Where did spc700 samples come from in the first place?

psycopathicteen · Post by **psycopathicteen** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:30 am

Should I just get rid of General Midi instruments? Most of them just sound like farts.

dougeff · Post by **dougeff** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 2:05 pm

What software are you referring to? A lot of music software uses/stores as MIDI. Even samples can be triggered/retuned with MIDI input. Basic instruments may sound boring...but you can add effects to them...echo, overdrive, compression, envelopes, etc to make them sound not "like farts".

Drew Sebastino · Post by **Drew Sebastino** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 7:58 pm

Isn't midi just like the SNES's audio, in that there are several samples along with code that says where to play the samples and what volume to use then and what not vs. just a long audio sample

If I'm not mistaken, this is midi, and it certainly doesn't sound like farts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gEkNVq1ct0

This is random, but I always find it kind of funny how the first song in a game is generally the most well regarded, although I usually find that there are better songs. Out of all the Doom songs, "Hiding the Secrets" (21:16) is my favorite, and I much prefer it over "At Doom's Gate"

...Is it sad that I know all the Doom song names... I'm just a sucker for this kind of music.

93143 · Post by **93143** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 8:19 pm

MIDI is just a data transfer standard designed for music. General MIDI is just a synthesizer specification built on the MIDI standard. There is no "official" GM sample set; in fact, it is quite possible for a non-sample-based synthesizer to be GM-compliant.

One of the GM requirements is a 24-voice minimum, so until someone comes up with a soft synth capable of pulling that off, a sample playing on the SNES is not General MIDI regardless of provenance.

Drew Sebastino · Post by **Drew Sebastino** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 8:21 pm

93143 wrote:One of the GM requirements is a 24-voice minimum

You mean, like 24 audio channels? Dang...

psycopathicteen · Post by **psycopathicteen** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 8:50 pm

The sample library that came with my computer sucks.

93143 · Post by **93143** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 9:16 pm

I'm guessing you mean the cut-down version of the Roland Sound Canvas sample set built into Windows, that no one bothers to do anything other than any more. Even it can sound decent in skilled hands, but it's true that it's designed to be as inoffensive as possible for as wide a variety of music as possible while using as little memory as possible (it was made a long time ago), so for a SNES track you'll probably want samples more specific to your objectives.

I find that the electric guitar sounds in a low-grade stock GM sample set have a particular tendency to suck. No power chords, for one (unless you run it through an amp sim), but it goes much deeper than that. Violins (and violas) are even worse. I wonder where they get those samples, and whether they were originally supposed to be heavily modulated and/or slathered in effects to sound decent...

Larger and/or better put together GM sets, including free ones, can have much more impressive instruments. Specialized non-GM or even DIY samples or sample sets can often serve specific purposes much better, but sometimes a good GM patch holds its own surprisingly well. Unfortunately this is often at least partially the result of throwing memory at the problem...

Drew Sebastino · Post by **Drew Sebastino** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 9:57 pm

So the exact same midi track on one computer could sound different on another? I guess that's how this is possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXFYWJ7dbz0

Based of this video, I can tell the Orchid SoundWave 32 is a very good sound card.

Edit: And the Ensoniq SoundScape Elite FM...

93143 · Post by **93143** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 10:20 pm

Espozo wrote:Edit: And the Ensoniq SoundScape Elite FM...

That one's not even using a sample set; it's FM synthesis. The SoundScape Elite can use samples, as you can see from the next entry in the list; it just isn't doing so at that point.

Post by **tepples** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 10:25 pm

Espozo wrote:So the exact same midi track on one computer could sound different on another?

Yes. MIDI just tells what notes to play with what instrument numbers. General MIDI assigns standard meanings to instrument numbers, as well as other requirements for certification that an affordable PC couldn't easily meet at the time.

On an original Sound Blaster, a MIDI file played through the Allegro library's MIDI driver sounds sort of like a Genesis game. (The Sound Blaster incorporates an AdLib-compatible Yamaha OPL2 FM synthesizer, and on the AdLib, Allegro implements General MIDI instrument numbers with a nonconforming voice limit.) Allegro also incorporates a MIDI driver called DIGMID, but it was rarely used because the game's developer had to supply the "sound font" (sample set) to cover all used instruments, and mixing took a lot of CPU time back in the days of 486DX2/66 processors.

93143 · Post by **93143** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 1:53 am

Additionally, some sound cards were (and I believe still are) capable of loading user-provided sample packs and doing the synthesis and mixing in hardware. Early examples include the Sound Blaster AWE series and the Gravis Ultrasound, but it was the Sound Blaster Live! that first made it big, the combination of its musician-worthy specs and its use of the open SoundFont 2.0 specification (complete with editor at no extra charge) helping to usher in a sort of golden age of free/cheap sample packs. The .sf2 format persists today, aided by the availability of free editors that don't require a Sound Blaster in order to work; just about any popular sample playback software can load it or at least convert it to native format...

...oh hey. Hammersound is still up...

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 8:48 am

Espozo wrote:So the exact same midi track on one computer could sound different on another?

This is an euphemism. It depends not only on the computer, but on the hardware (or software) used to play the MIDI.

When I was a kid, I used an old PC with the OPL FM synth, it sounded awful, so when Windows 98 came out with the software dumbed down SC55, it sounded mighty to me, but nowady I find it sounds like crap as I have ways to render MIDI with much better sounds.

Belive it or not, when I was a kid my dad had a very early laptop, and the MIDI was absolutely awful, so awful it made OPL sound good.

TmEE · Post by **TmEE** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:39 am

This MIDI file sounds like this on the variety of hardware I have in one of my computers.

* OPL3 FM
* Creative Live hardware synth with default soundset
* Creative Live Softsynth
* Yamaha YMF719
* FM + YMF719 (you can make custom mixed devices in Win98SE feature that was dropped in later Windowses and sadly you cannot control inter-device latency)
* Yamaha SW1000XG
* SW1000XG + YMF719

dougeff · Post by **dougeff** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 9:28 am

Did you write that song? Its great!

TmEE · Post by **TmEE** » Sat Sep 19, 2015 12:20 am

It is Angel Island act2 from Sonic3

nesdev.org

Where did spc700 samples come from in the first place?

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