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Although FM sound cards will play the songs, the sound quality is rather wimpy. I recommend a wave table sound card such as the Sound Blaster AWE-32 or -64 card or equivalent.
If you don’t have a wave table card or external synth, there are software alternatives. Software wave table synth programs are available for download from several sources. Roland has a GM/GS SoftSynth which will play through any 16 bit A/D sound card. A demo version is available from their web site. Yamaha has two GM/XG SoftSynths with trial versions available for free download. The higher level one, the SYXG50, has more voices and stuff, but requires at least a 200MHz computer to run without drop out. Nova Station also offers a GM/XG SoftSynth with a free trial download. The sound driver is the same as the Yamaha SYG20 but the player program is different. You be the judge.
If these weren’t enough, Japanese programmer, Hiroki Nakayama has written a very good SoftSynth called WinGroove with a downloadable trial version. Check the links in this text or click the buttons below.
The Software synths are installed as midi drivers which work along with the FM synth and MPU401 external midi port drivers and can be selected in Windows Control Panel (Multimedia). Each of the above SoftSynths comes with a player program but I won’t discuss the differences in them here. Try them and see.
The Synth drivers themselves will work with virtually any midi application, including most sequencers, internet players, etc. These drivers will keep your computer rather busy so don’t count on running other applications at the same time; you may experience some drop out of the music. Also the processing required causes the sound to come out about a half second after the midi data is read. By itself, this is no problem, but I've found that if you set your sequencer to play some channels through the SoftSynth and others through your FM card or external synth, the SoftSynth notes will play a little later than the hardware synth making a mish-mash of your music.
Incidentally, although I use an AWE-64 card and several external synths, I do a lot of my editing on a laptop which only has an FM sound system and these softsynths are great!
Below are links to some SoftSynth sites.
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| Check out Roland’s GM/GS SoftSynth | Try Yamaha’s XG Synths | Here’s the Nova Station XG SoftSynth | Sample H. Nakayama’s WinGroove | Need Real Player? Here it is |
The REAL files on this site are compressed audio files. They require Real Media’s Real Player G2 to listen to them. You can download it free with the above icon. These are recordings of the music played on my synths so you can get an idea of how they are supposed to sound. The files are set up for 28k or faster internet links. There is some degradation of sound quality especially in the high frequency response. (The drums sound a little mushy.) But this is the small price we pay for manageable file size.
By the way, these songs are available on CD at MP3.com. Click the link below. Check this site often for more information.
Enjoy!
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Click here to check out my CD at MP3.COM |
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