MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

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jaffa225man
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by jaffa225man »

As of three days ago, Serg M, closed the feature request and it's in the latest version! Thanks very much, Sergey, if you're reading this! That means, if you download (& and compile if necessary) MUNT 2.2.0 and use the GUI (I only tested with mt32emu-qt), its built-in "Play MIDI File..." in the "Tools" menu, correctly processes both SMF and raw SysEx from this game (and likely others) which send fragmented System Exclusive data. An external player is no longer necessary! :)
jaffa225man wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:18 am
andrew603 wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2017 10:08 am Interesting stuff! You should definitely post that to the MUNT project pages on either SourceForge or Github if you have not already. I've just made a "Tech support / knowledgebase" subforum. This info could be our first post. :)
Thanks! On your suggestion, I created a bug ticket on sourceforge at https://sourceforge.net/p/munt/bugs/29/ as MUNT's github page seems to disallow the bug tracking interface.
crumby
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by crumby »

Thank you for the files ! (i have a SC-55 and a CM-32L)
It is OK if i submit the files to mirsoft ?
jaffa225man
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by jaffa225man »

You're welcome; I'm glad you like them! They're really just pure captures with a bit of SysEx-slowing to support the original MT-32 and capital-tone fallback remapping to support newer GS modules, so it's fine with me, but I don't think you need my permission.
Sbeehive
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by Sbeehive »

Thanks so much for ripping these and the SYSex files!

I'm having a bit of an issue getting proper playback on my CM-64 and my CM-32L using Falcosoft's midi player. No matter which of the SYSex files I load up the CM-64 plays improper instruments at times and the CM-32L won't play some of the channels....

I'm trying to troubleshoot things on my end. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!
jaffa225man
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by jaffa225man »

Sbeehive wrote: Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:42 am Thanks so much for ripping these and the SYSex files!

I'm having a bit of an issue getting proper playback on my CM-64 and my CM-32L using Falcosoft's midi player. No matter which of the SYSex files I load up the CM-64 plays improper instruments at times and the CM-32L won't play some of the channels....

I'm trying to troubleshoot things on my end. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!
You're quite welcome! I'm sorry they're not working as well as they should for you.
I just tried it on a windows (albeit XP) machine with falcosoft's MIDI player (32-bit version 5.6) to try to duplicate your problem with the files from my google drive post (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28#p126). They seem to playback the same as ever for me (after playing the "CM-32L-CM-64_initial-SysEx.mid" file), so I am guessing your MIDI interface could be the problem. I used my Edirol UM-1S on this windows test. Roland/Edirol interfaces do fare better than some which mangle intelligent mode SysEx. I guess you could test your interface and cabling by connecting a MIDI cable from your interface's OUT port directly back into its IN port and connecting that up to MUNT's input (while limiting it to 32 partials) to see if it differs. If there's no difference it's probably the interface or cable.

Now that I've gotten the CM-64 overflow assign working, I do see many parts overflowing to my MT-32 in this mode, but I don't really notice dropouts on the CM-64 normally (not like with the MT-32 without partial overflow anyway). Some songs, such as "CM-32L-CM-64_Thrashard-In-The-Cave.mid", sound wrong on the MT-32 even when it's being used as an overflowed-to module. Anyway, the recordings I made previously (in the post viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28#p120) are of the CM-64 without overflow, so that is how I'd expect both your CM-32L and CM-64 to sound. Perhaps ROM revision differences could account for what you're talking about, though, if it's not your interface or cable(s). My CM-64 identified itself as "Roland V 1.02 89/Dec/05" (as SysEx/Hexidecimal decoded as ASCII from its OUT port) when I previously sent this SysEx to its IN port: "F0 41 10 16 11 7E 00 00 00 00 20 62 F7".

I hope something here is helpful.
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by Sbeehive »

The problem was something much more foolish than my USB midi interface (although I did upgrade to Roland's solution - RIP Midisport Uno!)... as it turned out I was using the MT-32 set and not the CM-32 and 64 set.

Now they sound amazing! I really need to get my hands on more X68000 stuff. I can't get over the quality of the sound that comes out of these modules - it sounds otherworldly!

Thanks again!
jaffa225man
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by jaffa225man »

Sbeehive wrote: Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:22 pm The problem was something much more foolish than my USB midi interface (although I did upgrade to Roland's solution - RIP Midisport Uno!)... as it turned out I was using the MT-32 set and not the CM-32 and 64 set.

Now they sound amazing! I really need to get my hands on more X68000 stuff. I can't get over the quality of the sound that comes out of these modules - it sounds otherworldly!

Thanks again!
That's interesting because I don't remember making changes other than culling certain tracks that were repeats between those releases. But I'm very glad you got it working and that you love the sound of these synthesizers as much as me. Yes, being true synthesizers, these modules can be coaxed to make very different sounds, in the right hands. I'd also love to capture (or find others' captures of) more X68000 soundtracks, but the main one I'm curious about is Gemini Wing for the CM-64's Electric Guitar PCM (SN-U110-07) card. It required me to play the game to hear the music (and it's too hard for me - at least on emulation, without a real X68000 joystick). Unlike Akumajō Dracula, it has no sound test menu that I'm aware of. Even cheat codes for it have eluded me. I did find some kind of rip of its music, available online, but it seems to be in a proprietary (or disk image?) format I'm not familiar with. The site I found it on was mostly written in Japanese, and eventually I gave up trying to use it. I don't know what other X68000 games supported these synthesizers, but I'm sure I'd love to get my modules to play them too.
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by Sbeehive »

jaffa225man wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:38 pm
That's interesting because I don't remember making changes other than culling certain tracks that were repeats between those releases. But I'm very glad you got it working and that you love the sound of these synthesizers as much as me. Yes, being true synthesizers, these modules can be coaxed to make very different sounds, in the right hands. I'd also love to capture (or find others' captures of) more X68000 soundtracks, but the main one I'm curious about is Gemini Wing for the CM-64's Electric Guitar PCM (SN-U110-07) card. It required me to play the game to hear the music (and it's too hard for me - at least on emulation, without a real X68000 joystick). Unlike Akumajō Dracula, it has no sound test menu that I'm aware of. Even cheat codes for it have eluded me. I did find some kind of rip of its music, available online, but it seems to be in a proprietary (or disk image?) format I'm not familiar with. The site I found it on was mostly written in Japanese, and eventually I gave up trying to use it. I don't know what other X68000 games supported these synthesizers, but I'm sure I'd love to get my modules to play them too.
It really is absurd how good it sounds. LA Synthesis/FM are my definite favorites for MIDI sound. Of course, there are a lot of good options like SC-55/88/PRO that have some really special arrangements. It takes everything special about retro game music and pumps it up to 11.

As far as X68000 goes, it is a shame it is so hard to get a proper setup. It seems like you need to be independently wealthy to get the real deal. As far as emulation, I haven't tried any software emulation.... MISTer, in theory, would be able to get some kind of hardware-based FPGA stuff going but it is all grassroots dependent. Right now, there are no developers (as far as I'm aware) that have made real progress towards that.

Another odd note - seems like something in my setup doesn't compensate for the SYSex messages fast enough as some of the songs have this weird backup of sound with a hyper-fast play-through after (like the first 2-3 seconds of a song are mute, but notes are playing in the player, and after that delay the sounds all play hyper fast until caught-up). I'm thinking maybe because I'm using a MIDI thru box.
jaffa225man
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by jaffa225man »

Sbeehive wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 1:07 pm
jaffa225man wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:38 pm
That's interesting because I don't remember making changes other than culling certain tracks that were repeats between those releases. But I'm very glad you got it working and that you love the sound of these synthesizers as much as me. Yes, being true synthesizers, these modules can be coaxed to make very different sounds, in the right hands. I'd also love to capture (or find others' captures of) more X68000 soundtracks, but the main one I'm curious about is Gemini Wing for the CM-64's Electric Guitar PCM (SN-U110-07) card. It required me to play the game to hear the music (and it's too hard for me - at least on emulation, without a real X68000 joystick). Unlike Akumajō Dracula, it has no sound test menu that I'm aware of. Even cheat codes for it have eluded me. I did find some kind of rip of its music, available online, but it seems to be in a proprietary (or disk image?) format I'm not familiar with. The site I found it on was mostly written in Japanese, and eventually I gave up trying to use it. I don't know what other X68000 games supported these synthesizers, but I'm sure I'd love to get my modules to play them too.
It really is absurd how good it sounds. LA Synthesis/FM are my definite favorites for MIDI sound. Of course, there are a lot of good options like SC-55/88/PRO that have some really special arrangements. It takes everything special about retro game music and pumps it up to 11.

As far as X68000 goes, it is a shame it is so hard to get a proper setup. It seems like you need to be independently wealthy to get the real deal. As far as emulation, I haven't tried any software emulation.... MISTer, in theory, would be able to get some kind of hardware-based FPGA stuff going but it is all grassroots dependent. Right now, there are no developers (as far as I'm aware) that have made real progress towards that.

Another odd note - seems like something in my setup doesn't compensate for the SYSex messages fast enough as some of the songs have this weird backup of sound with a hyper-fast play-through after (like the first 2-3 seconds of a song are mute, but notes are playing in the player, and after that delay the sounds all play hyper fast until caught-up). I'm thinking maybe because I'm using a MIDI thru box.
Yeah, LA synthesis is my favorite, but I do like well done sound canvas stuff too. FM (OPL3) was my first experience with DOS game music, and it's okay, but when I first heard the MT-32 I was overwhelmed with its quality, and I haven't really looked back too much at the soundblaster 16.

I haven't looked at MISTer yet, but a true X68000 hardware setup would be preferable, although as you say quite expensive.

Actually, I think your speed issues are with falcosoft's MIDI player. I had issues like you've described, while testing it, until I enabled the option to wait a bit between each song's playback (at least I think that was my solution). It's annoying Microsoft dropped support for selecting MIDI devices in current versions of windows. Maybe there's a better player for windows available. I don't know, though, as I'm on GNU/Linux and mostly using an older version of audacious (3.4.3, which I manually compiled, along with its AMIDI-Plug plugin) to play anything and everything. My experience with MIDI hardware (mostly roland, though) is that they generate very low latency, so I doubt your thru box is the issue.
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Re: MIDI rips of Konami's 1993 Sharp X68000 game, "Akumajō Dracula" for Roland MT-32/CM-32L/CM-64

Post by Sbeehive »

jaffa225man wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:38 pm

Actually, I think your speed issues are with falcosoft's MIDI player. I had issues like you've described, while testing it, until I enabled the option to wait a bit between each song's playback (at least I think that was my solution). It's annoying Microsoft dropped support for selecting MIDI devices in current versions of windows. Maybe there's a better player for windows available. I don't know, though, as I'm on GNU/Linux and mostly using an older version of audacious (3.4.3, which I manually compiled, along with its AMIDI-Plug plugin) to play anything and everything. My experience with MIDI hardware (mostly roland, though) is that they generate very low latency, so I doubt your thru box is the issue.

Yeah Falcosoft tends to run GM/GS stuff flawlessly but MT-32 tends to be a pain.... I think I might try running things through an older player in DosBox and seeing how that goes!
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