Yamaha XG and PC Games

[zaphod77]

I'm pretty sure final fantsy 7 XG battel music does a custom patch for the breath sound, as i uses a no existent bank 130 patch 26 (!)

And yes, this works on even the softsynth.

[zaphod77]

okay i tested. the sy50xg does not load qs300 voices at all. found a midi using them and got... silence...

That said, the waveforce style cards CAN definitely load banks, because the wavesets are not stored on the card! the powerymf drivers can update and change the used banks!

[zaphod77]

Having finally gotten one of those ds-xg soundcards, I can confirm the following.

1) PowerYMF can change the soundbanks, but it requires a reboot. no dynamic banks adjustment.

2) DS-XG are not sitable synth references. the synth is a combinatin of hardwaare streams and software processing, and they gtet it WRONG in many of the drivers. a simple test is the Vomving Mission XG MIDI file. Played with the softsynth, or any other accurate XG synth, there's a amazingsounding swirlig whoosh effect not too far in. it sound right on the db50 and sw60,as well ass all syxg softsynths. the ds cards mess it up!

3) powerymf is still useful, as it can reallocate gardware streams from midi to wave and directsound in nearly any combinnation.

Sad to say, the latest sy50xg kicks it's ass. fortunately the card was only 4 bucks...

[glendower]

Hey, board noob here-- anyone want me to see if I can record and upload some of the FF7 tunes from my DB50XG or SW1000xg? I'll have to find a place to put them, of course

[zaphod77]

Suggest using WInamp to playback the midis, as it's one of the few players (if you have the rigth version) to support marker baseed midi looping. You can even set the number of loops

look in a ff7 midi, and you wil see two midi text events. loopstart and loopend. a midi file with them will play from the start, until loopend, and then jump back to loopstart until the max loops for your player confg is reached, and then it will pass loopend.

Every one of them gets the SYXG50 seal of approval.  They play perfect on the db50/sw60, and probably play right on the sw1000 as well, but only the softsynth and the early cards are guaranteed to be correct fro them.  Some of them make extreme use of effects like bombing mission, and are ruined by the waveforce YMF cards.  If your synth gets it right instead of a reverse cymbal you will get an amazing sounding woosh and sword chink effect that sounds NOTHING like a reverse cymbal

[glendower]

Suggest using WInamp to playback the midis, as it's one of the few players (if you have the rigth version) to support marker baseed midi looping. You can even set the number of loops

look in a ff7 midi, and you wil see two midi text events. loopstart and loopend. a midi file with them will play from the start, until loopend, and then jump back to loopstart until the max loops for your player confg is reached, and then it will pass loopend.

Every one of them gets the SYXG50 seal of approval.  They play perfect on the db50/sw60, and probably play right on the sw1000 as well, but only the softsynth and the early cards are guaranteed to be correct fro them.  Some of them make extreme use of effects like bombing mission, and are ruined by the waveforce YMF cards.  If your synth gets it right instead of a reverse cymbal you will get an amazing sounding woosh and sword chink effect that sounds NOTHING like a reverse cymbal

I use MegaMid for simple playback... it's cool in that it allows some control of the voices but does not loop (and looping would be cool for recording).

I tried the softXG synth and it really sounds considerably worse than the XB50 or SW60-- maybe it's because I'd already had the DB50 when I bought FF7, but I found the soft synth to be almost embarassing (granted, I didn't try to tweak it or anything... why bother when I had the 'real thing'? ). The music sounds really decent through the SW1000... some instruments seem to be softer by default on the newer synth, but over all, the instruments seem better defined and not as muffled as they do on the DB50. I never thought of them as muffled until I heard the sw1000 Although I have the MIDs ripped from the game, I still felt the need to play through it again. DB50 and SW60 definitly sound better than the PS version.

<sigh> it makes me sad to read the old reviews of that game and see people badmouthing the midi music because they don't exactly get it. It's like badmouthing the graphics because you have a crappy video card or monitor.

[Kaminari]

Blame it on Creative :)

[glendower]

I blame *SO* much on creative. A3D was blowing EAX out of the water... grrrrrrrrrrr.

[Locutus]

@glendower: I'd really like to hear some FF7 SW1000XG samples. :-) It'd be great if you could record some and put them online somewhere.

Regards,
locutus

[glendower]

@glendower: I'd really like to hear some FF7 SW1000XG samples. :-) It'd be great if you could record some and put them online somewhere.

Regards,
locutus

Hey locutus, I'm trying to get the recording feature to work in XGWorks... I have a feeling that XGWorks still isn't 100% win2K compatible even with the patch. I can record it using another sound recorder, but I sure would like it if this could work.

[glendower]

Okay, I'm giving up on XGWorks working for now (although most of the other features seem to work properly)... I've started recording tracks, but thought that i would take requests-- what would you like to hear?

[Locutus]

@glendover: Thanks, I'd really enjoy listening to some MIDI files from my private collection on the SW-1000XG. I have put them in a ZIP archive and moved them to my private webserver.

The archive contains the following files:

- DESCENT.MID, which is the theme song from DOS game "Descent".
- gm_tt0.mid, theme song from Transport Tycoon, which consistently surprises me with it's incredibly fine-tuned MIDI files, that sound very good on nearly all of the GM synths I played it with.
- gm_tt03.mid, another file from Transport Tycoon with interesting electric guitar slides
- HUMAN2.GM and ORC2.GM from Warcraft II, don't have to say anything here
- xg_lgp_0043.mid, xg_lgp0055.mid, xg_lgp_0085.mid from Final Fantasy VII (PC version). They have support for XG Level 1 I believe, correct me if I'm wrong.

If you like, you can send the MP3 files via email (locutus266|at|web.de), so I can host them on my space for this forum. I happen to have some webspace to put it on.

I hope this is not too much to ask for, but it's very hard to choose from a big collection of files. If you feel busy, ditch the FFVII files. :-)

Best regards,
locutus

[glendower]

I havne't forgotten about this! I've recorded some of htem but had to take an emergency trip out of state.

I have all of the FF7 music that i ripped from the game disk, so if you want any other tunes, I've recoded a few. I like a lot of those songs that you've included there!

I've also been trying to 'fix' some XG tunes that i Have that were written specifically for the SW60xg so that they sound right on the SW1000XG. Some instruments just sound crisper and cleaner on the 1000 than on the DB50/SW60, but others actually sound more natural, I suppose (pipes sound windier-- I don't know the correct musical terms). Often, those instruments are lost in songs where they weren't supposed to sound 'correct', they were just supposed to sound the way they do :-D

I like how some people compose for a module-- they want a song that sounds like the module, not a song that sounds like real insturments. Of course, we'd all like to have authentic sounding instruments, but if not, make good use of what you have. It's been an interesting lesson

[zaphod77]

Certain types of music HAVE to be onposed for a modle specificlly.

As long as you stick to gm, it works across GM.

BUt you get into filter effects, and the exactsampleused suddenly becomes absolutely REQUIRED to get the song to sound right.

My poor ears find the softsynth to be high quality and nearly equal to the sw60xg.

Some XG versions of the songs are improved, yes.

But others are much better on the ps1.  Still more FIghting, for example. as i said before, that dirty percussive drawbar custom sample just makes the song.