MT-32 Manual - are other versions available?

[HondaSiR]

And there's also the MT-32 with the third headphone jack hole at the back. I would presume that's the model with the 1990 ROMs. Matt, does your 1990 MT-32 have this feature? And how is your RWI unit differ from ours?

[Matt W]

Well...My 2.07 unit has a headphone jack if thats any help. The RWI 1.07 unit according to Robin Whittle (of Real World Interfaces) has reverb modes added from the D110 I believe. It also has a battery backup as well as generally better sounding samples. I think the s/n ratio was somewhat improved as well. He also mentioned that some of the RWI modded units had extra outputs added to the back of the unit for reverb reflections but my unit just has the regular left and right outputs.

And Tom...the MIDI light is not blinking during ROM play...forgot to answer that earlier.

Finally, the original reason this thread got started. Here is the scanned page of the MT-32 manual regarding the ROM Play:

[HondaSiR]

All right! Thanks for the info, Matt. Somehow I knew that there was something special about that MT-32, the one that has the third headphone jack at the back. Its the one with the ROM play feature. So far I have only seen one of them being auctioned off at ebay...they are pretty rare, even rarer than the ones that come with rack mounts.

[George Montemayor]

Just downloaded the oggs; can't wait to listen to them at home tonight.    I took a look at the PDF file and noticed two of the demos were by Adrian Scott.   That name sounds awfully familiar.  Didn't he also compose demos for the SoundCanvas line?

[Matt W]

I've seen and have several Roland demos by Adrian Scott. If I recall, he did Leya's Song which is one of the demos on the SC-55. (Jazz Lagoon being the other.)

Also, I forgot to add that there is a typo in the manual. on the MT-32, the songs are numbered in the order that I have them posted. Notice in the list that 2 of them are switched.

[HondaSiR]

The CM-32L's ROM has the strings "Random Demo-Play" and "Chain Play", but nothing in the way of song titles, so I assume it doesn't have demo tunes as I had once hoped.

Just out of curiosity...but what are those strings for? The CM-32L, CM-64 and CM-500 all lack the front panel display and buttons. How do we access those demo songs if they do exist in those ROM chips? Perhaps a special sysex message can be used to extract them?

[Tom]

I'd like to know that, too.  The CM-500 Manual doesn't mention anything about demo songs...

[Laust]

As far as I can tell, Roland had some kind of display and keypad support in mind when they designed the CM modules. The CM-32L has connectors that match the connectors for the display and keypad inside the MT-32. They're not identical (I guess that would have been too easy), but close. And one day I'll figure out how to hook up a key panel and LCD display to the CM-32L

Also, I have tried the CM-32L's ROM in the MT-32. It worked, somewhat. The display showed "**** Roland ****" on boot up and then proceeded to the normal channel display. The keys worked, but the volume control didn't. Sound didn't work at all, I got a continuous droning noise, and when I tried sending it a MIDI file it crashed at the SysEx (I think it responded to some display-changing SysEx first. Not 100% sure).

So, not quite compatible modules, but very similar nevertheless.

[HondaSiR]

Good Luck, Laust! Hopefully you can find a way to tap into the CM-series' ROM chips. Roland put them there for a purpose and hopefully we can unlock it one of these days.