FLUIDSYNTH: Kyrandia 2 - The Hand of Fate - MIDI with FatBoy SoundFont sounds weird

[cachaito]

Hi, according to ZvikaZ, FluidSynth should be superior to other MIDI solutions in ScummVM. And when we use it on KQ6 it is! But when I play Hand of Fate on the same FluidSynth settings, MIDI music compared to DOSBox + VirtualMIDISynth 2.8.0 and FatBoy 0.788 SoundFont (in SETUP.EXE is chooes General Midi device for MIDI) is a little bit weird... Take a look to attached samples.

EDIT: I've checked Loom EGA floppy disk version and FluidSynth has a major issue with generating some sounds in beginning Overture. I've checked two SounFonts (FatBoy 0.788 and Arachno SoundFont - Version 1.0.sf2). I'm attaching some recorded sound samples too.

Best regards, Bart

[athrxx]

This is actually misinformation that "Fluidsynth should be superior to other MIDI solutions in ScummVM". For whatever reason people who aren't ScummVM devs enjoy spreading wrong facts like this on discord or wherever all the time. Please don't believe these things if they don't come from the ScummVM team.

The Midi tracks of the games of that era are usually either composed for the Roland MT-32 or (the later games) General Midi (Roland SCC/SCB or similiar). So these will usually the recommended devices for those games. If you use an entirely different synth like Fluidsynth the results will be more or less random, since this has never been part of the game musicians' considerations and testings. I can imagine that a sound font that is carefully arranged with a specific game in mind could actually produce good results. Or if is a sound font which manages to achieve actual GM compatibility. Otherwise you're probably much better off with a MT-32 or GM device (real or emulated).

Hand of Fate has both MT-32 and General Midi tracks which both sound fine if played through a dedicated device.

What exactly is the point of this bug report?
Do you think that there is a bug in the Kyra engine? Or in Fluidsynth? Is Fluidynth supposed to sound like VirtualMIDISynth (whatever that is)?

[antoniou79]

I am unsure if the specific issue with the LOOM EGA mentioned, is the "slurred sound" in the tracks that the cachaito uploaded, but if so, this happens to me in my low-spec laptop, with debug builds, so it could be a CPU constraint issue.

However, in my case if I build a release build of ScummVM (--disable-debug --enable-release) the issue goes away.

[cachaito]

Hi athrxx! I was referring to this comment about FluidSynth: https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/11337#comment:13

Thank you for additional info! Answering your question:

What exactly is the point of this bug report?
Do you think that there is a bug in the Kyra engine? Or in Fluidsynth? Is Fluidynth supposed to > sound like VirtualMIDISynth (whatever that is)?

I think it's not a Kyra engine issue, but Fluidsynth internal settings for Kyrandia game? You would agree that its a bit weird comparing to VirtualMIDISynth sample version (k2_db_gm.wma) or to other attached samples from KQ6?

Best regards!

[athrxx]

Okay, to be fair he doesn't expressly say "Fluidsynth should be superior to other MIDI solutions in ScummVM" there. It's more like he doesn't particularly enjoy Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth.

But please keep in mind that the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth is at least totally conform with General Midi and will produce the intended results.

I am still not convinced that we're talking about a bug in ScummVM here. Also, there isn't any such thing as "Fluidsynth internal settings for Kyrandia game". I don't think there are any custom settings besides the options available from the launcher. There are certain reverb, chorus and interpolation settings. But I have no idea what to do with those or whether they have good default values.

I am not closing this right away, but rename it, so that someone who is interested in Fluidsynth might take a look at it...

[ZvikaZ]

Hi.

Nothing important to contribute to this issue, but since I was cited as saying "FluidSynth should be superior to other MIDI solutions in ScummVM" - I'd like to emphasis that I didn't say that...

If anyone is interested, the discussion is at https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/11337

[cachaito]

Replying to ZvikaZ:

Hi ZvikaZ, sorry for putting a dose of misunderstanding. I understood from our conversation that FluidSynth is better than VirtualMIDISynth based on fifth point:

5.
Why bother with VirtualMIDISynth?
Use ScummVM's natural Fluidsynth support. It's easy and very good.

Probably I pulled the wrong conclusions from it.
To be honest, in KQ6 FluidSynth outperform other solutions. I've compared two options: FluidSynth and VirtualMIDISynth and it provides much more details and "deep" music (in my opinion). But in Kyrandia 2 case... It's surprisingly much distorted.

[athrxx]

I close this as invalid. Clearly it is not a ScummVM issue if certain sound fonts arent't optimized for use with certain games.