AdLib vs. Roland MT-32: Police Quest 2

[tf2cheats]

scummvm since the latest daily build has munt reloaded build in for near perfect MT32 emulation

[Robloxian182]

Adlib=Eh, sounds pretty good for it's time. Roland MT-32=SWEET JESUS

[kevlarman]

Just played this agian last night via DOSBox. Couldn't get my real MT-32 working properly with my PC, but I am surprised at how close Munt sounds!

[SHINOBHS]

Roland MT32 is fantastic. Way better than AdLib.

[leroyrs]

The Roland sounds great, playing on another lever.

Sounds very 80s. :)

[Dilandau3000]

@leroyrs That's mainly due to the insane amounts of reverb used in this soundtrack. :)

[leroyrs]

@Dilandau3000

In the 90s I used a SB16+ Roland Wavetable Daughterboard SCD-15 (GS And GM Standard) So I was able to play music in Roland or Adlibmode. The demo disks were full of Midi Files showing what the Roland Synthie was able to do. Still amazing...

[x3posse]

wow, sounds great! Had this on an 80286 PC with EGA graph and regular built in speakers. Always wanted an Ad-Lib but my parents never bought me one - never knew that it sounded this great...!!

[mishmoshable]

Kool. I like the second one better. Was that information at the start yours however? Because thats a lot of information you posted . just sayin

[marquis0r]

how to connect a soundblaster card to a mt32?? do i need drivers? got a midi cable but in sound setup nothing happens on the mt32

[waytostoned]

OMG my ears, that is not adlib, its a mutant dot matrix printer emulating an adlib! :O

I for one welcome our new dot matrix orchestra overlords!

[spyro303]

Is it just my fuzzy memory or does the Adlib sound a lot tinnier than the Sound Blaster 1.0? Seems so treble heavy.

[Dilandau3000]

@spyro303 It's because this is the DOSBox emulation of the AdLib. The real thing does sound a little bit better.

[spyro303]

@Dilandau3000 If only modern motherboards still had an ISA slot I'd keep have my Sound Blaster 32 installed on every PC I ever own. I'm sure the dosbox emulated Sound Blaster OPML FM instruments don't sound as good as the real thing used to.

[1787dude]

according to the janitor, officer walls takes really big dumps that clog toilets

[CodyRicheson]

This sounds about as good as a pop instrumental from the same period. Really amazing quality!

[renmorpheus]

And another amazing MT-32 version. I wish I had the spare change to buy that module :(

[nicolaj0154]

@LoneWierdo hm, it depends on where you live and how much there is with and how good the conditon is, but im kinda young at dos games, but i got interested in the synth, because of its sound, so i have to talk about it with parents, and such, <_<

[atidiaX]

excessive verbosity ROFL, that's one hell of a criminal

[GavinRoskamp]

Holy shit. Must buy a Roland MT-32 and play Lemmings. I actually think my old Gateway had a Roland on-board, but it's taken apart in the garage now. Any way to snatch the card out of it?

[laffer35]

Finally got my own MT32 to work here, was hell getting the correct cables... ended up buying 3 different MIDI-USB cables on eBay, none of which would work correctly.

Finally ended up going to a music shop not that far from where I live and luckily the cable I picked up there worked perfectly.

This thing is really awesome and any fan of old Sierra games owe it to themselves to get one... well, I'm stating the obvious, anyone having watched the video here will already know :p

[nicolaj0154]

does anyone have a roland mt-32 they would sell cheap ore a giveaway?,

[marquis0r]

adlib is more nostalgic ;)

[PeoplesWar]

@marquis0r That's what I say. I prefer Adlib and SB simply because its what I remember. But wow, MT-32 was on top of the game!

[KallePelleVille]

just... FANTASTIC!

[ioctlvoid]

Wow. Just Wow. This is a game from _1988_, people. Do you realize that most people played games with only the PC-speaker back then?

I'm always confused about MT32, what exactly do you need to get this kind of quality? Do you use the Roland LAPC-I internal ISA card? Do you use the external Roland MT-32? How are they connected and set up?

Maybe you could do a quick video of your setup, that would be great to see. :-)

Great video this one too though, of course.

[Dilandau3000]

@ioctlvoid I use the external MT-32, connected with a USB MIDI cable, and the MT-32's audio output fed back into my sound card's line-in.

[aseglkj]

@ioctlvoid the LAPC-I, MT-32 and CM-32L are mostly compatible. the latter two are external modules that you can use with dosbox even with a laptop or recent PC - all you need is a cheap USB-MIDI adapter. for the LAPC-I you need a PC with an ISA slot, but it should still work in dosbox, or of course in pure DOS.

there is one thing - the LAPC-I and CM-32L have some extra sounds that some games use, so you'll be missing out on those with an MT-32.

[Dilandau3000]

@aseglkj On the other hand, some early games abuse bugs in the first-generation MT-32 to create some special effects, and those won't work right with the LAPC-I, CM-32L, or later generation MT-32s. :-)

[aseglkj]

@Dilandau3000 that's why I own an LAPC-I, an MT-32 and a CM-32L (and an SCC-1)

[frigginjoe]

Well Soundblaster got it right by incorporating a sampling channel in there, DMA, however you wanna consider it, but those cards were at least within the average enthusiast's budget range. Roland was always amazing, but even back then all that occurred to me when hearing the thing was that it sounded too good for the graphics.

Weird, I know.

A PC's beeps weren't doing justice to better EGA or VGA graphics out there, yet with the MT32, the package felt uneven again where gfx weren't up to par.

[ElasticMinds]

@frigginjoe 100 percent agree. The music is MILES beyond the graphics in the game. Considering the MT32 is a consumer module of the Roland D series. I have a D550 (a rack version of the flagship D50 keyboard) I wonder how much MORE of a unbalance it would be. Looks like i should be making a video of it soon.

[laffer35]

@frigginjoe Hah I know what you mean, that's exactly what I found myself thinking when finally getting my own MT-32 hooked up here.

[NoMac90]

I really like the YM3812 over anything else from that time, but this sounds really horrible.

[andersdenkend]

Holy shit!

[ashafro]

how do you connect a roland to a modern pc? do you need any special hardware/software to make it work

[Dilandau3000]

@ashafro Just get a USB MIDI cable, and if you want to get the sound back to your PC you'll also need a cable with two mono 6.35mm jack plugs on one end (to plug into the MT-32) and a single stereo 3.5mm mini-jack plug on the other end (to plug into your sound card's line in). You don't need any special software, you just need to select the proper MIDI device in DOSBox or other stuff where you want to use it.

[jobrook911]

And the other thing that's so cool is that this happened bloody 20 years ago (yes it's Japanese)! Anybody can improve things with 20 years extra to work on it, and the fact you are even comparing the quality is just more points to the MT-32.

Yeah, the reverb setting was definitely up too high. We all like a little extra reverb for the ambiance, but probably about 6-7 out of 10 is the max without it dominating the theme.

[janmansde3dede]

Really Roland MT-32 sounds fantastic But my only big grip with it is

Why does it sound like you're playing it in a Cave ?!?

On the other hand the echo's make the game feel older (which I like)

[Dilandau3000]

@janmansde3dede The composers went a little bit overboard with the reverb. :-)

[CopycatStudios]

@Dilandau3000 I'm guessing you're not into experimental, avant-garde music, then. :þ

[CopycatStudios]

@janmansde3dede Well, maybe if you're into normal, traditional music. If you like experimental, avant-garde stuff, you don't mind it so much. It is an important tool, along with backmasking, synthesizer nodding, feedback, electronic sampling, cacophony, atonality, dissonance and confusion. Like The Fiery Furnaces, Lustmord, and Front Line Assembly.

[xeonrebel]

To be honest, any midi can sound that nice with DSP, Reverb and Chorus effects, i mean with todays technology, i can connect my yamaha psr keyboard and sound even better than mt-32, it has more channels and more sound effects. truly, mt-32 was advanced for its time, the thing is that if adlib had after effects proccesing it would have sounded a lot better...

[Dilandau3000]

@xeonrebel Yes, but this isn't today's technology, it's late-80s technology. And your Yamaha definitely won't help make PQ2 sound better because PQ2 has no General MIDI support. Also, the main point with the Sierra games is that they wrote their music specifically for the MT-32, so it's not going to sound as intended on anything else (this is not true for some of their later games which can and do sound good on any GM device).

[jobrook911]

Hey, no offense, but this sounds more like the DosBox Adlib Emulation. The real Ad Lib is more balanced in it's sound banks.

About MT-32, yes Sierra apparantly invested heavily in this technology and it was ahead of it's time. Though it never gained a proper commercial base due to it's cost.

A real treat for retro-junkies.

[Dilandau3000]

@jobrook911 That's because it is the DOSBox emulator. I realize that biases the result in favour of the MT-32, but the different because DOSBox's OPL-2 emulation and a real AdLib is nowhere near as big as the difference between e.g. Munt and a real MT-32. :-)

[janmansde3dede]

@jobrook911 Too bad that sierra never invested in the Commodore Amiga's paula

(they used adlib..)

[plexci]

Wow, this knocks my socks off!!!

[SamonMarquis]

With the amount of things Sonny Bonds does during this ONE DAY parallels that of Jack Bauer.

[Dilandau3000]

1. I was saying it makes no difference if you use the *real* MT-32 with DOSBox or a real PC. DOSBox passes MIDI data to the MT-32 without modifying it so it really makes no difference.

2. I know what this game sounds like on a real AdLib. There is no discernable difference with the version presented here.

3. The DOSBox OPL emulator is one heck of a lot better than the Munt MT-32 emulator.

[1music4all]

Wow, I want an MT-32 now!! Where can I find one?

[Dilandau3000]

@1music4all eBay or something similar would be your best bet.

[ThinkLearnSolve]

holy shit, that sounds so different

[Acadianiste]

holy shit... for the MT-32, how can it spit out such a sound from such an old game... are you running this in an authetic computer of the time too?

[Dilandau3000]

No, I'm running it from DOSBox, but it makes no difference. It would sound exactly the same if I had used an old computer with a real MPU-401 to connect to the MT-32.

It's the MT-32 that produces the sound, the computer has no influence on it.

[Acadianiste]

i,va been wanting an adlib card lately.

[Acadianiste]

for retro reasons. lol

[region1111]

Wow what a difference. that's the first time I've ever heard the mt-32 music for this game. It sounds like real music!

You should post more, for their other games too.

The mt-32 was something like $500 back when this game came out. Way too steep for a teenager's budget.

I remember how much sierra would hype, hype, hype that card. Very few people actually had one.

I wish they had put more effort into developing quality music for an adlib or soundblaster 1.0, those are the ones everyone had.

[Acadianiste]

Lol what is real music? isn't any music real music?

[region1111]

Acadianiste:

I'd call that first adlib verison of the song quasi-music. You can tell they started with the mt-32 version and worked backwards, downgrading it.

[Phanto5692]

Very nice and all but.... what's the point?

[Dilandau3000]

The point is, I bought one and wanted to show it off. :-)

[ThinkLearnSolve]

do you got ears?

[lemonrind]

I had an original Sound Blaster card. I think the AdLib sounds better, due to nostalgia.

[robot797]

that sound card sounds good

weird enough

[nesnahprotsdam]

That's pretty damn amazing.