Talk:Roland MT-32

Monotonic bit?

"in the original MT-32 by dropping bit 14 (the highest monotonic bit) and shifting the remaining bits to the left, reducing the effective resolution to 15 bits"

Trying to translate this article and I'm wondering what exactly "the highest monotonic bit" means. Also, how does that double the volume? If a 16-bit sound signal's sound floor is -96dB, you'd exceed digital maximum in 10 bits if each bit doubles the sound. Davhorn 14:42, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The "highest monotonic bit" is the the highest non-sign-carrying bit. Bit 15 carries the sign; bits 14 to 0 carry the absolute amplitude. Shifting by one bit to the left (while keeping the sign bit) is the same as multiplying by two. We're talking about linear amplitude values here, not logarithmic decibel values. - NewRisingSun 19:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Now it makes sense :) Davhorn 21:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Copyright status of MT-32 samples

Fair use#Common misunderstandings suggests that Roland failed to properly claim copyright over the MT-32's sound samples. Does this mean they are considered to be in the public domain? The Emulation section of this article seems to be referring to this in the short mention of Munt's legal "squabble", but fails to report on what the resolution was. Pimlottc 13:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The current legal status of the samples is that they are without a doubt, copyrighted in any country that respected the Berne Convention at the time the samples were fixed (Mid 1987). Ordered list of those who adopted the Berne Convention here: List of countries party to the Berne Convention by date of entry into force. As the United States adopted the Berne Convention Treaty in 1989, a ton of laws were put in place regarding the copyright status of national and international works in the United States. Roland failed to demonstrated that they had a copyright on the samples using any of the American provided remedies. However, their Cease and Desist against the emulator's authorship is without prejudice, meaning if they ever get bored and want to come after those involved, they can and will.

Ultimately, however, in the United States, the EFF is working hard to strike down compliance with the Berne Convention on the grounds of it being unconstitutional. The United States Constitution requires the copyright term to be finite in definition. Under the Berne Convention, the United States is generally required to respect the copyright terms of other countries. This effectively includes others with Perpetual copyright. This fact, in and of itself, renders the Berne Convention document in violation of the Constitution. If the EFF is ever successful, this would make the MT-32 ROM samples indisputably within the Public Domain in the United States. - Canadacow 06:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Undocumented Key Combinations

(If these don't belong on the main page, at least put them here) - - The MT-32 had various key combinations that could be pressed before powering up the unit. To run one of these functions, simply hold down the buttons needed and turn on the MT-32.

- -

• Part 3, Volume and Master Volume = Runs the MT-32's test mode.
  • No need to press Master Volume. Just 3 and Volume are enough to enter test mode. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.70.69.139 (talk) 20:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

-

• Part 4, Rhythm and Master Volume = Displays the MT-32's ROM version for a couple of seconds.

Lord Nightmare 00:00, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

-- I tend to think that these could go on the main page. While some might want a generic page about the MT-32, I believe it's an important enough trivia about the device. (and, it took me two hours to hunt down these key combinations.)

cbreaker —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbreaker (talk • contribs) 07:15, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

Related Devices

Someone has marked devices with entries related to the MT-32(ex. the CM line) as non-notable/subject to deletion. However, the information is still useful. Perhaps these entries should be folded into the MT-32 page? 76.102.131.84 00:26, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

They should be deleted. There's no information on them that isn't either dispensable or already explained on the MT-32 and SC-55 pages. - NewRisingSun 13:09, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Sound sample box under Music for PC games

An audio rendering of Sierra On-Line's Space Quest 3 Introduction music [1] produced using the MT-32 is available from another article. Should this media be reused for this article under the Music for PC games heading in a sound sample box? TamaMan (talk) 08:59, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

'de-facto standard' in pc gaming music?

I think this needs to be qualified/clarified. It was a 'de-facto standard' only on the content-production (music composition) side of the PC-gaming industry.

In the (consumer) PC home/gaming market, the Creative Labs Soundblaster was the "de-facto standard" music card (well, actually the older "Adlib" card, which the Soundblaster fully emulated), in terms of units sold and percentage marketshare amount multimedia-equipped MSDOS PCs. When I played some MP3-recordings of game MIDI-music (rendered on the Sound Canvas or LAPC1), I'm amazed how much better lots of old DOS games could have sounded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.50.57.185 (talk) 05:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

It was the de-facto standard in that most major game studios at the time composed music for the MT-32 et al, and the music was then converted for playback on other devices. As such, the standard for MIDI playback was an MT-32 compatible synth. Everything else (OPL-based synth) was merely a pale imitation. You can liken it to the modern "de-facto standard" for audio acceleration being OpenAL (as poor as it may be), despite the fact that non-OpenAL compliant on-board audio chipsets dominate the market. 66.167.51.156 (talk) 07:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I think 'de-facto standard' here is intended to mean the MT-32 became a de-facto standard in the context of MIDI modules, and not a context of PC soundcards in general. The point is, it was the precursor to the later General MIDI standard. 64.83.196.13 (talk) 17:05, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Extendes CM-32L Capabilities?

In the article it says. "Also, some games were written to use instruments not found in the MT-32 models, and require a compatible module, such as a CM-32L, for proper sound playback" Does that mean the CM-32L has different voices or more voices? I think a clerifcation would help the article. --95.88.250.251 (talk) 07:57, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Side notes

Some of the onboard sound cards circa 1997 were qualified by DOS games of 1988-1994 as:

• Sound = SoundBlaster
• Music = Roland MT-32.

Yura87 (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Robin Whittle / RWI

There, added some info about the RWI mods. Might want to follow up with User:Robin Whittle for some info past 1990, like if he ever reworked the mods for the newer revisions/derivatives, and maybe an estimate of how many RWI MT-32 mods were performed. Back in the day, my dad had his MT-32 modded by LA Custom Instruments. 64.83.196.13 (talk) 20:42, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Quantization noise

I'm deleting this:

Both the MT-32's LA32 synthesizer and reverb chip compute sound data using integer instead of floating-point arithmetic, thus losing precision during every division operation, which manifests itself as quite audible quantization noise in the digital output.

It provides no references, and in the late-80s few if any other digital synths would have been using FP at the time, so this is not at all unique to the MT-32. Thus I find this passage vague and provides no useful information. Deleting in favor of better information I'm adding. 64.83.196.13 (talk) 21:06, 2 September 2011 (UTC)