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That just sounds... wrong! :) Somehow too soft and mushy to my ear. This is how I always remember Descent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2QeIv9f2s&list=PLK81XJrZf8dru4dNv0qCc3kNCYEbuo6K5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNTo-bFEedE

"AFAIK it was composed with a SC-55, so this is how it's meant to be heard!" ;)

I've always liked the Yamaha XG sounds as well, even though I never had that card or daughterboard.
That's exactly the sound I want to get away from. If you like all the buzzing you can just as well use AdLib. :P

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timppu: "AFAIK it was composed with a SC-55, so this is how it's meant to be heard!" ;)
Entire symphonies have been composed only with the help of a piano and it's not how they are meant to be heard. ;P

Also: "The original soundtrack for Descent was written by several people at Interplay at times where Parallax Software did not yet have a composer." To me it sounds like the OST was pretty much improvized by whoever at Interplay had some music skills (and let's be honest - only parts of the Descent OST are good, a lot of the music is a generic MIDI mess). I have doubts all of it was produced on professional hardware. Heck, I'm almost certain that large portions were created in cheap MIDI sequencers on regular computers.

Either way, I just really love how the sountrack sounds with FluidR3, at least some parts of it. The moment when the bass drops in the title theme always gives me an eargasm.
I remember years ago getting into . It offered you a new device you could push your midi information through and it would use soundfonts to enhance the sound. Then i used the [url=http://www.soundfonts.gonet.biz/]Merlin Soundfonts. Then something amazing happened. I took some midis from Symphony of the night, and it sounded almost exactly like what came from the game, except for a few effects that weren't present.

But that was like 10 years ago. Sometimes you have to tweak exact drum or other sets to get the result you want.

Sometimes you could overload soundfonts to fill in the gaps of one soundfont's ability, say a piano soundfont overriding the general merlin set if it sounded a little off. Should be an ultimate drum set somewhere too...
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F4LL0UT: That's exactly the sound I want to get away from. If you like all the buzzing you can just as well use AdLib. :P
To me it is the difference between clarity and mushy sounds where many instruments are barely audible. And so it goes. :)

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F4LL0UT: I have doubts all of it was produced on professional hardware. Heck, I'm almost certain that large portions were created in cheap MIDI sequencers on regular computers.
I think you just described Roland SC-55. Naturally the composer had to have some kind of synthesizer to get feedback how his work would sound in practice. I don't think SC-55 was considered particularly high-end synth back in 1993-1994 or so, even home users bought it home (or SCC-1, which is basically SC-55 on a card; even I had/have one). I think those were widely used by PC game composers back in the day for General MIDI (or Sound Canvas) music..

Of course, compared to modern GM/GS soundfonts, they had to cram the instruments to quite a small ROM in the SC-55/SCC-1, so modern soundfonts have the luxury of having higher-quality instruments. That's why I am not particularlly pursuing for a 100% SCC-1 soundfont anymore. The likes of Chorium Rev.A, ToH etc. are superior to it. After that it becomes mostly the question of balance between the instruments, how much they affect how the original music sounds (e.g. I think the trumpet of ToH is too "strong" in X-Wing music, but otherwise the soundfont is great for it).
Post edited January 27, 2015 by timppu
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timppu: I think you just described Roland SC-55. Naturally the composer had to have some kind of synthesizer to get feedback how his work would sound in practice.
A large number of keyboards with soundfonts had huge limits in memory; Although soundfonts are fairly small we're talking about 200k or less. Maybe up to 1Mb as a ROM, but with 200+ instruments that quickly breaks down exactly how a soundfont should sound, especially the drum track where every key is a different instrument type of drum, bell, clap, or anything else.

Years ago i enjoyed some fun where i plugged a MIDI adapter directly to key keyboard's input, then fed the output back to my computer and recorded it. It generated wonderful music. I can probably still find some of it, although with Timidity++ and other soundfonts that's no longer necessary.
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timppu: I think you just described Roland SC-55. Naturally the composer had to have some kind of synthesizer to get feedback how his work would sound in practice.
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rtcvb32: A large number of keyboards with soundfonts had huge limits in memory;
Yeah I just wrote about that. Modern soundfonts don't have the same memory limitations as the ROMs on those 90s synths. Just look at the size of Timbres of Heaven... Chorium Rev.A is actually qute a bit smaller than the other mentioned soundfonts in this discussion, but even it is considerably bigger than e.g. SC-55 soundfont, I think.

Chorium = 27,5 MB
FluidR3 = 141 MB
SGM = 235 MB
Timbres of Heaven = 304 MB
(I recall even seeing some 2 gigabyte GM/GS soundfont, that is just insane...)

I have some SC-55 soundfont (not sure if it the real one, or one just trying to mimic SC-55), and it is merely 9.42MB uncompressed. The Gravis Ultrasound by which some still swear for some reason had originally just 256kB of RAM, upgradeable to 1MB (I think it had to contain the whole GM soundfont, if you wanted to use the card with General MIDI games; games with native tracker-type GUS support (both of them) could naturally upload those instruments/samples the game needed, saving RAM space).

But beyond that, it becomes the question of balance between the instruments, compared to the synth that the original composer was using.
Post edited January 27, 2015 by timppu
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timppu: But beyond that, it becomes the question of balance between the instruments, compared to the synth that the original composer was using.
A higher quality soundfont can't be bad... but balance, yes that would be a problem. If it sounds slightly off it can just ruin the output.

I kinda wish they made rules for soundfonts, so you could make higher quality ones that are drop in replacements rather than mix & match. Still, find a good set for you and you can do wonders.
If you care about accuracy more than anything, use Patch93's SC-55 soundfont v1.9. It's the closest I've found to the actual SC-55.
Lately I tested as many soundfonts as I could find. Both on my X-Fi card and with BASSMIDI software driver.

So far the best General MIDI soundfont I found for gaming is Giant Soundfont which can be found at

http://giantsoundfont.npage.de

The name suits it, because it is rather big, about 540 MB uncompressed, but it sounds really good and what is more important is still actively developed and patched by its creator, and developed in a way suitable for gaming.
I have made a few sample videos with it on some old games via dosbox

AdLib Synthesizer vs. Giant Soundfont
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He_mlHj7tOU

Lost Vikings intro/tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvWPXly_yVw

Blackthorne intro sequence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IG3MwjPSj4

This is another huge soundfont Evanessence, which is close to 2GB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ86HUs61k4

Giant soundfont sounds better than evanessence on most of the games, except for some reason on Westwood games, where Evanessence is better. I think currently Evanessence is reduced and is called Musying Kyte or something like that. Havent tested the quality after the change

Dune 2 intro, using Evanessence soundfont
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ86HUs61k4
Post edited March 06, 2015 by pdedinski
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pdedinski: Lately I tested as many soundfonts as I could find. Both on my X-Fi card and with BASSMIDI software driver.

So far the best General MIDI soundfont I found for gaming is Giant Soundfont which can be found at

http://giantsoundfont.npage.de

The name suits it, because it is rather big, about 540 MB uncompressed, but it sounds really good and what is more important is still actively developed and patched by its creator, and developed in a way suitable for gaming.
I have made a few sample videos with it on some old games via dosbox

AdLib Synthesizer vs. Giant Soundfont
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He_mlHj7tOU

Lost Vikings intro/tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvWPXly_yVw

Blackthorne intro sequence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IG3MwjPSj4

This is another huge soundfont Evanessence, which is close to 2GB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ86HUs61k4

Giant soundfont sounds better than evanessence on most of the games, except for some reason on Westwood games, where Evanessence is better. I think currently Evanessence is reduced and is called Musying Kyte or something like that. Havent tested the quality after the change

Dune 2 intro, using Evanessence soundfont
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ86HUs61k4
Interesting. I have Musyng Kite, Giant 6.0 beta and Timbres of Heaven 3.2. Tried comparing all 3 in Dragonsphere and Flight of the Amazon Queen and while I cound hear the difference, couldn't decided which one was better. Eventually settled on Musying Kite.

As was mentioned by someone else, there are also soundfonts which aim to reproduce the SC-55 sound although they're questionable legality as they often use Roland samples. (But it isn't always totally clear whether the samples used on free soundfonts which don't aim to sound like the SoundCanvas were obtained from an acceptable sources.) Besides Patch93, StrikingUAC/Trevor James is popular. I tested both, but decided I somewhat prefer the other soundfonts although again it was hard to decided. There is also a 1.8GB commercial soundfont but it costs like US$90 so I think few people have tried it. I imagine one limitation is even if you use only SoundCanvas original samples, the synth probably isn't going to processes them the same as the SC-55 did. The Sound Canvas app in iOS is said to be quite a faithful reproduction, but not something you can easily use for gaming.

Of course to a big extent it depends on your personal preference. Some people may prefer the music to sound as close to what the original composer may have been aiming for. Others may care less about this and just want something which sounds good in their opinion. As has been mentioned by others, balance between the instruments or rather a similar balance (not necessarily the same since to some extent that's also personal preference) to what the composer was using is ideal but beyond that it's up you you what you think the instruments should sound like IMO.

One factor which is often not talked about is that even if a composer was primarily working with an SC55 or whatever, I imagine some or may be even many would have at least tested, and probably tweaked their games to make sure they worked ok with other popular GM synths, cards and daughterboards common at the time including non MPU401 ones. E.g. Gravis Ultrasound and Soundblaster AWE32 (depending on when the game was released and what was popular at the time).

Edit: A bit more testing and checking back found several other Soundfonts I'd tried or seen recommended before. There is WeedsGM3, ChoriumRevA abd SFM v2.01. All these are fairly old but some people find them good for games and old doesn't have to mean bad. There's also Arachno Soundfont 1.0 which is somewhat inbetween, last updated 2012 I believe.

Personally, with my limited testing I couldn't say any of these were definitely better than what I was using.

There's also Crisis General Midi. 3.01 is fairly old now 2006. The author was developing 4 but abandoned it due to the lack of donations or licences. However the author later said they lost their job and so has more time to work on Crisis 4. I'm sure we all hope they will get or got a new job or whatever, whether or not they have time to work on CGM4. (Someone also suggested they consider crowdfunding. I think this person mentioned this elsewhere on GOG.) Something to keep an eye on in any case perhaps.

I probably should have mentioned, of the earlier soundfonts not counting the Soundcanvas ones which seem to be developed by different people for short times, both Giant and Timbre of Heaven seem to be under some degree of development. For Musygn Kite the author has said is the final version of the soundfont (which has gone under many names), but welcomes others to develop it. It sounds like it isn't the first time the author lost interest so it's possible things could change there too.

You can find a fair few comments and criticism of the various soundfonts when it comes to games in various places like VOGONS and here, where people feel the strengths and weakness are. For the older soundfonts without many or any versions these criticism are probably still valid although you may not agree with them. For the ones like Giant or Timbre of Heaven, it's possible things have changed. (I guess one advantage of the changing names for of Muysng Kite is it's clear what version people are talking about.) Where people have specified where exactly they found problems you can probably test this yourself. (If it's a specific game, you can probably find the midi files somewhere if you don't own it.)

Finally perhaps useful to remember you can combine soundfonts. At the simplest level, with Virtualmidisynth or any other Sountfont 2 synth which supports loading multiple sountfonts, you can load supporting soundfonts to provide instruments you ons is weak in. E.g. Drums by Slavo seems a popular addition to some of the older sountfonts. Bellatrix Orchestra is another possibility. You will need to check how your synth handles priorities. And there's also the problem of balance again so you may have to edit one of your Soundfonts. (Probably the same if you only want some of the instruments although IIRC the X-Fi GM or something like that allowed you to select which instruments you wanted from the Soundfont.)
Post edited July 21, 2015 by NilEinne
Thanks for the opinion.

I've tried a score of soundfonts myself, including the ones that aim to reproduce SC-55. However you are right that samples themselves are not enough to reproduce it.

You are mentioning some fonts that I have not tried and I will give them a go.
As for combining them I am already substituting instruments from one sound font to another using Viena and I also use Synthfont2 quite a bit (even donated to the author).

It really depends on the user preference.. For my tasting I have found that for old games Giant and the Evanessence (ex Musying Kite.. I think the last version sonds worse to my taste than when it was Evanessence).

I love the MIDI sound of old games, and since back in the days I could not afford anything more expensive than a SB Pro compatible card with an OPL3 synthesizer I find strange charm in rediscovering them while experimenting with the different ways they can sound.
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NilEinne: There's also Crisis General Midi. 3.01 is fairly old now 2006. The author was developing 4 but abandoned it due to the lack of donations or licences. However the author later said they lost their job and so has more time to work on Crisis 4. I'm sure we all hope they will get or got a new job or whatever, whether or not they have time to work on CGM4. (Someone also suggested they consider crowdfunding. I think this person mentioned this elsewhere on GOG.) Something to keep an eye on in any case perhaps.
Crisis GeneralMidi 3.01 is still my favourite one ;)
Tried Crisis.. latest 3.x Version, loaded into BASSMIDI.. it's a well balanced soundfont and definetely one of the better ones and definetely sounds catchy on some games.. Still Giant remains my favourite. I think I have tried already most of the listed ones.

But you are right, there is no perfect soundfont. That's why I keep four ready to use.. Two loaded on my Sound Blaster X-Fi Midi banks (Giant and now Crisis) and rwo ready on the BassMIDI ports (Evanessence and FluidR3). And I like to configure each game with a separate dosbox config file, so I've set each with the soundfont I think sounds best on it.
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pdedinski: Tried Crisis.. latest 3.x Version, loaded into BASSMIDI.. it's a well balanced soundfont and definetely one of the better ones and definetely sounds catchy on some games.. Still Giant remains my favourite. I think I have tried already most of the listed ones.
I’m going to give a try to Giant Soundfont.
Is 5.9c the version I should go with?

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All right, I understand, "c" for compressed, "nc" for non-compressed.
Post edited July 23, 2015 by vv221
Guys, just wanted to thank you for recommendations. It's kinda hard to look for soundfonts if you don't know where to look at. I tried before and gave up. But I just tested several suggestions from this topic and the midis now sound much better.