Recommended Setting for mt32-pi

[zoopster]

Looking for configuration recommendations for an authentic DOS gaming experience using mt-32 pi. Thanks!

[Bas]

The Pi acts like an MT-32. If the game supports and detects it properly, there's nothing else to set. Some games expect a certain MT32 ROM version but that depends on the game.

[zoopster]

Thanks Bas. How about the MT32 menu configuration options?

[Bas]

Those don't affect the sound. You can flip the device to emulate a General MIDI synth using SoundFonts. That's departing from the MT32 though. The original MT32 was what it was and sounded the same whenever you got it to work.

[virtuali]

A clarification from somebody who used to work for Roland in the early 90's:

MT32-pi as a software basically emulates two very different kind of hardware:

• The original MT32, which is a MIDI synthesizer based on LA synthesis (very short PCM samples combined with digital emulation of analog filters with 4 "oscillators" per voice which Roland calls "partials"), based on a stripped-down version of the famous Roland D-50, but multi-timbral. Basically, an MT32 is equivalent to entry-level Roland workstation of that era: D20, D10, D5 and the E-series arrangers. The same synthesis was also used in the external PC module CM32L or the PC ISA card LA-PC. The LA part is handled by the MUNT software emulator.

• A generic MIDI synth based on Sound Font technology, which complies with the General Midi standard (a way to layout sound libraries in a certain way so that MIDI files would play "similar" on different devices) and produce sounds based entirely on Sampling, so they tend to use more memory and are usually (not always) of a better quality than LA-based (MT32 and siblings), although they are less flexible and programmable in real time, more like a Sampler. A Rompler would be a better term: something that play sample-based sound from a usually large library of sounds, but less of a synthesizer than something based on LA like the MT32 or even FM like all the various Yamaha chips, from the one used in the Megadrive, to the famous DX7. Roland at that time offered the Sound Canvas line of products, which were seen as the successors of the MT32, and PC games started to offer General Midi audio in addition to MT32, because it was also used by audio cards which could use Sound Font technology, like the AWE series, and there was a PCM-based version of the CM32, called CM32P, which was another variant of the Sound Canvas line. This part is emulated in the M32-PI by FLUIDSYNTH.

So, even if the software is called MT32-PI, it's in fact two very different systems:

• Munt to emulate the MT32 family of products, that don't change much in the way they sound.

• Fluidsynth to emulate the "General Midi" family, and by using different Sound Fonts, you can either get close to the original Sound Canvas (SC55, SC88, etc.), or to some of the Roland competitors of the era (Yamaha XG, etc.), but of course you can also have completely original Sound Fonts that might use way more memory than those classic devices and sound very different.

[FPGA64]

The author spent a great deal of time writing extenisve docs

https://github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi/wiki