A floppy disk MIDI boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10

[squarefoot]

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]

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.

[noizejoy]

Agreed, the MT32 sounded very bad, but it inspired a scene of MIDI enthusiasts and companies making countless MIDI song files for popular and classical music that travelled via floppy discs and bulletin board systems. And the MT32 was kind of GM before GM - and its drum note assignments can still be found in the bones of some of the most recent and ambitious beat making plugins.

So I value the MT32 as an historic technology culture enabler, rather than as a sonic treasure.

That being said, I should run mine through my guitar pedalboard and see if it can be made to sound cool. :-)

[jader201]

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

[Max-q]

I totally agree with you. I hated them from day one. Sounds to clean and polished.

[yellowapple]

> 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 ;)

[bambax]

I don't feel any nostalgia either but I do remember you could find specific soundfonts for specific sounds, and some of those sounded very good.

[YawHawHawn]

Isn't General MIDI simply the mapping of certain instruments to certain numeric IDs? It doesn't dictate the actual sounds or samples that are used, does it?

Given that, why would it sound worse than any other means of triggering the same instruments?

[nedrylandJP]

Even more useful once your MIDI files are organized.[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puVYtkh-LO4

[k12sosse]

SON, YOU KNOW THOSE MIDI FILES AREN'T SORTED!

Was glad to see this already here. Never before - or since - has the Tulley Toggle found a more appropriate use.

[sublinear]

> In this, the year 2025, minijack MIDI is now fairly common, but in the 90’s it was all DIN, all the time

[infotainment]

I'm guessing this was meant to be a joke about how everyone is still using the DIN connector for midi? Kind of confusing.

[NikkiA]

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.

[petesoper]

If you're in 2025 we have a few questions for you.

[ngcc_hk]

Time loop is hard … do you have to wait until 2025 for your question to appear in his timeline … nothing run faster than speed of light, even time?

Or as he is in 2025, he saw everything keep on changing due to the ripple of his disruption of timeline.

Or as back2future postulate it is a different future and hence back to the speed of light issue.

Hard.