VGMPlay for MSX 1.0 released

Nice work Grauw!

Good work! Thanks Grauw.

guantxip: You have to extract them with gzip to get the uncompressed vgm files. Sometimes even when they have the .vgm extension, they’re still compressed.

Here’s an archive with all the extracted smspower FM songs http://www.grauw.nl/etc/music/vgm/smspower-fm.zip

Mmh, you may need to submit a request on smspower for that… or rip it yourself .

Hi diederick76, I just tried playing some Nemesis 3 VGMs on my King’s Valley II cartridge with switch in slot 2, and it works on both my turboR and CX5MII. Could you give me some more information about your set-up, like which MSX you are using, what’s in slot 1, which music are you trying, etc.? If you can replicate your configuration in an emulator and reproduce the issue that would be even better.

There are two songs of Sonyc OPL4 that appears a message of Not enough memory. (songs 8 & 9). My computer is ST with 512k and I added an external 4m card, but with the same result. My moonsound I think has memory enough because I never have problems to hear moonblaster wave files.

I'll wait to the next release. I have tested with all chips except sfg-05 because I'm not owner. And it's a great program, congratulations!.

Grauw, have you been able to load the Hexion musics? I did a fast test with blueMSX with no success. The player loads the files (so they have been uncompressed correctly), but no sound. Maybe I should try with real HW? :-?

BTW, these musics need an OKI chip for drum samples originally, is this supplied by Music Module now or will they sound without drums?

Can't reproduce the behaviour mentioned earlier with openMSX. I made a copy of the SD card and put that in openMSX (carta) en put an scc in cartb. openMSX now happily plays all the Salamander songs.

Switching the cartrigdes on the real MSX makes the problem go away though. I can play the songs just as on openMSX. Vgmplay keeps using the SCC. But oddly, when I switch them back, I can only hear the SCC with the first song.

Prioritise this issue as you see fit. I have a work-around as mentioned. If/when you need help debugging this, just tell me what to do.

Great work Grauw !

Thanks Grauw, all songs of Sonyc opl4 works fine.

Oh yeah, and maybe a possibility to play playlists instead of seperate files

For OPM, you need SFG-01 or SFG-05.

OPM or the YM2151 is the FM synth you can find in the Yamaha SFG-01 and SFG-05 indeed, which were also built into the Yamaha CX5M series of MSX machines.

SFG can't be used to hear FM-PAC music. It's really too different :

- FM-PAC = YM-2413 OPLL FM sound synthesizer with 9 channels of FM sound without drums or 6 channels of FM sound + FM drums. Only mono sound (or fake stereo)

- SFG = FM sound Synthesizer built around the YM2151 or YM2164 sound chip. These IC's have 4 operators and are for example used in the cheaper Yamaha DX series (e.g. the DX-9, FB-01), several arcade games and the Korg DS-8 and 707.

This unit includes a D/A converter (YM3012), so 8 audio tone signals can be obtained at the right and left channels. It has also a YM2148 chip with MIDI function and keyboard scan function.

Stereo sound with SFG !

No any specific game was developed on MSX with SFG music, as it was mainly used on musical MSX computers (the Yamaha CX5M/7M serie).

Hi guys.

congratulations for your fantastic job. I'm gonna triing to use it on MultiMente to let the gui start the VGM automatically.
I downloaded the nice package full of vgm.
I only wish to know a scheme of WHAT can i play WITH.
I mean:
Folders with FM name contains vgm I can play with ... (FM-PAC?)
Folders with PSG name contains vgm I can play with every MSX
Folders with SCC name contains vgm I can play with SCC cart
Folders with MSXAUDIO name contains vgm I can play with PHILIPS MUSIC MODULE
Folders with OPL,OPL2, OPL3, OPL4, OPM name contains vgm I can play with ??
Folders with OPLL name contains vgm I can play with FM PAC?

Are you thinking about a user GUI to add ?
Are you thinking about a folder browsing feature to list all VGM inside a folder, displaying also the chiptune needed for each .vgm?

Great job guys!

Sorry if it is a dumb question, but would it be feasible to make a DOS 1.x compatible version of VGMPLAY?

My Xak: The Art of Visual Stage VGM pack is now available on vgmrips.net.

I wanted to wait until I complete gunzip support, but there’s been a couple of other changes in the mean while so maybe I’ll do an intermediate release in the near future.

I translated the titles from the OST on EGG (which is the same as the older OST with a few additions). Also cross checked with amongst others your video and the thesaurus :). Just noticed I made a typo in the Uneasiness track name though, hrm.

Also finished Xak for the first time while I was at it :).

Listened through the entire list and I have only one thing to nag about:
You might want to consider re-recording the "Victory" theme. It has a 'percussion hit' at the beginning which is not supposed to be there. Possibly some noise command still stuck in the buffer.

One of the Xak songs was featured on the Pixelated Audio Podcast, at 30:24! Really nice :).

The link works fine here, but the time was different: from 31:54. They chose a good track but Xak has many of those.

@Grauw: next up finishing Xak 2 and Tower of Gazzel? Almost makes me want to play them again too... But afraid I want to translate it then.

Hmm, I didn't find this particular track so outstanding myself... anyway, it's pretty cool they discussed it so extensively

How about the MP3 download and play it in something else than your browser?

Ok, a bit late but… the game’s sound test doesn’t reset the drum key-ons when selecting the next track, so the VGM splitting and trimming faithfully reproduced that last drum register setting at the start of every song. I just submitted a pack update, should be live somewhere in the coming weeks, but for the time being you can find the updated pack here.

(Updated pack now live on the site: Xak: The Art of Visual Stage)