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.
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.
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.
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