Demolition-Man wrote on 2024-04-01, 09:22:
Are other instruments perhaps used in the XG setting or tuned differently without using the additional XG options? Or does it not work that way? The XG MIDI stuff is still new to me, but I'm happy to learn.
To answer your question, GM is covered under XG, so there is no difference in sound between a GM and XG MIDI - when played on XG hardware - unless the MIDI data is formatted or tweaked to use XG commands and to take advantage of XG MIDI's additional instruments, features, and capabilities, which can vary wildly from hardware to software and hardware to hardware. To make it more confusing, there are two different kinds of XG (Regular XG and Sondious -XG), three tiers of XG hardware/software synths with different instruments and performance capabilities, and backwards/downward compatibility of XG MIDI data between various XG hardware and software synths is not always there, but forward/upward compatibility is pretty much guaranteed, so you can take an XG MIDI file that was made on an older/lesser XG synth and have it sound great on the newer/higher-end synths, though you can't always do that with a MIDI file done on the newer/higher synths because the instruments/sounds used can be different. For games, what I said means mostly nothing, as the few games that used XG were almost entirely composed with the S-YXG50 (soft-synth) or DB50XG/DB51XG (MIDI daughterboard) and MU50/MU10 (hardware), which is basic XG and not the more advanced, with bells and whistles. In today's world, you can get by and meet your needs by using the S-YXG50 VST and FalcoSoft's VST Host MIDI Driver and MIDI Player and completely forget about XG hardware, unless you are looking to run a vintage hardware setup and require correct hardware or you are running a newer/current PC (The last Yamaha XG modules are compatible with current systems) or you just need the advanced musical functions and capabilities of the last XG hardware for whatever reason.