All I know is I went from a Sound Blaster 16 Pro to an AWE 64 gold, the MIDI quality blew my mind. I believe this is the result of using instrument samples to render the audio instead of pure synthesis.
I also remember that the SB and other audio cards added MIDI lines into the DA-15 joystick port that for some reason resided on sound cards. This let people hook up real synths to render the music and I knew of one musician who did this with a keyboard though I never got to hear it live.
Yep. Count me in as another fan of the AWE64 Gold. The DSP chip they used on that board, version 4.16, also patched the MIDI hanging note bug that was present since the SB16 era. As an aside, I believe the very earliest SB16s didn't have this hanging note bug, but they were incredibly noisy.
> joystick port that for some reason resided on sound cards.
That reason was the limited amount of ISA ports. Early joystick ports were on their own ISA card. Which used a precious slot. For creative labs it was good advertising "see, no extra slot needed"
> Although not perfect, [Sound Canvas VA] is the closest recreation of the original SC-55 in software form as of 2023.
Ah, this submission should have a “(2023)” added to the title. In 2024, Nuked-SC55 (https://github.com/nukeykt/Nuked-SC55) was released, which is a fully accurate software emulation of the SC-55/SC-55mkII (it relies on having the original ROM files).
"development and maintaining of this emulator has stopped; this project also caused me pretty severe burnout [...] pressure to relicense the project and usage info/code from my code against my will/without permission or outright license violations"
Usually the hardware for which the respective music was composed is the most preferable. For example for Ultima VII, that would be a Roland MT-32 (plus a Sound Blaster Pro for speech synthesis). The SC-55 only provides incomplete emulation for MT-32.
They link to a cornucopia of samples they made available on archive.org at the bottom of the article (not in-line, where I was looking for them). Doom, which is fairly widely known, starts at #57: https://archive.org/details/DOS-Gaming-General-MIDI-Comparis...
I have played around with a lot of general midi hardware. have a sc55mk2, sc88, sc155, mt32, MU1000, MU15, and the one I want to talk about Alesis Nanosynth. I actually think the Nanosynth is the most interesting and can provide really good results. The others sound a lot alike for the most part, well other than mt32 for the soundtracks designed for it. Also fun is to run midi through multiple devices and pick and choose the channels to create a new mix.
I can't remember if it had General MIDI, but I'll give a nod to the Gravis Ultrasound. I couldn't afford / justify a full one, so I got the ACE version. Of course the use of midi for games was almost gone by then.
AFAIU, the GUS was basically a DSP + sample RAM. With an appropriate driver, it should have been possible to load General MIDI instruments (maybe only what's needed for the game you are about to play, due to limited capacity) and let the DSP handle pitch and effects. It seems like such drivers existed, called ULTRAMID and MEGAEM. Whether that was a common thing to do at the time - no idea.
But what the GUS was popular for was games (and demoscene demos!) that used the hardware "natively" by loading their own samples and maybe own effects.
I really like the yamaha MIDI sound, shame they weren't that popular. Sounds much richer and more expressive than Roland. Roland might be more technically correct, not sure.
I had a decent midi collection well before MP3s were around (or even took off). MIDI was much more forgiving to download via a 14.4k modem.
Even when they did, I remember how revolutionary Creative Labs appeared (to me) with sound fonts on my Live! card. Or when the PC version of FF7 came with a software synth.
I occasionally run across songs on streaming services claiming to be 'orchestrated' versions of this or that, only to highly suspect the 'author' just grabbed a MIDI and threw it into a modern music writing studio package (perhaps replacing a few instruments here and there).
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 31.1 ms ] threadI also remember that the SB and other audio cards added MIDI lines into the DA-15 joystick port that for some reason resided on sound cards. This let people hook up real synths to render the music and I knew of one musician who did this with a keyboard though I never got to hear it live.
Also, some later DSP’d SB16 cards used CQM instead of OPL3 for the MIDI, so it could sound a touch harsher and raspier, if that makes any sense.
That reason was the limited amount of ISA ports. Early joystick ports were on their own ISA card. Which used a precious slot. For creative labs it was good advertising "see, no extra slot needed"
But I also recall how much I struggled to get the emu10k1 chip to work with my Linux distro in the (very) early 2000s. I eventually gave up.
Ah, this submission should have a “(2023)” added to the title. In 2024, Nuked-SC55 (https://github.com/nukeykt/Nuked-SC55) was released, which is a fully accurate software emulation of the SC-55/SC-55mkII (it relies on having the original ROM files).
"development and maintaining of this emulator has stopped; this project also caused me pretty severe burnout [...] pressure to relicense the project and usage info/code from my code against my will/without permission or outright license violations"
But what the GUS was popular for was games (and demoscene demos!) that used the hardware "natively" by loading their own samples and maybe own effects.
Even when they did, I remember how revolutionary Creative Labs appeared (to me) with sound fonts on my Live! card. Or when the PC version of FF7 came with a software synth.
I occasionally run across songs on streaming services claiming to be 'orchestrated' versions of this or that, only to highly suspect the 'author' just grabbed a MIDI and threw it into a modern music writing studio package (perhaps replacing a few instruments here and there).