mattw wrote on 2020-12-29, 20:33:

yawetaG wrote on 2020-12-26, 18:33:

mattw wrote on 2020-12-21, 09:36:

...i kind of demystified "fmAyA" - it's actually "fm4y4". so, 94B instrument definition could be either PCM(Wavetable) or FM. that means "fm4y4" whatever it exactly means, is the only "loop mode" available with FM instrument.

Google "Roland FxM". Some Roland synths (JV-80 and descendants) have a limited FM modulation option. As an aside, JV-80 uses the same GP4 chip as the SC55, so FxM might be part of the GP4 chip's abilities and just inaccessible in SC55...

I believe you're right, in 94B that "fm4y4" thing is dual 2-operators FM (that's why it's designated as "4", i.e. "2x2") and that Roland FxM is also 2 operators FM (1 carrier and 1 modulator). I think 94B has Dual such FM synth, because 94B can do 2 samples defined for one instrument, i.e. I guess it is connected to what you outlined here:

Yes. You can find a simple example of FxM on this page: https://www.polynominal.com/roland-jv80/index.html (under TECH, last bullet point). It's kinda crappy.

BTW, upping the modulation sensitivity on a SC-55 results in modulation effects similar to that example on some patches at high modulation values (using the modulation wheel, CC1), so it might be that the parameter is not editable on the SC-55, but still present nonetheless in the synthesis engine and ROM presets.

So, once again, I am not expert on those topics, but similarities between 94B and Roland are staggering in my opinion. […]
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yawetaG wrote on 2020-12-26, 17:59:

The usual way Roland implements detuned patches on their other TVA/TVF synths is having two samples played at once, one of which is detuned.

So, once again, I am not expert on those topics, but similarities between 94B and Roland are staggering in my opinion.

[EDIT] correct me, if I am wrong, but:
TVF is essentially the same as what 94B has: VCF, which is Voltage Controlled Filter

and I presume Roland TVA is essentially the same as what 94B calls VCA (Voltage Controlled Amplifier). I am very close to think direct conversion between SC and 94B is possible. There are too many identical structures/parameters, at least from my point of view.

VCF and VCA are part of the basic designs for the components of a synthesizer, dating back to the time that analog synthesizers were initially developed*. In a digital synthesizer they do not need to exist as distinct electronic circuits or components.
If 94B is actually a (not so legal) copy of the SC-55 these generic terms might have been used to avoid scrutiny into the format...

* There's a nice book by Peter Manning, "Electronic and computer music", that recounts the history of synthesizers in quite a bit of detail. Recommended.

For the MIDI implementation and relationship between parameters in MIDI and ROM, I came across this older page that basically provides an annotated shortened version of the controllable parameters:

https://hanwen.home.xs4all.nl/personal/synth/ … supp_notes.html

Some comments on that page make me believe that the ROMs might have been cracked before, but it's likely the information will be hard to find because it was likely published on mailing lists or maybe usenet. Guess I'll have to trawl through Google Groups' archived posts (DejaNews archive) and hope to find something between the retroactively posted spam... 😐

yawetaG wrote on 2021-01-02, 07:06:

https://hanwen.home.xs4all.nl/personal/synth/ … supp_notes.html

thank you, that's an excellent article, especially for someone like me - total illiterate about synth engines, SC, etc.

markanini wrote on 2021-01-01, 20:54:

Is there an easy way to get hold of VSC55.dat?

read the posts above and below this one:

Re: About Roland Virtual Sound Canvas 3

they contain links to Trial versions or what to search in Google. the DAT bank in the Trial is the same as in Retail. in fact the above links also contain information how to manually update trial with official updates for the Retail.

markanini wrote on 2021-01-01, 20:54:

Also what's the difference between the 1,807,804 bytes and 1,592,400 bytes version?

the difference is that 1.5MB version is SC-55, while 1.8 version is SC-55MII, again discussed on several places here:

Re: About Roland Virtual Sound Canvas 3

Re: About Roland Virtual Sound Canvas 3

I understand it's a long discussion, but still...

So have you guys stumbled upon some obstacles during your research or why the radio silence? So far this thread had been an interesting read and it seemed good progress had been made.

Hi. mattw and everyone else here in this topic have done a fantastic job (even if I don't have the knowledge to fully understand them). Unfortunately all these discoveries, in practice, didn't lead to the development of a fully functional emulator or soundfont that mirrors the sound of an SC-55, and this is a shame after all this work. Do you have any plans to continue this project?

A tool to convert SC-55 ROMs to VSC sound bank would already be something. It would not be the best solution (at least based on what has been said here) but, since no one is able or willing or has time to create an emulator from scratch, it would be a way not to frustrate all the work done so far.

Hi everyone,

Inspired by the excellent work you guys have done to decode the control and wave ROMs I have spent a month to see if I was able to write a simple emulator that would use the original ROM files to recreate the sounds of my SC-55. Considering the fact that I had not programmed for 10+ years and knew little about synthesizers it's been a pretty steep learning curve. Luckily the SC55 sound font by Kitrinx and NewRisingSun was extremely helpful.

The project is naturally in very early stages of development and currently limited to Linux & ALSA, but I believe I have gotten the basic parts to work. Next step is to figure out some kind of RIAA filtering and adding ADSR/volume envelope. Feel free to check it out at https://github.com/skjelten/emusc

Some of you might wonder why I did not just fork munt, but I found that to be an overwhelming task. I needed to start from scratch to understand all the inner workings of both the ROMs and how a synth works.

PS: Any help would be greatly appreciated!

skjelten wrote on 2022-02-17, 11:08:

Hi everyone, […]
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Hi everyone,

Inspired by the excellent work you guys have done to decode the control and wave ROMs I have spent a month to see if I was able to write a simple emulator that would use the original ROM files to recreate the sounds of my SC-55. Considering the fact that I had not programmed for 10+ years and knew little about synthesizers it's been a pretty steep learning curve. Luckily the SC55 sound font by Kitrinx and NewRisingSun was extremely helpful.

The project is naturally in very early stages of development and currently limited to Linux & ALSA, but I believe I have gotten the basic parts to work. Next step is to figure out some kind of RIAA filtering and adding ADSR/volume envelope. Feel free to check it out at https://github.com/skjelten/emusc

Some of you might wonder why I did not just fork munt, but I found that to be an overwhelming task. I needed to start from scratch to understand all the inner workings of both the ROMs and how a synth works.

PS: Any help would be greatly appreciated!

OK, this needs to be integrated into MT32-pi. Like, yesterday.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-02-17, 11:24:

skjelten wrote on 2022-02-17, 11:08:

Hi everyone, […]
Show full quote

Hi everyone,

Inspired by the excellent work you guys have done to decode the control and wave ROMs I have spent a month to see if I was able to write a simple emulator that would use the original ROM files to recreate the sounds of my SC-55. Considering the fact that I had not programmed for 10+ years and knew little about synthesizers it's been a pretty steep learning curve. Luckily the SC55 sound font by Kitrinx and NewRisingSun was extremely helpful.

The project is naturally in very early stages of development and currently limited to Linux & ALSA, but I believe I have gotten the basic parts to work. Next step is to figure out some kind of RIAA filtering and adding ADSR/volume envelope. Feel free to check it out at https://github.com/skjelten/emusc

Some of you might wonder why I did not just fork munt, but I found that to be an overwhelming task. I needed to start from scratch to understand all the inner workings of both the ROMs and how a synth works.

PS: Any help would be greatly appreciated!

OK, this needs to be integrated into MT32-pi. Like, yesterday.

To get a proper SC-55 emulator in my custom MT32-pi project was actually the main motivator for starting this project 🙂

skjelten wrote on 2022-02-19, 03:42:

To get a proper SC-55 emulator in my custom MT32-pi project was actually the main motivator for starting this project 🙂

Thanks for this project! I hope it will come out soon on Windows too.

Good that the idea wasn't abandoned. I hope this becomes a reality, in spite of the SCVA being available now (which is rather focussed on the SC-8820, with SC-55 instrument mapping as a bonus). Keeping my fingers crossed for this one!

The old VSC VST that is freely available can use the SC-55 instruments, but it has to be patched/hacked to get them.

Roland Virtual Sound Canvas - VST sysex tune-up

Old Sound Canvas VST 1.6 Mod for SC-55 instruments

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-02-19, 14:19:

The old VSC VST that is freely available can use the SC-55 instruments, but it has to be patched/hacked to get them.

Roland Virtual Sound Canvas - VST sysex tune-up

Old Sound Canvas VST 1.6 Mod for SC-55 instruments

It is simply using the SC-55 VSC samples (which are identical to the Microsoft GS Wavetable synthesizer). Maybe the quality is slightly higher than the Microsoft synthesizer, but it doesn't use the original SC-55 samples.

I didn't know about these patches. I managed to apply them now, but one way or the other, the VSC is no match for the SCVA. As an example, the choir you can hear in Doom's E1M8 is a mere shadow of what it should be with VSC.

Is there by any chance also a way to increase default polyphony in the VSC from 64 to 128 voices (max) and use GS instead of GM2?

Trelokk wrote on 2022-02-19, 19:29:

I didn't know about these patches. I managed to apply them now, but one way or the other, the VSC is no match for the SCVA. As an example, the choir you can hear in Doom's E1M8 is a mere shadow of what it should be with VSC.

Is there by any chance also a way to increase default polyphony in the VSC from 64 to 128 voices (max) and use GS instead of GM2?

Whatever changes you make, VSC will always sound like the Microsoft GS Wavetable, but the quality is slightly higher and it supports effects. But it is far from accurate. SCVA is also not accurate, but it is the best you can have at the moment. This new project is interesting and also very important, and I hope we will have something that works soon.

Anyway you can use Falcosoft MIDI Player + LoopMIDI with VSC or SCVA. Also, that change to VSC is useless.

Yeah, the instruments won't suddenly sound better when you use the SC-55 bank - at least with the VSC. (Because any of the available banks, regardless whether it is vsc55.dat, vsc88.dat or vsc88pro.dat, uses the same sounds - with the only difference being that many samples are reused.) In the SCVA however, you *will* notice it.

Trelokk wrote on 2022-02-19, 19:29:

I didn't know about these patches. I managed to apply them now, but one way or the other, the VSC is no match for the SCVA. As an example, the choir you can hear in Doom's E1M8 is a mere shadow of what it should be with VSC.

Is there by any chance also a way to increase default polyphony in the VSC from 64 to 128 voices (max) and use GS instead of GM2?

E1M8 sounds fine to me with the VSC-MP1, though it sounds far better with the XG50 VSTi. The choir is clear as day with both of them.

The only way to fix the VSC-MP1 is to edit/recompile the DLL with the proper information, which should also include getting the banks properly installed, so they can be switched to, with the appropriate commands.

On a side-note, I also found out that you can use the old XG Software player with the XG VSTi and it sounds wonderful. From my testing, it actually sounds superior to the latest Falcosoft's MIDI Player, which only falls flat because it doesn't seem to handle the effects in the same way, by default. The XG player sounds brighter, warmer, punchier and just more pleasing, even though the interface is ancient and a chore to use.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-02-20, 15:30:

On a side-note, I also found out that you can use the old XG Software player with the XG VSTi and it sounds wonderful. From my testing, it actually sounds superior to the latest Falcosoft's MIDI Player, which only falls flat because it doesn't seem to handle the effects in the same way, by default. The XG player sounds brighter, warmer, punchier and just more pleasing, even though the interface is ancient and a chore to use.

Sorry to say, but it does not make any sense. The player does not "handle" the effect any way. It only sends the Midi commands that are interpreted by the VSTi plugin. Please, send me an example Midi file where you hear differences.
Also what Midi out do you use as selected output in XG software player?

I edited the post 'Old Sound Canvas VST 1.6 Mod for SC-55 instruments' based on the research from this thread. I assumed back then that each bank had different base sounds.

I'm using the manually selected VST MIDI Synth on both the XG player and the Falcosoft MIDI Player 6.1 x64, not going through Coolsoft MIDI Mapper. VST loaded through the driver is the XG50. I have nothing but the default settings on your MIDI Player and there are no accessible configuration settings through the XG MIDI Player, with the player volume set at the max on both and same volume level in the system mixer. Given that, they should (probably) sound equivalent and they sound nearly identical, but they do not sound the same. The XG player just sounds a bit punchier and warmer, even with my regular GM files, and it seems like the handling of effects/balance are different between the two players. The only clear difference that sticks out with your player is that the SysEx for Volume/Balance is unchecked, which is the default setting for every version of it that I've ever used and there is no equivalent setting in the XG player, so I can't say for sure if it would be responsible. Just now, I'm doing a quick test with the Space Quest 5 GM complete soundtrack file from QuestStudios, in the section after the intro "Captain's Test", where Roger would be walking around the StarCon Academy, and there's a subtle but clear difference between what comes out of your MIDI player and what's coming out of the XG player. Now, it's moved to the section where he's taking the written exam and the difference there is less pronounced.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-02-20, 15:30:

On a side-note, I also found out that you can use the old XG Software player with the XG VSTi and it sounds wonderful. From my testing, it actually sounds superior to the latest Falcosoft's MIDI Player, which only falls flat because it doesn't seem to handle the effects in the same way, by default. The XG player sounds brighter, warmer, punchier and just more pleasing, even though the interface is ancient and a chore to use.

As I have written above what you say does not have any sense since the players themselves do not handle the effects at all but only send commands to the VSTi plugin. Meanwhile I have made a test with FSMP and Yamaha software player and they sound exactly the same when all other settings are identical. So you must have set something differently/wrongly that's why you hear different sound. There is no other reasonable explanation.
Here is a video about my test:
https://youtu.be/wYWaByQx5h8

I'm using the manually selected VST MIDI Synth on both the XG player and the Falcosoft MIDI Player 6.1 x64, not going through Coolsoft MIDI Mapper.

BTW, What is the "manually selected VST Midi synth" you are talking about? What is the host you use that hosts the VSTi plugin?

The point is you do not experience differences because of the player "does not handle effects the same way". And most likely others would not be able to reproduce your result/different sound with Yamaha Software player.
Are you sure the Yamaha player really using the VSTi plugin?

The XG Player that I'm using is the older version that shipped with the S-YXG50/70 for 95/98/XP installer packages and not the far more advanced version that you are using, which is one that I've never used, though everyone seems to have access to that particular player and uses it in their testing. Based on the config file and the system info, it seems this 2.X version was part of the WDM install package for XP. All settings in FSMP 6.1 x64 are the default settings and there is nothing accessible through the XG Player beyond the volume control and MIDI output selection, as the XG driver itself doesn't load. I'm now testing with the SysEx for Volume/Balance enabled and it's a little closer to what the XG Player puts out.