You don't need a new soundcard for this. Timidity++ does everything in software. Only reason you'd need a new one is if your current one has really bad sound quality output. Timidity++ doesn't use any hardware wavetable features in any soundcards whether it's a yamaha XG MU-100, roland sound canvas, audigy 2, etc; it does it's own rendering using your main CPU. Timidity emulates hardware midi. Unless your onboard sound really does have pitiful sound quality you don't need a new one... At least make sure the pat set works properly before buying a new sound card for timidity and this pat set
.
Made a mistake and put to use
#extension opt -EFns=3 in the readme. This actually causes clipping and distortion which could very well be what you or others experience (similar to what you describe but doesn't make sense either since you say general midi works so maybe it's something else). Delete
#extension opt -EFns=3 if using it or use 0
#extension opt -EFns=0Recommend to use MidiYoke with twsyng instead. Timidity via setwindrv can be painful and it crashed FFVII on my end (using Windows 7 but I could've had the wrong options). Logarithmic volume control is greyed out when using midiyoke with timidity++'s twsyng which also allows independent volume levels in Windows vista-7 (having volume too loud for timidity's midi can cause the drums to sound distorted and/or too quiet).
Make sure timidity midi device type is configured to XG for FFVII XG playback
(it should automatically fall back to general midi when you use general midi or awe midi). Change timidity midi device type to GM, for awe soundfont or general midi option.
You want to set the right timidity options in the default timidity.cfg your using (your using the one in the pat set as default. Other setups should use another (a main) timidity.cfg as default with all options in there and point to the pat set's timidity.cfg from there; this way you don't have to copy timidity settings to each and every timidity.cfg
).
Gauss interpolation with max quality is set with the following:
#extension opt -EFresamp=g
#extension opt -a -N 34+1twsyng has a gui and makes the settings much easier to handle and using it with midiyoke didn't cause crash issues like setwindrv did on my end (looks like you're using that; I could've had the wrong options). The way you're doing it requires the options be set in the default timidity.cfg through a text editor, and this can be a huge pain
when tracking timidity conflicts-problems since there's no verbosity console. Yamaha XG option should be working btw.
Test the custom XG midi file I uploaded through timw32g. If it plays fine and you hear vocals (around 1:10 and 3:10) then you know the pat set is being used properly by timidity and you can apply the same options from there to twsyng (or the painful way through command line). Then you can use the yamaha xg option in FFVII config menu.
Try twsyng with midi yoke since the way your doing it now is more difficult; setwindrv crashed FFVII for me everytime (might be working on your end but it's still pain not knowing if timidity encounters an error).
Here's the settings you should use:
If you still hear the drums but their faint (or distorted) try turning down timidity's volume (amp should be 50 but lower values may be better on your setup). Make sure noise shaping is set to 0
(anything higher than 3). Made a mistake and recommended the tube amplifier like noise shaping which is wrong! You need 0
or higher than 3 for noise shaping (tube amplifier like can be too loud and cause clipping-distortion which can be similar to what you're experiencing; if general midi works fine however then it doesn't seem like the noise shaping at fault).
Also, use the correct location for the "dir" lines in the pat set's timidity.cfg so timidity can find the drumsets and banks; it looks like you're already doing that.
What OS are you using?
I also agree and think midi doesn't suck. It saves lots of hard drive space and you can swap instrument sets to have totally different masters and quality to music. Also think using the native game midi is better than black hacks (black hacks are great btw
) to use pre-recorded music files; it's amazing what they pulled off with the awe32 considering it only had 512kb of ram (then again it's amazing what they did with the playstation considering it had less ram for music I imagine). Plus we still have the yamaha XG midi to render the music like the playstation (it seems better IMO but it's also better being able to use different instrument sets; if we find high quality sources of the samples used in the playstation, we could make a patset-soundfont out of them. We can make a sega genesis patset-soundfont, SNES FFIV,
) and you can master your own soundtrack with different soundfont-patset combinations. Actually encountered errors in the OST that are gone with the yamaha XG midi; don't know if it's ogg's fault but oh well.
