#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS HOW TO#
#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS PRO#
#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS SOFTWARE#
#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS PC#
#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS SERIES#

You should make sure that your unit has a new memory battery (a CR2032 battery, just like you’d find on a PC motherboard) unless you fancy the idea of opening it up and replacing the battery yourself.

#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS PRO#

An SC-55 in good condition costs around $100-120 on eBay, with an SC-88 slightly less and an SC-88 Pro slightly more. Nowadays, Sound Canvas units are not very expensive. For musicians, the SC-88 Pro offers the most options and features and would be the way to go. I would recommend listening to recordings of both on YouTube before you buy.

For gamers and listeners, the choice between the 55 and 88 is largely down to aesthetics and what music is being played-game soundtracks from before around 1995 were usually written for the SC-55, and music written for Windows GS or similar knockoffs often sounds the most correct on the 55, but mid to late ‘90s games usually had music written for the SC-88, and the SC-88’s instruments have slightly higher audio quality. Both come in enhanced versions (SC-55 MkII and SC-88 Pro)–the SC-55 MkII is a straight improvement to the SC-55 with an increased number of simultaneous voices, but the SC-88 Pro changes the sound of the SC-88 in ways that may not be to everybody’s taste. The two most important Sound Canvas units are the SC-55 (1991) and SC-88 (1994). They weren’t the most sophisticated or expensive synths of the era, but nearly every MIDI you’ll find will sound correct in one. They was by far the most common General MIDI synthesizers available during the 1990s, all of their instruments sound good, and most MIDI files are written for Sound Canvas synths or cheap imitations like Windows GS or the Sound Blaster Live! sound card that was in seemingly every computer 20 years ago.

#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS SERIES#

For first-time users of a hardware synth, I strongly recommend the Roland Sound Canvas series of synths. You’ll of course need a computer with Windows on it (I don’t have access to a Mac, and solutions for Linux or *BSD are very complicated and often dependent on the individual application you’re using), the synthesizer itself, and a physical connection between the two. The introduction to X-Com: UFO Defense (1994) repeated four times, each with a different synthesizer: AdLib OPL2, Roland SC-55, Roland SC-88, Roland MT-32.

#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS SOFTWARE#

However, software synthesis is beyond the scope of this article. On the other hand, BASSMIDI and the like are free, and buying an old MIDI unit is not. The vintage sound cards were better, but not that much.

Yes, those are sound sets for wavetable software synthesizers like Timidity and BASSMIDI (as well as old sound cards when MIDI was a higher priority) but these synths are too limited to produce really nice sound-they can’t do much to manipulate the sounds they’re given, and they lack the dedicated mixing and effects stuff in the hardware units covered in this guide. Is this related to those SoundFont things I once heard about ? If you are a retro gamer, interested in MIDI as an electronic music scene, want an easy way to compose decent-sounding electronic music on your computer using a MIDI sequencer, or otherwise want or need MIDI playback, this guide will help you to get audiophile-quality MIDI set up and running on any Windows computer using an external synthesizer.

If you replace the synthesizer, then you change everything about the way MIDI files sound. Think of a MIDI sequence as being like a more complex version of a player piano roll, with the MIDI synth as the piano. The same MIDI instructions that produce those pitiful noises on your computer also produce floor-rattling hip-hop beats, massive ambient soundscapes, and virtual orchestras, and your computer can sound like that too! All you need is a better synthesizer.Īs the acronym suggests, MIDI is just an interface, a standard for a computer or controller to drive the synthesizer that makes the music. Perhaps you might have dismissed MIDI itself because of that-notwithstanding that the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard is used somewhere in nearly every studio and on nearly every stage hosting an electric or electronic musical performance in the world. Perhaps you might even think that’s what “MIDI” sounds like-terrible, tinny, badly sampled instruments little better than what you could get out of a ‘90s Nokia cell phone. Most computer users are familiar with the Windows GS MIDI synthesizer that comes with Windows.

#GENERAL MIDI PLAYER WINDOWS HOW TO#

MIDIPhile: How to Get Audiophile-Quality MIDI Playback with a Hardware SynthesizerĪ MIDI file made for a Doom level, played on my Roland SC-55 MkII.

General midi player windows