"High quality" DS music with MIDIs and DLS banks... by TheUltimateKoopa at 1:18 AM EST on December 23, 2012
So, I used VGMTrans to rip MIDIs from DS ROMs, and saved soundbanks for those sequences, as DLS files, and then played them in Synthfont.
One good thing? VERY Good quality, obviously. Well most of the time.
Two bad things. Well if I said ADSR.. you'd know what I mean. The other issue is any MIDI events on a percussion track. For example, if you know how the underground theme from NSMB sounds, you'll notice the percussion changes the pan position almost constantly, however, when I did the above, it was just permanently of the right.
Here's 2 examples from NSMB: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxGzY1eGAiitTHZQR2swSWFsM0E https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxGzY1eGAiitU2NKX29fVmFXLXc
World 8 Map, and Underground, respectively.
Does anyone know how do get the instruments to have the correct attack, decay, sustain and release.... things? And also, the whole panning thing?
Depends on the midi driver itself. This is the same/similar problem that exists with that "high quality" Mother 3 rip... sure the samples and the midi data is identical, but the actual sound engine doesn't cover certain things, like ADSR, vibrato rate/depth, and other things.
It's possible kode54's midi plugin in fb2k has these features or could be updated to include them... personally I think it's a waste of time since it'll be very difficult to make accurate, and would probably vary depending on the game anyway.
TUK: Dude, trying to do the DS version of GBAMusicRiper? I could understand in the GBA's case, but, my opinion, just add Sync mixing and other samplerate options to Vio2SF and you'd get virtually the same quality!
Lunar: You suppose panning commands would be covered? Since there were a few tracks that mistakenly treat 'em like vibrato commands...
I don't see that there'd be a problem with panning... though it depends on how it's implemented (for instance I know panning on yamaha's softsynths affects the volume output - as you pan a sound, the output on the channel you're panning towards increases while the other one reduces... difficult to explain.) It's just a case of editing the sequences so that the right controllers are sent, because yeah they might use proprietary controller numbers.
I meant if there are multiple percussion tracks on the original tune that have different panning, then on the MIDI since all percussion seems to be on channel 10 the panning is constantly fixed to certain position, somehow.
Damn that sucks! I hate trial versions!!! Oh well ill search again and see if i can find another better converter hopefully.
Edit: I think i found something http://www.extranslator.com/index.php?page=exsc, someone claimed this converts dls to sf2 but its not free either :( other than that i can't find anything else. there are alot more sf2 to dls topics than dls to sf2...sorry if i wasn't any help.
OK someone gave me a 'cracked' version, and now everything's perfect. foobar2000 is better than SynthFont... but I only used that because foobar2000 doesn't support DLS somehow.
Now, a related question....
Is it possible to rip soundbanks (in DLS format) from N64 ROMs?
Oh and.... how does it sound? https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxacLww0mDf8RmZyVUNyREg3MlE
Thats a good question, I too would also like to know how to rip the soundbanks from n64 roms in dls format (if it's possible) or better yet is there a way to convert video game music formats to dls? Lol i've always been infatuated with dls ever since VGMTrans first came out :P man we really need a dls converter.
I have yet to find a better MIDI player than SynthFont, then again I'm using version 2-N.
Would it be possible to have some of these MIDI/DLS files that are causing the problems and comparison MP3s so I may forward them to Kenneth for analysis? It might be he can improve the support for whichever controller is being used here. Maybe.
Assuming it's not a controller switch like mentioned above or something insane that the MIDI standard doesn't support...
Also, I have found that when I use the DLS/MIDI exports from VGMTrans the percussion is on a melody track and the percussion track is just ignored, so there may be multiple "percussion" tracks per MIDI. I'd be surprised if the percussion tracks were being merged to one from VGMTrans on track 10... Never seen that before.
The MIDI standard does say that all percussion goes on channel 10.
BTW, I know a guy who has an unfinished vst that emulates the Nitro Composer engine. It's Fincs, ask him if he feels like sharing. I'd share my copy, but he specifically told me not to.
Wow i've had foobar2000 for months now and never even thought of playing midis in it, i knew there was a componet for it though lol i just learned how to play minigsf music in foobar a month ago.
Also ... am I right in assuming that if there was a soundfont for say, Goldeneye 64 that included ALL the instruments, and that the instruments were assigned to the correct program number, in a way that simply playing ripped Goldeneye MIDIs with this soundfont, had the correct instruments playing, but in a potentially higher quality?
The thing that annoys me about these soundfonts that can be downloaded, is that they never contain everything, and most of the time, the samples are completely out of tune.
How does one rip the soundbanks from an n64 game? Is there a software (no command-line software) that can rip them and can n64 soundfonts be played in awave studio?
TUK, you arent going to getting a higher quality than you hear it in game.
I have done the exact thing as you described above with super smash bros and the only possible enhancemeent you get is the song being played at a higher frequency rate, since the samples are mixed for [i assume] 32000khz, there is no point to increase that to 44100khz or 48000khz
unless you do a complete re mix like i did with mario kart 64, you will not get any enhancements
By "not being able to extract soundfonts fresh from the ROM"... if you mean like how you can extract soundbanks as DLS files from DS ROMs, and then use random software to then save the soundpacks as a SF2, then I knew that :P
I didn't mean literally extract SF2 files directly from a ROM...
Oh cool! I know what samples are! :D i just didn't know if they were already in sf2 format in the rom or not i just took a guess lol and lol i knew that too about extracting dls from nds roms long time ago (using VGMTrans of course) :P its fun XD and dutchie, think you can link me to subdrags n64 tool? That would be great. thanks!
Oh and guys awave studio is AWESOME!!! It is the best if you want to create soundfonts from samples or edit current soundfont files :D :D i would recommend it to anybody who loves messing around with soundfonts.
Also i want to share with you a free version i found online https://dl.dropbox.com/s/euw3vmpk95aztay/Awave.Studio.v10.rar?dl=1 again it's an older version but at least it works. :)