Quote:
Originally Posted by Venkman
Can you listen to any MIDIs on it for improved sound, or do they need to be created with MT-32 in mind?
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No, it was MT-32 specific. The MT-32 had some presets and recorded sound samples in its ROMs, but the best MT-32 tracks had custom sound programmed into it. Data, via sysex information from the game, is sent to the MT-32 unit. Without the unit a game set to use the MT-32 music sounds absolutely terrible with wrong instruments and noises. Because of this dynamic programming, SoundFonts can never replace the MT-32.
The units have not been sold for sometime now, so if you want one you have little options other than the likes of eBay. The good news is that there is an emulator project called
Munt under development. This project has been going on for years, but has little progress for the last couple of years. Recently there has been renewed progress that promises the possibility of 100% accuracy.
It has been incorporated into ScummVM and some special builds of DOSBox and a driver for 32-bit Windows, but requires the ROMs from the unit. There are potential copyright issues involved with the ROMs, so they cannot be distributed with the binaries. It is also why it has not been added to the official build of DOSBox. To use it with ScummVM you need to add the ROMs to ScummVM.
For more information about the unit, check out QuestStudios'
Roland MT-32 Sound Module Resource Center. For information about using the unit with DOSBox and more information about Munt
see this thread. Sound samples of Munt vs a real MT-32 can be found
here. Keep in mind that the Munt samples are now quite old and do not reflect the current status of the emulator.
