Retro midi machine!

[Mattias Westlund]

OK, did a bit of research and it's no longer a mystery why the M-GS64/SC-88 sounds far better than what one might expect given the reputation of Sound Canvas units, at least in musician circles.

Quote:The total Sound Canvas [SC-55] patch set is 3MB in size, 1MB of which is probably dedicated to the MT-32 tones

Quote:The SC-88's 8 Mbyte wave memory is equivalent to 16 Mbytes in a 16-bit
linear format, allowing the SC-88 to offer an immense number of sounds
that include General MIDI System Level 1 and the Roland GS Format
sounds.

Not only is the difference between 3MB and 8MB a big deal in itself, the M-GS64/SC-88 apparently uses some sort of sample compression and its actual ROM size is 16MB. That's a whole friggin' lot for 1994, considering that the Proteus 2000 which came out five years later and was a state-of-the-art synth had a 32MB ROM. Twice the size, yes, but not really a whole lot more for five years of technical development. Maybe it's an apples and pears comparison since I have no idea what Roland was doing at the time, but the Proteus 2000 is a pretty iconic unit that I'm personally familiar with.

[Mattias Westlund]

After adding the TG100 and M-GS64 to my RMM setup, I have effectively run out of channels on my old Behringer MX 802A mixer. I've been looking around for a 16 channel mixer, but quickly realized that once you outgrow the 4-8 channel hobbyist/home studio level stuff, you're going to have to fork out €200-300 on the used market or twice that or more for a new one. Not saying it's expensive really, just that I'm not prepared to spend that kind of money on a mixer for this project, at least not at this point.

Luckily, small Behri mixers can be had for ~€20 so I simply went ahead and got another one, a UB1202, and just daisy chained them. The four PC sound cards go into the MX 802A, which in turn is fed via Tape Out to the Tape In on the UB1202. The two sound modules go into the UB1202, and I still have six mono channels (or three stereo) to spare if I want to add more stuff. It's a bit kludgy, but it works. I'm not doing any realtime mixing with these anyway, it's all pretty much set-and-forget, so it doesn't really matter that everything's spread out over two different units.



Still, having a 16 channel mixer would be a far more elegant solution but this'll do until I come across one at a good price. At least now I can have everything plugged in at the same time and use both sound cards and sound modules together if I so desire.

[Mattias Westlund]

[Nayrb]

That's an awesome track! Still reminds me of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys in a good way.

[Mattias Westlund]

Thanks Nayrb!

Here's a video for Hidden Secrets as well:

[Nayrb]

Damn that's cool. You know, when I first started daydreaming about having a home studio and the ability to do all this kind of stuff I legitimately thought it was going to look and function like this sort of rig. At the time I guess I would have been right (and it wouldn't have been "retro")!

[Mattias Westlund]

Yep, this is kind of what a computer-based home studio looked like in the late 90's/early 00's. Software instruments and FX have certainly made things a lot easier, but a little bit of magic has also been lost along the way.

[Michael Willis]

These pieces of music make me want to be eleven years old again and play some RPG rendered in 256 colors 320x200 graphics about a young squire who saves the kingdom after all of the king's knights get slaughtered in a horrible ambush.

[Mattias Westlund]

(12-03-2018, 09:48 PM)Michael Willis Wrote: These pieces of music make me want to be eleven years old again and play some RPG rendered in 256 colors 320x200 graphics about a young squire who saves the kingdom after all of the king's knights get slaughtered in a horrible ambush.

Mission accomplished then, I guess

[Mattias Westlund]

I just realized I haven't posted any music made with the M-GS64 even though it's been a year since I got it. Here's a thing I've been working on lately featuring the M-GS64, the TG100, the Soundscape Elite and the APS.

Horizons