> 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).
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...
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.
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.
> 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).
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".
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.
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
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.