Midi Playback Issue

Hello. I've been using Xmplay. I for the life of me can't figure out how to get this player to play midis to the same tune of almost any doom engine that has used MS GS Wavatable Synth as it's output. It always sounds off or an instrument is incorrectly used. It could be a bad soundfont or so. I would go to Unforseen forums about this, but this is Doom. I want it to sound like those I grew up with (Post 95 era). I'm not asking for a new sound font to "Improve things" I just want to get this to sound like Doom as I've known it.

Basically, the MS wavetable synth uses a dumbed-down Roland Virtual Sound Canvas soundfont. It is present in DLS format as GM.dls, installed in I-forgot-which system directory.

Now, XMPlay does not handle the DLS soundfont format. It handles SF2 just fine, but not DLS. And it's not using the MS wavetable synth but its own MIDI synth, in the form of a BASS MIDI plugin.

So when you listen to MIDIs in XMPlay, you use a different font and a different synth. Of course it's gonna sound differently!

To alleviate the issue, you can try to search for a Sound Canvas soundfont in SF2 format and use it in XMPlay. It still won't sound exactly the same (there'll probably be some differences in the instrument even if they're supposedly based on the same source, and the synths will still be completely different) but it should be quite a bit closer anyway.

Thank you Gez. I thought it might be that. Currently the closest I have is a Roland GS soundset 16bit. Not sure where I found it. It's very close but it has a few off instruments. I will hunt for a Sound Canvas made by Roland. I will learn more as I go.

Scc1t2.sf2 contains nothing but VSC/GM.dls instruments, so everything is 100% authentic.

Danfun64 said:

Scc1t2.sf2 contains nothing but VSC/GM.dls instruments, so everything is 100% authentic.

I found a copy of it floating somewhere on the web. I decided to add it to the midi plugin. This is perfect. Beats the other fonts I was using by a long shot. Thank you!