One of the projects I wanted to do with my new 486 PC was to try out a Roland MT-32 with it. The MT-32 is a MIDI synthesiser that was used to help compose many late-80s games. Many of these games sound amazing with an MT-32, so, like many before me, I decided to talk about it.

About the MT-32

I won’t dig too much into the details of the MT-32, this has been covered many times before. I recommend starting with this Wikipedia page. Suffice to say, it takes MIDI data and turns it into synthesised music. I managed to acquire one that has a few battle scars, but is very functional.

Mine is an old-style MT-32 with a late serial number. Those who know MT-32s will know what that means. For everyone else, the new-style has some bug fixes, can sound a little different, and has a headphone socket in the back.

The MT-32 came out before the General MIDI standard, which means that it usually sounds weird playing General MIDI music. Roland provided a patch file to make it sound a lot better in these cases, it is actually still on their website today. This has its limitations, especially due to the limited number of channels in the MT-32. There is also no battery, so this needs to be applied every time the device is powered up (when needed). Of course, this General MIDI patch will make MT-32 specific games sound weird.

Connecting the MT-32

So, you want to connect your MT-32 to a vintage PC? Not so fast! There are some things you need first. You need a box called an MPU-401 to go from your sound card’s Midi out to the MT-32. Cards that claim they have MPU-401 support usually won’t work. But! The MPU-401 won’t connect to your sound card, you need a MIF-IPC-A card in your PC to provide the interface.

I don’t have any of that, and there are alternative ways of doing it. The first is SoftMPU. This is an MPU-401 emulator that runs as a TSR in DOS, and it does the hard work for you. The next is a modern hardware MPU card, those can get quite expensive. Instead, I have another trick up my sleeve, the PicoGUS sound card.

The black “MIDI out” of the PicoGUS is essentially a hardware MPU-401 implementation. The PicoGUS comes with a cable to turn this output into a MIDI output, so you just need a standard din MIDI cable to hook this into the MT-32’s input.

Next is the audio out. The MT-32 has a left and right 1/4 inch socket for audio out. The audio does not come out of the sound card. In some sound cards, you could hook this into the line-in, but the PicoGUS doesn’t have that. In my setup, I use an audio mixer.

The sound card’s output and the MT-32 output connect to this, with my speakers (or recording equipment) connected to the output.

This crude diagram outlines how the setup is wired up:

Example

In this example, I’m using floppy disk version of Monkey Island in DOS, with a recording device hooked into the mixer output instead of speakers. By default, Monkey Island will start in “Adlib” audio mode if you have a compatible card. The PicoGUS in Sound Blaster mode has an Adlib compatible card. So, this is what it sounds like by default.

Monkey Island intro captured in Adlib mode

Now, let’s try with the MT-32, when you start with monkey r, it will start in “Roland” mode using the MIDI. This is what it sounds like.

Monkey Island intro captured in Roland mode

The difference is incredible, I could only dream of this setup as a teenager. You even get a nice little LCD display showing you what is going on.

How can I try this at home?

If you have a 386/486 build, I recommend checking out the MT32-Pi project. This is a hat for a Raspberry Pi to very accurately emulate an MT-32. Otherwise, DOSBox combined with the MUNT project can emulate it on a modern PC. There are guides on how to do this all over the web.

I highly recommend trying it, especially with compatible Sierra and LucasArts games.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *