I really like the sound. It has the best qualities of FM and romplers.

Today's upload: Super Street Fighter II
https://youtu.be/keDHx9QoOVc?si=O9nPfO8r1YhlUZkM

Even using translation tools, the site only seems to have info on the device, not any way of purchasing it. How do you go about getting in line for it? Because this sounds utterly amazing.

dionb wrote on 2025-06-03, 23:15:

Even using translation tools, the site only seems to have info on the device, not any way of purchasing it. How do you go about getting in line for it? Because this sounds utterly amazing.

Currently still in stock at Ken. But they will not ship abroad. So you will need to use a local friend or proxy service.
https://www.kadenken.com/view/item/0000000018 … y_page_id=ct220

Age of Empires and Warcraft II!
Just beautiful!
https://youtu.be/1EWjgS7Y2p0?si=RfK5js1vZBb-FlV9

it's a toss-up between this and DMXOPL for me right now, though some patches on this are impressive for FM, the overall sound reminds me too much of some of the low end GM devices.

looking at these examples (would have linked directly but apparently soundcloud is doing forced registration now...), the guitars in doom are much more in line with something you could expect from a good mega drive game, while the superoctet disappoints here despite being 8-op. but the best place to check is the legacy of rust soundtrack on youtube, because these should be the latest version patches unlike other ancient DMXOPL recordings out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbFMlh97G5Q

so a multi-OPL3 external device with the DMXOPL patches installed would be really good - probably 3 chips needed for good polyphony. 24 instrument+8 drum polyphony on the superoctet seems a bit lackluster itself though for using modern hardware, and it's not clear whether there are some double voice patches here as with DMXOPL, however worth nothing it's possible to stack several superoctets to increase polyphony, which is interesting.

DMXOPL is impressive stuff for sure, but as stated it needs software programed to use it. Even if someone was to make a multi-opl3 chip device, it would have minimal support. I'd rather see PC get a proper OPL4 sound card with full sample memory and the hardware access need to fully use it myself...

SuperOctet will just work for any GM compatible source, so it's a fun addition as I already have plenty of rommplers already. It was a project by one person who certainly didn't have Doom on his mind during development. It is possible to program custom instruments as well, but it's above my current knowledge level 🤣.

Personally I'm hoping for more drum kit presets, as SuperOctet only has one currently. But, making a proper drum kit from pure FM by hand that is properly balanced is no easy task. Even back in the arcade days, most devs used various PCM or ADPCM samples for drums, as it was way easier. Irem's X-Multiply is probably one of the best soundtracks to use actual FM drums, and that was on the YM2151.

SuperDeadite wrote on 2025-06-11, 03:59:

DMXOPL is impressive stuff for sure, but as stated it needs software programed to use it. Even if someone was to make a multi-opl3 chip device, it would have minimal support.

several dual OPL3 external devices actually already exist: 1 2

the first already has built-in support for custom GM patches, so it would be a matter of extracting them from DMXOPL and putting them in. if that's somehow not possible there are plenty of non-x86 doom ports, so code that can read that GENMIDI data and work on some MCU or system on a chip is likely already out there.

the goal is the same as with superoctet, really - an external GM device using FM synthesis that's free from the crappy patches that 90% of DOS games came with, while also improving polyphony. i'm not sure how far 2 chips will go though, there are mentions of 6 or 8 emulated chips being recommended for DMXOPL. for instance the SC-55 polyphony is pretty lacking for a lot of later made MIDI files.