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#11
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
On Feb 23, 4:01 pm, 98 Guy wrote:
wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ome3vfadYvs http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/midi/GROOVE.MID http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/6/...408/groove.wav Your system is using the GS Wavetable SW MIDI device, the same as mine. All computers made after 2000 come with AC'97 cards. There's nothing wrong with the new MIDI device, but MIDIs sequenced and intended to be listened with the old OPL3 MIDI device don't sound as good on the more modern ones. Well, I beg to disagree. I have listened to both my .wav recording and your version on youtube, and hands down I think the musical quality (instrument quality) of my .wav file is superior. It doesn't matter what you think is superior, it was intended to sound exactly the way it did in the time it was authored. The flute in the MIDI device you and I use has too much timbre and sounds nothing like a flute. I clearly hear the aliasing in the youtube version when the high-hat is tapped. It sounds awful. I heard aliasing in your recording too, dude. The YouTube guy must've also used a crappy recording program like Sndrec32. You might want to read this, particularly the last sentence in the first paragraph: http://www.schristiancollins.com/generaluser.php It talks about "realistic". Realistic my ass. Listen to the Squarewave instrument in MS GS Wavetable SW, that's not what squarewaves sound like. Are you gonna play the notes of NES tracks with a soundfont that plays squarewaves like piano because its more "realistic"? It might sound better to you because its not a series of beeps anymore but the fact is that is not how the song was intended to sound or be listened to. Your "realistic" song is the fake one. Get what I'm saying? I went out and downloaded the GeneralUser_GS_1.44 sound-font file and installed it in my VLC player (it uses fluidsynth), so now VLC can play midi files. The wav file that I recorded earlier was played by Windows Media Player 9. I don't know what sound-font WMP is using - if any. I've played the mid file with both WMP and VLC and I can't hear any difference. Wait you lost me, they both resemble the wav you sent me, you say? In that case, you have failed to utilize that new soundfont you downloaded or that soundfont is exactly the same soundbank as the one already on your soundcard. I'm looking for the OPL3 'soundfont'. I don't see how having AC-97 audio hardware (not the inferior SB16 sound card) makes my system any less of a "pure" win-98 system. By late 1999 or early 2000, many win-98se systems came from the factory with motherboards that had on-board AC-97 hardware. Well you use an inferior OS so I'd assume you all jump on the bandwagon to trip on memory lane. That's what it is to me and what I'm here for, to relive my very earliest days of messing with MIDIs on Windows 95 even, not just 98. I'd love to get a chance to use Voyetra AudioStation again, it's been almost 20 years. But what can I say, it won't be the same without the same MIDI device. Thanks for Timidity but it doesn't simulate OPL3. I've tried flipping thru different modules to emulate but the MIDI I was playing kept sounding the same. |
#13
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
In message , 98 Guy writes:
wrote: It doesn't matter what you think is superior, it was intended to sound exactly the way it did in the time it was authored. zrlox: That may or may not be true. If they'd wanted a particular sound, they'd have used .wav; .mid is the computer equivalent of sheet music rather than a record/CD. Of course, they may have had to use .mid because .wav took up too much space at the time. 98 Guy: on the other hand, it _is_ possible that they composed the piece (I haven't heard it: I'm offline at the moment) taking particular regard to the midi hardware they had. This is not good practice, but is very common in computing, and can be done without realizing: it's like writing web pages that only display as intended if viewed with the same browser the writer is using; the author/composer doesn't realise that what they are creating can be displayed/played on different software/hardware and might look/sound different. (Plenty of other examples - word processor documents, ...) [] I clearly hear the aliasing in the youtube version when the high-hat is tapped. It sounds awful. I heard aliasing in your recording too, dude. You want to explain how you heard ailiasing in a 44.1 khz sampled 16-bit PCM audio stream? Depends what it was sampling; if it was something synthesized at, say, 22.05 kHz, I would definitely expect to hear some aliasing, especially if the two were from non-locked clocks. [] It talks about "realistic". Realistic my ass. Listen to the Squarewave instrument in MS GS Wavetable SW, that's not what (I'm a little surprised at the mention of a "Squarewave instrument".) squarewaves sound like. WFT is a square wave? (Did you mean WTF?) The only place I like to see square waves is in my oscilloscope. (I like the "in".) A square wave is what you get from the simplest electronic oscillator you can build; it sounds harsh through a speaker as it is full of harmonics (IIRR it contains third harmonic at one-third level, fifth at one-fifth, seventh at one-seventh, and so on). I _think_ the "Stylophone" which is currently back as a novelty made square waves. Are you gonna play the notes of NES tracks with a soundfont that plays squarewaves like piano because its more "realistic"? How many composers or transcribers _really_ want to create music that sounds like it's being played on an Atari 800? Some do, for retro purposes or just 'cos they like the sound (-:! It might sound better to you because its not a series of beeps anymore but the fact is that is not how the song was intended to sound or be listened to. Intended my ass. It was all they had available at the time. You may both be right. It _could_ be that the original composer would have liked better what is available now; we can't know without asking him/her. However, if z wants to hear the file as it was originally _heard_ around the time of its composition, he has a right to want that, too. Your argument is like saying that back when music came on vinyl records, the needle skipped and there were pops and clicks in the music - because that's what they intended. And then when the same music was later pressed onto CD's, there were no skips or click or pops, which was inferior because the music was intended to have clicks and pops and skips. Alternatively, see the "original instruments" movement in classical music. People get quite heated on both sides of that one! (On the _whole_, I prefer most of the classics I like - which is mostly limited to the popular and light end of the spectrum - on modern instruments, especially pianos, though I have heard live Mozart's "Turkish Rondo" on a "Turkish" piano of the type current in Vienna when he wrote it, and that's a great novelty, but more because of the attachments it had rather than the basic sound.) Your "realistic" song is the fake one. Get what I'm saying? I do (-:. It all depends on whether the composer _preferred_ what he had then, or just had no choice, which as I say you'll not know without asking him/her. If you want to hear it today in exactly the same way you heard it 15 years ago, that's your choice. But you can't say that the way it sounded 15 years ago was *exactly* the way that the people that created the midi files wanted, or desired, or intended it to sound at the time. How can you argue that they would have wanted anything other than realistic-sounding musical instrument sound? Depends what they were trying to do. The electric guitar, for example, does not sound like the acoustic one: however, most players of it have developed techniques (not to mention processing, such as effects pedals) that take advantage of its particular sound. [] I'm looking for the OPL3 'soundfont'. Have you seen this: http://www3.telus.net/anapan8/oldscardemu.htm Or this: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/everythi...a-classic-opl3 -sound-via-windows.. I downloaded what I think is an OPL3 soundfont from he http://mscore.svn.sourceforge.net/vi...re/share/sound /TimGM6mb.sf2 And told VLC to use it. I then had VLC play your groove.mid file, and recorded it. Here's the link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/6/...08/groove2.wav It sounds different than the version using the GS wavetable soundfont. Does it sound more like you think it should? If all you want to do is play midi files that *sound* like they were being played through an FM-synthesis OPL3 sound card, then just go out and get VLC and tell it to use the TimGM6mb.sf2 sound font and play your midi files through VLC. It won't matter what OS you have. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Veni, Vidi, Video (I came, I saw, I'll watch it again later) - Mik from S+AS Limited ), 1998 |
#14
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
On Feb 23, 8:18 pm, 98 Guy wrote:
wrote: It doesn't matter what you think is superior, it was intended to sound exactly the way it did in the time it was authored. They were using what-ever hardware was available at the time - FM-modulated audio synthesis, not wave-table synthesis. Yes and they thought their music sounded aesthetic enough otherwise they would've used WAV. I've been sequencing MIDIs since forever, my first few when we still had the old Win95 machine. When I wrote music with an OPL3 playback device, I liked how my music sounded and designed it with the intention of it being listened to on that MIDI device only. When we got our new computer with the AC'97 sound card that had the onboard MS GS Wavetable, I hated how my old MIDIs sounded on it and was depressed at the change in general but eventually got used to it and wrote more MIDIs which would end up being a collection of 800+ in the next few years. When I wrote them, I wrote them in a way that sounded good with the new soundcard I had available and I'm sure they would sound like **** if played back with OPL3 or any other MIDI device that I did not design them for. So, I don't get your point. Yes, they used what they had available to them, but when someone uses something you authored in an unforseeable way that you didn't intend nor had control over, how do you erroneously assume it's for the better? Your logic is laughable. It's midi. You want real-sounding instruments, get a human to play one. Um, the flute sounds how it should with OPL3 playback. A flute is naturally soft and has little to no timbre. How do you assume the author of GROOVE.MID intended to use a timbred woodwind instrument, btw? Are you sure he chose the instrument because OPL3 does not have a timbred woodwind instrument or because he wanted it to sound that way? You want to explain how you heard ailiasing in a 44.1 khz sampled 16-bit PCM audio stream? You sampled a 22khz audio stream with twice the sampling rate with a ****ty recorder like Sndrec32 that does not feature anti-aliasing and the clipping just augmented the artifacts. A spectrograph confirmed what I heard. It's above the 22khz shelf, maybe you can't hear it because you're old. At my age, I can hear up to 32. WFT is a square wave? http://www.sendspace.com/file/y4v9k9 First half is real squarewaves from the real device, second is how you hear them with this crappy MS GS Wavetable MIDI. How many composers or transcribers _really_ want to create music that sounds like it's being played on an Atari 800? Look around, there's plenty. Why do you think old videogame music from 8-bit and 16-bit eras have such a large fanbase and many bands, symphonies play the pieces in organized events that get crammed with fans? Why do you think Jean Michel Jarre is so successful, who by the way created music out of "beeps and bloops" from electronic devices since the 60s? It's possible to create aesthetics and beauty with classic electronic equipment. It might sound better to you because its not a series of beeps anymore but the fact is that is not how the song was intended to sound or be listened to. Intended my ass. It was all they had available at the time. And they still went on with it anyways. They could've just used WAV which many companies went for, like Sony for their PS1 which by the way had ****tier music than its competitor N64 that still used a limited, custom MIDI device. If you want to hear it today in exactly the same way you heard it 15 years ago, that's your choice. In this specific case, I want to re-live old memories. I was 6 years old last time I played around with Voyetra AudioStation and listened to the sample MIDIs with the old hardware. All other kind of music I have the proper methods to play them the way they were meant to be played. But you can't say that the way it sounded 15 years ago was *exactly* the way that the people that created the midi files wanted, or desired, or intended it to sound at the time. How can you argue that they would have wanted anything other than realistic-sounding musical instrument sound? Is a timbred-flute realistic? Do squarewaves really sound like a trumpet clogged with an elephant testicle? No, because VLC won't play midi files unless it has a soundfont, and it didn't have a soundfont file until I downloaded the GeneralUser_GS_1.4 file. You should be able to play MIDIs with any player you want but change the MIDI device in Windows sound settings. I have a few, MS GS Wavetable SW being the default. or that soundfont is exactly the same soundbank as the one already on your soundcard. My soundcard = C-Media AC97 Audio Device Your soundcard is irrelevant, the MIDI synth can be onboard but not always. But the key here is the MIDI device, and we both have the same one. Have you seen this: http://www3.telus.net/anapan8/oldscardemu.htm Or this: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/everythi...ng-a-classic-o..... Yes, old page. All links are dead. I downloaded what I think is an OPL3 soundfont from he http://mscore.svn.sourceforge.net/vi...score/share/so... It isn't. And told VLC to use it. I then had VLC play your groove.mid file, and recorded it. Here's the link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/6/...08/groove2.wav Bad boy, I pointed out your flaws last time you did this and you didn't listen to a word I said. Lower your goddamn volume, your sample is CLIPPED. This one at least didn't sound aliased, whether or not it really was. I appreciate the help and all, but would it kill you to encode to MP3 so I don't have to wait 5 minutes downloading? It sounds different than the version using the GS wavetable soundfont. Does it sound more like you think it should? You have the YouTube link to know how its supposed to sound like. And no, the flute still sounds like a timbred mess of ****. If all you want to do is play midi files that *sound* like they were being played through an FM-synthesis OPL3 sound card, then just go out and get VLC and tell it to use the TimGM6mb.sf2 sound font and play your midi files through VLC. It won't matter what OS you have. Didn't need VLC, I loaded TimGM6mb.sf2 with Synthfont and it sounds nothing like OPL3. |
#15
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
On Feb 24, 1:42 am, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: Of course, they may have had to use .mid because .wav took up too much space at the time. WAVs with lower samplerates and bit depths didn't sound too bad and had bitrates comparable to MP3s and many people did use them all the time. (I'm a little surprised at the mention of a "Squarewave instrument".) It's the most standing-out example I could think off the top of my head. Older MIDI synths properly reproduced the Squarewave instrument and then the onboard MS GS with the AC'97s ****ed this up. On the other hand, I vaguely remember a different, irrelevant instrument (FX4 Atmosphere) sounding like squarewaves on OPL3 instead of Lead1 Square which ironically sounded like the FX4 Atmosphere instrument. Unnoticed ****up on the part of the developers? Who knows. Alternatively, see the "original instruments" movement in classical music. People get quite heated on both sides of that one! (On the _whole_, I prefer most of the classics I like - which is mostly limited to the popular and light end of the spectrum - on modern instruments, especially pianos, though I have heard live Mozart's "Turkish Rondo" on a "Turkish" piano of the type current in Vienna when he wrote it, and that's a great novelty, but more because of the attachments it had rather than the basic sound.) As a fan of diversity, I personally don't mind remixing or reconstructing literature to adopt modern times as long as it's properly presented as being a remix. Disrespecting the original and all the traditional effort plus revolutionary breakthroughs it made in its time is equivalent to book- burning in my opinion. Artists like Mozart have died in poverty and ridicule to create the revolutionary beauty of their time that only a century after their deaths the idiot masses recognized... only to have their works butchered in a way they could not forsee a couple centuries later and soon never remembered for the original, genuine revolutionary tune that made history. Replicating their music in any other way than the original is an insult to all those classical artists that never got to live to see their works gain worldwide avid listeners and generate so much wealth. They got **** on for being ahead of their time, and now they get to be **** on for not being alive to defend their art. I do (-:. It all depends on whether the composer _preferred_ what he had then, or just had no choice, which as I say you'll not know without asking him/her. As a MIDI sequencer myself, I know that I have no opportunity to intend what soundfont I want my music to be listened on without knowing it a priori. When I wrote MIDIs with OPL3 soundfont I wrote what sounded good on that and wouldn't have an idea how it would sound on future soundfonts. When I did, I had to edit the notes, add some modulation, change instruments or add transpositional harmonics to get it to sound as good as the other soundfont. Depends what they were trying to do. The electric guitar, for example, does not sound like the acoustic one: however, most players of it have developed techniques (not to mention processing, such as effects pedals) that take advantage of its particular sound. Thank you. Should've thought of this earlier. |
#16
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
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#17
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
98 guy, y u so mad bro? Calm down.
On Feb 24, 9:30 am, 98 Guy wrote: wrote: They were using what-ever hardware was available at the time - FM-modulated audio synthesis, not wave-table synthesis. Yes and they thought their music sounded aesthetic enough otherwise they would've used WAV. No they wouldn't, because back then disk space was at a premium, and they weren't going to distribute music that took 10 mb per minute in wav format. See above post. "WAVs with lower samplerates and bit depths didn't sound too bad and had bitrates comparable to MP3s and many people did use them all the time." I still have a CD backup of our HDD back when we had Win95 and WAVs were all over the place, for both apps and games and they were hardly noticeable in terms of space, not any more than GIFs or BMPs. And if FM synthesis never existed in the first place - if wave-table sound cards existed right-off-the-bat on day one, you would have liked it then instead of ****ing on it today. I'm not ****ing on anything, I just like to listen to music as it was intended to be listened to. As I said, I created only maybe 10 MIDIs while we had the old hardware and made 800+ for MS GS. Most of them would likely sound horrid on OPL3 since they weren't written for it. I don't listen to midi music at all. So I give a rat's ass about midi music and midi technology. You listen to it all the time, the authors just mix it with separate chords/ambience/vocals and ship as CD/MP3 so you have no idea which synthesizer was used. Speaking as an engineer, FM sound synthesis was a technological crutch for computer sound generation until technology allowed for wavetable synthesis. Wavetable synthesis is a superior method to generate music and sound effects. It is more capable at accurately reproducing the sounds of real musical instruments. So why does the flute sound like a clarinet and Lead 1 (Square) just wrong? Realistic my ass. I have to use the ocarina instead of the flute when I need the flute, and there's no alternative for Squarewaves. The choice of guitars are limited and sound rather wrong. I could go on and on. If you want to cry like a baby because your midi files don't sound right when played on a GS synth, that's your problem. u mad brah. Your goals and arguments are infantile. The goal I have right here at this minute, maybe. Wanting to relive childhood memories. But fact is the majority prefer original recordings to butchered remixes. You sampled a 22khz audio stream with twice the sampling rate Yes I did, and by that method I satisfied the nyquist criteria for correct digital audio sampling. *facepalm* You realize digital audio is ALREADY sampled that way by default? Samplerate =/= hertz frequency. A samplerate of 44 reproduces a maximum audio frequency of 22 kHz as it is known in real, non- digital audio and a samplerate of 22 captures only a 11kHz pitch. The Nyquist criteria requires two samples per hertz. It's confusing to newbs, shouldn't be to engineers like you. When I said MS GS MIDIs don't have content above a samplerate of 22,050, that's exactly what I meant, nothing above 11,025 hz. So no need to record at twice that, especially with a recorder with no anti- alias feature that ended up resampling a 22khz audio stream to 44 with aliasing artifacts. With a ****ty recorder like Sndrec32 And by what technical basis can you claim that SNDrec32 is a "****ty" recorder? See above. that does not feature anti-aliasing How do you know that the sampled output hasn't been properly filtered at 22 khz so that it contains no content above that? Because I could hear aliasing above that. If you're as familiar with aliasing as I am, you'll know that when upscaling from 22 to 44, the lowest frequencies from the original become the highest in the new upper shelf and the highest become lowest. From a spectrographic point of view, the new extra 22khz shelf becomes a mirror view of the bottom. It's a neat way to brighten up dull recordings with very low samplerates, in a way restoring the upper frequencies. and the clipping just augmented the artifacts. Yea well so I admit that I didn't putz with the sound levels before recording those samples. At my age, I can hear up to 32. Oh, so you have super-human hearing eh? Nope, just young. I think I actually have worse hearing than most people my age. My 18-year-old girlfriend can hear up to 19khz (38khz sampling rate), while I could only go up to 17khz at that age. I also have rather defective hearing on the low frequencies because I can't hear below 45hz, while my girl can go as low as 15. I downloaded what I think is an OPL3 soundfont from he It isn't. Well if OPL3 was so god-damn important for your people who think that FM synthesis is the kick-ass way to synthesize music, then why hasn't anyone created an OPL3 sound-font then? Don't know, I'm not active in the emulation community. That's why I came here. What - 10 mb takes you 5 minutes to download? Do you have a dial-up connection to the internet? No, and that's not the point. I don't wanna deal with waiting as much time as it took me in the past to download an MP3 as now just because some people think compression isn't necessary anymore. I offered enough courtesy and uploaded my MP3 at the max quality which ended being less than 500KB and took a few seconds to transfer, not a few minutes. Maybe that should tell you why music wasn't distributed in wav (or even mp3) format 15 years ago. I did request you use a lower sampling rate if you couldn't be assed to encode to MP3. That's what people did in the past to make WAVs less burdensome, and were usually in mono. |
#18
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
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#19
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
On Feb 24, 3:13*pm, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: What is this "Squarewave instrument"? Lead 1 (Square) Is it just a squarewave? Yes. There are stylized versions but they sound nothing like the bull**** by the MS GS synth. When you write a MIDI file, you have no control over what it is played on - the player can even switch the instruments around if he/she wants to. If you really want to fix how it sounds, you shouldn't release it as a MIDI, but as a WAV (or, these days, MP3, AAC, or some other recording format). I knew jack **** about any of that in first grade when I began messing with digital music. But even now, I'm not gonna convert 800 MIDIs to MP3s especially since the process is not automated and the process time would be the length of all the MIDIs combined since the only way to convert is to intercept sound going out of the sound card. But I've largely given up music altogether so it's not that important. I'm impressed at how long the MS GS MIDI device has survived, though. It came with my latest i7 PC even. |
#20
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Playing MIDIs with Win98's original SB16 OPL3 sound card
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