That's awesome!

Awesome.

So, the "Doctor Solo" patch: a recreation of the iconic Doctor Who theme sound?

Cmon... Which D50 signature patch has a stack of pads that start in different tuning, than adjust with time?

You're a legend!!

@@Username_-fm4lj uhhh....

and is more expensive too...

Oi

When you thought you said something intelligent but Unfortunately that statement doesn’t make any sense

@@ChrisNova777 I didn't intent to say anything intelligent, it just was a funny remark. But ok, mr wise guy, enlighten me.

I did prefer the sound of my Amiga 500 and later that of the Gravis Ultrasound EX.

100% agree: for the 80s guys that was mindblowing!!!

when I heard it back then, it was more shocking than a graphics upgrade ega/vga etc.

Feels Bad Man

It is a cool little gadget. I would love it if I can alos get one but I assume these would be hard to come by.

I am also a sucker for retro PC audio (especially the Rolands

oh shit hi lazy game review man

Maybe capacitors issue on the SCC-1 ? Did you get them checked? Also there are videos on YT of people got the SCC-1 working not connected to a PC.

Anders Enger Jensen You are awesome, man.

I love the 8 bit Keys remix on your channel. Great job for sending the device ;)

Anders Enger Jensen Norge er best

Ja, er vi ikke alltid det a? ;)

I do hope you sent him a spare and still have a Roland midi stack.

dp vn03 really just sounds like a normal game music & not bitcrushed.

For its time, yes.

yes lmao

PC was always total garbage. At this time Amiga had 4 channels stereo built in. And no stupid manual selecting, IRQ and DMA retardation.

Eh. 4 channels stereo by having 2 channels each per side, which is idiotic. The PC survived through a combination of it having been IBM, making it popular in the business space, being standard hardware with nothing really proprietary in it leading to an explosion of clones, and that it was highly expandable, but remained compatible. Also the Amiga WAS good, but Commodore dropped the ball so hard that by the time the company collapsed the Amiga was starting to look like a joke. Not because it was bad, but because it had barely improved in a decade, while in that same time PC's had made huge strides in processing power, graphical capabilities, sound and multimedia. Stand still for long enough, and the competition is bound to catch up with you...

Lol. Poor PC speaker!! It's trying!!

@Gernot Schrader Not expensive at all; it was rather cheap in fact, it's because of lots of competition. The reason why the PC went from the video game laughing stock to the premiere video game platform in just two short years, is because of a reinforcing triangle. Video Game developers were willing to take the risk to push the hardware to its limits and beyond, video game players were willing to pay for the upgrades necessary to play those games, and the hardware to play them to their fullest, and the resulting demand had ever hardware manufacturer jump in competing for the dollars; resulting in prices coming down, more powerful systems being built and sold, and video game developers happily pushing the new systems to their max and beyond, and subsequent PC gamers buying the new ever cheaper hardware to keep up with the newest games. Thus in 1989 the PC was a video game laughing stock, by 1992 it was the premiere, most innovative and most forward progressing video game platform having pushed all the others to the side, and just one year later all of those other systems were... well, DOOMED. By contrast, when Commodore released the Amiga 600 and the 600 upgrade kit for the 500, all the parents and owners, went, "What? I have to buy a new Amiga in order to keep using it?" Commodore subsequently made the mistake of telling them, "No, no, all the software will continue to keep running on the 500." They couldn't actually guarantee that for third party developers, but it did effectively make Amiga developers stick to the 500, meaning the 600 only ever got a slight performance boost; no actually improvement in the games; and so the reverse of the triangle that boosted the PC into the stratosphere, made the Amiga stagnate and die. I would love to see the 8-bit Guy, LGR, and other retro games actually collaborate on a series of videos dealing with the build up to, and then this video game revolution, it's probably the most pivotal, most innovative, and most forward striding few yeas in video game history; the status quo of today, directly comes out of those years; and yet, apart from a few games or pieces of hardware released at point (and then it's only that specific thing) all the other videos are always about things before, or after these revolutionary years.

hei phils

Watching your channel daily thank you Phil!

We've advance since then. We have amazing virtual instruments that can fool even musicians.

I still buy redundant stuff that was on my 'must have!' list as a kid :D adulting ain't so bad.

Yeah its like everyone from that era was Cucked into having shit sound

Look for the MT-100... Half the price for the same thing

@@daBuzzY90 the mt-100 looks better, I wonder why it’s less than half the price on ebay

I've made a career out of filing away esoteric knowledge and skills which have a knack for coming in useful 15 years later 5 states away.

The true purpose of knowledge is to keep your brain amused!

same, im probably never going to need to know this stuff

Yes I don't have many friends that would care but I do have one that will play links 386 with me still

Now..how much more did this cost compared to the soundblaster?

At the time I’d imagine the Soundblaster was still really nice to have :)

@@megalonk._.9728 Soundblaster / SB 16 we the most compatible and widely used sound cards in the DOS days. The easiest and cheapest way to have something that sounds ok.

The SoundBlaster was an awesome soundcard, but if it was a 5, the MT-32 was an 11!!!!!!!

@@Uzeless The Soundblaster was not as good as many think. It had many Problems. The only good Thing was that many Games had Support for it. That's all. There have been better sounding Cards like Gravis Ultrasound back then.

+realtrisk I did not know this, but it makes sense as MegaCrasherMusic said.

Definitely incorrect, according to Roland itself. The MT-32 was intended to be used by "bedroom" musicians as an inexpensive desktop synthesizer. The reason the included piano PCM attack sample is so weak is simple - memory prices in the 80's prohibited including a higher quality piano sample, even if only the attack portion. The MT-32 shares the same PCM sample set as the second generation Roland D-series synths, which the MT-32 basiclly is, minus the keys, full 8-part multi-timbral editing capability, and a few other features. And to make matters even worse, Roland also used the cheapest, noisiest, DACs they could possibliy get their hands on .

This would also explain the default 2-9 set of channels - one could just plug in the piano and go, without reconfiguring

+realtrisk *Realistic piano synthesis actually had to wait* until Roland developed Structured Adaptive Synthesis as executed in the cost-minimal-object RD-1000, now overtaken in turn by Composite Object Sound Modeling.

I have a MIDI file of "Walking in Memphis" which sounds pretty good on the MT32 (or LAPC-1). Would it sound better on a dedicated piano? Of course. Of course channel 1 was set aside for the host keyboard, regardless of whether it was a piano or not. The MT32 was designed to provide an entire band accompaniment to the primary keyboard.

And you can use soundfonts like Timbres of Heaven to make them even better these days.

You never seen doom in the right hardware then...

it's the synthesiser playing live )

with MT32 or SoundBlaster AWE32 this is easy.

@@madfox2000 AWE32's just a ROMpler

oh jeah! it's wonderful to listen to this... it's like it was produced before 2-3 jeahrs ago.

Most people didn't have gaming pc's back then

Technology Spotlight it's DOSBox that does that. Apparently, it's a major glitch. My real hardware never does that.

Alright. I just found that strange.

To hear a non-emulated PC speaker, here's a link to a complete Space Quest 3 PC Speaker Soundtrack: kzfaq.info/sun/PLUa-WwS_7GQx_4ZlUV5D97IgLfcHJn_rT

Retro PC User damn I thought it was just a trill done on purpose

Technology Spotlight when elecronics go into puberty :))))

I have to agree with you! I love this intro theme sooo much! 😄

Ja the intro is amasing!

BTW, I recall that as time went on, the differences in music quality between the different titles became more and more significant, and amazing. I remember that Space Quests 4 and 5 had differences that sounded to me (at least, at the time) like night and day. This was because Sierra Online was more and more using major orchestral compositions with their music and thus using the MT-32/LAPC-1 hardware closer to its potential, while still "downgrading" it for PC speaker, Ad-Lib, etc. I really wish that you would've used those later titles as a comparison!

SQ4 was indeed from the pinnacle of the Sierra composers' heyday. By 1990/1991 they had really started to explore the capabilities as well as the machines were now 286 and 386 by far, which could muster much better performances. Also Mark Seibert, Rob Atesalp and the others could use their musical education to a greater extent. The interesting thing about SQ5 sounds on the MT/CM modules, is that at this point the General MIDI was out and they wanted to cater for GM modules too. So in order to make the transition smoother and the difference between MT and GM modules, they created the now widely known GM patch bank for the MT modules, with some extra sound effects etc. If you load SQ5, you'll hear that the sounds are made similar to the GM layout, which meant that they didn't need to rewrite all the music for the GM version or vice versa. The other sound cards needed some extra work though, but usually it's removing parts and altering a little here and there to cater for the different response these sounds gave when playing. Rob Atesalp told me that he and most of the other composers really didn't care much for the GM setup. It was too constricting and less responsive than the MT with its all flexible layout and possibilites, albeit less authentic sound representation. We have to remember that in the early 90s, we were all about trying to recreate the natural instruments as good as possible - pianos should sound like pianos, guitars like guitars, violins like violins.. although, the technology at the time was still limited compared today's, so that's why GM modules and synths using PCM methods back then sounds harsh and quite lifeless. That's why the LA synthesis from Roland, was much more interesting for game composers - it was more flexible and allowed for much wider textures for them to create interesting sounds that conveyed what they needed to illustrate in their music and sound design. I too prefer the MT sound to the GM for this reason, and the fact that this was the first module I had for gaming in addition to my Sound Blaster Pro. The perfect marriage for DOS gaming :D

I wholeheartedly agree, and thank you for the additional historical insight. I did not know that there was such a strong following for MT. I did notice the difference myself; I recall patching the LAPC-I a few different times to "general MIDI-ize it", but noticing the quality was greatly inferior. But, I just chalked it up to superior hardware and native advantage, and hoped that better patches would be available in the future.

"I was the envy of all my PC gamer friends" lol

It's worth pointing out that the midi-cards only played music, you needed a separate sound card for the normal sound effects.

JayB Not so weird since it was spearheaded by them in the first place. And the MT-32's layout and number of sounds was the basis for the standard. :)

MegaCrasherMusic Yes, but here we're talking about the GM standard, not MIDI itself in the first place.

Chopy 61 I did his original theme in full version here: soundcloud.com/eox-studios/8-bit-keys-theme-mt-32-version Doing a full version of my remix on the other hand, is a huge undertaking. If I get enough time later, I might make an all MT/CM version of it. ;)

Thanks Jensen!

It also makes you appriciated how far we've come. We take a build in full fetched digital sound suite in the modern pc, but it was not always so. Even getting sound to work in the olden days was a major challenge in some cases

Used my MT-32 simply as a sound module. Ran from a 1040ST running Cubase. Put through a half decent external effect processor (Alesis MIDVERB in this case)... to add space, it was pretty nice.

You should listen to real soundtracks, not just intro sounds. Adlib soundtracks sound most of the time better than MT32 for various reasons.

@@niceanddestroyed thanks for the suggestion! However, would you mind explaining your reasoning for why Adlib soundtracks sound better? I mean, I get that it has that classic 8-bit videogame sound to it, which a lot of people appreciate, but do you have any reasons other than that?

@@TheRealMMCMT32 sound doesn't win versus Adlib most of the time, because sounds were always the same and impossible to design from scratch. Soundtracks were also less elaborated most of the time probably for various reasons (sounds nice with less efforts, a Midi file to play was enough, that was not the most used soundcard, etc.). Listen to Monkey Island 2, Dune or King Quest V soundtracks for instance. They sounds better with the Adlib card.

FranZowsky7 Me too.

Maybe Tandy could use PSG as well.

Just...without the noise channel.

Because it uses a PSG like the Master System.

The Adlib sounded like the sega genesis

I am shocked that a "module" isn't a card but actually a module.

There is always the MUNT emulator for the MT-32, its not going to be accurate, but ive read its close-ish

Why not man, I'm guessing to expensive and or confusing

@@hellishcyberdemon7112 Around 150€ ;)

@@DASPRiD holy shit thats alot for something that old

Now, there's a presidential candidate we can all get behind! :D +1 vote!

MIDI has always been great

Liam Barnes all octaves matter

It has always been great and got even greater with USB.

I'm with PCM

Joe Darkness Correct, except it's called LAPC-I (i for IBM compatibles). They had a Japan only LAPC-N for the NEC 88s and similar. It was the CM-32L with the extra 33 sound effects on both cards. Very hard to come by these days though. :)

It was actually pretty common back then for sound cards like the Sound Blaster to have a "Wavetable Daughter connector" where you could just attach a module that would takeover MIDI music duties from the soundcard. Creative made one called the Wave Blaster, Roland made another called the Sound Canvas, and there were a few others as well. I honestly can't remember the brand of the one I had but it was a lower cost competitor. Didn't sound quite as good as the Creative or Roland ones but it beat the pants off of regular FM sound.

Did you mean Harry Potter?

Makes me wonder if Sierra (or the Two Guys from Andromeda) were involved in the development of the firmware.

Nah, it’s a statement about their success. Translation: “Cha Ching!”

Stoney3K the computer could send some text data to the MT32 in addition to the MIDI data. The programmers took advantage and put some little Easter eggs there.

@@Stoney3K It's a MIDI sysex message I actually ripped the MIDI data with scummvm and alsamidi, and you can find the text in the midi file

@@Mr.Maritime Their success thanks to Roger getting them out from the SS offices and to Sierra On-Line on Earth. Poor guy gets no credit.

The best part of the video (audio). Loved it aswell.

This is also probably the reason they start from channel 2 as a default, since channel 10 has to be drums and it only had 8 other channels they had to start from 2 if they wanted to contiguously use the the channels.

Channel 10 doesn't have to be drums in pre-General MIDI devices, although it makes things easier when it is when trying to run music composed for General MIDI devices on an MT-32. Channel 1 is typically the default channel for mono-timbral MIDI devices like keyboard synthesizers, so not using Channel 1 complements them. The MT-32's built in piano patches left a little to be desired.

its a small amount

@@xenonfx3411 But thousand times better than simple chiptunes

You might like the song 'Crushing Day' by Joe Satriani, I was trying to think of harmonically / stylistically similar songs and that's as far as I got...

That intro and The Secret Of Monkey Island one are by far some of the best PC tunes ever.

Not even close to the best game music in the late 80's. Try out the music for "Blood Money" on Amega... kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ec-dqJl91dTbnYU.html .

pawelw Thanks, glad to hear you think so. Not sure when or if I get time to do a whole MT-32 remake of my remix, but I have made David's original Casio theme in its entirety though: soundcloud.com/eox-studios/8-bit-keys-theme-mt-32-version