Tutorial: Roland RA-50 to MT-32
0Hello friends, you like 386 / 486 games with Roland MT-32 music, but you won't afford a MT-32 as prices gone high? You are not a big fan of emulation either? Then make it the PC-SOUND-LEGACY way: Buy a used, cheap Roland RA-50 realtime arranger and built in a switch to set it into MT-32 mode!
As the RA-50 has similar internals as the real MT-32 and has the same method of making music with the Roland LA-synthesys, it sounds exactly the same. When you have moded your RA-50, all you have to do before powering on is to switch it in MT-32 mode. Its all a MT-32 but the display (no fancy MT-32 display messages) and of course does not have the classic look of the real one.
You can set the MT32-mode in the menu as well, so why a hard-mod?
If setup by menu, the stop all notes command is not getting through, so this can cause trouble while playing games music when connect it thru MPU401 interface. BUT you can avoid that by using SOFTMPU in RA-50 mode.
(For me as I like physical switches and I'm using the PC-MIDI interface of my Orpheus 1 soundcard, I prefer the hardware mod)
Be prepared: Before starting, make sure you have:
1st the stuff needed and
2nd the skills needed and
3rd read the Vogons thread for further informations (link down below)
IMPORTANT:
This video is just a demonstration for your entertainment and of course I don`t take any responsibility for anything you might do with your own stuff!
The mod shown in this video is based on this Vogons thread where Cloudschatze and Sallient documented it.
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=74580&p=963270&hilit=ra%20ra50%20ra-50%2050#p963270
The music playing in the video was recorded with the RA-50 in MT-32 mode. It is from the MS-DOS game BUDOKAN.
listen - enjoy - like - subscribe
Ernie
PC-SOUND-LEGACY