A comparison of MIDI devices from Serdashop. And what does GM, GS and MT-32 mean?

A comparison of MIDI devices from Serdashop. And what does GM, GS and MT-32 mean?

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Hi and welcome to Retro Erik. In this video we   are comparing different MIDI  synthesizers from Serdashop. If you are following my channel,  you have probably seen my videos   om MIDI devices. All of them are  in fact supplied by Serdashop.

Serdashop has specialized in making MIDI  synthesizers for the Wave Blaster connector,   or as we call it today, the Wave-Table header.  His products range from the Economical McFly, The   ESS based E-Wave, and more advanced synthesizer  like the DreamBlaster X2 and the DreamBlaster   X16 where you can upload your own Sound Fonts. Serdashop also has MIDI solutions for the printer   port and the serial port. I have made a video on  all printer port audio devices from Serdashop.   If you are into sound on retro  computers, you will want to check it out.

But before we start comparing gadgets,  let’s explain Wave-Table Synthesizers. In 1992 Creative Labs came out with  the SoundBlaster 16 sound card. It   came with a new 26-pin header called  the Wave Blaster connector. The Wave  

Blaster connector allows users to install  a daughterboard called the Wave Blaster.   The Wave Blaster is an add-on MIDI-synthesizer.  It is a sample-based synthesizer that is General   MIDI compliant. The Wave Blaster adds  hundreds of real instruments and drum   kit samples that can be used to bring more  authentic music and sound effects to your PC. People often believe that General  MIDI or GM, was created by Roland,   and that the only real and authentic General  Midi sound for DOS gaming at the time,   was the Roland Sound Canvas. This probably  has root in the fact that Sound Canvas often  

was used by game studios for testing and  balancing their General MIDI soundtracks.   But in fact, there is no definitive answer on  what the best General MIDI synthesizer for DOS   gaming is. It basically comes down to what you  feel, is the sound that best fits your taste. Actually, General MIDI was developed by the  American MIDI Manufacturers Association and   the Japan MIDI Standards Committee.  It was first published back in 1991.  The Wave Blaster port was adopted by other  sound card manufacturers who produced   both daughterboards and soundcards with the  expansion-header: Diamond, Ensoniq, Guillemot,   Oberheim, Orchid, Roland, TerraTec,[1] Turtle  Beach,[2] and Yamaha. The header also appeared  

on devices such as the Korg NX5R MIDI Synth  and the Oberheim MC-1000/MC-2000 keyboards. Later Roland defines a new standard called GS,   it’s basically the same as GM plus some new  features like more instruments and effects.   These new features in the Roland new GS  standard were especially useful in games. We should also explain the Roland MT32  before moving on to the comparison. Already back in 1987 Roland releases the MT32  external synthesizer. It had 128 synths and 30   rhythm sounds, playable on 8 channels.  It even had reverb effect to give the  

sound more space or depth. It quickly  grew popular among gaming developers.   One of the reasons for this was the Linear  Arithmetic synthesis engine. They used the   LA engine to generate new sounds and was  very useful for sound effects in games.  The Linear Arithmetic synthesis engine is one  of the reasons the MT32 is so hard to replicate.

Due to its popularity Roland would two  years later release the LAPC1 as an ISA   card for the PC. The LA in the name is  because it has the Linear arithmetic   synthesis engine. The LAPC1 is a Roland  CM-32L and an MPU-401 MIDI interface.   The CM-32L is basically the MT32 plus  33 sound effects mostly for gaming. So, if you have a game which needs a CM32L,  and you only have a MT-32 , you will get   some instruments playing instead of  sound effects, like here on GODS. We now understand Wave-Table headers, General  MIDI or GM, Roland GS, the MT32 and the CM32L.

We can now start comparing MIDI devices. This is not a video of all his devices, but  only the once in my collection. First out is   this S2P. This is the parallel port version of  the Dreamblaster S2. Its’s one of Serdashop’s   low-priced General MIDI devices. I have  the parallel port version of this because   I wanted a parallel port Genel Midi for my  laptops without a sound card. With this,  

my laptops now have at least music. And for  games like Monkey Island or Sierra games MIDI   Music is all I need. To get it working you need a  utility that redirects MIDI to the paralell port.   This is done with SoftMPU. The only drawback  with SoftMPU is that it needs a 386 computer or   better. But luckily for us there patch for a few  games out there. Like Doom and other games using   the same sound engine. Games that use the Miles  Audio Interface Library and most importantly.  

Most Sierra games, except for the oldest ones. One of the things I like with this paralellport   version, is that low noise. Since it’s not  installed ON the soundcard, it does not pick up   any noise from the PC, or the Soundcard’s internal  mixer. The S2P has it’s own line out, and power  

in. As loong as how have a good power supply,  you will get very good sound quality out of this.  Talking about sound quality. As  mentioned sound earlier in this video,   sound is subjective. I feel that in  games like Doom, Doom2 or prehistoric   the sound is very much to my likings. So, to summarize. The DreamBlaster S2   parralellport version is a very good option  for a laptop computer. There is no noise that   I can hear. And I like the sound of the General  Midi instruments on this SAM2695 sound chip.

The MP32L is built on the mt32 Pi Project  on GitHub, so you can download the all the   upgrades from the mt32 pi GitHub sites. It  has 256 banks. That means that it can have   256 different sound fonts. Of course it does not  have any licensed bank from Roland, but it's made   to be as compatible as possible especially when  it comes to the MT32 and the CM32L. That is the   whole point with the mt32 Pi Project. It does not  have a wave table connector so you cannot connect   this directly on your sound card it has a d media  port and that is how you connect it to your sound   card you can connect it uh to the joystick port on  your sound card you if you have um midi card you   can of course use that or if you don't you can  actually also use the MPU232 witch is a Serial   port to MIDI interface also made by Serdashop. It  has a line out with a very good DAC so this will   also not pick up noise from your computer once  again be sure to use a decent power supply the   one that's the Serdaco sells is very good and  as far as I know does not pick up any noise.  

It has a OLED display it's quite cool some  games like Sierra games they actually use   that display to send messages. One of the  really good things about this device is   that it has four buttons and you can use two  of them to change the sound Bank on the fly   so if you start up the device in General  MIDI modus and then you realize you wanted   Roland GS. Well you just use the display and  the buttons and choose Roland GS or MT32 or   whatever other bank you want to use. Just give  it a second or two to load before it will kick  

in. One more good thing about this device  is that you can easily move it around from   different computers so you can use this on your  Atari, Amiga or any of your PC's very easily. Next out is the WP32 McCake. It's also built on  the mt32 Pi Project on GitHub but instead of using   our Raspberry Pi 3A Plus or later you can use a  cheaper Raspberry Pi compute module 4 light. This  

makes the whole unit smaller and therefore you  can fit everything on one card with a wave table   header. So with all the talk about the wave table  header in the beginning of this video, we finally   have one of the cards with a wave table header so  this card you can put directly on your sound card   and keep it inside your computer. He has also made  a external display that fits in one of your drive   bays with a nice OLED display and four buttons  to choose bank and set the volume. This is a very  

neat setup since it's built on the same mt32 Pi  Project it has basically the same settings when it   comes to Banks, memory and all the other things. It does not have a line out, so the sound out from   this will have to pass through your sound card  and could therefore pick up some internal noise.  One thing I didn't mention about MP32L was the  sound font support. Since these two devices are   built on the mt32 Pi Project they use the same  sound font format - the sf2. The SF2 format   you probably heard about that before. It was  developed by Creative Labs for use with a Sound   Blaster card. So actually the same sound fonts  you can upload on your Sound Blaster with memory,  

can use on this. If you Google the internet  for SF2 fonts you will find a lot of them. And then we have the X2 GS Second Edition.  I've made a video on the X2 - the original   one. But this is now replaced by the Second  Edition and the one that Serdashop sent me  

this time has a Roland GS licensed sound font  built in. That is why it uses the letters GS in   the name of this sound device. It has two  Banks one is pre-loaded with Roland GS and   the other one you can load whatever you want. But if we go down in this table we see that   the format it needs is a proprietary dream  Bank format dream is the supplier of the MIDI   chip that is used on this board but luckily  for us there are ways to convert sf2 sound   fonts to the dream Bank format you will find  more information on Serdashop's web pages.  You can get this without the licensed GS Bank from  Roland and you will save a few €'s on that. The X2  

has a Preset Editor application for Windows where  you can upload sound fonts. You can change a lot   of settings in the sound fonts and basically  adjust the sound to your liking. It has a wave   blaster connector and that is how this board is  supposed to be connected. But you can also connect   it with the MIDI-Cloud directly to your joystick  port or with a chill V external MIDI board. 

It does not have a line out so the sound  has to pass through your sound card And then we have the X16. My version is the  X16 with the licensed Roland GS sound fonts.   If you are using this for dos gaming I  really urge you to buy the GS version.  The X16 has eight banks for sound phones and it  can also play 256 instruments at the same time   very few games uses more than 33 pylyphones or 33  instruments playing. It has 1 GB for sound fonts.  

That means that you can load pretty large sound  fonts up to the x16 the sf2 sound fonts and a lot   of ordinary sound fonts you can find on the net  only takes a few megabytes like typically two or   four or eight or maybe 16 megabytes and here you  have 1 Gigabyte the largest font I've seen I think   it's BURAN and that is about 60 MB or something.  So 1 GB should be plenty of room for for storing   fonts. Anyway you only have 8 Banks to store  in. Anyway the X16 has a lot of effects this   board also of course has a wave table header for  connecting it directly to your sound card but it   also has a separate line out so that means that if  you want to you can connect your speakers directly   to the x16 you can also install it externally  on the Chill V external MIDI board. The X2 and   the X16 does not have any buttons or any ways to  externally change the bank on the fly. But you   can send so-called nrpn commands directly to those  two devices to change the bank you want to use uh   directly from dos or from Windows the x16 have dip  switches where you can use this but uh when your   card is in your computer uh this will be very hard  to do and um I'm not sure I would recommend doing   that while the power is on we have now covered  all five devices so we know what they are and   what they are capable of doing so what should  you pick up well if you go to mobile games and   uh take out a list on games supporting General  Media Roland GS or MT32 or CT32L you will see   there is a lot of games uh with support for one or  more of these standards if you just want a cheap   way of playing General MIDI on your old laptop  I would go for the S2P it's easy to install ,it   works on 386 or betters and there's a few patches  for older games if you are using a 8086 or 286.  If you want to play play the really early games,  especially those from Sierra, you probably want   MT32 emulation. And the mt32 Pi Project is as  far as I know the best way to get MT32 - if  

you don't have the original Hardware. So if you  pick up the MP32L or the WP32 McCake you will get   real or as close as possible to real MT32. It will  also give you CM32L and with those two covered you   will be able to play a lot of games the way the  developers intended you to listen to their music.  But the mt32 Pi project also has excellent support  for GM and quite good support for Roland GS. So if   you go for the MP32L or the WP32 you will have  a very all around high quality MIDI synthesizer   and it will give you all the options you will  need to play games from the 80s and the '90s. Then we have the two Dream Blasters; The X2 and  X16 with or without licensed Roland GS. If you  

are buying a MIDI to play DOS games go for the  GS version. You want to use the licensed Roland   GS samples that was the way most game developers  intended you to listen to the game music. it also   has excellence General MIDI and you can upload  your sound fonts for the version of General MIDI   you prefer. Should you choose X16 or the X2. Well  if you're really into MIDI and you have a lot of   favorites (sound fonts) and you need to have them  easily accessible, then go for the x16 because it   has 8 Banks. It also has more sound effects but as  far as I know it will not help you for DOS gaming. 

That was a lot of talking on my side. I think  I've covered everything. Now very quick summarize:   By the MP32L or the X2 GS Second Edition,  or both of them. If you have both of them   you will have a great solution for DOS gaming. Well that was my take on this. I hope you saw the  

whole video. It's a quite a long one and I hope  you liked it, and if you did please press Like and   Subscribe, that will help me a lot. Thank you for watching.

2025-01-15 19:23

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