DOOM MIDIs on a mobile phone

Hehe, just aquired an old mobile phone (with no cell service, I DON'T have a cell phone <grin>).

The phone is a Samsung SCH-r600, and can play MP3s/videos/take pics/etc... I knew that it had some sort of onboard wavetable, as it can use MIDIs (as well as MP3s) for ringtones. You can play MP3s easily, but not MIDIs unless you download them from Samsung's "web store".

Heh, I discovered I could rename some MIDIs to ".MP3", copy them to the phone's microSD card, and play them using it's onboard wavetable synthesis <grin>.

Now... I was playing the DOOM and DOOM II MIDIs and though, Man, that sounds faimilar (re: my recent experimenting with the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer on my PC). Well, the phone's wavetavle is a DEAD RINGER for the MSGS wavetable synth, Samsung must use a version of it (along with the Roland "GM.DLS" sound bank) for this model of phone <grin>.

You'd have to record it.

Listening to MIDIs on a cellphone is pretty fun. Some Doom songs sound pretty BA while others are just butchered due to missing or off-sounding instruments. Now, if I had a modern mobile phone and recording equipment I could record some songs.

that got me thinking.. are there specific MIDI playing programs that let you load a custom wave table?

hervoheebo said:

that got me thinking.. are there specific MIDI playing programs that let you load a custom wave table?

http://www.synthfont.com/

hervoheebo said:

that got me thinking.. are there specific MIDI playing programs that let you load a custom wave table?

XMPlay
foobar2000
ZDoom :p

timidity

hervoheebo said:

Listening to MIDIs on a cellphone is pretty fun. Some Doom songs sound pretty BA while others are just butchered due to missing or off-sounding instruments.

In my case, (per my first message) apparently my newly aquired phone uses the Roland "GM.DLS" file... which sounds identical to the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth in Windows. Now mind you, I'm NO fan of the MSGSSW synth whatsoever <grin>, but I though it was rather neat that the phone used the same sound bank... heh, which sounds almost identical to a Roland SC-55 :)

hervoheebo said:

that got me thinking.. are there specific MIDI playing programs that let you load a custom wave table?

For soundfonts, XMPlay (along with it's MIDI plugin) hands down :) Check my blurb for XMPlay (and it's MIDI plugin) here -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/XMPlay/XMPlay.htm , and snag a soundfont here -> http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/51104-weeds-general-midi-soundfont-v3-0 / http://home.earthlink.net/~richnagel/#soundfonts :)

Heh, found a bit more info on the phone's wavetable synthesis. The phone is either using (not sure which) Qualcomm's "CMX" compatable chip MSM6050, or a MSM6100.

MSM6050: 32-note polyphony, 128 instruments, GM1 compatable, MIDI formats 0 and 1 supported, 44.1k 16-bit samples (same as the previously mentioned Roland soundset file "GM.DLS").

MSM6050: 64-note polyphony, 128 instruments, GM1 and GM2 compatable, MIDI formats 0 and 1 supported, 44.1k 16-bit samples (same as the previously mentioned Roland soundset file "GM.DLS").

Couldn't dig up any actual proof that it was using the Roland "GM.DLS" soundset file, but like I posted previously, the sound is *identical* to the MSGS wavetable synthesizer :)

Heh, funny thing is (per one of my previous messages), the MSGSSW synth uses that Roland "GM.DLS" file, which is essentially a sample dump of the onboard ROM of a Roland SC-55. Hehe, hence, I have what could be considered a "handheld SC-55" <LOL>! (minus MIDI ins and outs though <grin>).

Wish I could figure out some way to play the MIDI files without renaming them to ".MP3" though... according to a PDF manual that I downloaded from Samsung's web site, it indeed is suppose to be able to play (recognize) MIDI files, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to make the phone do so. They don't even show up in the "Music Player" app that's on the phone... that is, unless I rename them to ".MP3" (?).

What extensions have you tried? .mid, .midi, .smf?

Gez said:

What extensions have you tried? .mid, .midi, .smf?

Yep, all of the above. As well as other format extensions that the phone supposedly recognizes; CMX/AAC/EAAC, no joy.

Hmmm... just a thinking, I actually didn't try ".midi" (only ".mid"), I'll have to try that next. Thanks for the reminder :)

I've actually tried playing most of the Doom midis on my blackberry before.

It sounded pretty cool, but some of them didn't sound right sometimes.

Heh, those phones surely have a more powerful MIDI hardware than most PC sound cards nowadays. Try as you might, unless you go for the higher end like Creative X-Fi or some older ones like the Yamaha Waveforce, you won't find any sort of hardware MIDI acceleration today, it's all done by software.

Which boggles the mind, considering how cheaply those chips can be integrated in mobile phones.

Why does it boggle your mind that integrated sound chips don't come with a functionality that the vast majority of user never needs, especially if you consider that for those who still do there's software alternatives available?

On the other hand, cell phones have different needs and still need a low memory footprint way to play music or effects

Graf Zahl said:

Why does it boggle your mind that integrated sound chips don't come with a functionality that the vast majority of user never needs, especially if you consider that for those who still do there's software alternatives available?

The same could be said about 7.1 sound and support for Dolby/DTS/AC3 etc. which are all implemented in software anyway (except for the 7.1 electrical output, but if they could somehow cheapen out even on those via software, I'm sure they'd do it).

Why do we still need hardware for that? It's not that many application out there manage to put full load on all 4 cores that can be found in any semi-modern system so normally doing the de/encoding in software won't even affect performance.

Just look at the development of graphics hardware. All fixed (i.e. hardware) functionality is slowly replaced by programmable shaders.

I think the trend is clear: Dedicated hardware for specialized functionality is becoming a relic of the past.

If it wasn't for the fact that for audio, the use of dedicated hardware has declined long, long ago and all the burden has been placed on software, even when there weren't multicore CPUs around.

AFAIK, the only company still promoting "oldschool" audio accelerating hardware is Creative, and TBQH I doubt if it has any advantages over a modern multicore setup, especially since Creative insists on being stingy with the onboard memory (or "X-RAM" as they wish to call it). Quite the opposite, using one is probably gonna introduce the well-known driver/hardware issues that plagued Creative cards ever since the Audigy era, but I'm digressing.

In any case, for some reason, accelerated audio hardware, programmable or "fixed", has been long been abandoned from the mainstream, while video hardware is really cheap compared to the processing power it can deliver.

I dunno about digital audio hardware in general, but as far as MIDI is concerned; nothing comes close/holds a candle to _true_ MIDI hardware (verses a software version; i.e. a software synth).

Case and point; as a musician, I've been composing/(de)composing/twiddling with EMU hardware since my first AWE32 way back when (and before that, my WaveBlaster 1, based on the EMU Proteus line of rack mount MIDI modules). Since my WB1, I've had numerious EMU based sound cards (AWE32/AWE64/Live!/etc...), and although there are numerous SoundFont based MIDI software synthesizers (softsynths with SoundFont support), NONE of them come close to the *true* sound of real hardware.

The closest would be Ian Luck's "XMPLay" (with it's SoundFont compatable MIDI plugin installed, and a decent GM compatable SoundFont), but even with it, in all of it's greatness, still lacks "something" compared to real EMU based hardware. And note that, I plug/rave about XMPlay all of the time <grin> :)

'Nuther point and case: Even though that the Microsoft GS SW Synth (the start of this thread) is based upon the old Roland Sound Canvas 55 line of MIDI modules (even as going as far as using a ROM dump of the sample ROM on the module... you know, the elusive "GM.DLS" file); the MSGSSW synth doesn't come close to the sound of a _real_ Roland SC-55... over sound-wise, effects-wise, and the like.

Anyhoo, just my half a cent :)


(edit) P.S. Oh, and another SW/HW comparison, just in general... yep, I'm still on a miserable dialup out here in the woods <grin>.

Never been a softmodem (i.e. a Winmodem) that comes even close to the performance and connection stability of a true hardware modem (e.g. any of the US Robotics line of ISA and external modems). Plus, most of the time you don't even get that cool sounding little hardware modem speaker/buzzer <LOL>!