[jazzy piano music] - Greetings! And welcome to an LGR Thing returning to the mountain
top, the MIDI Mountain that we put together, I don't know, is it was like a year
or two ago or something. Oh good grief, 2017 was four years ago. So anyway, I guess it's
been a while, but you know, I still use it every so often. Maybe not in its full form,
but there's a reason for that. And that's because it's a MIDI
mountain! It's just a stack of MIDI devices that
aren't really connected except via cables, and
anytime that I want to use it I have to bring the whole
setup out or parts of it out. And normally that's what I
ended up doing, if I'm honest. I just bring one or two
components out as needed, and then it's not a MIDI mountain anymore, it's just a regular old MIDI
set setup for retro computers. And the thing with these devices here, most of them anyway,
everything but the MT-32, is that they are all 1U half rack devices, which means that they fit horizontally onto half of a one unit sized height rack. So that got me thinking, "Why don't I just put these
in a rack of some kind?" The other thing that
really spurred this on is that I've kind of already done that. I've messed around with
putting some of these units and just units of all kinds
of different audio stuff into a rack-mount shelving system that I use for my main synthesizer setup. Yep, I'm very much into synths, making my own music and such, never really got it with
any kind of seriousness, but it's something I've
always messed around with, and in 2020 in particular, I
really ramped up all the things that I wanted to try and connect together and just sort of building
my own synth configuration and just adding things to it and swapping things out all the time. And at the core of that is
this audio rack in the middle. And having had so much
fun putting that together. I really wanted to replicate
some of that experience with a MIDI Mountain 2.0, rack-mounted, a MIDI RackMountain, if you will. And so that's what we're
doing in this video here is we're revisiting that
idea of a MIDI mountain, but doing it even bigger and better. So we're going to be taking a look at a bunch of different components going through the different MIDI-modules that I want to be using as well as the MIDI interface itself and the MIDI Thru Box and stuff like that that's pretty important. Mixers, power equalizer, and you know, a whole bunch of different things, and of course, a rack-mounted case. And that is going to be the
bigger distinction here is that I want all this fully
enclosed in something that I can pack up more
easily and move around, or, you know, just pack up more easily. I don't know, it's hard
to pack this thing up. So we bid farewell to the
current MIDI mountain. we hardly knew ye, but in its place will
be something much bigger and badder and better, hopefully. So let's get right to it. So the first MIDI device in
the mountain is a familiar one. This is also the oldest
one we'll be using. And the only one that's not
General MIDI compatible exactly. This is the Roland MT-32 but instead of normal standalone unit, like we did in the last
MIDI mountain video, this is one of them that's been
put into a rack-mount case. Yeah. I've actually done a
video dedicated to this over on my blurbs channel. And while I'm not a
hundred percent certain this was actually a Roland product, like the case itself, it
is made for it specifically and was sold through music
distributors at some point in the early 90s, late 80's, and yeah... It's just a full case replacement for it. It's just a normal MT-32 inside and it's been a flatly mounted,
so there's no angle to it. It is, unfortunately, 2U tall, so that's two units instead of one. It's, I think, due to the
front of this whole bezel here, because of the way it's
normally angled backwards that would be 1U high, but
when you angle it forward and make it flat, this is
actually from here to here a little bit taller
than 1U, so that's fun. But anyway, this is going to
be the base of the mountain. Oh, by the way, on the video and blurbs, I didn't have the correct
volume nob for it. Well, I do now, actually
got one 3D printed and it looks very nice. Yeah. Next, we have another familiar unit. This is a Roland Sound Canvas, specifically the SC-55 MKII. So this and the other MIDI devices will all be General MIDI compatible. And the 55 MKII in
particular is a nice little half rack size in terms
of width and 1U tall. So the idea here will be to
put this on a one unit shelf. We'll see how that does. I've taken the feet off of here because it actually has
these four feet that go on the bottom that makes it
a little bit taller than 1U, and I've done the same for
the other units as well because they will all be a
little taller than need be. I still don't know if
they'll fully fit on a shelf. It's going to be tight, but we'll see. So we got the MT-32 and the Sound Canvas, those are necessities. This is another pretty much necessity as far as I'm concerned. This is the a Yamaha... Dang It. Couldn't have a spec on the front. Yeah, this is the Yamaha MU80, another classic MIDI module, maybe not as popular necessarily as the Sound Canvas or the MT-32. But, yeah, it does some
very similar things to the Sound Canvas and
it just sounds great. It has some different
tones that it generates. And yeah, this is one that
we had in the previous MIDI mountain and it's just
an awesome sound to it. I love the pianos and drums and a bunch of the other sounds it makes not necessarily the guitar so much, but you know, it's a great module and, you know, like those others, I didn't show the rear
of the Sound Canvas, but I have before so whatever. It's got MIDI in, out and thru, the little serial selection thing, we're not going to use any of this really, just the MIDI thru and the outputs on the right there for sound. And here's where things
start to differ though compared to the previous mountain, in addition to the MT-32, I guess, being a little bit different, but yeah this is the Kawai GMega. This is a synth module
that you don't see as much, but still had a bit of
success amongst folks, mostly in Japan. I've seen a few folks import them. I mean, that's what I did. And yeah, it was just
another General MIDI module with some slightly different
sounds, 32 voice channels. I'm not intimately familiar with this, not something I've used as much as the Sound Canvas or MT-32. There were just a bunch
of these things back then, and they're all interesting
in their own way because they have slightly
different features, in terms of musical composition stuff, which I'm not terribly
interested in for this video but still it's got some cool things. Now, this one doesn't do the quarter-inch outputs, it's got RCA. And it's really just the
sounds that it generates that are going to be a
little bit different, the instruments themselves An interesting addition, I believe And the last module is
another new addition. So yeah, we're not doing the
Korg like we did last time. I really liked that module but I decided I'd try for
a different kind of white, off-white, gray-colored MIDI module. This is the Akai SG01K So yeah... A little bit different in
terms of the aesthetic, not only the color, but you know, it's got a screen with
these little red LEDs which is kind of cool. And it's also got these different kinds of push buttons and things. And I would really
prefer it to be in black just to match all the rest, but whatever, This is just a cool little device. Again, kind of like the Kawai one, this is a somewhat
popular-ish import [chuckles] amongst MIDI enthusiasts, and this one has some very similar things, once again, going on so... They all have the serial which
we're not going to be using. MIDI in out and thru outputs
and RCA in this one as well. And there's also a little three and a half
millimeter headphone jack, so if you don't want to do
line level, there you go. So yeah, this is probably the unit that I use the least out of all these, so this will be fun. And naturally it will
need a MIDI interface. So this will be the same stuff that we did in the previous MIDI mountain video. So we have the MIF-IPC here
to provide MPU-401 capability, nice and intelligent mode stuff. There are modern recreations
and clones and such, but you know, I've got the original so... I'm going to use it. And same for the Roland MPU-401, the MIDI processing unit itself. So the card connects to
the computer through that, we've got the cable there, and then this is just going to be sending a MIDI out to MIDI switcher. I'm not going to mess with
any of these other things 'cause we don't need to. And of course, we're going to have a bunch of MIDI cables by the
time this is all together. And in terms of sending MIDI
thru to a bunch of things we have a MIDI Thru Box. Now, I'm going to be using this instead of the MPU-104, a little
switcher from Roland that we had at the near the
top of the last MIDI mountain, 'cause, you know, this is rack-mount and we got more rack-mount
options to choose from for all kinds of different things. So yeah, the MPU-401 goes into here and then it's got eight thrus, so we could actually
send the same MIDI signal to eight different MIDI devices. We're only doing four and, yeah, it's just a passive unpowered thing. We don't have to worry about
anything in terms of that. And it just works and it gets its power
actually through MIDI, so we'll have a little light
lighting up there hopefully. Yeah, handy piece of equipment. Now is for mixing all the audio together. No more cheap little four port switch. That's gone in its
place, places the MX822`` by Applied Research and Technology. Yeah, a brand new mixer, look at this. So yeah, eight channels stereo mixer which is ideal really for
what we're doing here. And it does have an effects loop. We can send different
effects through here. Don't have any intention
of using that for this. Each MIDI module has its own effects. Now, this is a powered unit here. We have an output there through XLR. So my thinking is MT-032, Sound Canvas, Yamaha, Kawai, Akai. That's five channels, why
was I saying for earlier? I meant five. Anyway, we've got five things to plug into this eight unit mixer. So that's awesome. And of course we got volume control, panning for each of the individual things and a nice little level meter set here make sure stuff isn't peaking. You know, last time I had
that graphic equalizer just sitting down near the bottom. Well, I did want another equalizer, not necessarily to do
much equalizing itself, but I liked the whole
spectrum analyzer deal. And this was a cheap one,
I just found it on eBay. I was like, "Ah, you know what? This looks kind of cool." And it's rack-mounted so
let's see what it's about. Again, this is totally unnecessary and mostly just for aesthetics. So even if it's sucked as an
equalizer, I don't really care. I just want the spectrum analyzer, the visual display to look
like a thing is happening. [paper rustling] Well, this is interesting. So it does have feet on the bottom and no actual rack-mounting ears on there but it's supposed to be 1U
tall rack-mountable thing, so I'm assuming the rack-mount
bits are inside the box. Ah-ha, there they are. So we've got those little metal things go on the side there and
make that rack-mountable. And we will take the feet off of there 'cause we be needing this. [slow jazz]
[screws rattling] Man, this certainly does feel cheap. I mean, it should be if it's
only like $69 or something it's probably just a clone
of all of the other stupid cheap looking things that are on eBay with these "equalizer" kind of features. So, you know, it's possible
that this won't even be an actual a spectrum analyzer and it'll just be some dumb display that just dances to music but whatever. [chuckles] These screws
don't even really fit. Look at that, they're like wood screws. They're pointy and slightly too wide. So it's just sort of
digging into the metal. Okay Well, it looks more rack-mountable. I have full expectations
of it being awful, but you know, it was cheap. And as long as it provides a display that displays something, I
guess we'll call that a win. Lastly, though, in terms of things we're putting in the rack, I needed something to
turn all the power on and I got one of these power
centers with 10 inputs. USB, apparently too. That's kind of cool. Yeah. Look at that. So do I have 2 USB right there? And I wanted one of these
that has all the switches just because I find that
incredibly enjoyable to do. So there's that. So we can just switch everything on like it's the "Back of
the Future" time machine. Fantastic. And yeah, everything just
plugs into the back here. Unfortunately, with some
of those wall warts, you may have to use some
little adapter extension things to get them to fit. But yeah, that's that. This'll be either at the
very bottom or the very top. Let's go ahead and get to... The actual rack unit itself. And for that, I've gone
with one of these gear cases because, I don't know,
I've always liked the way that these ridiculous trunks look. It's got a handles and it's
opens both front and back so... Kinda twists open like a can opener. And there you go. Check that out. It's just a big old box and it's not terribly deep. It's like 12 and a half inches inside. So yeah, I didn't want it
to be ridiculously deep 'cause I'm not putting any ridiculously deep modules in there. In fact, the deepest one is the MT-32 and you can see that it's not even going all the way to the back. So yeah, this is about the shallowest of these type of things that I could find that also was mounted in the way that I kind of liked the look of. Mm, there's a sticker! Mmkay. Some mounting hardware for the racks and then there of course are the actual rack-mounting bits themselves. So this is an eight unit rack and I mean that's all there is. It's just... [chuckling] That's just an open space with some holes and metal and stuff. I had considered getting
a custom wooden one made, but the prices on those man... you know, for another project I'm doing, I actually ended up getting
a custom case made for that because you'll see. But for this, you know, just a pre-made thing is totally fine. And I like the fact that it's got handles. Handles are cool. Okay, then... So that is enough with the explanation of what we're going to do. So let's go ahead and do it. We're going to build
things inside of the case and get it all hooked up and set up and then try it out with some MIDI files and a game or two and enjoy the new MIDI RackMountain. Let's get to it. [jazz music resolves] [slow jazz music] Alrighty, it is time to assemble
this new MIDI RackMountain out of our mole hill of MIDI components, beginning with the case itself, of course, and getting everything inserted into it which requires the use of
some mounting hardware. In this case, it's a little bit simpler than some of the other
audio racks that I've used in that there are no nuts or
anything that go around back. You just have these screw in bolts and the rack itself is
pre-drilled with threaded holes. So it doesn't require any
extra little metal clip on components or anythings
it'll stay in place. You just screw things in
with some bolts and washers. And the first one is the MIDI Thru Box which my thinking here was to put the least visually interesting
unit at the very bottom and then build up from there, with the mixer being next on top of that. And yeah, so far so good. I mean, you know, this
is just an audio rack. This is standard stuff. 19 inches across all the
holes are pre-drilled, everything just screws
into place normally. Everything should be perfectly fine, and the reason I'm saying this is because it soon was not perfectly fine whatsoever because of that questionable equalizer. [scoffs] This stupid thing. So it's advertised as a 1U
standard 19 inch rack thing. And you know, at first glance
it kind of looks like it. But as soon as I put it in
there, things looked a little off and that's because they
were checking this out. Those metal mounting brackets
that screwed in on the side of the unit to make it rack-mountable? Yeah, they don't fit. You could kind of line up either
the top or the bottom hole but it threw the other
one off at that point. So I thought, okay, maybe I mounted them on there incorrectly, but nope. I took them off there and spin
them around every which way and fiddled around with a
little bit and just determined that they're not drilled
correctly whatsoever. And they're also just a little bit taller, so the entire rest of
the rack be thrown off if I were to mount it in here, so I put them back on there and then took those two units out of there that I had already put into the rack and then stuck the
equalizer down at the bottom seeing if maybe I could get
it mounted a little bit lower, so it doesn't throw off the
entire rest of the rack. And it looked like that
would probably do the trick. So I also decided to drill
out the mounting brackets just a little bit so I can
get all four screws in there, Not necessary, but I did want all four, just so it would look nice, but that ended up being a mistake because with all four in there, it, once again threw off the height. 'cause not only are the brackets off. So is the entire height
of the equalizer itself. It's just a couple of millimeters larger than an actual 1U rack-mountable device. [sighs deeply] Yeah. So the quick and dirty
solution ended up being to take out a couple of the screws and then just push the whole
thing down into the very bottom of the case because there was
a little bit of leeway there. And then with a mounted lower, everything else was in its
correct place above that. That's not the last
problem with the equalizer but we'll get to that later because for now it was smooth sailing getting everything else mounted in there because, you know, they
were designed by people that actually knew what they were doing. So there's the mixer in its place followed by the MIDI Thru Box. And then the rack-mounted
Roland MT-32 going above that, which is our only 2U
tall rack-mounted thing in this entire setup. And then above that is
where all those half rack MIDI modules are going to
start going into place. And to make that happen, I got one of these 1U tall
shelves to go above the MT-32 because there wasn't enough surface area to start stacking things on the MT-32. So this shelf goes deep enough
and screws right into place and we can start stacking,
with my idea being to use some of this industrial Velcro beneath the units themselves to make sure they're not sliding around. Now, I could use screws and there were some holes
in the bottom of the shelves in order to do that, but I didn't want to. So the first two that are going in here are the Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 and the Yamaha, MU80,
and then my thinking was above those would go the next two units just put onto another shelf. Although, immediately I ran
into a problem with the Akai. It was a little bit too tall, I thought, with the front face
plate and then the screw that was holding in the front face plate, that made it kind of rock around. So it took the screw out
and that made it flat. But then once I got the power
strip installed above that, it became clear pretty quickly that it wasn't going to work out. The face plate itself as a
bit of a thickness to it, and with that shelf, the
second shelf installed. it just made the whole thing too tight. So I took the shelf back out and then just sort of stuck the Akai SG01K on top of the Roland Sound Canvas. I did actually have to take the Velcro out from underneath the Sound Canvas
in order to get it to fit. But yeah, worked out just fine. Everything's in there tightly, ad then I took the Velcro and put it behind in between the units so they're not sliding
around on the backside. And then finally there was the Kawai GMega which slid in from behind
just fine being pretty much the exact right height
to make things nice and snug. A little more Velcro
to hold those in place, keep those from sliding
around and there we go. That's the basics of the MIDI RackMountain all put into place. And I got to say it is looking
pretty imposing already. Just all of these particular
modules stuck together in an 8U rack. Ah, that is a sight to behold. I am loving what I'm seeing. Of course I love it even more with some power and that was next up. And, unfortunately, these
power cables provided an immediate source of frustration. Some of them are really long. Some of them are just
clunky and their design. I did my best though to try to get everything tucked
in place and out of the way. And then for the ones that
use a wall wart on the end, I used some of these little extensions, so that way I could actually
plug it into the power strip because otherwise they
don't go in sideways, they go in like facing up or down and there's just no space to make that happen inside of here. So yeah, really just wanting
to get everything all connected so I could power it on and I don't know just admire it really quickly, make sure everything is going
to do what it's supposed to. I mean, I've tested all
of these individually. I know that they work but I want to see them
working with this power strip. So let's go ahead and turn it on. [switches flipping] Oh yeah. [chuckles] That is immediately satisfying. I love clicking all of those power buttons and seeing everything turn on like this but the only thing even more satisfying is turning all of them off again. [switches flipping] Yeah, that's awesome. So next up, I spent a
while doing a little bit of cable management for the power. Just trying to get everything out of the way as much as I could because we're about to crowd
it up a whole lot more. Like everything has got a MIDI in as well as audio out and that's got to go to the MIDI Thru Box and
then our mixer down there. So yeah, let's get started. We're going to begin
here with the MIDI cables and I've still got the ones that I use from the previous MIDI
mountain, so that'll do It'd be kind of nice to
have some shorter ones but for now this is just fine. And getting them all
connected is easy enough. It's just getting the MIDI ends connected to the MIDI thru which sends MIDI out, and then the one main MIDI
connection on the Thru Box. That's going to connect
to our external MPU-401 that's connected to the PC. And then it's time for another
bit of cable management of sorts to try and get
just a little bit more space for all the audio cables
that are coming up. That is going to be a mess. Reason being that pretty
much all the cables that I have are three feet long and they don't really need to
be any more than a foot long but it's what I've got on hand so this is what's going to do for now. And there all going to be going through the mixer in stereo and they connect to the mixer with quarter-inch TRS on that side, and then the other side, some of them have quarter inch and then some of them
have RCA, just depends. But I had cables for both of
them not using any adapters. What I don't have a cable
for is something to go from the output of the mixer to... 'cause equalizers RCA only and the output of the
mixer is through XLR. So it does have a quarter
inch auxiliary output, I'm not going to be using that. I'm just going to order
an RCA to XLR adapter and get that sent to me real quick, and until then we can test it
out using the headphone output on the front of the mixer. And since I've tested both of the Rolands and the Yamaha before on this channel, let's try something out that
we haven't yet like the GMega. It's got a built in demo mode, so we'll let that do its thing. [whimsical synth orchestration] [upbeat synth rock] [timpani drums fading] Oh heck yeah, doesn't that sound awesome. I really liked the sound of this unit. It's got a very unique tone to it. You can see why I wanted
it in here, but anyway... [slow jazz] A couple of days passed and
the XLR adapter showed up and this all allow us to just go straight from the mixers main outputs
to the stupid equalizer. And I'm going to go from the mixer to the equalizers, I guess, DVD input. Doesn't really matter what it's labeled, they're all the same, really. And then I've got another cable to go from the rec out of the mixer to our computer speakers,
whatever they may be. And the it takes left and right RCA, and puts that to a single
three and a half millimeter female jack on the other end. For now though, I just wanted
to test this thing out, starting with that equalizer
and I have increasing doubts that it's going to be
any good, but whatever. Let's go ahead and get the
plastic off of there first. [plastic stretching] [adhesive snapping] Well, that was exciting. Let's finally test this thing out and see if it actually has
a real spectrum analyzer or if it's dumb. [upbeat synth music] Well, that's unfortunate. Sure is unfortunate. It's the same display no matter what kind of audio you put in there It just increases the
height with the volume. That's it. And you know what? If I'd have waited, I would have seen that Techmoan got pretty much this exact same thing just slightly as
aesthetically differently, but I actually bought this thing before his video ever came out. So yeah, whenever he did a
video on that and I saw it I'm like, "Oh no, I bet
mine is just as terrible." And it is and worse with
the rack-mounting garbage. I guess the actual 10 band
equalizer itself does work but I don't plan to use that. Like I said earlier, I
really just wanted this for a spectrum analyzer,
a VFD on the front, and it doesn't even do that. So we'll just pretend that's not there. Let's go ahead and try this out with a MIDI input instead
of just the built-in demos. And while we will be plugging this into a computer here pretty soon to get some MIDI files playing. right now, I'm using my Arturia Key Step from my main synth setup, and this all allow us just to
get some basic MIDI outgoing and see kind of what
we've put together here. Okay, so I've just got a
simple sequence put into here. We'll let that play. And now that I've got them
all on the same instrument which is just General MIDI
number one except for the MT-32, there's some weirdness there but they're all on the grand
piano, just default piano. So let's go with that MT-32 first. [slow arpeggio melody] So there's that. Next will be the SC-55. [music brightening] Next the MU80. [tone shifting] Next is the Akai SG01K. [tone shifting] And then last, the Kawai GMega. [reverb softening] They each have their
own individual settings for chorus and reverb
and things like that. I could go and like make
them all completely dry or completely wet or
whatever, but I just have them on the default things right now. MT-32 though, even though it's
blinking on number one here, I actually had to switch the
piano to MIDI channel two. And I just put the rest
of these on channel two, and then this one sees
channel two as channel one. Eh, it's just weird because
this is before General MIDI, so it treats things a
little bit differently, not a big problem in a
computer setting when we're, you know, games are just going to give it the instructions it needs as long as something is designed for the MT-32, for instance, but anyway... Something else that's kind of fun is now, since they're all going at once here, we can just have them all going together. [music amplifying] [tones shifting] There we go. That's five pianos in tune And of course, you could
make it, effectively, a five voice synth [chuckles] and treat them as like five oscillators. [low beeping] [tone shifting] [tone splitting] Or could just go really nuts at the timing and create our own oscillation by speeding up the rate and... [low, slow beeping] [beeping doubling] [beeping accelerating] [beeping osculating] [tone wobbling] [tone shifting melodically] [tone wobbling] [tone stops]
Yeah! Let's go ahead and get it
plugged into a computer though and see what it sounds
like with some MIDI files, and of course, some games. [giggles] Oh, this is exciting now that
it's finally coming together. Okay, so we've got the MIDI
RackMountain all set up and are ready to go and connected to the MPU-401 box right here through MIDI and then the
box in the back is connected to the MIF-IPC card in
the LGR Woodgrain PC that is running here. And then the cards... the sound card's line in,
the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0, that's connected to the mixer here, which takes all this,
sends it to the line in, and then, yeah, it's just mixing that with the normal Sound Blaster sound so that we can get sound effects and music coming through the same set of little computer speakers up here so... Kind of an underwhelming set of speakers compared to all this craziness,
but it'll do the job. So let's run the, you know,
the thing we've got to run in terms of testing General MIDI, Duke 3D. And let's do the MT-32 first because this is not General MIDI and, in fact, something else I've noticed, that's kind of a side effect
of it being mounted forward, you know, just straight up
instead of angled backwards is you can't actually see the
display as brightly because of the polarization on the front here. If I look at it from down
here, it's nice and bright, but at eye level, it's kind of dark because of the way it's mounted
in this rack-mount casing, so that's something, but it is what it is. So yeah, let's test this. It's set to General MIDI
and this is not a GM device, so it doesn't quite sound right. ["Duke Nukem 3D" theme] [chuckles] At all. [music stops] And that's just what you
get when you're running something that is not meant for the MT-32. We'll test the MT-32 with
something made for it here in a minute. Instead, let's move on to the other things like the Sound Canvas
which is actually what "Duke 3D" was written for. ["Duke Nukem 3D" theme] Yeah. [music fades] So in many people's minds, that is really the default
sound of "Duke 3D". This or, you know, the AdLib really but... [music stops]
Yeah. And we'll get to move on. So MU80 also General MIDI, the rest of these are all GM, but they just have different sounds. ["Duke Nukem 3D" theme] Different guitars, different drums... Going back to the Sound Canvas. [tone shifting] And back to the Yamaha. [tone shifting] [music stops]
Yeah. Same song, just different sounds. Let's hear it through the Akai SG01K. ["Duke Nukem 3D" theme] Different snare right there for sure. [music fading out]
Yeah. Not my favorite of the
bunch for "Duke 3D", but this, the Kawai GMega,
listened to this thing. ["Duke Nukem 3D" theme] [chuckling] It's so harsh. Like it's just pounding on
those drums. [music fading] I kinda like it for the "Duke 3D" theme because it's so in your face, but it's very different
compared to every other device. [music amplifying] Like going from that
back to the Sound Canvas. [tone shifting] [tone shifting back] [music fading out] Ah, now this is why I
love this type of setup. You know, you get to mess
around with all these different implementations of the
General MIDI standard and the different way forms
that they have packed in there. You know, and these are
all effectively "romplers," so they're just loading
different sound samples from ROM and then playing the back whenever the MIDI tracks
tell them to do so. Whereas this uses LA synthesis, and this is just a different
kind of sound module that, yeah, it's mostly relying on different system patches and things being sent to it
by games themselves so... Let's load one of those games. So I got Thexder 2: Firehawk. And you can actually see it
loaded up some text here, that's another thing you get
through the MT-32. [chuckles] [graphic's sound effect] [synth music building] [upbeat synth music] [music fading] Sounds so good. [chuckling] Now, it's just sending
MIDI information through the same interfaces before,
but it's just being written, or it was something that was
written with the MT-32 in mind since we switched it over to that, and if we were to do put
it over into these others, now they're not going to sound right. [tone shifting] So that's why I always,
in these kinds of setups have an MT-32 and then
something General MIDI because you need both, in my opinion, to get the most out of your DOS games. You can't just go with one or the other or you're going to be missing
out on a whole selection of music from different areas of games. So yeah, it's largely the late 80s into the beginning of the early 90s that the MT 32 is most often used and then these for everything else. [upbeat synth music] [chuckling] That's so cool. I also liked that you can see this MIDI light flashing over here. I was kind of expecting it to be red not a blue LED, but hey, whatever, I'm just glad that it flashes because that lets me know that MIDI information is being pulsed through to the MPU box here. And I mean there's no
indicator on the MPU-401. I've always wished that there was. Intriguingly, you also
see it still pulsing through some kind of MIDI data here when it's not doing anything. It's just at a DOS prompt, not really sure why. You know, nothing's being picked
up in terms of instruments, but maybe cause it's still sending like these just little late messages, "Thanks for playing." I don't know. But anyway, let's run
some stuff in Windows because it's important to me. [fanfare trumpeting] Yay. Now the way I have this set up is I've got the drivers installed
for the Roland MPU-401 and that's really all we need. It's just set to the default
settings for port and interrupt and, yeah, we can now play MIDI files through whatever programs
would allow us to do that. Like the traditional Windows Media Player if we wanted to get canyon.mid going. but you know, we did that in
the last MIDI mountain video, kind of did that to death really. So let's do a little something different like this MIDI player here the MIDI Jukebox from Passport Designs. And yeah, if you're familiar
with the passport.mid file that came with Windows 95, that's where this originated, or at least it was one of
their composers, I guess, made it maybe for a later version of MIDI Jukebox here or something. It was made by them anyway. And this came with the
Yamaha CBXT3 that I covered in LGR a while back and a lot
of you probably didn't see because that video
didn't do terribly well, but, hey, whatever. Here it is again. So let's take a listen to some big band, starting with the Sound Canvas and we'll just go through them. [synth big band music] [tone shifting] [tone shifting]
[piano track isolating] [laughing] Well, that's a thing
that happens occasionally. Sometimes it just doesn't start or it doesn't get the MIDI track correct. [full instrumentation returning] There we go. That usually tends to fix it. So for some reason, this unit in particular
is a little particular about the way it handles
like multi-MIDI tracks going through the MIDI cable. It was set to just do one which would be how you would have a set if you hooked up this to a
piano like we were doing earlier and just playing one instrument at a time, but if you're wanting to
do multiple instruments, sometimes you have to
go in here and do this. It's interesting, actually
clicking through these, you can see that the settings
are changing on all of them depending on, I guess, whatever
instrument is on track one. And again, the MT-32, poor thing, is not meant for General MIDI at all, so it's going to sound terrible with his bossa nova track, I'm sure. [synth bossa nova] [chuckling] Yeah. [music stops] Definitely not supposed
to sound like that. So let's put it over to the GMega. [synth bossa nova] Yeah. [tone shifting] That's all the GM modules
just mixed together and it actually doesn't sound too bad. [music amplifying] [tone shifting] [music fading] [chuckling] It is just so
fun to me, I don't know. At least if you like the way that these things sound. I know a lot of people don't. In fact, every time I
post anything related to MIDI music on LGR, there's
a number of commenters that are just like, "Oh,
I hate the way it sounds." Don't know what to tell you, really. I like it, for certain things. But yeah, since this is the Passport Player, let's go ahead and run
the passport.mid file. Just copy it over from a disk I had. Gotta bring it over from Windows 95 'cause it didn't come with 3.1. Yeah, Passport. Let's just start with GMega this time with it's crazy drums
switch around from there. [synth bass line] [tone shifting] It's crazy how much the drums changed the entire feeling of the song. [tone shifting]
Ooh. So that's the Yamaha and
that little honky-tonk kind of piano in the background sounds quite a bit different than the other ones. Let's go over to the Sound Canvas. [tone shifting] Out of morbid curiosity,
we'll just hear the MT-32. [instrumentation squealing feebly] Well, you know... [chuckling] [instrumentation shifting back] [music stops] That is just way too enjoyable in that childhood fantasy kind of way. And really, I could
just go on forever going through a bunch of different games and programs even composing MIDI, I love doing all that
stuff in my spare time, but let's just go on
out on a high note here with The Ultimate Doom. Mix them all together, why not? Even MT-32. [upbeat synth music] [chuckling] Boom. Five drum sets hitting at once. I was going to do a direct
recording of the sound here, fading in each of the five synths over the Sound Blaster sound. [tone shifting] [gunshots firing]
[enemies growling] [gunshots firing]
[enemies growling] [gun reloading] [gun reloading] [metal music continues] [elevator opening] [gunshots firing]
[enemies growling] [gun reloading] [gunshots firing]
[enemies growling] [gunshots firing]
[enemies growling] [score firing] [metal music continues] [slow jazz piano]
You know what? I haven't even addressed one
of its best features yet, and that's whenever I'm done
messing around with MIDI and getting everything turned off and then we can close it up and pack it away easily hopefully. This just goes on front here and got the can opener things on the side. I guess, they're more can
closers here, but yeah... That's that for the front. So yeah, let's just pretend it's all cable managed. [chuckling] And then the back he was on
the same way as the front. [latches clasping] That's it, all packed up and
ready to do whatever with like take it somewhere, put it in storage when I don't need it. I got handles, I can
put it up on its side. Actually, I forgot to mention earlier, it's got these wheels
and a travel thing here, 'cause this is really like a flight case, so it's a big old thing
of luggage effectively. Yeah. Rolling MIDI RackMountain and really a heavy. [chuckling] Now, I'm curious
how much this weighs. Let's go see. 81.2 pounds. - [Weigh] 81.2 pounds is
equal to 36.832 kilograms. - [Clint] Yeah. - [Weigh] To convert
from pounds to kilograms- - [Clint] Okay- [crosstalk] Okay, anyway. It's heavy is what I'm
trying to say. [chuckling] And yet still easier to pack up and move around than the other one. Speaking of which. [case rolling] The handle's a tad short, but
it is portable, technically. Get some Tyrian Jukebox going here. So yeah, one last little touch though, I'm going to put a
little a sticker on here 'cause I like putting stickers on a lot of different audio equipment. And this one is the newly
available Cool Crab sticker which you can purchase now on
the LGR Redbubble storefront along with some other
random merch but yeah... Sold like 70 of these things since launching that
storefront. [chuckling] A lot of you want a Cool
Crab merch apparently. And I was thinking of putting him here, but it looks like he's a
little too tall for that. I mean, he can kind of fit on both. There we go. Look at that. He's too cool. Hanging out on the MIDI RackMountain. I'm just leave the Tyrian Jukebox going for the outro here and yeah... I guess that's it for this video. If you have any suggestions or ideas, things that
you would change, yeah, put it in the comments or just generally your general thoughts on this General MIDI set up generally. I already know a few
things that I would change namely the stupid equalizer, I just don't like it in any way whatsoever and probably the Akai. I mean, I like it, but I kind of wish it matched the color
scheme of the other things and the sounds aren't
my absolute favorite. I've got a number of other modules I could swap it out for
if I want to though. But yeah, that dumb equalizer, that was just a mistake on every level. I'm not going to use the
equalization settings and the fake spectrum analyzer visualizer on there is just terrible. I would at least like it to match up with what's playing through the system. And I know of plenty of devices that would let me do that
in a 1U rack-mount size, but they're either too hard to find, too expensive or they do way much more than I actually need them to. So yeah, if you got suggestions
for that, let me know. I'd be curious to see what else I could swap this out
with that is not garbage. But anyway, that is it for this video and thank you very much for watching. [upbeat synth music]
I'm starting to love his "midi" videos. I'd really love to see him composing some music.
i have vinyl records from 8-bit guy (planet x3), AVGN, and look mum no computer. i will bet the house that I have one from LGR in the not too distant future.
I cant be the only one who is sitting here screaming at the tv “TURN THEM ALL UP AT ONCE YOU COWARD”
Hey man, I for one LOVE your MIDI stuff. I'd love to see a rundown of your synth rig too if there isn't one already up. Thanks
u/raiderofawesome and Master Boot Record need to do a colab!