Got a Roland SC-55, it's great! Advice from owners would be awesome.

[TasAcri]

1 hour ago, Zilch said:

 

It's better than the stock gzdoom/lzdoom.sf2, but it also get the intro of track 05 wrong.  Have a look at the thread I linked and try the soundfont listed there.  It is better.

 

I already tried it. And it sounds wrong, almost every song sounds worse with weird mixing glitches and volume levels. Not at all like the Youtube videos you posted.

 

But, i'm only using the included EmperorGrieferus' soundfont file in DOSBOX, not LZdoom with the other files you posted. So maybe that's the issue here. I'm looking for a single soundfont file to load in DOSBOX, not a whole setup. Can this setup be a single soundfont or something?

[Zilch]

Try to see if you can use VirtualMidiSynth by Coolsoft, combined with SC-55.sf2.

 

I'm experimenting with that rn, and it sounds pretty good.

 

Btw, those videos aren't mine.  They were posted by another gent who has a real SC-55, which was used for those recordings.

 

I compared them side-by-side (VirtualMidiSynth and the recordings), and it is VERY close.  A real SC-55 sounds a tad more aggressive, but again for us can't, or don't want to get a real SC-55, this really is good enough - and I will happily stand by that.

[TasAcri]

I'm using DosBox Pure (in RetroArch, guess i should have mentioned that) and in the soundfont section it only asks for a single soundfont .sf2 file.

 

So i don't think i can use other files along with it.

 

But it's OK, i'm pretty happy with the soundfont i have now. Tried a lot and this one is the closest in this particular setup. It's not perfect but hey. This isn't even my main way of playing DOOM, i just use it when i want to play with CRT shaders, for the nostalgia. I just don't like the original soundblaster/old OPL sound.

 

Otherwise GZDoom with the Microsoft wavetable option sounds even better than the SC-55 i think.

[THT]

Those black-and-silver USB converters are the bottom-of-the-barrel...you'd think this would be "good enough" but that hasn't been my experience. I have a bigass MIDI studio with over 30 devices and an M-Audio Midisport Uno is all I use when I need to backup or otherwise connect one to a computer. Same deal (it's just a USB cable with 2 MIDI DIN plugs on the other end) but it's actual decent quality; I've used the same one for a decade and it's still going...the generic black-and-silver one I got for free with a used device has never worked. $30, not gonna break the bank either!

FYI to other people looking here: any MIDI synthesizer that supports "General MIDI" ("GM") will do what the SC-55 does! Here's some module examples:
Yamaha: MU-devices (MU-50/MU-500/MU-2000)
Roland:  JV-1080 (getting to be in-demand!), SC-whatever ("Sound Canvas" range of modules)
Korg: any old Triton, the Korg workstation keyboard/module can be coaxed into GM as per this link they've kindly provided
Alesis: NanoSynth.

There are more, and you can get actual keyboards as well: Yamaha CS-1X, Roland Gaia are some examples, but, uhh....well...

Acting as a GM sound module is kind of a sad underuse of most synths; most people won't shell out $500 for a used Roland Gaia just to make DOOM sound better (but it probably will!). Most of these GM devices fall into a class of synths known as "ROMplers": machines which use fixed sample data for tone generation instead of something more sexy and exotic like "real live" oscillators. Having an oboe sample for an oboe is good enough for most of us, but if you don't like the way the sample sounds there's little the rest of the synth's engine can do to fix that!

In theory you could put a 16-part multitimbral synth or groovebox to the task (I'm looking at a giant Roland MC-909 as I type!), but these modules simplify this by using a standardized set of patches that matches the GM standard. For those of us who aren't synth nerds, probably best to stick to one of these or a software equivalent!

[DoomGater]

16 hours ago, THT said:

FYI to other people looking here: any MIDI synthesizer that supports "General MIDI" ("GM") will do what the SC-55 does!

 

NOPE! With the Sound Canvas Series Roland introduced their proprietary GS  Format (should read "General Synth", but they were never allowed to call it that for some legal reasons, so GS is an abbreviation without meaning ...). GS is basically a HUGE improvement to the normal GM General MIDI. It has much more sounds (250+ compared to 128 in plain GM), more than one Drumkit (10 if i remember correctly), TWO Percussion parts, TWO effect processors plus the ability to fiddel around with the tone generators parameters (Filters, Envelopes, LFOs etc...)

 

Look for anything that supports Rolands GS Format! OR---anything from Yamaha with XG-capability. (XG was Yamaha's revenge for GS and is basically a further improved GS.... )

Avoid any plain General Midi equipment. GS or XG is the minimum you should look for.
 

[PsychEyeball]

37 minutes ago, DoomGater said:

 

NOPE! With the Sound Canvas Series Roland introduced their proprietary GS  Format (should read "General Synth", but they were never allowed to call it that for some legal reasons, so GS is an abbreviation without meaning ...). GS is basically a HUGE improvement to the normal GM General MIDI. It has much more sounds (250+ compared to 128 in plain GM), more than one Drumkit (10 if i remember correctly), TWO Percussion parts, TWO effect processors plus the ability to fiddel around with the tone generators parameters (Filters, Envelopes, LFOs etc...)

 

Look for anything that supports Rolands GS Format! OR---anything from Yamaha with XG-capability. (XG was Yamaha's revenge for GS and is basically a further improved GS.... )

Avoid any plain General Midi equipment. GS or XG is the minimum you should look for.
 

...or get a device compatible with GM Level 2, which consolidates most of the basic GS/XG features, like the extra GS drumkits and some of XG's Control Change values. Personally, you probably would have to look hard to find a device without support for either standard since most devices in the day were made by Roland and Yamaha, and even outsider companies like Korg would have a partnership with Yamaha and made their GM romplers compliant with the XG standard.

 

Even then, about everyone who spices up their MIDI setup for Doom goes for Roland since Bobby Prince composed the soundtrack on a SC-55 mk2. Brand recognition and all.

 

(Plus I think this is a little overkill because no one really uses GS or XG settings in their music, apart from the bonus drumkits)

[brick]

5 hours ago, PsychEyeball said:

(Plus I think this is a little overkill because no one really uses GS or XG settings in their music, apart from the bonus drumkits)

Depends what you're looking for. I got my Roland SC-55 primarily for retro gaming, and while many games just used the standard GM, some took advantage of the particular way the Sound Canvas processes MIDI data (Doom being a prime example), and others use the specific GS custom tones, and none of those latter will play correctly in GM2 or XG.  For more general MIDI (ha ha) applications I agree that you don't really need an SC and there are other synthesizers, the JV-1080 that THT mentioned sounds lovely and would be one I would go for if I was more into composition.

[DoomGater]

38 minutes ago, brick said:

(...)the JV-1080 that THT mentioned sounds lovely and would be one I would go for if I was more into composition.

it sounds nice, indeed. But due to  different architecture, it is only GM, but not GS. Still an 8-Bit machine, as all Sound Canvas and JVs were.

BTW: The TOMB RAIDER Audio Soundtrack was done with a JV1080...

[Zilch]

Does anyone know if a Roland p-55 will sound similar enough to an SC-55?

 

It seems to be marketed as a piano midi module, so I'm not too sure...

[DoomGater]

 

P55 is not recommended. It is just a piano module. Not sure, if it has multimode at all. Look for the GS-Logo on Roland Gear.