AWE64 Gold. Not big in the Soundfont memory area, but it's the "best" ISA Sound Blaster.

Why the heck would you need a soundfont larger than 150 MB!?

Anyway, I don't suppose the kx project drivers make any difference?

And doesn't the AWE64's need for all that DOS PnP stuff make it somewhat less useful?

You did not mention wheter or not you have ISA slots in your system.

The SB-Live does not use the Soundfont Synth for the Dos emulation. But you can attach it to dos programs with an awkward workaround: Use VDMSound software or another soundcard such as the Vortex 2 to do the Dos emulation, then select them to use the SB-Live Soundfont Synth as the midi device.

If the system is fast enough you can just as well leave the Creative hardware out and use a Soundfont software synthesizer, such as SFZ.

Yeah the awe64 is a good card but I thought (thought wrong) it was obvious enough that I need a modern card since I'm already using a sound blaster live!.

Yeah I was thinking about adding another pci sound card in to try that quirky setup (one card doing midi and the other doing sb16 emulation) but it's not very conveniant. Plus I think it'd help if we all recognized the more modern sound cards that produce sb16 emulation and I'm talking more professional cards like m-audio sound cards for example.

Dos compatibility is one of my highest priorities but I also like to play around with midi's and soundfonts to make music recordings and what not. There are some real great midi remixes of some old gameboy games that sound really awesome with the right soundfonts.

Plus I'd be recording cassettes and vinyls from older video game soundtracks so something that'll produce at least 48khz or higher is a must. Oh and it needs to do 44.1khz without resampling (bit-perfect playback).

Maybe I sound like a demanding asshole but I think it'd help others who especially wanna do midi remixes of old dos games and what not.

Soundfont capability is a must.

Oh and the hardware I use is in my signature but I'll post it here anyways:
mboard= ASROCK 775dual-vsta
cpu=celeron D 330j @ 3.33ghz (soon to be core 2 duo)
vga= voodoo 4 4500 and geforce 8300 gs g86 card (soon to be ati 5770)
sound=onboard realtek hd audio alc888 (this does bit perfect playback despite what some other forums say), SBLIVE! 5.1
1 stick of ddr2 800 1gb ram

I'll play later with this als4000 card I got laying around and combine it with the sound blaster live. I did have an mx300 soundcard but I burned it by accident in a fire 🤣.

Oh yeah and the kx project drivers don't make a difference. Actually midis start dropping notes like crazy like right away. If I change the audio device in control panel I can get the midis to work right but then there's a second lag for all the sound effects in games! wth...

With a PC as fast as yours (and soon to be upgraded), I'd suggest sticking with the SBLive and running Windows XP SP3. The latest (last) WXP drivers released for the SBLive don't suffer from the soundfont size loading limitation AFAIK, and DOSBox would run smooth as silk on a PC that fast.

I have a P4 2.66GHZ CPU, 512MB RAM, running Windows XP SP2, with an SBLive Value (CT-4780); DOSBox works great on this rig, along with having nice sounding MIDI music in DOS games (along with my GM 55meg SF2 that I recently released) 😀 DOSBox simply uses the SBLive for any music playback (SB Live! Synth A).

Holering wrote:

Maybe I sound like a demanding asshole but I think it'd help others who especially wanna do midi remixes of old dos games and what not.

If you want to do crazy high-quality remixes and recordings and whatnot, I say do that on one computer, and play your DOS games elsewhere.

If you have some high-quality MIDIs that you enjoy listening to, why not just render them as FLAC once and for all, and be done with it?

That's an excellent soundfont you got there weed! Really enjoyable!

Yes I do render some midis into flac and/or mp3. But you can never stop playing with soundfonts when you got gigs to choose from. There are some commercial ones I have yet to try out but would love to if I had cash on me at the moment.

Yeah I'd like to avoid having two systems and just keeping everything in one space. If nobody knows of a win9x compatible high-end soundcard with hardware midi rendering (soundfont compatible. I hate using software midi rendering knowing I could use cpu cycles elsewhere. Though it's nothing bad it just seems cheap) then I'll just end up emailing c-media and other interesting companies about that. Of course if I find out sooner or later I'll be posting it up soon after just to let people know about it.

Yeah dosbox is plenty fast enough with pretty much any midi dos game. Not only that but most games that are glitchy are glitchless. It can also be a drag commenting out drivers to free up conv. memory in real-mode dos just for one game (blackthorne comes to mind). All the newer games that use cd-audio can be run natively in real-mode dos with no problem, but you do gotta make sure you use an ide dvd-cdrom drive since sata's don't have the analog audio output. Plus you gotta use alternative cd-rom drivers vs the stock oak driver. Now I'm curious if there's any TSR or driver to enable real-time digital audio from cd-roms without using any audio cable in dos. That would be sweet.

I really don't wanna dink around with the dual soundcard setup just to get soundfont midi in dos games. I just don't think it's worth it when you got dosbox which runs fine in windows 9x-ME.

Holering wrote:

Yes I do render some midis into flac and/or mp3. But you can never stop playing with soundfonts when you got gigs to choose from. There are some commercial ones I have yet to try out but would love to if I had cash on me at the moment.

I find it really hard to believe that a given MIDI can sound that much better with one soundfont versus another, at least when you're dealing with soundfonts larger than a hundred megs. Whatever.

Jorpho wrote:

Holering wrote:

Yes I do render some midis into flac and/or mp3. But you can never stop playing with soundfonts when you got gigs to choose from. There are some commercial ones I have yet to try out but would love to if I had cash on me at the moment.

I find it really hard to believe that a given MIDI can sound that much better with one soundfont versus another, at least when you're dealing with soundfonts larger than a hundred megs. Whatever.

I got fairly deep into exploring free soundfonts back when I used an SB Live. I found it was mostly volume balance issues, or individual instruments that sounded different that would make one soundfont sound better or worse than another with different games.

Eventually I got sick of Creative's business practices and switched to on-board sound. When I wanted MIDI again I bought some Roland synths, and I haven't missed soundfonts since :p

Soundfonts, reguardless of size, can definately make a big difference how any given MIDI file sounds.

Some of the biggest 'clunkers' were some of the retail SF CDs that I've purchased throughout the years. One that comes to mind is the Sonido Media "Monster GM" 24meg soundfont... absolute CRAPola compared to a lot of the other soundfonts available.

Another dud was the "28MBGM.sf2" that ships with the X-Fi Vista driver CD. As far as I can tell, that one was based off of the old "8MBGM.sf2"... yet sounds _no_ better whatosever than that smaller one. AND... the slackers who compiled it/put it together totally FORGOT preset 34 (the picked bass) :duh: .

Anyhow, different soundfonts can make a BIG difference, which is why my custom soundfont that I recently released originally saw the light 😀

ff4sf2.sf2 was my favorite soundfont. 512kb, 1991 samples, but eh... i love it and it fits on AWE fine and suits the era of the DOS games i use it with 😀

Can it not be said that many MIDIs of the era were actually composed with the limited instrument sets available at the time in mind, such that they'll sound completely unlike (and much worse) than what the original composer intended if you try to play them with some needlessly-elaborate soundfont?

Jorpho wrote:

Can it not be said that many MIDIs of the era were actually composed with the limited instrument sets available at the time in mind, such that they'll sound completely unlike (and much worse) than what the original composer intended if you try to play them with some needlessly-elaborate soundfont?

That's quite true. I've seen/heard a lot of older MIDI files where the composer used relatively strange instrument substitutions to achieve an desired overall sound (e.g. using the trombone preset instead of a trumpet, in a MIDI where the composer actually wanted a trumpet sound).

But (like myself), if the composer basically ignored what his MIDI hardware actually sounded like, and simply followed the standard GM guidelines as to what preset is which instrument, then a well-made soundfont would indeed make the MIDI file sound better.

On some games the results are awesome. Fluid w/ Castles II souinds excellent.

leileilol wrote:

On some games the results are awesome. Fluid w/ Castles II souinds excellent.

How'd you get that working? Castles II is an MT-32 game, not General MIDI...

Well, nothing really stopping you from playing a .mid made for a MT-32 on a GM device.