Logg wrote:

bristlehog wrote:

It turns out that this driver doesn't support any configuration (it effectively ignores any config parameters passed). Thus, only default configuration is supported

I found this quote from 4 years ago, and I think this applies to the SBP2FM driver as well? I made a SBP2FM.CFG in the same directory as SBP2FM.ADV, and when I run the command "PX DEMO.XMI SBP2FM.ADV" it ignores the I/O address I put in SBP2FM.CFG and fails to initialize.

No, it doesn't apply to SBP2FM.

bristlehog

A big hug from me, i was searching the web up and down for a player which i can use in a batch plays midi (xmi) via the various virtual boards in DOSBox, outputs nothing if i redirect to NUL and whatever else, it's just great for the use i've planned.
Mainly for a purpose like this:

https://youtu.be/FJLdTGmpvP4

Of course it's useless rubbish (the sound selection) but i like it. (it's just to distract me for some time from working on my models, every now and then i need a pause from that)
Foremost it allows me now to use only one player and i can even playback via SBFM to have an impression how it will sound in the game, this i missed most even when it sounds tard and i will probably never play the game in this way if there are better sounding configurations.

Intentionally i just liked to make a couple of midi comparison clips to show off the differences between lousy MSWS, astonishing GUS and the use of a recent wavetable soundfont. But it turned out to this what you see in my clip even if that is only useful to capture it. Settlers i will play via GUS anyway the sometimes quite large soundfonts aren't bad but less balanced as GUS. Other games using the virtual midi synth it depends on which i like best for the game there would be no need to select a different soundboard.

Just one thing i like to ask, does it return an errorlevel if i break using ESC?
That would be fine because then i can even return to the previous screen.

But i can check this myself no problem.

Priama commander bristlehog

---

"Phoenix" former "Sputnik" 😉

Any reason why "GMT32MPU.ADV" isn't included?
It's not exactly like "MT32MPU" and specifically ment for the Roland LAPC-1.
I found this driver in SimCity Classic (might be used by other games as well)
For SimCity Classic (and it's limited music) it's a matter of choice when you run it emulated which you prefere, both sound well but different.

Thanks to "PX" i stumbled over some weird old MIDI from "Space 1889", the game only supports PC speaker / Covox and if you play back the "ROL" usually they have only Piano as instrument, using PX you can hear how they was ment to sound (strange - the files are in the zip below).

The bankfile used for the conversion from ROL to MID could have an effect but played back else it still only plays piano chords.
However the music in the game sounds like the conversions as far as you can compare a speaker output to music.
Of course they was never ment to be played back via soundcard (resp. plays them back only via speaker) but it must have been sequenced as and only using the miles sound drivers they sound correct.

Gernot66 wrote:

Any reason why "GMT32MPU.ADV" isn't included?

Because I never heard of it. Are there any improvements over MT32MPU?

bristlehog wrote:

Gernot66 wrote:

Any reason why "GMT32MPU.ADV" isn't included?

Because I never heard of it. Are there any improvements over MT32MPU?

AFAIR this is a simple GM->MT32 remapper. No extra instruments at all.

Gernot66 wrote:

Thanks to "PX" i stumbled over some weird old MIDI from "Space 1889", the game only supports PC speaker / Covox and if you play back the "ROL" usually they have only Piano as instrument, using PX you can hear how they was ment to sound (strange - the files are in the zip below).

This is not true. Very early adlib games required external SOUND.COM to be launched before starting the game. The ROL files are normal adlib sequences with instruments stored inside STANDARD.BNK as usual.

Mok, yes thanks i found that out myself, trial and error as usual.

Yes it is (GMT32MPU.ADV) and does it's job quite good for the single tune of SimCity Classic.
Sure a nicer way is to remap it with a sysex file.
I'm not quite sure what you meant with "no extra instruments" sure it can't program the MT32 like you can with the sysex.
I'm quite new to the MT32 i have to say, i have to admit i didn't knew of the differences for decades, pardon me i'm a generic AMIGOID and not a doze.
Due to that i played "Frontier Elite 2" for more as two decades with wrong sounding music, what i thought it was just bad composed it is in fact meant for the MT32.
I'm pretty sure a lot never was aware of such for certain games. For FE2 it isn't very obvious, i started to get suspicious with "Wing Commander" (yet another game i played on my miggy) because of the leaking sound effects.
However it isn't poor, for the SCTUNE it will produce a better sound as the roland gm to mt sysex.
Otherwise i have to fiddle around with it first, it can be handy because i like the sound of the "Munt", it's a "real synthesizer" and sounds very phat, it leaks a little for classical music compared to 1GB soundfonts 😉

That it plays back the adlib rol files in a near to right manner seems to be because both are pre GM and use a similar instrument mapping - the result of a rol to midi conversion won't differ much for the instrumentation, but it sounds in the end much better.
Still it is confusing that them are fully instrumented rol and finally in the game it plays back via speaker only piano, what a waste 😀
Best is course if you play it with a dedicated adlib player like the "Ad Lib Jukebox".

----
@Bristlehog
I made a lot of experiences with your player and for sure i have some nit picking things to report.
The player unfortunately can't handle more as 10 track in a XMI, this means if there are more as 10 and you start without to specify a track no. it will end the playback after no. 10, similar if you loop the complete set it will only loop the first ten starting at 0 or the track # you entered.
To be honest i haven't found such an XMI in any game i run yet which includes more as 10 tracks, but i do so if i prepare the MIDI of a game for my Batch DOSBox MIDI player. Most often the XMI files are separate or in a own library but not stored as XMI.
Sometimes the behave is a bit strange for my use but i understand that your intention was to use it in a directory browser.
Means depending on how i call it up it expects to have the midi timbre libraries in C:\
Another slight issue is that it can't handle a XMI above roundabout 500kb, usually you won't reach this size but if you add a lot of sysex commands to the files it can exceed easy 500kb.

Otherwise i'm very satisfied with it.

Have some Muntificated Doom.
Probably i will create a special lib for the game to use it for Doom, a viewer of "8 bit guy" when he presented the MT32 was convinced it would have been far better for Doom as his GUS. Well i feel at least in DOSBox the sound of the GUS is quite good for this game compared to what was otherwise possible to have in 1993, but of course far from the richness and depth of the MT32. At least imho it sounds better as the much hailed AWE with his brittle 1mb soundfont.
The thing is GUS is a sort of a toy and wasn't a soundcard for the uninspired user, you need to edit a lot to get the best out of it for your game.
Check what instruments will be used and how often and setting up a special .ini for each game will keep maximum sample quality, but if you just load in a standard manner the samples will be downsampled a lot to fit in 1mb of ram.
4.11 release has about 8mb of samples, you really need to clever alter the .ini sometimes, but in case of Doom it comes already with an altered .ini file.

However you can't play Doom's Music via a MT32 without to change a couple of MIDI's to a maximum of 8 channels and without to send the gm to mt sysex at the MT32.
Latter you can do simply in advantage before you play with the very first intro track, to prevent that the game reset the device because while it's running the port stays open.
So this is what wouldn't exist yet, the Doom score on an MT32:
https://youtu.be/5mSy7YgwZa8

To stay to the Topic "Bristlehogs PX Player" the camparison to GUS using the miles sound drivers and PX:
https://youtu.be/UNssBsPfMQk

BTW, to play back a GM on a MT32 using PX you need to use the GenMIDI driver, else they will reset the device and the previousely send GM to MT sysex will be lost, especially the dedicated MT32MPU driver if you send the GM to MT with this driver to the MT32 nothing will happen except the sysex is in the MIDI itself..
Of course one could add this to any GM you like to play back on an MT32, but the sysex is about 30kb and bigger as most games midi themself.
But this leads easy to a XMI in a size above 500kb if you add the gm to mt sysex to each track.
It depends on how you use the PX player, if you play them back with a single call for PX you would need to add it only to the first track you play back, PX will keep the port open (but well which will be the first and will you like to play back this track always as first?).
But this again limits it to 10 tracks in a XMI, i call it up for each track in a XMI and this will reset the MT32 each time so each would need the sysex, except if i use the GENMIDI driver it won't send any reset to the MT32.
I know it's uncommon to use Munt (or a real MT32) to play back GM, but like i said i like the sound of it.
Apart from the depth it has it is very balanced in sound compared to the many homebrew soundfonts, each leaks in a certain part.
Personally i stick to "Fatboy" for GM/GS playback, but it leaks for overdriven guitars.
Bujt it's hell (or heaven?) for classical music, it almost turns anything to classical which contains horns or strings.
Even the 1.7 GB large Crisis soundfont isn't as good as one could expect by the size of it (i already assumed it and didn't downloaded it at first, recently i use it sometimes but it's really not worth the size).
The MT32 leads in synthesized sounds, here it can show off its real capabilities compared to pure wavetable synthesis.

Recently the "Soviet Spaceport" track of BARIS is hounting me 😉
Very nice compositions over all, my mother didn't likes my addiction to MIDI to well, but when i played back the score of BARIS she asked me who plays this music "the machine mom, the machine".
BARIS (Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space) natively supports the MT32, yet another one which isn't listed nowhere.
The listing in VGMPF is quite incomplete, already the "8 bit guy" mentioned more by heart.
It is really incomplete because i run mostly DOS games of "special interest", in other terms "space related games" and even i stumbled over a couple mentioned nowhere that they will support the MT32. SimCity Classic as an example, the GMT32MPU driver is enough to classify it for this.
Frontier is listed nowhere even if it would be obvious because the files have the suffix "rol" which stupidly stands for Ad Lib and MT32 SMF files as well.
Also it would be obvious if you capture the stream because it will include the MT32 reset even if that isn't present in the files, but this was common just to save another couple of bytes.

But well, I REALLY HAD NO IDEA 😀

Gernot66 wrote on 2020-01-24, 02:54:

@Bristlehog I made a lot of experiences with your player and for sure i have some nit picking things to report. The player unfo […]
Show full quote

@Bristlehog
I made a lot of experiences with your player and for sure i have some nit picking things to report.
The player unfortunately can't handle more as 10 track in a XMI, this means if there are more as 10 and you start without to specify a track no. it will end the playback after no. 10, similar if you loop the complete set it will only loop the first ten starting at 0 or the track # you entered.
To be honest i haven't found such an XMI in any game i run yet which includes more as 10 tracks, but i do so if i prepare the MIDI of a game for my Batch DOSBox MIDI player. Most often the XMI files are separate or in a own library but not stored as XMI.
Sometimes the behave is a bit strange for my use but i understand that your intention was to use it in a directory browser.
Means depending on how i call it up it expects to have the midi timbre libraries in C:\
Another slight issue is that it can't handle a XMI above roundabout 500kb, usually you won't reach this size but if you add a lot of sysex commands to the files it can exceed easy 500kb.

1) This 10 track (or in terms of AIL 10 sequence) limit issue seems to be an internal limitation of AIL. I did not limit the number of sequences in my code.
2) PX Player expects timbre libraries in current folder, if none present, it loads them from the folder where PX is itself located. However, there may be weird issues, I think someone reported that.
3) PX Player is a real mode program, so it can only use the conventional memory available, thus that circa 500 Kb memory limitation.

OhKeh, that explains it well.

May i dare to ask, is PX based on John Miles "XP"?
(i downloaded his pre RAD game tools SDK for AIL2 up to 1993 i guess, he offers it on his website).

And would it be a thing to care even for the sample player?
Before i have to dive into this myself.

It isn't important, i like the sample player demos, sure they leak a bit but i assume such can be fixed the players are just developer demos.
Mostly they are the only good stereo sample players apart from CT's own stuff which is unfortunately bound to the SB version, a sample player for SBPRO2 won't work with SB16 or any else and they seem to be a bit choosy about a presence of a real CT soundcard.
I use PLANY for my needs but it will only playback mono, on the other hand it's the most versatile and most simple to use, nothing to care about as to specify the file you like to play.

Gosh some players even alter the clock speed in DOSBox, as i found out if i play back a sample in 22050Hz and have set the blaster to 44100Hz they will double the clock speed.
It won't affect the playback of the sample but if i run a TSR to stuff keypresses to the keyboard buffer (i.e. stuffit) i have to double the seconds to wait for the send to keyboard buffer.

Gernot66 wrote on 2020-01-24, 15:31:

May i dare to ask, is PX based on John Miles "XP"?
(i downloaded his pre RAD game tools SDK for AIL2 up to 1993 i guess, he offers it on his website).

Yes, PX is based on XPLAY from AIL 2.0 SDK.

What a stupid question of mine, you noted this in the manual right at top 😉
Discard the idea of a sample player i found a suitable digi player, it's from the former RAD game tools (DOS version), plays nicely and in stereo.

However - RTFM, sure i did more then once but noticed my fault now, you need to have "DEVDRV.INI" in the folder where the midi files reside no matter what or if anything is in the .ini PX will then look for the GTL in this directory else it falls back to c:\ (as i noticed).

Works fine now and i don't have to copy files around to playback using the proper GTL for the game.
Mostly they won't differ, but i.e. BARIS is an exclusion, it needs a special FAT.MT else it won't find the needed instruments or the wrong ones.
Similar it's very own FAT.FM which seems to replace both FAT.AD and FAT.OPL (btw, the drivers are unaltered i assume the game patches "FM" to "AD" or "OPL" if requested, however the FM sounds only right using this special GTL, to me it looks like it is closer to MT-32 specification as to GM because if i use the wrong GTL i get similar results as for GM on a MT32, probably the music was originally composed for the MT thus the FM version is closer to this as to GM).

As a hint for those who like to playback the midi from BARIS (or maybe some other games to), rename a possible "FAT.FM" to "FAT.AD" and "FAT.OPL" to get the right sound out of the emulated FM chip (or even real one for sure). The FM drivers seem to accept any FAT - mostly (sometimes it can argue about missing patches when you playback a GM instead of a dedicated FM midi, but i found a GTL which is mostly GM compatible and will play almost any midi proper - except the ones of BARIS. Keep channel 1 in the midi file clear for a FM playback if you like to playback any midi which you downloaded somewhere - mostly it's possible but they need some work on them, it seems it's needed to reassign the rhythm channel, if channel 1 is occupied you won't have percussion), unlike the MT which is very choosy about that so it won't play with any else as with the one it was compiled for.
BARIS is a fine example (which i didn't expected), personally it's the first game where i noticed such a heavy and specialized use of the GTL.

Some experiences i made with the "GMT32MPU" driver, it's not bad and the GM of BARIS sound quite good on "Munt"(similar as if i use the gm to mt emu sysex, not exactly the same but close to, not bad over all and one could prefer this over the dedicated MT midi files since the instrumentation is like in the GM midi while the MT version uses often different instruments which sound sometimes "hmmmmm.... what was the idea?", otherwise the MT-32 music is quite fine and special to listen to as always.
The GMT32MPU works quite fine imho, but this will depend a lot on the GM file you like to playback on the MT.
Even if the MT has only one drum set one could get addicted to the sound of the drums (precise and loud).

Yeah, it won't make much sense for DOSBox and the playback of the music in the game, it's just toying around with the possibilities of the miles drivers.
However i like the sound of "Munt" and i often prefer it over a soundfont might it be 1.6GB in size it won't reach the depth, or saturation to compare sound it with colors.

Again thanks a lot for PX, without i wouldn't have noticed all this tid bits and differences between midi formats, to be honest before i had no idea that a MT-32 existed, respectively that it wasn't GM compliant.
I wouldn't have cared and i had no idea.
I never would have dived into sysex commands, i neither knew they existed or what their purpose is.
All this started for me with the use of PX.

For those who like to know what i do with "PX":
https://youtu.be/BDnWKyCQWvQ

Gernot66 wrote on 2020-02-06, 20:11:

you need to have "DEVDRV.INI" in the folder where the midi files reside no matter what or if anything is in the .ini PX will then look for the GTL in this directory else it falls back to c:\ (as i noticed).[/b]

It's DEFDRV.INI, not DEVDRV.INI. Also, PX should fall back to its home folder (where PX.EXE is located), not the root directory.

Oh pardon me i slipped 😀

It depends on the use i guess, however, since i run your program in a batch and start it from C: it didn't falls back to "PX" it searches in C: for the GTL, easy to notice if the program argues it isn't present but it is present in PX's home directory. Recently because of this but mostly because of the fact that certain games depend on a special GTL i decided anyway to change the directory to the location of the XMI files i like to play, doing so you're right, if it isn't present then it will fall back to PX. It's just if you start it from C: then it will look in C: instead in PX and this is the case only for the GTL, the driver will be searched in PX anyway. It is no question the better solution to change the directory.
As example; usually i ran it this way "px\px d:\game\midi\xy.xmi driver" and this isn't proper or healthy, works fine as long as it needs no GTL. I do have two virtual drives, this is essential to make them finally portable "C:" is quasi my DOS only and nothing else, all what is needed by the game or the stuff i created for it resides in D:\game\dos. Doing so i have a C:\ which i can use for all games and it's unaffected by special requirements. My intention is that i have due to this a DOS (DOSBox) which suits for all projects and it will be unaffected by changes i will make to the games wrapper.

in this sense
"Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence" (beep)

Hello,

There is a DOS game from 1994-1995 called "Alien Legacy", which I play now and I think it is a great DOS game.
This DOS game makes heavy use of XMI MIDI files. Under DosBOX I have tested PX Player with this XMI MIDI files and they sound great.
I want to convert these XMI files to WAV files and then to MP3 files.
Is there a Windows version of PX Player, which can convert these files to WAV files?
I know how to program with C/C++, too, if the source code of PX Player is available, I can modify/enhance it to work on Windows and convert the XMI files to WAV.

I have almost searched/googled all the Internet for a solution/application that can convert XMI files to WAV, but unfortunately I have found nothing.
I came across this forum and learned about PX Player.

Any kind of help will be much appreciated here.

Best Regards,

taylaninan78 wrote on 2020-04-28, 22:22:

Hello, […]
Show full quote

Hello,

There is a DOS game from 1994-1995 called "Alien Legacy", which I play now and I think it is a great DOS game.
This DOS game makes heavy use of XMI MIDI files. Under DosBOX I have tested PX Player with this XMI MIDI files and they sound great.
I want to convert these XMI files to WAV files and then to MP3 files.
Is there a Windows version of PX Player, which can convert these files to WAV files?
I know how to program with C/C++, too, if the source code of PX Player is available, I can modify/enhance it to work on Windows and convert the XMI files to WAV.

I have almost searched/googled all the Internet for a solution/application that can convert XMI files to WAV, but unfortunately I have found nothing.
I came across this forum and learned about PX Player.

Any kind of help will be much appreciated here.

Best Regards,

Although not a Windows version of PX Player (but another Midi player for Windows) you can use FSMP to do this. Simply load your XMI files to the playlist and press the red Record button. Before pushing the button you can also right click on it to select the recording mode. I recommend to select 'Batch File Mode' if you want to convert more files at once. If you use Bassmidi+SF2 soundfont or VSTi instrument you do not have to configure anything recording related but if you want to record your external synth then you have to connect your synth's output to the line-in of your PC's sound card and select the proper 'Recording Source' in 'Device Settings' of FSMP.
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#midiplayer

(cough) if you don't mind it's probably not the same especially for XMI from this aera. Mostly a GM/GS will sound exactly the same, respectively depending on the soundfont or midi device you use. The above debated GTL (instrument) libraries aren't used by them, but can be by any other i.e. special MT-32 versions which depend on a GTL and ALL AdLib or SB drivers need them. In no way a XMI played back using the miles drivers will sound the same on a "common" midi player, yes/no, the differences are small. However most modern players disregard sysex commands, simply because wavetable synthesizers can't do much with them they can't be programmed. Reset device, turn on GS/XG or similar basic commands still work though. I'mho no t won't sound exactly the same, i.e. if i used fluidsytnh with the exactly same soundfont on XMI "yx" it won't sound exactly the same as played back in DOSBox with PX. Not very comfortable but one could record it in this manner. What i like to say is the the player would have to use the AIL2 drivers and probably even the GTL to sound exactly like a Miles Player. Already if i playback the same file in DOSBox using i.e. MEgaMID didn't results in exactly the same. That might now contradict to that we know DOSBox only pipes the MIDI stream to the OS outside. But i guess that differs much if you use DOSBox ECE and the implemented Fluidsynth.

The differences are small, very small for GM/GS and i would recommend to use Fluidsynth itself to convert the XMI (resp. MID you will have to convert them either using i.e. WinAMP or similar or MIDIPLEX which i recommend) to a wave. If you use the same soundfont it will sound the same maybe not exactly. Even if i think it's useless, i prefere to play the MIDI files fresh played back even here i believe there is a small difference, but to make it portable to a phone it makes some sense, thus yes of course many games MIDI
exist as MP3 using Fluidsynth (you can just drop the file on the exe and with the proper presets it will be converted immediately) and rotten old LAME.

A quite more comfortable way is to use a Multimediaplayer and control the soundfont you like to use with a virtual midi synthesizer (i.e. named as).

After all i will show you what i like 😀 :
https://youtu.be/Rz-PbaCG5Bk

An batch proggie mimicking something real.
It's not finished yet, "select soundfont" (for fluidsynth) and loading of a different playlist doesn't work yet, loop is impractical, respectively i will solve it different because you
don't see the output of PX, thus files will loop by preset from table, the switch will override this preset and a play/repeat whole album is planned.
This batch player depends on a table as playlist else i couldn't show all the additional information about the file.
Loading of a different playlist is also rather optional, each game will receive a link to the batch and the batch is flexible enough to "know" which games midi you like to listen (simply the directory it was started from). If present it will load also he "player theme" from the same directory as the playlist resides in.

Don't say a word you haven't seen my DOSBox only SFX format yet

Hey and hello

Pardon if this is a wrong thread to ask this, but can someone point me to a player for XMI that can both:

1. support a playlist or playing everything in a directory without a need to put individual filenames into command line
2. detect loops in XMIs and allow to set number of loops (e.g. have 2 or 3 vs just 1 or indefinite)
3. has a menu to allow for easier selection of the track by browsing and traversing directories

Thanks ahead and pardon if PX actually does some or all of that - I wasn't able to figure that out from this thread, so hints would be much appreciated.

Bristlehog. I really like your pxplayer. I would really like to have the source please. I would pm you but I am a newbie and don't have permission yet.

That's great! Thanks for that. I'm enjoying it with TDYLPT!!! Perfect!

Hello,
I'm trying to use PX Player in DOSBox-X to play a midi file from Blood (the Build Engine game) emulating a Gravis Ultrasound using the GF1MIDI driver, but it doesn't work and I'm assuming that's because I don't have the required GTL files (*.AD, *.OPL, *.MT etc.). It does work ingame so the "card" works (I do have the ULTRASND folder with all the necessary files).
Is there any way to make it work?

I get a message saying GF1MIDI.ADV cannot initialize with these parameters:
I/Q: n/a
IRQ: n/a
DMA: n/a
DRQ: n/a

Or maybe my dosbox-x.conf is not properly set up?