At 06:09 PM 9/27/02 +0200, you wrote: >Even the mere possibility of playing MIDI files on MoonSound alone would >already be great. Adapting Meridian for MoonSound use would be even more >awesome, 'couse I really have to agree with you on that Moonblaster is >limited in its possibilities.
aaargh! PLEASE forget about midifiles!!!!!!! Playing a midifile on a moonsound is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas! This would be the same as converting a score (from a random book you buy in a music shop) to, say, fm-pac or/and msx audio. It just doesn't work that way! It will definitely sound like lamer-plastic. Listen to microcabin FM tunes, do they sound like the average casio dinky-toy you bought in the 80's? Nope, Micorcabin tunes sound better, but those keyboards mostly had the same chips, or at least comparible chips. I mean to say that if ppl spent some programming on dinkey-toy keyboards, they can sound way better aswell. Midifiles can sound good on your 2000$ Roland/Korg/Yamaha etc., but these models have at least 2..8 dsp functions onboard (reverb, chorus), filters, and way more ROM for their instruments. Surething that midifiles sound good then, have you ever tried to connect your msx audio to a reverb unit? You'll be surprised how fat that can be! DSP chips can make the worst casio sound reasonable. Anyway, even on mid/high-end keyboards, midifiles sound dull. Who the hell needs that 'gunshot' or that insane 'bird tweet', not to say that the 'fretnoise' sounds like an old granny with breathing problems. You have to thank Roland for this stupid setup, it was their idea! :) Anyway, the moonsound doesn't have DSP chips nor does it have reasonable ROM sounds (let's face it!). So, to compare it with "the world around us", you shouldn't use the card like that. The BEST way to get big sounds from the Moonsound is to carefully program it.. pay all attention to details and don't ever try to accomplish things the same way you're used to do with your other normal keyboards/synths. So, let's judge what we have then: 24 wave channels, playing ROM and RAM samples. Yeah well, the initial release should have had the full 512kb, now we're stuck to 128kb as not everyone has 512kb.. (and downsampling isn't an option as many samples probably are already 11khz/8bit :) I can guarantee that 24 wavechannels are far enough channels for most of our tunes, although it (or mbwave ??) lacks volume-ramping (meaning that you hear ticks between notes on the same channel). Unfortunately there's a number of limits in mbwave whichs prevents good voicecontrol; (based on the version I used some months ago, didn't use it much lately) unable to make more instruments out of 1 sample, bad frequency tables (try to copy some ROM strings to it, you can't get it in-tune!) and some minor things. The pattern editor: many peoply will say that they want more events per track. Honestly this is the least important issue! (surprised?) It's not unimportant, but there are things that really have more priority. Mostly they are simple things like channel-naming, quick mute/unmute keys, more pattern-scan levels/stages (to prevent waiting seconds when you're working in position 150 orso). IMO there are 2 ways to give the user more freedom: multiple events per step OR an advanced instrument editor. This instrument editor can provide special 'new' voice controls like pitch-envelope (which is basicly automaticly pitching like [C 4]->[P+3]->[L+3]), custom LFO (for pitch/volume/pitch/FM brightness) including a smooth random pattern (to add analog/acoustic fluctuations, you'll be amazed how much this can do!) and random timing differences (to make all things less static). FM: FM rules! Actually I think I'd use FM rather than Wave :) With FM you can polish and tweak until it's right, but above all: it doesn't sound lo-fi! FM-strings/pads can sound better than those in the ROM. The ultimate pattern-editor has 24 wave and 18 FM together. -> The most important rule to remember is: better a good synthetic sound than a bad pcm sample. <- darn, it's past 00:30 anyway, it would be great if meridian could be the package we're w8ing for since 1994 :) ttyl... (Zzzz..) _______________________________________________ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
