Include Dexed in MT32-PI

[mwedmark]

Would be really great if the open-source DX7 emulation synth Dexed was included or simply to include in MT32-PI.
What is the thoughs around adding more nice synths?

[dwhinham]

I've thought about this for a long time, since early last year, as I have a real DX7-IIFD and love it a lot.

If there's demand for this, I'll certainly do it.

I'm fully aware of a porting effort ongoing on the Circle repo ("MiniDexed"), but I'm not sure if their efforts will fit well into mt32-pi's codebase.

Will leave this open until I get time to look into it.

[mwedmark]

Thanks for the quick feedback! I'll currently don't own a MT32-PI but I'll build one just for fun. I did grow up with AWE32 and it's fantastic Soundfonts. Pro stuff for a dime. Nice to see the tech working here as well!

[KlasO]

Just posting to show my appreciation for raising this brilliant issue.

[human222]

Dexed would be fantastic. Imagine composing DX7 music with one of the computer cores on the MiSTer + mt32-pi?

Also as a side-note, MAME can emulate a number of synthesizers, including some FM ones that have a bit of a similarity to the DX line. Just adding this in case the Dexed codebase turns out to be difficult.

[dekkit]

Just dropped in to say excellent project and daaang that would be aweeeesome to have DX7/dexed!

[krulf]

Sounds really good if it could be made to work!

[dwhinham]

Dexed would be fantastic. Imagine composing DX7 music with one of the computer cores on the MiSTer + mt32-pi?

🙂

Also as a side-note, MAME can emulate a number of synthesizers, including some FM ones that have a bit of a similarity to the DX line. Just adding this in case the Dexed codebase turns out to be difficult.

Good point, I think ultimately MAME's synthesizers would be the better option as they are going for accuracy and complete emulation of the machine. There was some Yamaha MU-series related research going on too, IIRC. I'll look into this.

As for Dexed - the upstream codebase is pretty hard to wrap my head around and the code itself is pretty thin on the documentation.

I took a look at Synth_Dexed, whose author has done the hard work of providing a sane API for implementing Dexed's synth engine into other projects; this is what MiniDexed is also using.

Right now, I have it compiled-in to mt32-pi, and generating sound from within mt32-pi already, but MIDI keys don't seem to correspond to proper tones. It sounds like FM, but perhaps all the instrument settings are not initialized properly; probably something I'm doing wrong, not sure yet.

Will provide more info later.

[human222]

Good point, I think ultimately MAME's synthesizers would be the better option as they are going for accuracy and complete emulation of the machine. There was some Yamaha MU-series related research going on too, IIRC. I'll look into this.

Yeah there's lots of goodies in MAME. I think they started on SC-55 as well, although that one isn't showing life yet. About the MU-series, I tested it myself a while back. It's not perfect but it's quite pleasant already.

In the screenshot I got one instance of MAME sending MIDI OUT to a loopback device, and then a second instance of MAME receiving MIDI IN from the same loopback device. The loopback device can of course be skipped when using hardware.

Right now, I have it compiled-in to mt32-pi, and generating sound from within mt32-pi already, but MIDI keys don't seem to correspond to proper tones. It sounds like FM, but perhaps all the instrument settings are not initialized properly; probably something I'm doing wrong, not sure yet.

Will provide more info later.

That's great too. Well, whichever route you take, it looks like something very exciting is coming up for the mt32-pi. I can't wait to see what happens! :)

[probonopd]

I'm fully aware of a porting effort ongoing on the Circle repo ("MiniDexed"), but I'm not sure if their efforts will fit well into mt32-pi's codebase.

Happy to collaborate.

If you find something in MiniDexed that you think is not a good architecture decision, then we'd be more than happy to hear from you.

There are continuous builds now in case you'd like to try it out.

[Metacrack]

Why not implementing NukedOPL for a OPL emulation?

[farvardin]

Having Dexed included into mt32pi would be great, but it's true minidexed can be installed into an other SD card, and it runs fine with a mt32pi-hat, including midi DIN5 and LCD, so I'm quite happy with this setting...

[probonopd]

Maybe we could find some way to allow for "multibooting" (i.e., selecting MT32-PI vs. MiniDexed vs. other OSes) at boot time?