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Hello everyone. We have a special treat for you: a new blogpost that is a audiovisual whirlwind tour through a neglected era of music technology. It's easily the longest, but also the best-researched and most fun thing we've ever written: https://hikari.noyu.me/blog/2025-08-24-around-the-general-midi-world-in-12-pianos.html
@hikari "Fun fact: It even has a dedicated “C/M” mode, which emulates a fairly obscure Roland product, the Roland CM-32," wait the CM-32 isn't that obscure, it's a cost reduced but beefed up MT-32, that thing every point and click adventure targeted
@erincandescent ah, well:
- that was meant to say “Roland CM-64”, and that's now been corrected; there's no product by the name “CM-32”
- i guess a hazard of knowing too much about the Roland CM series is that we consider it obscure. you're correct that the MT-32 and CM-32L were important for DOS gaming. on the other hand, i'm not sure if anyone really cares about the completely different CM-32P. the CM-64 is a combination of the two. we should think about how to reformulate this…
@hikari I mean, yeah, my guess is that the reason they went all out and did the entirety of the CM-64 is a sense of completeness? But OTOH the MT-32 and CM-32L were very major pre-standards and so I imagine if not the primary purpose the major purpose of the support was “you can play your Sierra and Lucas Arts game backcatalog on it”