/tech/ - Technology

Sry for (unrel) OP pic, btw

Its what i had in store

>>30482
Midi still works that way. If you play a midi file, it will play with sounds built into your soundcard. It's just like emoijis. They display with whatever the built in emojis in whatever device or app you're using. It's because they don't actually store sound or images, just codes that say:

>:Dog emoji:
or
>:Eb4 1/4 note on tuba sound

That's another thing too is that each soundcard comes loaded with a midi instrument for all the kinds of orchestral instruments and much more.

https://soundprogramming.net/file-formats/general-midi-instrument-list/

>>30484
Like this is how different an emoji can look depending on the app. Because all its sending is a code to find that emoji in that app's database.

Another example:


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ELYEfhWkSRk&pp=ygUNSG9tbSAyIGtuaWdodA%3D%3D

Vs.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zAj8kMVRPDk&list=PLg9qEDl4K8NiOqu_Z1vUQ66uVroez0W9x&index=6&pp=iAQB8AUB

>>30484
Thank you for this poast

>>30486
You can change what you default midi soundfont is.

https://blog.markheadrick.com/2012/10/01/how-to-make-midi-files-sound-better-in-windows-7/

>To change the default MIDI instruments on Windows, you'll need to replace the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth with a different soundfont or MIDI driver. This can be done by installing a third-party driver like BASSMIDI, CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth, or a VST MIDI driver. Alternatively, you can use a SoundFont player to load different SoundFonts.
Steps to Change Default MIDI Instruments:

<1. Choose a MIDI Driver or SoundFont Player:
BASSMIDI Driver: An open-source driver that supports two ports (16 MIDI channels each).

>CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth: Emulates the EMU sound chip of Creative Soundblaster cards.
>VST MIDI driver: Uses VST plugins instead of SoundFonts.
>SF2 Player: Software like VLC or LMMS that can load SoundFont files (.sf2

https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts?formats=sf2&tags=soundfont

This video explains how to have the game's midi play different soundfonts.

E1M1 Using 40 Different Soundfonts! Comparison w/ Doom MIDI

>>30489
This guy is supremely homosexual.

>>30489
I hated every second watvm this

>>30489
I hate this as well

>>30491
Basadô

>>30490
>Make DOS Games Look and Sound Better
Why? They're still shit.

MIDI is a pretty cool tech. It was invented in the early 1980s as a standard by American and Japanese synthesizer manufacturers, ensuring that every equipment could exchange musical data easily, because back then everyone had their own special incompatible protocol. MIDI is still used today in most music software.

Then you had General MIDI which is an extension specifying some standard sounds that often sound cheap as hell, but you could make your own General MIDI bank of sounds with a Soundfont and play fart sounds instead of piano sounds or something, or have high quality sounds. It wasn't just sound cards, quite a few people had a module like the Roland SC-55 or SC-88 to play the music of DOOM for example. I think Nobuo Uematsu also used a SC-88 to compose Final Fantasy music for the SNES and Playstation games.

The problem of MIDI is that the resolution of the data is 7-bit wide, which means all the data being interpreted by a synthesizer or module is limited between 0 and 127.
This is pretty limiting, especially if you want to make microtonal music or do subtle modulation of sounds.
They are cooking a MIDI 2.0 standard with a better resolution but it will take a long while to get ratified and adopted by everyone, at least one decade or two. For now we have a extension of MIDI called MPE allowing per-note modulation and that kind of stuff but it's hacky.

midi is a pretty cool way to transmit music when your storage space is limited, think about it, those developers from back in the day were crafty. meabwhile nowadays you get shitty software that eats up 2gb of memory just so you can edit a txt file

>>30497

>This is pretty limiting, especially if you want to make microtonal music
That doesn't apply to pitch.
< MIDI pitch bend messages have a precision of 14 bits, which translates to 16,384 possible values (0-16383). The typical default range is +/- 2 semitones, but this can be adjusted. The center point of the range is usually 8192, with values below representing a bend down and values above representing a bend up.

<http://microtonal-synthesis.com/MIDItuning.html
<The MIDI Tuning Standard was ratified by the MIDI Manufacturers' Association in January 1992. Credit should be given to Robert Rich and Carter Scholz who wrote and lobbied for this addition to the MIDI specification. Manufacturers have the option of supporting the tuning standard partially or in full. It is featured on some Emu and Ensoniq instruments. Currently they implement only the non-realtime features of the standard.

>The frequency data format allows for the precise notation of frequencies that differ from equal temperament.

>"Frequency data shall be defined in [units] which are fractions of a semitone. The frequency range starts at MIDI note 0, C = 8.1758 Hz, and extends above MIDI note 127, G = 12543.854 Hz. The first byte of the frequency data word specifies the highest equal-tempered semitone not exceeding the frequency. The next two bytes (14 bits) specify the fraction of 100 cents above the semitone at which the frequency lies. Effective resolution = 100 cents / 214 = .0061 cents."[1]

>This higher resolution allows a logarithmic representation of pitch in which the semitone is divided into 1282 = 214 = 16384 parts, which means the octave is divided into 196608 (logarithmically) equal parts. These parts are exactly 100/16384 cents (approximately 0.0061 cents) in size, which is far below the threshold of human pitch perception and which therefore allows a very accurate representation of pitch.

>or do subtle modulation of sounds.
I think it's really enough for all the CC messages. But:

>some devices and applications can utilize higher resolution MIDI, typically using 14-bit values to achieve a range of 0 to 16,383. This higher resolution can be implemented using methods such as:

<Pairing two CC messages: One message for the most significant byte (MSB) and one for the least significant byte (LSB).
<Non-Registered Parameter Number (NRPN): These are messages specifically designed to allow for a larger number of parameters and a higher resolution.
<Registered Parameter Number (RPN): These are standardized high-resolution messages

>>30491
>25 minutes of E1M1
🤘

>>30491
Nice

>>30492
>>30493
>>30494
meanwhile, in the autistic cringing replies of that video on soundfonts:
>this video is actively harmful to aspiring composers. if you go around spreading misinformation that soundfonts are "The Unsung Hero of Video Game Music Production", people who are new to composing and arranging music will rely on soundfonts way more than they should and will be unaware of music industry standards like kontakt libraries and other sampler formats that have way higher quality samples and additional features that aren't in the sf2 format. just because toby fox used soundfonts in undertale and deltarune doesn't mean they should be advertised as a primary instrument choice in vgm: not every indie game has to sound like undertale or snes games.
>off to an aggressive start but i really do not want anyone to repeat my mistake of searching for an "eastwest symphonic orchestra soundfont" because my brain was so brainwashed by soundfonts in 2016, the time when vgm community was taken by storm after undertale released, and vgm was synonymous with soundfonts. now with the recent resurgence of soundfonts I want people to be educated that soundfonts in vgm should not be a primary instrument of choice, but instead a backup instrument in case you don't have a desired sound from the kontakt/uvi/halion/etc libraries that you use (this does not apply if the soundtrack aims to be soundfont styled at it's core, but like I said not everyone should do that). the soundfont plague has already taken over the touhou community even though the creator of touhou has never ever used soundfonts; the first suggestion when you google "edirol sd-90" (a hardware rompler) is "soundfont" because people promote inaccurately sampled soundfonts too much instead of sharing a hypercanvas vst mod that replaces the samples with edirol sd series rom sounds, alongside that these people who are new to touhou vgm also don't know that the creator has moved on from the rompler to premium vsts and libraries for a while now and they make up 90% of his tracks, far from what's propagated on the internet as "sd90 soundfont" or god forbid I hear "touhou soundfont" again because that makes my skin crawl. also neither terraria, starbound, or ffxiv have ever used soundfonts or any form of "midi" in their soundtracks like you hint in your video, in fact the vast majority of vgm, ranging from triple A to indie games, do not use soundfonts, but instead premium synths and kontakt libraries for their soundtracks.
>additionally popular soundfonts like sgm or arachno (purely legally speaking) are illegal because 95% of the time soundfont creators like these do not record their own instrument samples but sample roland or orchestral libraries, making so that technically "the creator illegally distributes premium sounds and the soundfont user uses the premium sound without owning the rights to them". soundfonts from videogames are also not in the clear because I'm pretty sure the people who put effort in sampling the sounds into snes/genesis cartridges would not look too kindly on people who rip the samples from them and distribute them freely in a convenient sf2 package. this specific point is kinda nitpicky because both companies who made the samples and companies who made the games just don't care and the entire soundfont community kinda relies on them not caring because otherwise most soundfonts would be taken down already ages ago, but still I feel like it would be better for aspiring musicians to legally own their tools instead of entirely relying on gray area soundfonts
>and i know this is a wall of text but please understand where I'm coming from. it would be nice if you addressed this issue either in a follow up video or just your own pinned comment.