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.BNK Files?

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First post, by TheAdmiralty

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Howdy!

Got a follow-up on an old question I asked.

I was playing Daggerfall the other day, when I noticed that the included HMI Setup was playing MIDI over an SB16 that sounded nothing at all like an OPL3. I finally realized that this was due to a set of .bnk files that are used by the program - melodic.bnk and drums.bnk. Now, I have a very basic understanding of how both MIDI and FM Synthesis work, but my question is if there is any way possible for Win95 (or the SB16 driver, or anything else, for that matter) to make use of the same .bnk files for all MIDI playback?

The reason I ask is this:
This is the HMI setup's sample rendered through their own banks.
This is the same file through a raw OPL3.
Granted, the system used for the second recording couldn't quite keep up with both Audacity and Win Media Player at the same time, but you get the point. I'm actually playing around with Win95 on DosBox right now just because I don't feel like digging out my testbed at the moment, and it's working remarkably well... makes it easy to test things out. Any ideas? Is what I'm asking possible? I've got two cards with actual OPL3 chips onboard (SB16 CT1740 + Telewave Audio 32) and another two with an OPL3 core embedded somewhere in there (AWE32 CT3990 + Logitech Soundman Wave OPL4), and I intend to do a lot of digging around with each of them to see what I can come up with. I'm just impressed that it's possible to make the lowly OPL3 sound so much better than its typical self... sadly, sound cards from before 1995 are beyond my expertise right now.

Much appreciated,
-Matt

He took out his hip flask when he reached the page that described how he reached the page that made him take out his hip flask.

Reply 1 of 5, by leileilol

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Nope. HMI / MSS Drivers != Windows drivers

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 5, by gerwin

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I find the story and question a bit confusing
This is the official description:
DRUM.BNK FM instrument patch file (5,3kB)
MELODIC.BNK FM instrument patch file (5,3kB)
These are translation tables to convert the game's General Midi music to OPL FM music data. Because the OPL3 does not understand General midi music, so they try to translate it automaticaly taking into account the limitations of the OPL3. It saves the game developer the effort of making seperate tracks for OPL3 by hand. With the coming of windows 95 OPL3 support was left out of any native Windows game AFAIK. Daggerfall only has a dos executable right?

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 3 of 5, by bristlehog

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Foobar2000 and its FooMIDI plugin support HMI/HMP files playback. However, respective drum.bnk/melodic.bnk files for different games are incorporated into FooMIDI, and there's no Daggerfall in that list yet. Anyway, FooMIDI doesn't use real OPL3 hardware, emulating it instead.

Theoretically, it is possible to create HMI/HMP player (and even MID player) that would utilize drum.bnk/melodic.bnk files for OPL2/3 playback. In practice, it would be a hard and challenging task.

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Reply 4 of 5, by TheAdmiralty

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Hard and challenging tasks have never stopped me before. 😐 Not sure it's worth the effort, though... the way it was explained to me before, was that .BNKs were essentially the AdLib precursor to SoundFonts and acted as sort of an abstraction layer between a GM signal and an FM Synth; It's pretty close to what you guys just described, but he made it sound a helluva lot more simplistic, like they were readily interchangeable in the same way you load an .SF2 with the AWE32 Control Panel. I think I'll just stick with my trusty EMU8000... I've butchered too many drivers already to feel the need to do one more just for this. Thanks for clarifying... now I know a bit more.

They really didn't make working with old MIDI synth's easy... pretty much everyone in the market had their own technology that they wanted developers to use, and it's like it just turned into a wash of small pieces of everything all causing problems with each other until things started clearing up and becoming standardized.

I think I remember WinAMP supporting HMIs through its own respective plugin as well, from when I was trying to get a WaveBlaster Daughterboard to work... I'll have to check on that.

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Reply 5 of 5, by bristlehog

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Winamp does support HMI/HMP, and plays them through real hardware if present, however, I doubt about using custom banks. I believe that standard timbres embedded into Windows OPL2/3 driver will be used.

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