Windows 3.11 (Introducing OLE and General MIDI)

[AngelOfGeass]

I play Crysis 2 in one of these

[retrogamerSam]

Birdhouse MIDI FTW!!! Epicosity is just too awesome!!!

[leonardobaker]

Sweet! where can I buy it!! XD

Screw windows 7! :D

[rodstartube]

OKOKOK POOP (LOL)

[dnebdal]

I'd forgotten that media player!

[Extaticus]

Oh, how I've missed Windows 3.11...

You, sir, have just made my day.

[mpowellmpowellmpowel]

Cool, I remember when I had Windows 3.1 and 3.11. Brings back memories.

[wilstermania3]

Win 3.11 I cant belive it what i see ...That was times^^

[B14UTH00TH]

OMG!!!!!! Windows 3.11 plays MIDI files better than Windows 95/98!!!!!!!! :O

[Azarien]

It depends on your sound card abilities, not on your Windows version.

[TheCheezWizz]

@B14UTH00TH what are you even rambling about nigger

[iHateDlls]

Honey.bmp background over there! :D

[christy2drag]

I never understood what OLE did. It seemed such a pointless thing to me at the time.

[KlonoaKawaiiDesu]

*sigh* I miss the OPL3 MIDI I used to have on my old computer... I used to have Windows 98 on my old computer, and I used to be fascinated with the Wavetable synth that was also on the old sound card. Looking back, FM MIDI is better, it has a better veriety of instruments.

[FusionNinjin]

i wouldnt mind useing 3.11, at least one knows whats running , and it is possible to get a 3.11 mashine on the net

[martonium]

a supported network card (with win3.11 drivers) + tcp/ip stack for win3.11 (can be downloaded off microsoft website; google for this) + supported browser (Opera 3.62, IE5 16-bit, Netscape 4.08) and you should be good to go

[FusionNinjin]

iv allready tested 3.11 trough a virtual mashine on net so its very possible :P

[singinglawnchair]

I never thought a sound card synthesizer could make me this happy, but it does. Ah, good times. Thanks for posting, now I want to pull out my old IBM, haha.

[Trancilian]

damn, I remember that midi media player. Looks a lot different from the winamp I use today^^ old school rocks!!

[tjtaber1988]

The sound of the midi in Win3.11 reminds me of the Sega Genesis.

[tgies]

Well, that's not Windows 3.11 specifically, that's the Sound Blaster and Adlib sound cards everyone had around then.

There's a good reason it sounds like the Genesis -- both the Adlib/Sound Blaster and the Genesis had Yamaha FM synthesizer chips.

[nickitas87]

@tjtaber1988 16 bit

[tgies]

Yeah, later versions of the software came with different MIDI patch sets for OPL3. The OPL3 patches used more operators per voice, since there were more available, resulting in more complex timbres.

[tgies]

Dead certain. It's a tweaked version of DOSBox with some optimizations and with the sine lookup tables messed with to make the OPL emulation a little more realistic.

At a couple points in the song, more voices are heard than the OPL2 would be capable of producing.

[Kil6969]

fuck geroge bush FUCK RELIGIONS

[tgies]

i didn't catch that name for a second

i have been laughing for three solid minutes

i hate you kil

[royalsteven]

Amazing i've had this after my atari. Then '95, '98, '00 and XP. My '98 computer had 7gb memory, now 160gb what a difference! I had internet, photoshop, dowloads, games and all the other programs on my 7gb computer. No wonder it there wasn't enough memory!

[FragMan69]

Wow, SB16 was my first sound card back in 1994. I remember all these apps, SoundoLE and stuff.

[horncomposer]

Canyon! At the end! I remember that song! Wow I don't even know if I still have it anymore...

Well about a VST OPL2 emulator, I started making one on SynthEdit a couple weeks ago. It's mainly a melodic mode synth that is supposed to imitate the quasi-"4-op" synthesis Doom used (basically two 2-op voices per note). It's difficult to make it sound realistic enough though, as I had to approximate certain values. I'd love to learn how to adapt the MAME code to VST...but it does sound challenging.

[tgies]

CANYON.MID is awesome. You can find it on the Internet if you do some Google searches.

The thing about emulating the OPL series is that a lot of their character comes from their flaws. The OPL2 and OPL3 had a very questionable way of doing the sine and cosine functions that involved looking up badly approximated values for sin(x) in a lookup table. This is why so many sound cards that "emulate" the OPL3 (such as later Sound Blasters) don't sound right at all.

[smartalex61]

Where did you get this software?

[tgies]

The MS-DOS emulator is called DOSBox; Google it. You can fish up a Windows 3.1 or 3.11 CD or floppy set on eBay.

[texhasreturned]

But do you think that its wasting money by buying a setup of an old Windows operating system to possibly use with DOSBox on a Windows XP/Vista computer (Undestroyable!)?

[Skornish]

@texhasreturned What does DOSBox do?

[texhasreturned]

DOSBox emulates DOS programs with the sound and graphics emulated as well.

[Leafblower29]

Soundblaster 16 without Yamaha OPL3 synthesizer would have sucked.

[tgies]

Well, the digital samples were a pretty big deal at the time. I love OPL3, though.

[heatblizzard]

Sorry for so many posts but their is a character limit on here. :( Hint: You can drag and drop the EXE onto the emulator itself instead of typing the commands by hand.

[tgies]

Starting Windows under Dosbox is a little trickier than that, IIRC.

[heatblizzard]

The SB16 cards are NOT compatible with the new Sound Blaster. Meaning your old one is WORTHLESS unless you have an old PC set up just for that. I liked the old synth sounds especally the organs.

Play Flix Mix an Abandonware innoventive puzzle game and listen to the variety of music. You can get it at Home of the Underdogs (search on Google) and use Dos Box.

[heatblizzard]

Isn't that what we were talkinga bout the Creative Lab's Set?

When I was little I played a lot of 'Edutainment' games back in the early to mid 90s. and the SB16 had a really neat retro sound to it. Which sounded like this. I asssume that's what we were talkinb about. The modern Creative cards are not compatible with SB16

[heatblizzard]

MAN! That would be so nice for everyone if someone to make the OPL3 soundfont then we can hear music the same in games as Flix-Mix. Unfortunately, I don't have the knowledge to make such a soundfont nor hardware.

[tgies]

You can't strictly make an OPL3 soundfont, since the OPL3 didn't have a limited range of sounds it could make -- it was a full-featured synthesizer and there were millions of possible ways to program it. I suppose one could make a soundfont of this Creative Labs General MIDI set, though.

[royspencer]

DUDE! u but that song in xcom...but now i have vista and now it doesnt work...help maybe?

also, what were u useing for the filming?

[RAMPKORV]

Are there any soundfonts availible that could replicate these OPL sounds? If anyone knows, please contact me.

[tgies]

The OPL3 has an effectively infinite range of sounds, being a fully programmable FM synthesizer; however, it might be possible to make a SoundFont approximating the sounds in the SoundBlaster General MIDI set for the OPL3 heard here. Nothing really beats the real thing (or a particularly good emulator), though.

[jdean9]

i'm looking for ways to emulate the OPL3 sounds, do you have any idea? mame32 does a great job i think, i listen to a lot of music in the mame32 music player, but i don't know how to use that engine myself. I wish i had those sounds in a vsti or as samples or something... any ideas?

[tgies]

I have considered creating an OPL3 VSTi myself. I might do this at some point. The MAME OPL2/3 emulator is actually the same as the one in DOSBox. You can always use a DOS-based music app such as Voyetra Sequencer Gold or Adlib Tracker in DOSBox.

[RAMPKORV]

Perhaps something I could look into during the summer, if I can just find a good source for information on how to write VSTs in C.

[jdean9]

This version of windows will be incredible! Any idea when it will be released?

[tgies]

Definitely leaps and bounds beyond any version of Windows we've seen so far. They finally figured out how to do away with all the unnecessary dreck.