Between this and your 136 in one project you are really wrapping up the ultimate DOS gaming alternative for all the people that don't have access to hardware that will get exotic as years keep passing. Thanks!

I know it's been a few years, but I wanted to thank you for making this series of videos. I feel like I'm 30 years late to this party, but I couldn't come close to affording this kind of kit back then. (I was very lucky to have the hand-me-down clone XT I had!) While I still can't afford the kit, I do have an old Mac Mini collecting dust, and I've been able to give it a fourth lease on life now as a MIDI emulator!

I had a PC speaker in my Turbo XT from 1987 to 1997. I missed this entire era of MIDI and sound blaster music in my games. I geek out on every MIDI video you do, Phil!

I love this. I have multiple machines that support MIDI through an MT-32 compatible or SC-55. Being able to just switch like this is great, and so much more affordable. And of course easier than trying to manage multiple devices.

ok I gotta say I really loved this video. the midi sounds were beautiful.

Awesome project, Phil. Might have to bring out my old Retro 3 in 1 and rework my MIDI emulator box to start doing this. Thanks!

This is a really, really cool project. Thank you.

Oh god Raptor Call of the Shadows was one of my favorites back in the day!

I had a Sound Blaster 16 back in the days with my old DOS PC, now using MUNT software emulator to play these games again with Roland MT-32 sound, amazing experience all the way!

I used a Korg wavetable card on my soundcard. It sounded great !

Oh my goodness this is a great idea. Thank you.

Using a combination of MT-32 and SC-55 for my DOS games thanks to your suggestions :)

Descent - nice stereo effects and bass👍 And another 👍 for Duke Nukem 😎

Thought Id say thanks for the tutorial Phil as it was very inspiring as are all your great videos. Rather than use a mini PC or otherwise dedicated unit for this project I thought I'd just use my main i7-8700K PC which is not far from the DOS PC. I routed the audio out of the DOS PC (AWE32) into the line in of my PC. This way I can play my DOS games with audio coming out my main PC speakers which are very good and also listen to MIDI tracks on the main PC using the Falcosoft MIDI Player (amazing software). For people such as myself who don't have a MPU-401 card on their PC I think Phil mentioned the Gameport to MIDI adaptor cable needed in the video but I didn't see a link for one in his list of links. For those who need such a cable I purchased the one below for around $22. It only took 2 weeks to get here to Adelaide from china. Very nicely constructed but they didn't label which connector was MIDI IN or MIDI OUT. Anyway it took 5 seconds to work out which was which. www.ebay.com.au/itm/1-8m-Dual-MIDI-DIN-5-Pins-DB15-Sound-Card-Joystick-Cable-Wire-Cord-Game-Port/263986355060?hash=item3d76d01b74:g:rDoAAOSwt6hcdZaM&frcectupt=true

I think this might be the earliest I've caught a a video now this is a project I would love to do once I get a retro machine setup. All though I've got a similar setup for my DOSBox usage. I've really enjoyed the Roland SC VA VST but as expensive as it was I should have just bought a SC-55. All though part of what caused me to buy it instead of a hardware device was the fact space is something I lack right now. EDIT: All though my current setup is not automated like this as how I have it running it. So no on the fly switching when you have a full DAW running the VST's.

I have a Yamaha DB50XG connected to the Sound Blaster 16 CT2740 and it sounds amazing. I even made SYSEX files to reset the Daughterboard to allow the SFX for certain MIDI files, like Last Wave from OutRun (rhythm channel 10) when I power it on and when it boots to either MS-DOS or Windows 95C via the autoexec.bat that calls the bat file that resets it.

Great video 👍 I need to finally finish this project. After your first tutorial about midi emulation I bought Roland UM-ONE with all necessary cables and connectors, but I didn't got time to get it to run.

Always did like the midis that came with every machine that had the yamaha s-yxg50 even though there was a 100 and later models

This is awesome. 😎

Well... I don't know why I didn't find your video before... Thanks for the featuring and the interesting project! So far, I "ONLY" have a full-size PC tower with an old multi-PCI motherboard (5), crammed with 4 Sound Blasters to test SoundFonts and wavetables... It has an AudioPCI 128 (CT4810 - ES1373), a Live! (CT4830 - EMU10K1) with the LiveDrive IR (found years after in... a trashbin), an Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350 - EMU10K2) and an X-Fi XtremeGamer (SB0770 - EMU20K1). All working together and switchable as MIDI outputs. Has been quite a pain in the *ss to configure them all with the right IRQs and non-conflicting drivers on Windows XP MCE 2005!

Roland sounds great !

Ah, stole my idea for the "MB-32" I was working on but based on OrangePi (with similar idea of batch files on the retro pc sending MIDI commands to change emulation modes). Not really "stole", of course, but kudos for you for being less lazy than me :) Great work!

I'm definitely going to try this batch file setup. I do all of this except I use my main PC and speakers or headphones. MIDI goes through the Roland adapter, sound goes from line out to line in on my Sound Blaster X AE-5 and then out to either 5.1 speakers or through headphones. Now I didn't know about the MIDIPlayer presets so I have five copies of it configured differently. Thanks for the info!

I guess I'm lucky. Born before 1980 in Central Europe - but behind that Iron Curtain (and growing up on the lower end of the food chain :D), I have never come across Roland, GUS or Turtle Beach or any other fancy MIDI device. So reaching the maximum level of nostalgia for me means just the plain and simple OPL2 - which is still cheap and plentiful :D

Really interesting what Sound Quality you could achive with MIDI back in the day compared to 8-Bit Music

thank you Phil. after all these years I finally setup everything like above even though I have real SC-55 and MT-32 LOL! I used Thin client HP610 to setup like above. It works with my other real retro PC(Pentium 1MMX with your 136 in 1 configuration). I had some issues here and there but I finally setup. It sounds great!

This project is to me the most inspiring so far ... heads off to you Phil. Have ordered a miniPC + have been testing everything on my main PC first before I'll port it to the miniPC. The MDF tool inreal DOS via MIDI-TO-USB cable works fine. You just need to tweak a little bit in HEX to make more presets, but that's part of the game. Want to create more presets for all cool soundfonts out there...

wow great product

Sounds great

Can't believe I missed this video. I have been wondering what the heck to do with a Dell Wyse ThinClient I have paying around. This is awesome.

As an amature/hobbiest music producer this really excites me, atm I'm using a lot of samples I collected from original hardware like the ZX Spectrum, the C64 and the Atari ST but I had to capture it through analogue means and it lost a fair bit of quality as a result. The Roland MIDI sound is fantastic and I would love to sample the hell out of it!

BANGERS!!

I'm glad I have a midisport 2x2 from m-audio this will make this easier

Greetings. I enjoy your vids, especialy the ones featuring roland sound canvas as well as other sound cards. Question. Would you ever consider making a video featuring the Arachno SoundFont and possibly a tutorial?

Hello Phil, thanx for useful video. Could you update links below video description as some files are not reachable anymore

Yes! Thank you.

I really like the idea. I am wondering what latency you get tho, as I found USB MIDI interfaces to add quite a lot. In my Dreamblaster on Atari video I measured roughly 1ms for the Dreamblaster, which is virtually nothing. Anything 20ms or above could impact the experience if MIDI used for FX for example.

Better than My MATE Vince since that please put your outro background music is amazing.

Great project. I tried to implement something like this using a Raspberry Pi 3 (cheaper and less space wasted), and it works really well (with some caveats). - Software configuration is not easy. You need to compile MUNT yourself, learn your way around ALSA MIDI mappings, and finally, write some scripts for routing. - It's more flexible. I used a mididings Python script to answer to the SYX files sent from the retro PC and it works beautifully: not only I can switch from MUNT to FLUIDSYNTH and change the active soundfont using BAT files, I could also send arbitrary text commands to the Raspberry and process them in the script. Potentially, it could do things like save MIDI files of anything you are hearing, show the MT32 LCD screen contents in an external LCD, or change any kind of settings (volume, reverb...), etc. You can of course control this script from the Raspberry, perhaps using an external keyboard or touch screen. - It's Linux, so no VST plugins. That means I can't use Roland's (extremely expensive) SoundCanvas plugin or the Yamaha one. I found that Fluidsynth is good enough for GM, though. - Unfortunately, the Raspberry is not fast enough for accurate MT32 emulation using MUNT. It is good enough most of the time, but some complex music will sound really, really bad, with a lot of wrong tempo issues. Turning off reverb/chorus and choosing a less accurate emulation method improves the situation (the sacrifice in sound quality is very noticeable, though). - Latency is not great (and no, shooting around in Elite is not a good test, you really need to plug in a MIDI keyboard to the retro PC and try using something like DOS Cakewalk; latencies around 100ms, which would be unnoticeable in games, are extremely irritating when trying to jam). - You'll have the same compatibility problems you'll have in retro hardware if you don't have a real MPU MIDI card, almost impossible to find (and extremely expensive). Many games won't work at all or will have a lot of issues. A nifty thing you can do if you use any kind of support mini-PC for your retro hardware is purchasing a serial-to-USB adapter and use any DOS communications package to open a shell to your support PC. You can even transfer files this way using file transfer protocols like ZModem, same thing we used to do when connecting to BBSs and such.

Where has Commander Keen '4' gone? Good vid.

Those sounds must have been the shit, back in the day!

Ingeniously thought off! #inspiring

Yes! The MIDI one.

Awwww Monkey Island on original midi haha LOVE IT

Kind of a noob with all of this, but would you also do this for dosbox? Or could all of this just be done via software on the PC running dosbox. I've seen the Munt videos, but not sure if that covers all - MT32, SC, SF3, etc. Or would a dreamblaster via USB be my best bet? I'm just wondering how to get the same functionality of this set up, but while using dosbox.

I have my retro system on the same desk as my windows 10 main rig. Rather than using a thin client could i just use my main rig as the emulator?

Thanks Phil it’s working perfect 👌, stripped down copy of widows 64bit on the 16gb flash storage on £22 on eBay U.K. brand new in box

This iteration of the project seems pretty neat.

Super!

Hi can you list the games used in the video? I want to play some of those and I didn't recognize all of them... Thanks!

Where’s the link for the sound blaster midi port to plug into the Rolland USB adapter?

Are these MIDI compliant? Maybe you could replace those with something more modern, like a Roland Sonic Cell?

arachno is always the simplest way if you have no idea what to use. good for oldschool games and newschool ones too. however you have to look around if you want something game specific or something you are used to.

I'm currently juggling an MT-100 (MT-32), an SC-7(SC-55), and a Serdashop X3MB (general MIDI/soundfonts) via a 4 port DIN switch and a mixer. This is a FAR more elegant solution. While someone complained about the cost of the Roland VA plugin, you don't explicitly need it to get awfully close to the SC-55 / SC-88 sound via some of the free "inspired by" soundfonts out there and mapped to profiles in Falconsoft. Considering the SC-55 and SC-88's typically sell for more than $150 each in the used market (and were north of $600 each originally), $125 for the virtual module isn't outlandish. I am surprised Roland hasn't capitalized on the retro gaming craze with a similar for-purchase software virtual synth module for the MT-32/CM-32L given the prices of original hardware these days. Anyway, this is a great project and the instructions on your site are great - thanks for all the effort putting this together!

I'd use a RaspberryPI for example with PiMiDi.

Thanks for the video clip, you inspired many souls of retro manias. Question: Where could I get custom sysex information for falcosoft midi player? I have some MSX machines which are 8 bit computers and I want to control midi player using sysex just like you from my MSX machines. :)

Why did you need the long midi cable before your roland usb interface? Couldn't you have gone from the male connection on that straight into the female connection from your retro pc card?

Well... looks like you ran a batch to change all descriptions in your old videos - could you put the links if it still available? ♥

This is awesome, but is there a way to emulate MT-32 input without MPU-401? I wish there was some USB-compatible replacement of it and that the emulator would run on something like Raspberry Pi instead of thin client, that would be great :)

Managed to score an MT-32 and Sound Canvas a while back for a much lower price than they typically go for today, but I think I'll definitely look at setting one of these up, since it looks much easier to switch between sound fonts than swapping out the whole box. Actually, I'm wondering if I can use the MIDI port on a PCI sound card for the MIDI input? I'm thinking I could just use my WinXP/emulator box, which already has a sound card. It's a C2D, so it should be plenty powerful enough to run a MIDI program. All I'd need is the right MIDI cable, which I can make up using a cheap 5 pin DIN female connector, DB15 connector, optoisolator, and some microphone cable. Sounds like a fun weekend project!

Great video Phil, how is the latency? I'm building a retro system and would like to use this. Low latency is unacceptable for me as I'm very sensitive to it.

so what you set the game to use as midi? you didn't show that part, do you some general sb16 setting for everything? or does that have to change depending on what emulation you're going for?

I really like this project and i might give it a try because it saves me a lot of midi cables and power bricks for "the real" stuff. But it also makes me wonder: will emulation affect the value of my mt-32 and sc-55 in the (near) future.

The Yamaha is quiet impressive

Phil, finally I got the cables and the Thin Client, I'm trying to setup my HP Elitedesk 705 G2 Mini to do exactly what you are showing in the video. This is all new, never had any midi stuff to play around. I watched your videos on the topic 3-4 times and I'm getting the grasp of it. I'm running into an issue: Sound Canvas is a x64 plugin and Yamaha S-YXG50 is a x86, which fails to load on the Falcosoft Midi Player x64, requiring me to change to the Falc. Midi Player x86. In the video you just loaded and fired the game: were you using the 2 different versions of the player? If not, how did you get around that?

What about loopMIDI? You can get MT-32 and CM-32 working with MUNT that way without any extra hardware.

Wish you could do this with retro console games

Ok, sorry if this is a stupid question, but couldn't I use a Soundblaster Card and go from the Joystick port to the "mini computer" back to line in to the soundblaster or do I still need a Roland Card too?

What is the name of the jet fighter game you are playing at 6:20 into your video? -looks awesome.

Hi Phil, what USB DAC do you use??

Hit Stabs MT-32 are pretty cool

É possível utilizar essa placa para transformar um órgão organist yx-300iii em controlador midi?

Is it possible to power the thin client via battery, making it portable?

Where is "Links in the description"???

Is Gravis possible? Great video.

Is it possible to do a similar project using a Raspberry pi or an android device?

I was using Creative MidiBlaster MB10 for midi sound bank. HUH what days...

What's up Phil?

Yamaha S-YXG50 only works with Falcosoft MIDI Player 32bits (x86). It's only a 32bit mode Plug-in, so in order to have everything working, you cannot use 64 bits plug-ins, neither Falcosoft 64 bits.

Nice!!! I will try with my t620. What is the quality of the sound that sends out the thin client? Is there any noise that alters the midi or the sound?

Elite! (Or, in my case, Harmless!)

Nice video. You need make/update the raspberry pi 3 mdi emualtor Project. No sure for munt on pi3 but your tutorial for GM works fine on Raspibian with Fluidsynth. Also there not option for Android devices/phones?

Does win98 support usb midi?

Hmm these would be interesting for Atari ST/Amiga MIDI emulation

very interesting. would like to see something similar but for people living in small apartments :-) i.e. how to do this in a vm/dosbox for classic gaming.

hi phil, do thin clients normally have gpio? do you know that? thanks

I hooked up my p200 mmx with SB PRO 2.0 to the ROLAND USB interface. Falcosoft is running on a Thinkpad t420. However, when running the mt32 batch file, I get an error - MPU inerface not responding. Am I missing something? I'm using a GamePort to MIDI passthrough cable.

why do you use a male to male connecter inbetween the UM-ONE and the cable connected to the dos mechine? wouldn't it be easier to plug the UM-ONE directly into that cable since it already has a female connector?

Wow!!! What happend with MUNT?? Are this new project better? Besides shortcurts, does sound better in MT-32 mode than MUNT?

Only thing I would miss are the SysEx messages some games would display on the MT-32 LCD!

I built a setup based on this and it works almost flawlessly. Just wondering how you were able to configure older Sierra games (like Space Quest 3) to work correctly? Choosing the Roland option in setup results in no sound for me but newer games (SQ4, Dune) are fine.

DOOOD!

With all the mini pc & thin clients, are there any good USB sound cards for WinXP or even Win98?

Somehow, those songs and sound effects sounds better than nowadays stuff. I wonder why.

Does this work with Mister FPGA?

Hi phil Great channel btw , got a quick question . I managed to grab a wyse D90D7 amd G series cpu but I`ve been reading up on it and apparently you cant install any applications on it . it has 4gb memory 16gb flash storage and runs windows 7 embedded edition . Also read that it will stop you from installing any os other that dell/wyse images … do you think its going to be useless I don`t know anything about thin clients lol

Is there a reason you didn't include the $125 (USD) cost of the Sound Canvas VA in the cost of the unit?

The Roland midi adapter cost around 44€ could i use one from Thomann for roundabout 15~€ ?

So my sandwich contains, Roland SC-88PRO, Yamaha MU1000, Korg NS5R, Kawai GMega, Casio GZ-50M, and a Roland MT-32. i also use a 5-1 midi din splitter and one Roland midi Usb for my MT-32. Also that doom distortion guitar is very similar to the SC88pro, in SC88(not pro) mode

I wondered if there was such a thing as emulated Midi hardware and it turns out there is! Can it all be done in software if the DOS program can be fooled into thinking a hardware device is connected? Like emulating a hardware peripheral connected to the serial bus or is it crucial to have a hardware emulator physically connected? I mean, we can create a completely 'made up' computer using VirutalMachines.