What is the best SC-55 soundfont?

[pcorf]

37 minutes ago, Jinxie said:

I learned about this just yesterday while researching accurate soundfonts and the limits of the sound format and had to look up how my favourite composition of yours, Plasma, sounded on an SC-88.

It genuinely gives off such a different mood from the SC-55 version that it almost felt like a time machine to my childhood :D

 

Not a huge fan of the song as I hear it in many wads but there are more wads with original music these days. But anyway I have an unreleased slaughtermap (666 monsters, 66 items, 6 secrets) named Plasma which uses fire textures throughout and the song Plasma to please everyone. Might be the New Doom Odyssey's tribute to the Mighy Blue/Green. Many secrets to be revealed later this year.

[Gregor]

11 hours ago, leejacksonaudio said:

That's correct. I would compose my songs for ROTT on whatever soundcard du jour I had, and I would then bring them in for approval by Tom Hall, the project director. He would listen to them on his Roland SCC-1, a General MIDI card. So, in a sense, you could say ROTT was sort-of written for the SCC-1, indirectly speaking. ;)

So who actually handled the SC-55 conversions for your songs then? Just some generic employee? I don't know anything about GM to GS conversion, so maybe it's very straightforward. Also, when you composed the soundtrack for Duke Nukem 3D, did you write the songs on the SC-88 in its SC-55 compatibility mode or the naitve mode? Sorry to bother you with so many questions but this is really interestng to me. Duke and Rott  both have such iconic soundtracks.

[leejacksonaudio]

5 hours ago, Gregor said:

So who actually handled the SC-55 conversions for your songs then?

If you're talking about the ones on YouTube, those are done by a private person and don't involve GS to my knowledge.

 

5 hours ago, Gregor said:

Also, when you composed the soundtrack for Duke Nukem 3D, did you write the songs on the SC-88 in its SC-55 compatibility mode or the naitve mode?

I wrote in General MIDI mode. Couldn't use any SC-XX-specific tricks. Although, when I was listening, I had the SC-88 in its native mode.

 

[Gregor]

4 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

If you're talking about the ones on YouTube, those are done by a private person and don't involve GS to my knowledge.

 

I wrote in General MIDI mode. Couldn't use any SC-XX-specific tricks. Although, when I was listening, I had the SC-88 in its native mode.

 

I was just wondering because both Duke Nukem 3D and ROTT feature a "Sound Canvas" mode in their music options you can choose besides the "General Midi" mode (and plenty of other modes like soundblaster, ultrasound, etc..).

 

 

 

So since you composed the songs in GM, i was wondering what version of the songs would play with the "Sound Canvas" mode selected and who at 3D Realms converted the tracks for that from GM to GS if you didn't do it? I assume that there are differences between the GM and Sound Canvas modes and they don't just play the same GM versions for both...

[leejacksonaudio]

2 minutes ago, Gregor said:

So since you composed the songs in GM, i was wondering what version of the songs would play with the "Sound Canvas" mode selected and who at 3D Realms converted the tracks for that from GM to GS if you didn't do it? I assume that there are differences between the GM and Sound Canvas modes and they don't just play the same GM versions for both...

Unfortunately, they do just play the same GM versions for both. GS required Sysex messages, and the Apogee Sound System did not support Sysex, so no GS.

[Gregor]

6 hours ago, leejacksonaudio said:

Unfortunately, they do just play the same GM versions for both. GS required Sysex messages, and the Apogee Sound System did not support Sysex, so no GS.

Well, let's take a moment then and say a prayer for those few poor basterds that spent their last shirt to get hold of an SC-55 back in the day when Duke Nukem 3D first launched so they can lsiten to those fancy GS rendition of the favorite tunes... only to find out that Apogee SCAMMED them. 🤣

[leejacksonaudio]

1 hour ago, Gregor said:

Well, let's take a moment then and say a prayer for those few poor basterds that spent their last shirt to get hold of an SC-55 back in the day when Duke Nukem 3D first launched so they can lsiten to those fancy GS rendition of the favorite tunes... only to find out that Apogee SCAMMED them. 🤣

 

GS was never advertised on the box or in the software - only General MIDI.

[Gregor]

27 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

 

GS was never advertised on the box or in the software - only General MIDI.

But why did they even make it an option in the setup.exe then if it didn't do anything besides GM and wasn't advertised anyways?

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

6 hours ago, Gregor said:

But why did they even make it an option in the setup.exe then if it didn't do anything besides GM and wasn't advertised anyways?

I've seen this discussion a few times on Doomworld and VOGONS. I think it was done simply for clarity and to avoid confusion (not every Sound Canvas owner would know to select "General MIDI"). It's sort of like how there are separate music options for AdLib and Sound Blaster, even though they're the same thing in terms of music synthesis (the Sound Blaster is 100% AdLib compatible).

 

There are also way more games than ROTT and Duke 3D that have identical-sounding options for General MIDI and Sound Canvas. DOOM does this as well. Even this obscure platformer does it:

 

 

8 hours ago, Gregor said:

Well, let's take a moment then and say a prayer for those few poor basterds that spent their last shirt to get hold of an SC-55 back in the day when Duke Nukem 3D first launched so they can lsiten to those fancy GS rendition of the favorite tunes... only to find out that Apogee SCAMMED them. 🤣

That would hardly be a scam because even with GM-only MIDIs, the SC-55 would still significantly improve the quality of the MIDI playback compared to whatever non-Roland MIDI synth the user previously had. In fact, Apogee even recommended the Roland Sound Canvas in some of their catalogs for the best music quality in games like Raptor: Call of the Shadows, despite the fact that game's music is GM.

Edited April 23, 2022 by TheUltimateDoomer666

[leejacksonaudio]

Thanks for explaining that, @TheUltimateDoomer666. Much obliged.

[Gregor]

3 hours ago, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

That would hardly be a scam because even with GM-only MIDIs, the SC-55 would still significantly improve the quality of the MIDI playback compared to whatever non-Roland MIDI synth the user previously had. In fact, Apogee even recommended the Roland Sound Canvas in some of their catalogs for the best music quality in games like Raptor: Call of the Shadows, despite the fact that game's music is GM.

 

Good point. I could see the SC-55 being recommended because as a Sound Canvas its GM playback will be identical or at least very similar to the sythn that was used to compose the soundtrack in the first place. That would make the tracks sound closer to the "intended" experience. But does the SC-55's GM mode add any actual differences to the notes being played or effects added on top of compared to the GM of other synths?

 

3 hours ago, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

There are also way more games than ROTT and Duke 3D that have identical-sounding options for General MIDI and Sound Canvas. DOOM does this as well. Even this obscure platformer does it:

 

So you're saying... Doom's Sound Canvas mode doesn't feature any GS implementation, either? 😭

 

Which begs the question: were there even any games in the 90s that had actual Sound Canvas GS mode support??

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

27 minutes ago, Gregor said:

But does the SC-55's GM mode add any actual differences to the notes being played or effects added on top of compared to the GM of other synths?

The SC-55 can apply reverb to GM tracks, while some other synths are dry. Most SC-55 recordings of GM soundtracks are done with the reverb enabled.

 

27 minutes ago, Gregor said:

This is probably common knowledge then but... does Doom's Sound Canvas mode feature real GS implementation? Or is it again just General MIDI?

It's all General MIDI. Very few games made use of the additional GS features, as doing so would have caused problems for those without GS synths (e.g., the wrong instruments would play if the composer used instruments that aren't in the GM standard).

[Gregor]

14 minutes ago, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

It's all General MIDI. Very few games made use of the additional GS features, as doing so would have caused problems for those without GS synths (e.g., the wrong instruments would play if the composer used instruments that aren't in the GM standard).

 

But wait a minute - if you choose the Sound Canvas mode in the options, then you obviously can be expected to have an actual Sound Canvas hooked up to your PC aka a GS-capable device. So how could that ever have caused problems for people with GM-only synths? They were never supposed to choose the Sound Canvas mode in the first place. I can understand why you couldn't use any GS features for the GM mode of course; but for the separate Sound Canvas mode that shouldn't have been an issue, right?

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

Because "Roland Sound Canvas" alone doesn't imply GS compatibility. A number of Sound Canvas synths are GM only, such as the SC-7 and RAP-10. In addition, making GS-only versions of the music would have been too much work in most cases. The composer would practically have to re-make the tracks to take advantage of the hundreds of new instruments that GS adds.

[Gregor]

3 hours ago, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

Because "Roland Sound Canvas" alone doesn't imply GS compatibility. A number of Sound Canvas synths are GM only, such as the SC-7 and RAP-10. In addition, making GS-only versions of the music would have been too much work in most cases. The composer would practically have to re-make the tracks to take advantage of the hundreds of new instruments that GS adds.

I see. Thanks for the clarification!

[Grieferus]

On 3/19/2022 at 10:31 PM, Karmeck said:

Looking in the comments section for the awful SC-88 soundfont, I learn of a 103mb SC-55 SoundFont. A fast search lead me to this file

SC-55_v3.7.sf2 found here: !Outdated! see edit 2

https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/audio/soundFont2/

 

I have not found it elsewhere, so I don't know about the version number is about it why it is so big. 

 

Edit:

Found the original upload !Also outdated! 

https://archive.org/details/SC55EmperorGrieferus

 

Edit 2: here is the most recent version 

 

As the file was smaller I asked in the comments witch file was the most recent, and it's this smaller one. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G53wKnIBMONgOVx0gCOWrBlJaXsyaKml/view

 

What the archive like does have going for it. Is a changelog: 

https://ia600700.us.archive.org/2/items/SC55EmperorGrieferus/Changelog.txt

Oh look, ma, I'm inside TV!

[JDoyle]

On 4/23/2022 at 8:26 AM, Gregor said:

 

So you're saying... Doom's Sound Canvas mode doesn't feature any GS implementation, either? 😭

Which begs the question: were there even any games in the 90s that had actual Sound Canvas GS mode support??

I seem to recall the the midis from Descent used SYSEX messages to detune specific drums on channel 10, such as pitching up or down the snare. I have a memory of ripping the midis from the game and examining them, trying to figure out all their tricks :)  I don't know if those were Sound Canvas-specific SYSEX messages? 

[ludicrous_peridot]

SoundCanvas VA seems to come up in the "soundfonts" discussion fairly frequently, so I though I'd finally share the recordings of Doom and related game MIDI music that was gathering dust since I've done them a year ago or so when I had access to this VSTI module.

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've also done some non-Doom related game recordings

Spoiler

 

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by ludicrous_peridot

[zz_denis]

Dear all: I have sampled my sc55mkii (128GM+9 drum kit) to sfz (filename: GMSC_test.7z) yesterday:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/118828-trevor0402s-sc-55-soundfont/?page=5

 

Doom level1 demo:

https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=138839

 

I have merged all my sc55 sfzs into one soundfont and all samples are 44.1k.
The sf2 is not final (in progress) because none of the samples have established loops.
But it can still be test playing many midi songs.

 

SC55_gmass.sf2:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AHquBL1mEpQOVvfqLFIiJzDb2yTCYXEJ/view?usp=sharing

 

The soundfont is too big, you can use the configuration of the fluidsynth:
set synth.dynamic-sample-loading 1

 

2022/6/25

I released my new SC55 soundfont v0.1 (266MB) today and started a new thread:
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/129928-new-sc55-soundfont-266mb-all-new-441k-samples/

Edited June 25, 2022 by zz_denis