core emulator for 88Emu is now 100% done and it supports sample-accurate emulation for the SC88, SC88VL, SC88Pro and SC8850.
Working on the UI now, then release...

awesome. any reason the sc8820 wouldn't work too?

Also, does it do an emulated serial interface, or does it provide 4 midi ins if you use the sc8850 emulation?

ALso, the sd70 outputs digital 24 bit 44100 or 48000 Khz audio, as well as the usual 20 bit 32000.

It should work with the SC8820 too, but I don't have one to test, nor I have the roms.
It emulates 2x serial interfaces for all units, plus it supports 4 midi ins through USB in the 8850.
Technically 24 bits are possible since it can just skip the last truncation step before outputting, but it's capped at 32khz. The SC-D70 does resampling internally, it doesn't actually run at 48000.

oh. alright.

so you can actually install the roland midi drivers and use 88EMu that way? that will be awesome. too bad the d70 just resamples somehow.

where can i look at that mu2k project?

i can't wait to use the sc-8850 emulator.

Nic-93 wrote on 2026-09-02, 17:37:

where can i look at that mu2k project?

Here (but it's far from being complete):
Re: Yamaha XG emulation at last

Working on UI and MIDI player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyvS2cm7DZk

Yeah, that looks like the SC88 pro UI. Just preview is moved to a button, replacing phones, and midi in b and power are replaced by playlist. I dot' think th power switch does anything useful for the emulation, as it seems most of the stuff that you were supposed to turn of the power for is not on the front panel. Ther was stuff that you woudl do it for on the sc55, but it seems there are other button combos for it now.

btw, seems the sc8850 is very bright orange (near yellow) when on, even though it looks green with the backlight off. 😀

Also, there are confirmed inaccuracies with sc va compared to 8820, as far as I know. one is that sc55 map doesn't do percussions choking like every actual hardware in sc55 mode. which means it's stil worth doing the sc8820 if we can ever get the roms.

giulio wrote on 2026-09-03, 03:08:

Working on UI and MIDI player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyvS2cm7DZk

Nuked SC-55 needs a UI like that, it's awesome.

Nuked has the sc55 ui. which doesn't have those extra buttons at the bottom. the only thing it's missing is the integrated midi player.

zaphod77 wrote on 2026-09-05, 17:14:

Nuked has the sc55 ui. which doesn't have those extra buttons at the bottom. the only thing it's missing is the integrated midi player.

There are forks on github that add just these things: The Sound Canvas module front panel GUI and/or a Midi player. The front panel is kinda nice when tinkering, as for the player; I prefer to use WinAmp or Audicious anyways.
Also I am expecting that an EmuSC kind of setup will overtake Nuked SC-55 for most practical uses, in the future. As the Nuked SC-55 provided reference information now allows for such projects to come to frutation.

gerwin wrote on 2026-09-05, 17:34:

There are forks on github that add just these things: The Sound Canvas module front panel GUI and/or a Midi player. The front panel is kinda nice when tinkering, as for the player; I prefer to use WinAmp or Audicious anyways.
Also I am expecting that an EmuSC kind of setup will overtake Nuked SC-55 for most practical uses, in the future. As the Nuked SC-55 provided reference information now allows for such projects to come to frutation.

Nuked SC-55 and EmuSC are two very different projects: one is a low-level emulator that accurately emulates the original hardware (I think 88emu does the same thing), while the other is a C++ rewrite similar to Munt that aims to be accurate enough and more lightweight to emulate. They are two different philosophies.

The interface Giulio created for 88emu is fantastic, better than anything else I've seen so far. I hope he forks Nuked SC-55 with the same interface in the future (obviously simplified for the SC-55).

Kappa971 wrote on 2026-09-05, 17:57:

Nuked SC-55 and EmuSC are two very different projects: one is a low-level emulator that accurately emulates the original hardware (I think 88emu does the same thing), while the other is a C++ rewrite similar to Munt that aims to be accurate enough and more lightweight to emulate. They are two different philosophies.

If the logic is out in the open, and the output can be verified byte for byte, then eventually a simple Midi-in to Wave-out synthesizer can produce the same sound as Nuked-SC55 but without having to pretend that there are multiple MCUs (CPUs) exchanging data at precise speeds. Another benefit is that certain ROM limitations are then easy to adjust, like channels, polyphony, CTF, etc.

It is not like the guys at Roland choose to emulate vintage MCUs for their Sound-Canvas VA VST. They did not need to.

gerwin wrote on 2026-09-05, 18:07:

If the logic is out in the open, and the output can be verified byte for byte, then eventually a simple Midi-in to Wave-out synthesizer can produce the same sound as Nuked-SC55 but without having to pretend that there are multiple MCUs (CPUs) exchanging data at precise speeds. Another benefit is that certain ROM limitations are then easy to adjust, like channels, polyphony, CTF, etc.

It is not like the guys at Roland choose to emulate vintage MCUs for their Sound-Canvas VA VST. They did not need to.

Now we have SC-88, 88Pro, etc. emulation, so why should I worry about the limitations of the SC-55?
If I want to emulate an SC-55, I need an SC-55 with all its limitations, especially for some games.

And Roland doesn't care about video games, so they released something that was acceptable enough.

Kappa971 wrote on 2026-09-05, 18:22:

Now we have SC-88, 88Pro, etc. emulation, so why should I worry about the limitations of the SC-55?
If I want to emulate an SC-55, I need an SC-55 with all its limitations, especially for some games.

And Roland doesn't care about video games, so they released something that was acceptable enough.

I don't think these remarks change anything. It will go as I illustrated. Just takes a bit more time.
An EmuSC-like project could switch different Sound-Canvas peculiarities easily, and on the fly.

Specifically, Roland doesn't seem to mind people listening to old midis composed for old synths using emulators, btu they do seem t care about music production and live performance.

More polyphony is a useful trick. Having significantly more usually helpes playback, because then nothign gets stolen. however, sc mk1 and 2 have different stealing logic, and that can definitely mess up midi files. SO having an exact Mk1 is still very useful to pair with dosbox.

Finally giulio and TUS released 88emu sources at GitHub today.

5 devices are emulated: SC-88 - pure one, VL and PRO versions, SC-8850 and old good SC-55mk2 - judging from remarks, they used Nuked SC-55 sources for it.
SC-8820 isn't supported atm, but once TUS have the hardware, they will fix it for sure.
Also you have to provide your own ROM images for any device to start.

I've built binaries for my system (Linux x64) and tested them for a while.
88emu appears to be a standalone version, publishes 3 new MIDI IN ports to the system (A, B, announcements) so it should be directly compatible with DOSBox and such, didn't test it yet.
Incorporates a built-in MIDI file player for testing , GUI is scalable from 50% to 300%.

Generally all synths are working but we need more testing to detect alpha version peculiarities.
For example, 32 channel midis sound kind of weird but LCD graphic demos look all OK.

More teasing screenshots to follow: