External MIDI?

[Dyson]

I have an old Roland PMA-5 portable midi sequencer/synth (basically a newer, portable version of the SC-55) hooked up to my windows 7 machine.

It actually has great sound, and I've gotten some beautiful music from it.
I had to install the coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth in order to use its midimapper functions on Win7. I got it so I could play midi songs via windows media player, and have DOS games like Space Quest output to the PMA_5.

What I would *like* to do is output EQ's MIDI to the PMA-5. I know not all the audio is in MIDI-compatible format, and I'm fine with that outputting "normally". But for the midi music, I'd just like to hear it through my external midi.

I also have an MT-32, which I'm tempted to try it with, but EQ would have been at the end of the MT-32's popularity period, so is less likely to be compatible (the beautiful and famous MT-32 was pre "general midi").

So does anyone know of a way I can do this? Has anyone done it? Any suggestions would be welcome.

PS - I've got an old K-6 300mhz Win98 PC that will have an AWE-32 back in it once I replace the memory card sockets; I'm tempted to hook the MT-32 to that and try it, but I'm pretty sure Titanium EQ will run like molasses, at best, on that slow of a machine.

[mcoy]

Paging Aalderon - I think he got his Roland MT-32 working. Maybe send him a PM?

-Mcoy

[Dyson]

Originally Posted by mcoy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Paging Aalderon - I think he got his Roland MT-32 working. Maybe send him a PM?

-Mcoy

Thanks for the tip! I sent them a private message. Hopefully they'll post an explanation of how they did it.

I noticed yesterday that while I have music while loading and at character select, I no longer have in-zone music. No polka in Rivervale, no spooky in Lavastorm, no fairy music in Kelethin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Duane]

This guy has a playlist of all Pre-Luclin music on a Roland SD-50.

Here ya go.

[Dyson]

Originally Posted by Duane [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This guy has a playlist of all Pre-Luclin music on a Roland SD-50.

Here ya go.

Sounds great! listening to it now.

But I'm talking about using my PMA-5 or MT-32 while playing EQ.

[Mblake81]

I like learning about this topic and still associate synth with video game music & sounds. I had a Soundblaster Live! for original EQ.

From what I've been reading, the game was designed for/on AWE32 with synthusr.sf2 soundfont.

The music for EQ started coming together as early as 1995 and was composed with the AWE32 soundcard in mind. By the late 90s most games moved away from MIDI soundtracks but EQ still supported ONLY the AWE32 and Sound Blaster Live! cards for hardware sound. From what I can tell, this is because the game client loaded a special EQ soundfont into the card which loaded instruments and drums unique to the game in addition to calling upon instruments native to the cards EMU8000 midi synth chip.

I picked up the MIDI file archive from the EverQuest MIDI project and fired up the main theme and it pretty much choked my equipment. The composer (Jay Barbeau) really did compose in a late era of MIDI as it uses a solid 16 channels and knocks down the polyphony door. I am fairly certain you would cripple a Yamaha DB50XG if you tried to play back some of this music on it. As I understand it, that DB50XG has 32 voice polyphony. Watching the MIDI playback voice count in MIDI Player with playing "Norrath Beckons," it looks like it is averaging 25-30, has some areas that clear 40, and tops out at around 70 (!)

[Aalderon Crystafire]

Hi Dyson,

No, I did not use an MT-32 for Everquest. I did play some of the midi files back on my Roland SC-55 but that was not for in-game playback.

As Mblake81 has quoted above the soundtrack was composed for the AWE32/64 or any of the SBs with the EMU8000. Jay's soundtrack is magical and was one of the main reasons I had started playing on P99. Sadly, many of the MIDI triggers (when what track plays when and for how long) were broken after the trilogy client and it was never a priority getting it fixed here.

[Dyson]

Hmm... maybe I'll have to go looking for some sheet music for the soundtrack, and use that to make MIDI songss.

I discovered some of the songs are in a format that can be converted to midi; I converted one as a test.