Category Archives: MIDI

Making The Simpsons Sing

The talk is, in case it wasn’t clear, about the Kurzweil VGM MIDI synthesizer board. The two larger synthesizer chips are named Homer and Marge, and the three smaller ROM chips are Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The VGM looks a lot … Continue reading

Posted in E-mu, Kurzweil, MIDI, Sound | 3 Comments

Of G-Men and Farmers

There’s an interesting story concerning this Midiman GMan General MIDI sound module. It involves Midiman (better known as M-Audio), the Farmers Insurance Exchange, and also Dream/Atmel, Crystal Semiconductor, and Roland. (Apologies for the beat-up specimen.) The story of course concerns … Continue reading

Posted in Crystal Semi, Dream, Legal, MIDI, Roland, Sound | 20 Comments

More Peripherals

Remember this post from a while ago? Several new peripherals have turned up, but what are they? This time, the manufacturer names vanished together with the model numbers, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Do you know these peripherals? PS: … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Sound | 11 Comments

Finally Free

For a while I’ve been toying with the idea of buying the full official MIDI specification, but never went through with it. Not so much because of the cost ($100 for the core spec) but because of the hassle. Only … Continue reading

Posted in Documentation, MIDI | 6 Comments

Tahiti + Rio = Monterey

The talk is, of course, about Turtle Beach sound cards. I finally got hold of a 1994 Turtle Beach Rio daughterboard which came mounted on an ISA sound card. On closer inspection the card turned out to be a Turtle … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Sound, Wave Blaster | 22 Comments

E-mu SoundEngine

An interesting piece of hardware popped up at the OS/2 Museum not long ago. It’s an E-mu SoundEngine General MIDI sound module from 1993. This module has very close ties to the original Creative Wave Blaster upgrade module, even though that’s not … Continue reading

Posted in Creative Labs, E-mu, MIDI, Sound, Wave Blaster | 13 Comments

Deeper Into Wave Blaster

I have continued to dig into the mysteries of Wave Blaster (WB) connectors, daughterboards, and DB-50XG MIDI. To recap, the objective is to find how to convince a Yamaha DB-50XG to send MIDI data, if at all possible. A closer … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Wave Blaster, Yamaha | 6 Comments

The Vanishing Dream

By sheer coincidence, three different yet similar wavetable daughterboards landed on my desk. They’re of different ages but all use Dream synthesizer chips. Together they provide an interesting window into the evolution of MIDI synthesizers. The oldest daughterboard is from … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Sound | 2 Comments

44-Voice MIDI on Yamaha OPL4

In 1994, sound cards with wavetable synthesizers were all the rage. Typically these supported 24-voice or at most 32-voice polyphony. So 44-voice synthesis sounded fancy. The following text can be found in a README file in the driver package for … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Sound | 8 Comments

SC-8820 Gripes

After a long while, I dusted off my Roland SC-8820 sound module which I bought used about 10 years ago. The goal was to drive it from an older PC via MIDI. This turned out to be a lot harder than … Continue reading

Posted in MIDI, Roland, Sound | 12 Comments