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Spectre01

What's your prefered Midi Device?

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Changing the midi device doesn't necessarily change the sound of your midis, unless of course Coolsoft's synth comes with its own soundfont. As far as soundfonts go, I use a .sf2 version of Eawpats that I put together from the original patch set, then tweaked somewhat towards my liking, without drastically altering it much.

I use the BASSMIDI driver to play back midis wherever it can be used. I tried Coolsoft initially but as far as ZDoom is concerned anyway, the multi-second delay for loading songs was unbelievably distracting. However, BASSMIDI does have its own bug where sometimes the instruments all get loaded as pianos until the track is restarted, but I've only seen this affect ZDoom thus far and it's pretty uncommon at that.

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Timidity++ with GUS Pro Patches Lite v1.61. So much epicness! It makes every MIDI song pleasant to listen. I love the drumset since I heard it for the first time.

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Michael92 said:

Timidity++ with GUS Pro Patches Lite v1.61. So much epicness! It makes every MIDI song pleasant to listen. I love the drumset since I heard it for the first time.



How easy is it to implement into Doom? I don't want it making changes to my system.

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In short, I've had some struggle to implement it but it was really worth.
Unfortunatelly, you need to install the Timidity driver, then change the MIDI device in OS in order to make it work on any executable of Doom.
To make things more complicated - for Pro Patches Lite, I've extracted timidity.cfg from TiMidity for ZDoom, pasted to C:\WINDOWS\, then specified the path of patches within this .cfg file.

Unless you use ZDoom, you can download the TiMidity for ZDoom, then all you need to do is to specify the path of timidity.exe and set midi device to timidity++ in ZDoom config. As mentioned above, specify the path of patches in timidity.cfg.

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I use CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth, often with the 4 MB "EYE & I Productions" GM soundfont (they are the same company that created the original Gravis Ultrasound instruments) because it is small and reasonably balanced, and sometimes with one of the other several dozen soundfonts I have.

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I changed to Coolsoft because dew said that it fixes glitchy audio when loud instruments are playing. But I think it has its problems. For example if I warp to many different maps in a row, sometimes some instrument can go nuts and drums can turn into a weird pitch-shifted version or completely disappear. If I close the game and start from that level, there are no problems.

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Mostly OPL2 but when I feel like I want to spice things up, WeedsGM3/Fluidsynth. But damn, it decreases the fps very very slightly.

I actually prefer Fluidsynth for how great the instrumentation is, haven't found any problems with it so far. Using OPL2, the style of the music can vary since it seems to depend on the current GENMIDI (or was it DMXGUSC?) lump present in the IWAD, but I use it. Because why not?

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I've been using Timidity++ with EAWPats for most stuff, but I got ZDoom set up to use alternative soundfonts if something just doesn't work well with that one. In general, I found it the most pleasant one by a wide margin.

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I got a Roland SC-5 .sf2 at home, and I liked it, but I'm still to try Eawpats. And yes, I use CoolSoft's VirtualMIDISynth.

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Been using FluidSynth.sf2 for a long time now. Might give that VirtualMIDISynth a try. Are they similar in any way?

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I found a way to convert the old Windows "gm.dls" file into an SF2, so I've been using the BASSMIDI driver as a device to play that. This may sound like a total waste of the format, but there's a subtle improvement in the release of notes: sometimes Windows's native playback cuts out prematurely (might even be at static intervals), possibly due to a flaw in whatever software driver they kept around.

To avoid confusion, there's a difference between "the driver used to process MIDI files" and "the instrument set that MIDI files use to determine aural output". You need both in order for a MIDI file to play. If "CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth" appears in your ZDoom option for MIDI device and it plays music, it's because there's an accompanying SoundFont (SF2) file applied in its own settings. More likely than not, any of the differences between it and other devices are a result of the SF2 rather than the device. That isn't to say that MIDI devices themselves can't produce different output, but most people tend to care about the instruments first.

As for choices between devices, I only use BASSMIDI because it was the first search I landed on. Anyone know of different experiences with different software MIDI drivers?

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I play on Linux. The MIDI device? FluidSynth, of course.

The soundfont? These days, it's usually 8MBGMSFX.SF2. Most MIDIs are written for it or something really similar to it, and it's designed to sound good with MIDIs that aren't.

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Depends on my os and what levels I am playing. Most of the time I use fluidsynth with Scc1t2.sf2. If I am playing Eternal Doom, I'd use WeedsGM3, WeedsGM4, or 1mbgm.sf2 instead (depending on how I am allowed to set sf2 files to).

On Windows I either use the above, or, in non Eternal Doom cases where I'm allowed to do so while allowed to change only music volume, the default Microsoft gm synth.

On Linux I either go with what I said in the first paragraph, or if I'm feeling too lazy to set commands (or are unable to, in the case of some ports) I let the system use the default of Fluidr3 (much to my annoyance)

If I was forced to use GUS patches but aren't doing Gus hardware emulation, I remember seeing something about patches converted from an sc-55, but I don't remember where to find them. Otherwise I'd use 8mbgmpat (something I know I'd use anyway for eternal doom)

If i was forced to use Hardware GUS emulation, I'm not sure whether the stock patches or pro patches are better.

If I had to choose between an mt-32 (or similar) and an opl3, I'd choose the opl3 for more music channels.

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