Bad Gear - Roland MT-32 - The OG Retro Gamers Synth

[Music] welcome to bad gear the show about the world's most hated audio tools the relationship between the roland brand and this show is a very special one around 25 of all bad gear protagonists are descendants of the houses roland and boss this doesn't make roland a bad brand it's just like one of these musical artists who released so many albums that even die hard fans lost track and not all albums can be a sergeant peppas today we are going to talk about the roland mt-32 this 1987 multi-timbral sound module was originally designed with amateur musicians in mind but still nerds over at sierra one of the og 80s game developers had other plans and this little black box quickly evolved into an early de facto standard for computer game music one thing that might get overlooked in all that retro gaming hype is that the mt-32 is not only a quick and dirty provider of 80 spread and butter sounds but it's also a deep and complex synth surprisingly similar to roland's then state-of-the-art flagship model the d50 let's take a closer look at the first glance the roland mt-32 is taking all the honey i shrunk the vhs player boxes traditional roland display rudimentary controls for 6 of the 9 voices midi and stereo outs the more sought after new version has headphone outputs too all this doesn't look like a lot of fun but the mt-32 is all about the inner values anyway the synth engine offers 32 voices of polyphony and is based on roland's la technology which can also be found in the more upscale instruments of the d range la synthesis employs a combination of short low-res pcm samples mostly used for the attack phase and a va synth section for the body of the tone a method originally conceived to battle yamaha's dominating fm technology right out of the box the mt-32 provides not-so-cool pianos proper simulations of acoustic instruments and some digital roland synth classics [Music] [Applause] just like its fm counterpart la synthesis is not known for being user friendly but fear not no menu diving is necessary you have to sysex the hell out of this little unit the manual is not always helpful when it comes to forging the correct sizzix strings so i want to thank rancy for assisting me in the process of reverse engineering some of the system exclusive messages there are plenty of software editors but most of them don't work on contemporary computers the rather costly midi quest aside jsynth lib seems to be the most promising solution but i couldn't get it to run on any of my machines leave a comment if you were luckier than me as mentioned earlier the mt-32 has a reputation of being the gold standard for retro game midi playback however it does not comply with general midi specifications simply because general midi wasn't around in 1987. there are some similarities and people call it the grand daddy of the 1991 standard you can emulate general midi behavior by sending a dedicated midi file but i assume it would require some further tweaking to make the rise of the triad soundtrack shine [Music] [Applause] of course there are games that offer native mt32 support and sierra classics like monkey island 2 do sound fantastic speaking of sierra there's a library of sissex files that contains many of the custom sounds nice the unit will suffer from amnesia when turned off there's a noisy reverb and if you really want that super authentic retro gaming experience you will have to invest in an mif card and mpu-401 breakout box too pragmatic heretics might stick to dosbox and the mont mt32 emulator it goes without saying that mt32s are dramatically overpriced and i want to thank vienna's very own synth repair wizard thomas for lending me his unit gaming nostalgia aside is the mt-32 still worth the hassle of 80s midi archaeology or other more convenient options for making music you have already heard the mt-32 in our little intro tune that's a solid collection of 80s music production staples multi tim reality and the respectable polyphony count were essential features at the time of the unit's release let's see if it still holds up [Music] nothing wrong with these sounds they do have a certain 80s flavor but that's not necessarily a bad thing i didn't run into obvious polyphony issues and managing basic parameters like volume and program changes with a digitakt works like a charm deep within the innocent looking enclosure of the mt-32 hides a subtractive synthesizer i want to know if we can make it more accessible using last week's a01s sysex functionality in this very roland setup [Music] [Music] interesting the somewhat plasticky sounding subtractive synth section offers a wide tonal variety and it's no surprise that it strongly reminds me of roland's d range hands-on controls for selected parameters are nice but you will need a software editor for in-depth patch editing the mt-32 is a complex instrument but i assume most people just want that instant retro throwback let's see if it can deliver exactly that and some more in this monkey quest space commander in the prehistoric land of the chuck's steel sky digital marble machine mockup [Music] [Music] verdict let's get this out of the way first true fans of the mt-32 will not accept any substitutes it is an integral part of many authentic retro gaming setups and it offers a very specific flavor of la synthesis this being said however powerful and unique the mt32 might be it isn't the most convenient solution if you want this kind of sound for game soundtrack playback and music production mont is pretty spot on and although the sonic peculiarities of the mt-32 can be seen as the secret source of a track the overall tone is very similar to that of other members of the d family especially the d110 i know the d110 received quite some criticism on this show for having a terrible ui but at least it has one regardless of reasoning if you were like me one of the kids that had to play the pirates of pastelon to the anovating beeps of a cheap soundblaster or worse the internal speaker the mt-32 is indeed the big whoop and you must have it thanks for watching and see you next time hey guys i hope you enjoyed the episode feel free to like subscribe become a patron and leave a comment what other kind of gear you would like to see and hear on the show you

Channel: AudioPilz

Views: 38,847

Keywords: Bad Gear, Audiopilz, Roland MT-32, DOS Gamer's Dream, Monkey Island, General Midi, multitimbral, sound module, 80s sound, game sound, retro gaming, Roland D-50, Roland D-10, Roland D-110, Rompler, Vintage Synth, Digital Synth, sound canvas, sound blaster, adlib sound card, dos gaming, amiga computer, marble machine, civvie 11, dos music, willy beamish

Id: DfUOR9I2Fwc

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021