08. May 2012, 11:50:51

#20

FfFCMADQuote

Hi.

You should know when using BASSMIDI, System shock 1 is not optimized for General MIDI. So there is no real use of using a GM- Synth because the Music sounds completely wrong. The only Synth i know which works relatively good with SS1 are Roland Sound Canvas compatibles. The Intro Music with a Roland SD-20 or Microsoft Synth is relatively compareable to the PCM-version in the Intro-Movie. But even then, its sounds completely off in the menu and later game. Some MIDIs from SS1 sounds relatively good with any GM-Synth like my MU2000, but most of them are completely wrong. (The Cyberspace-BGM sounds cool with my MU2000, buts its related the drum kit which fits perfectly)

The reason is, that SS1 is optimized for OPL-synthesis. Even if you use GM in the setup of SS1, it still uses MIDI Files with a OPL-synth in mind. (FM-Synth with GM "compatible soundpatch") If you have got a MIDI-Synth with a display it can be seen that its not done for GM: Only 7 Channels (if i remember channel 9 to 16) and arkward instrument usage.

If you want the optimum sound, try a Roland SC-55 (Wich seems to be halfway Ok) or use a good OPL 2 or OPL 3 synth. There are differences, using a creative card will make things worse. With my Terratec EWS 64 and its much better OPL, the game FM-synth BGM sounds acceptable. An original Adlib or Adlib Gold should do the trick, too.

If using BASSMIDI, there should be a special Soundfont only created for SS1 to get the music right.

Keep this in mind. Looking Glass/ Origin games of these times only had FM-Synths in mind, as i know.

13. May 2012, 13:47:42

#21

TarvisQuote

I disagree. Otherwise why would the game have distinctly separate MIDI files for GM? Go check the SOUND folder and you'll see a different folder called GENMIDI.

06. June 2012, 18:39:29

#22

FfFCMADQuote

Yepp, these are GM and MT32 !compatible! MIDI-Files. Barely made runable for "not GM" MT32 and the Roland SC55 GS Synths. As i said above, there are only MIDI-Files created with FM-Synthesis in mind. The whole soundtrack is made for OPL-Synths. The GM-Folder contains sligthly modified MIDI-Files wich will use and modify instruments from MT-32 or Roland SC GS, but virtually they stay the same. 7 Channel only and arkward instrument usage. As i said above, they will only sound halfway good if a Roland Synth with GS-Support is used. On a real 100% GM-Synth it !will! sound like crap, because its not really GM.

21. June 2012, 19:50:55

#23

FfFCMADQuote

To add, a higher polyphony than 32 is bad, because these MIDI files relay on the problem of outrunning voices while playing for correct playback. The synth has to be set to monophonic for all sounds except the drumkit because the MIDI files are really crappy done. If the synth does not kill notes off, the notes will play the whole time. An OPL synth will work fine with that, a MT-32 and so on too. But 64 polyphony or higher >> forget it.

24. February 2013, 13:57:36

#24

❕ Peter MeierQuote

Xenoneo's idea to exchange the Midi Soundbank is great. I wanted to do that too, since I have the audio tracks played with an AWE 32 burnt into my mind.

I'd like to recommend an alternative user driver MIDI device: VirtualMIDISynth. I had a better experience with it than BASSMIDI, and would like to suggest trying this instead, especially for Windows 8 users.

Retelling my experience:

Unfortunately, I could not get BASSMIDI to work properly, but found a different solution. I'll share in case others run into similar issues. I assume this is a Windows 8 issue, so any Win8 users may find this useful.

When I tried BASSMIDI, the music would distort after a few seconds of play and then turn silent, to reappear every once in a while for a few seconds. I'm quite an advanced computer user (including DOS, working with cfg files, etc) and tried fixing this for hours, but just couldn't get it to work as intended.

Then I noticed that instead of adding itself as an additional device, BASSMIDI completely replaced the default MIDI device of Windows and would not revert this even at uninstall. Since Windows 8 abandoned any MIDI settings (probably the same for Win7), I got stock with only non-working MIDI devices. I could get the game to use DSP synthesizer audio instead, so first I didn't bother with fixing the Windows issue for the time being.

When trying to fix this, it was clear that reverting to the old settings manually wouldn't work since I didn't have a backup of the previous registry settings (and couldn't find these online). When trying to fix the Midi device somehow, instead I found an alternative user mode driver for Midi, which is VirtualMIDISynth.

Unlike BASSMIDI, VirtualMIDISynth officially supports Windows 8 and is developed very actively, with new versions out every month or so.

Using VirtualMidiSynth the issue was solved for me. The music now plays flawlessly. I also like the GUI better than BASSMIDI, with more useful options available and better explanations given. It has a more modern feel to it overall.
And unlike BASSMIDI it seems to not replace other MIDI devices, but adds itself as the default, moving other devices down the chain (e.g. VMS is now the default device 0, while the two BM devices are now devices 1 and 2). I assume this would have been the same with the default device.