[HN Gopher] A floppy disk MIDI boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10
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       A floppy disk MIDI boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2024-05-19 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nicole.express)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nicole.express)
        
       | sublinear wrote:
       | > In this, the year 2025, minijack MIDI is now fairly common, but
       | in the 90's it was all DIN, all the time
        
       | petesoper wrote:
       | If you're in 2025 we have a few questions for you.
        
       | NikkiA wrote:
       | In 1996 Yamaha was all about TwinVQ (which was far better than
       | mp3 at low bitrates) anyway, so it'd have been that rather than
       | mp3, had they gone that route.
        
       | squarefoot wrote:
       | When General MIDI standard sounds became widespread in early-mid
       | 90s I already wet my feet with synthesizers, samplers and the
       | Amiga .MOD scene, so I was eager to try this new format and its
       | standard library of sounds, but was surprised how absolutely
       | awful they sounded compared to pretty much everything I used,
       | cheap keyboards included. No way I would swap any of my cheap
       | synthesizers with a MT32 or any similar expander. I may have a
       | very unpopular opinion, but hated those sounds since day one, and
       | still hate them. The demos linked sound just terrible to my ears;
       | you can't make a general purpose sound and expect it to fit any
       | song in any genre as much as you can't have a single type of
       | cheese and expect it to be good in all meals. I completely
       | understand the reason why they existed, but no, I don't feel any
       | nostalgia.
        
         | ElectricBoogie wrote:
         | It's a common misconception that GM has to sound bad. Consumer
         | GM units used the smallest sound ROMs they could get away with,
         | lower quality DACs, etc. But you could fire up GM on your
         | Kurzweil K2000, your Quadrasynth, your Roland, or Yamaha
         | professional level synthesizers and workstations and the same
         | GM programs would sound amazing.
         | 
         | For less than a higher end Sound Canvas, you can get a real
         | professional synth with a much bigger and better sound ROM,
         | better DACs, better effects, etc.
        
         | Max-q wrote:
         | I totally agree with you. I hated them from day one. Sounds to
         | clean and polished.
        
         | jader201 wrote:
         | I think things changed a bit with MIDI with the introduction of
         | Soundfonts, and even more with dedicated MIDI sound cards.
         | 
         | I bought a Roland SCC-1 [1], and fell in love with MIDI. It was
         | basically a CM-300 in a PCI card. I could program music that
         | sounded like it was coming from a Roland keyboard. Such good
         | memories.
         | 
         | But like you, I also was not a fan of FM produced MIDI, and
         | that was only exacerbated by the SCC-1.
         | 
         | Soundfonts made it possible for games like FF7 to sound
         | identical to the PS1, which was miles ahead of FM MIDI.
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_SC-55
        
           | emchammer wrote:
           | FM synthesis on consumer MIDI sound cards only sounded dull
           | because it had fewer operators than a professional
           | synthesizer.
        
         | yellowapple wrote:
         | > as much as you can't have a single type of cheese and expect
         | it to be good in all meals
         | 
         | You clearly haven't tried Kerrygold's Dubliner cheese, then ;)
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-19 23:00 UTC)