Grand MS-DOS gaming General MIDI showdown

2023 Mar 5audiogamingmidims-dosTable of contentsIntroductionMeet the contestantsRoland Sound Canvas SC-55Roland Sound Canvas VAYamaha MU80Yamaha S-YXG50Recording processCapturing MIDI dataRecording the audioPost-processingRecordingsQuick impressionsFinal verdictRoland SC-55 vs Roland Sound Canvas VARoland SC-55 vs later Sound Canvas modelsRoland SC-55 vs Yamaha MU80Yamaha MU80 vs Yamaha S-YXG50In closingRecordings, links & further readingFilesSoftsynthsReviewsIntroductionThe Roland SC-55 sound module is the undisputed king of mid-late 90s General MIDI music in MS-DOS retro gaming circles. Well, I’m going to dispute that a bit in the present article, and I’m going to do more than just talk: as a happy new owner of a real SC-55 and one of its later competitors, the glorious Yamaha MU80, I’m going to put these two bad boys from the 90s to the test, along with their software recreation attempts.You can read all sorts of opinions and claims on this subject over the great (mis)information source of our time, the Internet, such as:The Roland Sound Canvas VA (SCVA) emulates the SC-55 wellThe SC-55 mode of the SCVA is inaccurateThe SC-88, SC-88Pro and SC-8820 are superior to the SC-55Music composed on the SC-55 sounds wrong on anything elseThe Yamaha modules are much better than anything ever put out by RolandThe Yamaha S-YXG50 is a 100% identical recreation of the Yamaha DB50XGAnd the list goes on… But instead of relying on second-hand information, anecdotes, and vague personal opinions, I’ll present you with high-quality lossless recordings of no less than 46 classic DOS game soundtracks, each recorded on 7 different MIDI modules! That’s 322 recordings in total, yikes!Of course, then I’ll share my own anecdotal and vague personal opinions on the matter—whether you ask for it or not—but that’s just how it goes. But now at least you’ll have the option to disregard what I’m saying and draw your own conclusions based solely on the recordings. Moreover, I’ll share all the MIDI files and the REAPER project files as well, so you can create your own recordings, should you wish to do so.Meet the contestantsRoland Sound Canvas SC-55The Sound Canvas SC-55 external MIDI module was released in 1991 by Roland as the successor of their Roland MT-32 family of modules. This was the world’s first synthesiser with General MIDI support, and it quickly established itself as the de facto standard for high-quality General MIDI audio in DOS gaming—a status that remained largely unchanged until the end of the DOS era.Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 (top) and Yamaha MU80 (bottom) General MIDI modules.(I’ve cable-tied up the whole thing already, and I won’t take it apart just to make separate photographs of the two units…)Apart from supporting the General MIDI standard (GM, in short), the SC-55 also supports Roland’s own General Standard (GS), which extends the General MIDI instrument list with additional instrument variations and drum kit sounds, and provides a standardised mechanism for adjusting chorus and reverb effect parameters, among a few other things.Most DOS games that have a “General MIDI” sound option use in fact not just GM, but also GS features. Variation instruments are generally avoided—presumably for better compatibility with GM-only modules—, but per-instrument chorus and reverb settings are frequently employed. As a result of this, some compositions may sound overly dry on GM-only modules that feature no such effects, lacking space and ambience. On other GM-only modules that do feature these effects but don’t allow fine-tuning their per-instrument levels via GS messages, the music may sometimes sound as if it was recorded in a cave!In short, if you want to experience MIDI music in DOS games at their best form, as their composers intended, you’ll need a GS-compatible device.I have recently bought an original Roland SC-55 from eBay Japan in near-mint condition—probably retired from a prestigious karaoke bar after decades of faithful service, entertaining drunk CEOs on the weekends… My unit was manufactured in 1991; it’s one of the early revisions without a General MIDI logo on the front plate (probably because the General MIDI standard released in 1991 wasn’t fully finalised at the time of manufacture yet). It has the v1.21 ROM, which is considered to be the overall best version for DOS gaming.Roland Sound Canvas VARoland’s Sound Canvas VA software synthesiser VSTi plugin was first released in 2015. It provides a software recreation of one of the last members of the Sound Canvas family, the Roland SC-8820 module from 1999 (a cut-down version of the SC-8850). It does not emulate the SC-55 directly, but it can be switched into SC-55, SC-88, and SC-88 Pro compatibility modes, just like the real SC-8820.Roland Sound Canvas VA VSTi pluginAlthough not perfect, this is the closest recreation of the original SC-55 in software form as of 2023.Because the SCVA can emulate later Sound Canvas modules, and people have made various claims about them over the years, naturally I’ll put all available models to the test. Knowing the year of introduction of a particular model might give you some hints about whether it’s suitable for a given game. The general logic behind this is that in say 1995 most people—including the composers—likely owned the upgraded SC-88 instead of the original SC-55, so the music must have been optimised for the module most people had access to. That’s sound reasoning, but I’ve found little empirical evidence to back up that claim based on my listening tests, but more on that later. Anyway, here are the original release dates of the different models:Roland Sound Canvas modelYear of releaseRoland SC-551991Roland SC-881994Roland SC-88Pro1996Roland SC-88201999Yamaha MU80The Yamaha MU-series of MIDI modules were Yamaha’s answer to Roland’s Sound Canvas line. The Yamaha MU80 was introduced in 1994 as a competitor to the Roland SC-88, the successor of the SC-55.Apart from basic GM support, the MU80 also has an excellent GS compatibility mode that sounds eerily close to the original Sound Canvas on most source materials. Additionally, the MU series also supports Yamaha’s vastly superior XG standard (EXtended General MIDI) which was sadly criminally underutilised in games. Because of this, we’ll only investigate the GS compatibility mode in this article.While the SC-55 was squarely aimed at the computer hobbyist market, the MU80 is at least a semi-pro sound module that found its way into many studios over the world. Objectively, it’s a much better device; the build quality is much more solid, and the range and quality of available instruments and effects are simply a league above the SC-55. But all this is for naught for us DOS gamers if its GS compatibility mode doesn’t sound great! 1Is the MU80 a superior piece of studio equipment unsuitable for gaming purposes? Or can it perhaps outdo Roland at its own thing? Fear not! As I happen to be the happy owner of a Yamaha MU80 from 1994—again purchased from eBay Japan—we will find out the answers to these pressing questions!Yamaha S-YXG50In 2003, Yamaha released the Yamaha S-YXG50 software synthesiser VSTi plugin as part of their SOL2 package. The S-YXG50 is a software recreation of their earlier DB50XG wavetable add-on card, which is a scaled-down version of their MU50 external MIDI module, which is in turn a scaled-down version of the MU80, the very first module supporting the XG standard. From a purely DOS gaming perspective, these differences don’t really matter; they’re all pretty much interchangeable when all you care about is games.Yamaha S-YXG50 VSTi pluginIn 2016, a Belarusian programmer created an ultimate portable VSTi version of this softsynth with the copy-protection removed, mixing and matching parts from various official Yamaha software releases. The plugin uses the original 4MB wavetable ROM of the MU lineup, and it sounds extremely close to the MU80 on most materials. As Yamaha discontinued all their software products in 2003, the S-YXG50 can be considered abandonware for practical purposes.Recording processUnless approached methodically, the likelihood of self-delusion or honest error in an endeavour like this is rather high. In order to turn this exercise into a repeatable process, and to be able to batch-render the softsynth versions in offline mode (faster than real-time), first I needed to record the MIDI output of the games. This also ensured that all different MIDI modules are sent exactly the same MIDI data during the audio recording process.As I’m intending to record lots of game music in the coming years, I think it’s best to document my recording process here once and for all.Retro gaming man cave. The desktop machine on the left is my Pentium MMX 200 based real “DOS box”; the tower on the right is an Athlon 64 rig I use for Windows 98 gaming. Paired with CRTs, of course, because old computers without CRTs are like non-alcoholic beer—rather pointless 😎🍺Capturing MIDI dataRecord MIDI data from the game running in DOSBox Staging via loopMIDI into REAPER. The REAPER project was set to 120 BPM and 960 PPQ MIDI event resolution, resulting in a MIDI event quantisation of 60 × 1000 / 120 / 960 = ~0.52 ms.Split the continuous MIDI stream into individual songs (when needed), perform minimal cleanup if necessary, and insert a “GS Reset” SysEx message at the start of each song.Notes and exceptionsThe Elders Scrolls: Arena — I did not record these in-game but I used the PX Player DOS utility that can play back XMI MIDI files using the original Miles Sound System drivers. Word of warning: this usually results in identical results, but in rare cases, the tempo might be off (e.g., for Discworld). Therefore, the results must always be checked against the actual in-game music or known-good recordings when taking this shortcut!System Shock — Similarly, I used PX to play the intro tune to make the transition to the menu screen at the end sound smoother.Star Wars: TIE Fighter —