Grand MS-DOS Gaming General MIDI Showdown | Hacker News Reader

Grand MS-DOS Gaming General MIDI Showdown

blog.johnnovak.net

97 pointsibobev21 comments

> Although not perfect, [Sound Canvas VA] is the closest recreation of the original SC-55 in software form as of 2023.

Ah, this submission should have a “(2023)” added to the title. In 2024, Nuked-SC55 (https://github.com/nukeykt/Nuked-SC55) was released, which is a fully accurate software emulation of the SC-55/SC-55mkII (it relies on having the original ROM files).

There are also two SC-88Pro emulators coming v. soon. There is a MAME driver that will be in the next release https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/16080 (you can build it right now of course but I have no idea where you would find the roms) and also this: https://synthanatomy.com/2026/09/the-usual-suspects-88emu-a-...

That github repository has a sad closing story:

"development and maintaining of this emulator has stopped; this project also caused me pretty severe burnout [...] pressure to relicense the project and usage info/code from my code against my will/without permission or outright license violations"

All I know is I went from a Sound Blaster 16 Pro to an AWE 64 gold, the MIDI quality blew my mind. I believe this is the result of using instrument samples to render the audio instead of pure synthesis.

I also remember that the SB and other audio cards added MIDI lines into the DA-15 joystick port that for some reason resided on sound cards. This let people hook up real synths to render the music and I knew of one musician who did this with a keyboard though I never got to hear it live.

Yep. Count me in as another fan of the AWE64 Gold. The DSP chip they used on that board, version 4.16, also patched the MIDI hanging note bug that was present since the SB16 era. As an aside, I believe the very earliest SB16s didn't have this hanging note bug, but they were incredibly noisy.

There was a bug? Is that why some of the Wing Commander 2 music would sound weird sometimes?!?

On most SB16s, yes! It really depends what you were rocking.

Also, some later DSP’d SB16 cards used CQM instead of OPL3 for the FM MIDI, so it could sound a touch harsher and raspier, if that makes any sense.

Some keyboards of the time period even came with a special "general midi mode" specifically for this, i recall the ensoniq TS12 I used at the time did

> joystick port that for some reason resided on sound cards.

That reason was the limited amount of ISA ports. Early joystick ports were on their own ISA card. Which used a precious slot. For creative labs it was good advertising "see, no extra slot needed"

Sound fonts were a reovlution on consumer grade PCs. I can still hear the "Bloodwar" demo they shipped with.

But I also recall how much I struggled to get the emu10k1 chip to work with my Linux distro in the (very) early 2000s. I eventually gave up.

They link to a cornucopia of samples they made available on archive.org at the bottom of the article (not in-line, where I was looking for them). Doom, which is fairly widely known, starts at #57: https://archive.org/details/DOS-Gaming-General-MIDI-Comparis...

There's an inline link under "Recordings".

Things have improved a lot, like nuked sc55 but also Mame adding mu50/80. In short, this is very subjective... Though most games were accounting for the GM standard anf sounds used by the MT32. Overall XG was better, and so wtere those sounds, but we're for a different usecase and that is why they can sound slightly off. This is mostly that the games were dealing with the limits and quirky sounds of the mt32 and related period devices, like the sound canvas.

Personally I never liked most dos game soundtracks, as sample based sounds on the Amiga were overall better (unless they were Sierra games who sampled pretty bad mt32 sounds and blips and bleeps). I made music with the DB50XG over MIDI with my Amiga if I needed 'professional' sounding instruments. XG and a DR660 sounded better.

The SC88 emulator from The Usual Suspects does sound good: https://youtu.be/LFDmDiaVk8o

Usually the hardware for which the respective music was composed is the most preferable. For example for Ultima VII, that would be a Roland MT-32 (plus a Sound Blaster Pro for speech synthesis). The SC-55 only provides incomplete emulation for MT-32.

I can't remember if it had General MIDI, but I'll give a nod to the Gravis Ultrasound. I couldn't afford / justify a full one, so I got the ACE version. Of course the use of midi for games was almost gone by then.

AFAIU, the GUS was basically a DSP + sample RAM. With an appropriate driver, it should have been possible to load General MIDI instruments (maybe only what's needed for the game you are about to play, due to limited capacity) and let the DSP handle pitch and effects. It seems like such drivers existed, called ULTRAMID and MEGAEM. Whether that was a common thing to do at the time - no idea.

But what the GUS was popular for was games (and demoscene demos!) that used the hardware "natively" by loading their own samples and maybe own effects.

I had a decent midi collection well before MP3s were around (or even took off). MIDI was much more forgiving to download via a 14.4k modem.

Even when they did, I remember how revolutionary Creative Labs appeared (to me) with sound fonts on my Live! card. Or when the PC version of FF7 came with a software synth.

I occasionally run across songs on streaming services claiming to be 'orchestrated' versions of this or that, only to highly suspect the 'author' just grabbed a MIDI and threw it into a modern music writing studio package (perhaps replacing a few instruments here and there).

I have played around with a lot of general midi hardware. have a sc55mk2, sc88, sc155, mt32, MU1000, MU15, and the one I want to talk about Alesis Nanosynth. I actually think the Nanosynth is the most interesting and can provide really good results. The others sound a lot alike for the most part, well other than mt32 for the soundtracks designed for it. Also fun is to run midi through multiple devices and pick and choose the channels to create a new mix.

I really like the yamaha MIDI sound, shame they weren't that popular. Sounds much richer and more expressive than Roland. Roland might be more technically correct, not sure.

Did anyone do a comparison like this with DreamBlaster modules?

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