My SC-55 has reverb / chorus buttons but I never played with them. Might need to check it out 🤣

But so far I'm mighty impressed by these SoundFonts. As I said before if you want something that sounds like Roland, well buy a Roland synth, but if you are looking for something that brings a new sound to the table then SoundFonts gives you a ton of choices

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

My SC-55 has reverb / chorus buttons but I never played with them. Might need to check it out 🤣

I'm not really sure what their function would be, but any MIDI files that use the reverb and chorus controllers (MIDI CC 91 and 93) will automatically have the controllers' valued amount of reverb and chorus applied (0-127)... that, on any General MIDI hardware that supports those controllers (which is most of them).

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

But so far I'm mighty impressed by these SoundFonts. As I said before if you want something that sounds like Roland, well buy a Roland synth

You prolly remember me saying this before; but I've always drooled over (since day-one) the Roland SC-88 Pro. Even today, damn, that thing sure looks sexy; what with all of it's buttons and such 😀 And, I remember the MP3 demos that I (and a friend) had download from Roland's site back in the day (what was it, 1996?) sounded quite awesome 😀 This back when I was primarily (de)composing on an AWE32 with the bog standard 8MBGM.SF2, and my Wave Blaster 1.

Okidoki seeing that Doom doesn't use these controllers I tried the following:

- Launched the game
- Hit "ALL" button which selects all instruments
- Set reverb to 127
- Set chorus to 127

Here is a Doom recording: http://www.mediafire.com/?k0ayi4dd02d556x

It's small enough for dial up!

Recorded on a SC-55MKII

EDIT:

Also it seems that reverb 40 and chorus 0 is the default setting? At least that's what the display shows when I reset the whole unit...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Okidoki seeing that Doom doesn't use these controllers I tried the following: - Launched the game - Hit "ALL" button which selec […]
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Okidoki seeing that Doom doesn't use these controllers I tried the following:
- Launched the game
- Hit "ALL" button which selects all instruments
- Set reverb to 127
- Set chorus to 127

I can definitely hear some reverb and chorus, so's since DOOM doesn't have any of those controllers in it's MIDI soundtrack; the settings on your SC-55 are a "global" sort of thing... overriding whatever is set within any given MIDI file. Although, it doesn't really sound like a value of "127" though (127 would result in a LOT of reverb and chorus). Try the attached ZIP with the MIDI file... 127 for reverb and chorus for each of the MIDI tracks.

Quite a cool thing indeed though... a global setting for reverb and chorus 😀 I wish that the SBLive! could do that (same with the AWE32/64 cards), a "global" reverb and chorus setting sort of thing, as it would definately make the WAD based games' music sound a lot better 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Also it seems that reverb 40 and chorus 0 is the default setting? At least that's what the display shows when I reset the whole unit...

I'm assuming so. It prolly defaults to those global values upon powerup or resetting...

Prolly allowing any given MIDI file to override the global setting if the MIDI file's controllers are of a higher value (just guessing here, though).

P.S. Hehe, the Microsoft GS Wavetable software synth (with some of the EAX reverb effects) is almost a dead ringer for the SC-55 😀

You can also adjust level, pan, chorus, reverb and key shift. Either for individual channels or all of them!

Quality wise it's like the air is getting thin when you start off with a Sound Canvas. I mean that SoundFont I tried was almost 300MB but didn't sound 50x better or anything like that.

PS: That MS GS recording still sounds very "basic" IMO. Certainly pales in comparison to all these other SoundFonts and Sound Canvas.

I have managed to get the Chorium soundfont to run on Realtek onboard audio on Win 7 x64 😀 I used the software MIDI synth, Timidity++.

Being a software solution this means that basically anyone can use a soundfont with DOSBOX, although presumably with a performance hit compared to a sound card that supports sound fonts natively. In my testing however I didn't notice any adverse affects, but then I've got a 3GHz quad core which usually handles dosbox pretty well 😀

Firstly you need to download this package from Sourceforge - a modified version of Timidity++

Then of course you need the soundfont, either Chorium or another one of your choosing.

When you install Timidity, you will have a new group in your start menu - under Timidity++ run setwindrv

Add the directory where your soundfont is saved in the top text box and click the 'add' button.
Then just below that you need to 'add' the SF2 files and 'remove' the other entries in the 'soundfonts & includes' box.

Save and quit. Now go back into your start menu under Timidity++ and run twsyng
This will put an icon in your system tray, near the clock. Right click it and select preference

click the synthesizer tab. Set 'port max' dropdown to 1 and set port 0 and port 0 to 'MIDI Mapper'. Hit OK. Right click the icon again and select 'start synthesizer'.
You will need to ensure that twsyng is running, and select 'start synthesizer' every time you want to use it, if it isn't already running.

Now go into your DOSBOX config file. Under the [midi] section ensure it looks like this:

mpu401=intelligent
mididevice=default
midiconfig=1

Save and start DOSBOX. At the prompt, type mixer /listmidi
You should get something like this:
0 "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth"
1 "Timidity++ Driver"

If the Timidity++ Driver is something other than 1, close DOSBOX, go back into your config file, and change the midiconfig setting to whichever number was the Timidity++ Driver. Start it up again.

Now assuming all your other settings are default, any DOS game that supports General MIDI, Wave Blaster or Roland Sound Canvas should work on port 0x330 if you choose these options in the game setup utility.

You can further change the way it sounds, by right clicking the twsyng icon, selecting Preference, and changing the options on the Effect tab. I personally prefer no reverb and no low pass filter but this is personal preference.

In my testing so far, Doom sounds identical to mau1wurf's recording, and Duke Nukem 3d sounds pretty close, but mine seems to be a bit more heavily filtered. This is probably due to the cheap onboard realtek audio though, the instruments sound pretty much the same, just some higher notes seem slightly quieter/more muffled. Still sounds pretty damn good though.

When I get time I will try out a few other soundfonts including rfnagel's 😀

Thanks for the tip DonutKing, this is working great using my onboard Realtek in Windows 7 Professional x64. I copied the "twsyng" shortcut into my "Startup" folder and under Preference / Synthesizer tab I checked the "Automatically start synthesize" box so now when Windows 7 starts up everything is running without additional intervention on my part. Been using "SGM-V2.01.sf2" and I am very pleased with the results so far!

Thanks for the great guide DonutKing! I have a question for those more familiar with Timidity++ (it's my first time using it). How do you control the volume of the timidity driver ? I'm on XP, I can control it using the wave volume slider of my sound card, but that also controls the sounds effects volume. Is there a way to control it indepently ?

No one ? I tried changing the Amplification option in twsynth, but it doesn't seem to do a thing.

In fact, none of the options in twsynth seem to do anything for me. I disable reverb and chorus and messed with other things and still the midis sound the same. The driver is working, as it's a huge difference from the microsoft one.

What's the use of twsyng ? It seems like after you load the soundfont you want to use with setwindrv and then change the default midi playback device in windows configuration, that's all that is needed. I can play midi files with the selected soundfont without even loading twsyng.

EDIT:
OK, I managed to do it. There's a file called timidity.cfg stored in c:\windows that controls the behavior of the virtual midi driver. You can edit this file in setwindrv if you choose "edit timidity.cfg" button. Then you can control all the parameters used for the driver. In my case, I wanted the volume to be lower, because I play some games that don't have volume control inside them, and I had to control them using the windows volume control. The timidity driver uses the Wave volume control, thus, if I wanted to lower the volume of the music, it also lowered the volume of the sound effects. Adding this line "#extension opt -A50" lowered the volume from the default 70% to 50%, because I didn't wanted it to sound too loud.
Here's a list of complete options: http://twsynth.sourceforge.net/use/useage.html

There is no any memory limit for Soundfont technology that I am aware of. The SF2 file format itself is based on RIFF and therefore limited by 4GB; but there's a possibility to load lists of SF2 files (*.sflist) that allows using a soundfont collection of virtually unlimited size.

There's a quality 1.6 Gb free soundfont named Crisis GM 3.01. Very good results with orchestra-type MIDIs; varying results with others. It's very quiet compared to other soundfonts though. I have attached an example of how it sounds with Warcraft II.

There is also this:
http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth

And from my experience Studio Works 2007 Light.sf2 is much better than Crisis GM.

Personally I never cared much for the Crisis GM SoundFont... the relatively poor quality (IMHO) didn't substantiate it's extremely HUGE filesize.

That being said, you should hear the afore-mentioned HUMAN1GM.MID synthed with my ¥Weeds¥ General MIDI SoundFont v3.0 😀

P.S. While I'm on the subject, MP3s of several MIDIs recorded directly from the BASSMIDI Driver and my SoundFont:

http://jasonwilliams400com.startlogic.com/sno … /Grabbag_BM.mp3

http://jasonwilliams400com.startlogic.com/sno … Symphony_BM.mp3

Stojke wrote:

And from my experience Studio Works 2007 Light.sf2 is much better

Is there any place to download that SoundFont? From what little I've read on the Internet about it, I'd like to give it a listen 😀

Downloaded your sound font, will be testing it out a little 😀
Also i can upload it for you, 222MB SFPacked.

[Edit]
Here are some records and original MIDIs:

MIDI #1 Sonic 2 Casino night
MP3 #1 Sonic 2 Casino night

MIDI #2 Sonic 3D Diamond dust
MP3 #2 Sonic 3D Diamond dust

MIDI: XM Play WAV Write using Studio lite SF2
MP3: Fraunhoffer IIS 192kbps High Quality

rfnagel wrote:

That being said, you should hear the afore-mentioned HUMAN1GM.MID synthed with my ¥Weeds¥ General MIDI SoundFont v3.0 😀

Hey, I recently tested out your soundfont with BASSMIDI. Really nice. I even made a recording of it here which showcases its strong parts quite well imo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqaG0YDZvEo

But I have one gripe about it. It seems like when an instrument plays for the first time the samples have to be loaded with a slight delay and popping noise, so the MIDI needs to be played two times to listen to it properly. Do you know anything about that problem?

What program are you using to play MIDIs?
Updated the above post*

Me? TMIDI Player, was discussed here a few months ago...

Why don't you try Van Basco with Virtual MIDI synth?
Much better combination from my experience.

For example, Sonic 3D Diamond Dust MIDI sounds much better in Van Basco x VMS than XMPlay output.

Because TMIDI Player shows which resets are sent by the MIDI.

Didnt know it could also mute channels. Well, player is your choice.
Also, i am not getting Sound Font errors you described. Might be your sound card or the way you are loading them.