Making Grimoire's MIDIs sound better

[VampiricBushKid]

.MIDIs have their own musical charm even today, but sometimes they can sound a little lackluster, or otherwise not nearly sound as good as you'd like them too,leaving you to imagine what they'd be like in the hands of an official band, orchestra or rather in a different format composed in real life.

Whilst technology has not yet reached the ability to crap out a Beethoven from the like of an old MIDI file used in a game you'd have to run in DOSBOX to get to work, we do have the option of making the instruments used in MIDIs a lot more better nowadays for use in games that might be made in an RPGMaker Engine, like Elona and it's unnoficial Mod Elona+ or the Jojo's Bizzare adventure 7th Stand User Fangame.

This leads us to the subject of Coolsoft's VirtualMIDISynth, a free software tool that runs seamlessly with most games and media players that utilize .MIDI files, changing their output via Soundfont (.sf2) files giving users improved .MIDI music that much more pleasing to the ears,

Sadly this software isn't that well known, which is a shame given what It can do for someone fond of listening to .MIDIs or playing games that utilize them, and with the release of Grimoire, I thought it the perfect oppurtunity to make this thread to inform people about it to raise awareness and public support for the program and it's development.

The site itself had the program for free download, and features them on their own page, and 've compiled a neat little package full of soundfonts for you to use in a 7zip file, just install VirtualMIDISynth, download my file, extact it and read the readme, and pop in your
.sf2 files into the program, the site also features some soundfonts for you to download also if you wish, some of these are also in my package.

Have Fun!
The Software:
http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth
My SF File.
https://mega(dot)nz/#F!GsIUSIjB!WRs1cJg0eWHktrl1Iz-gCw
Also, avoid CrisisGeneralMidi.sf2, it's grossly huge, not that good, and causes stutter and slowdown due to it's size when used by the program.

[VampiricBushKid]

Bump.

[Rostere]

I think the music is perfect just as it is.

BTW, do you even own the game?

[AlienBaboso]

Rostere, MIDI music sounds different on each sound card. Synthetizers use high quality samples of real instruments so that midi files sound like what the composer intended. I have used synthetizers in the past, and even good MIDI files sound miles better when you use the right pack.

[Rostere]

Originally posted by AlienBaboso:

Rostere, MIDI music sounds different on each sound card. Synthetizers use high quality samples of real instruments so that midi files sound like what the composer intended. I have used synthetizers in the past, and even good MIDI files sound miles better when you use the right pack.

I still disagree with the premise, we don't know what hardware the composer used, and as such not what his intent was. Anyway, just because a sample is more "high quality" does not mean it sounds better in a composition. It's interesting to experiment anyway, of course.

Here is a comparison of different versions of one track from Snatcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6YNlAkffcA

Notice that some of the more modern versions sound like ♥♥♥♥ compared to the extremely low-fi MSX 2 version. This is in spite of high quality samples. SS1 soundtrack is probably also another example.

[Necropants]

I was interested in trying this, but there seems to be a bunch of hoops you have to jump through on windows 10.

Okay seems like you need do do this in windows 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfbbzN9XuPw

Got it to play midi's correctly, still can't get it to run grimoire though.

[Disparate Revenant]

Same problem as Necropants. MIDIS work when playing through wnidows media player using the software, however when I run Grimoire the mixer doesn't show it playing midis at all. Grimoire still sounds the same.

Any ideas?

[FairlySadPanda]

This does not appear to work with Grimoire. Probably something to do with how Grimoire feeds audio data to the soundcard.

[Necropants]

Yep which makes me question if the guy posting this even has the game or tried it out

[Mwen]

Originally posted by Rostere:

I think the music is perfect just as it is.

BTW, do you even own the game?

This is a good question that needs to be answered. The game doesn't show in OP's profile. I've seen several forum posts like this where the poster doesn't seem to even own the game. I just read a very indepth negative review where the OP showed 0.1 hours in the game. What is going on here? Pirating or just trolling?

[Tyrir]

You probably would have to modify the soundfont in gm.dls instead. This game seems to use that for its MIDI playback.

[Rostere]

Originally posted by Mwen:

Originally posted by Rostere:

I think the music is perfect just as it is.

BTW, do you even own the game?

This is a good question that needs to be answered. The game doesn't show in OP's profile. I've seen several forum posts like this where the poster doesn't seem to even own the game. I just read a very indepth negative review where the OP showed 0.1 hours in the game. What is going on here? Pirating or just trolling?

Sadly, there has been a lot of piracy (just look at the 4chan /v/ Grimoire threads). I guess it is up to us to call the pirates out as we see them.

[FairlySadPanda]

Originally posted by Tyrir:

You probably would have to modify the soundfont in gm.dls instead. This game seems to use that for its MIDI playback.

This actually works, but I got very lucky and found a .dls file randomly via Google that had higher quality samples. SF2 -> DLS converted sound banks don't seem to work.

[syllogism]

I made some quick conversions using various soundfonts, in case someone is interested. These were made using extracted midis.

Main Theme:
https://instaud.io/1acb (Roland Sound Canvas VA SC-88 Pro mode)
https://instaud.io/1acA (Timbers of Heaven)
https://instaud.io/1acB (SGM V2.01)
https://instaud.io/1acC (Arachno)

Fairy Eye
https://instaud.io/1acH (Roland Sound Canvas VA SC-88 Pro mode)
https://instaud.io/1acE (Timbers of Heaven)
https://instaud.io/1acF (SGM-V2.01)
https://instaud.io/1acG (Arachno)

[Rostere]

Originally posted by syllogism:

I made some quick conversions using various soundfonts, in case someone is interested. These were made using extracted midis.

Main Theme:
https://instaud.io/1acb (Roland Sound Canvas VA SC-88 Pro mode)
https://instaud.io/1acA (Timbers of Heaven)
https://instaud.io/1acB (SGM V2.01)
https://instaud.io/1acC (Arachno)

Fairy Eye
https://instaud.io/1acH (Roland Sound Canvas VA SC-88 Pro mode)
https://instaud.io/1acE (Timbers of Heaven)
https://instaud.io/1acF (SGM-V2.01)
https://instaud.io/1acG (Arachno)

Great job, but how come you were able to access these files if you don't own the game?

It's kind of sad when a guy works on a game for 20 years only for people to reward him with nothing. Clearly, you care about this game enough to play around with the soundtrack. Don't you think that actually buying it - when it offers more playtime than most AAA titles - is the least you can do?

[buoy]

The MIDI files are unchanged from the superdemo (and likely from the DOS beta before it), so there is a legitimate avenue for acquiring them.