MAME 0.261 Work In Progress: Yamaha MU50 XG MIDI module

The Yamaha MU50 module will work in MAME 0.261, thanks to great work by Olivier Galibert. This includes full emulation of Yamaha's AWM synthesis including the digital effects DSP, and it's running the original firmware. MAME allows both live MIDI in and simulating live MIDI in from a .MID file.
The .MID file playing here is one of the demo songs from Yamaha's PSR-540 arranger keyboard, pulled out of the ROM from that keyboard (which eventually will also be emulated).

[@NickHowesAstro]

As one of the people from Yamaha's R&D who worked on XG, this is very cool indeed. Be good to know precisely how you got it working (I know where the Rom repository is).. I left Yamaha in 2010, so it's more for curiosity than anything else

[@caddelworth]

*Deep* respect, sir! I still use my CBX K1 XG (owned since new) as my "go-to" sound module!

[@MESSDrivers]

Very cool. Olivier Galibert did the actual reverse-engineering. I gather Yamaha's official XG softsynth for Windows had debug symbols or something to that effect and things lined up extremely well with what the MU's firmware was doing. He's working on several other MUs right now, I'll post a video when any of them come up.

[@atomicskull6405]

So what's the story behind the SW70XG sound card? It was supposed to be an SW60XG but with sample RAM, prototypes were shown but it never came out.

[@ChilliusVGM]

This is insanely cool, I think the potential for this is so benefitial to both people who want to use this for game audio - and for people who want to produce using the MU50 sounds. Hope to see this follow suit with other MU synths!

[@Xeraser2]

Please tell me he's gonna make a VST version of this, it would be incredible. Does he plan on reverse-engineering the other synths in the MU series? (especially the MU1/2000, they're incredibly expensive to import but they're SO worth it)

[@MESSDrivers]

There's at least one fork of MAME dedicated to making our emulated synths work as VSTs. Olivier is currently working on the MU100 (because one was included inside the Konami KeyboardMania arcade games), and we have ROMs for the MU80. MU1/2000 would need someone to dump the ROMs, including (obviously) the wave ROMs.

[@Xeraser2]

​@@MESSDrivers I JUST learned about MAME emulating synthesizers and I can't believe it took me so long. I really need a list of all the currently working/in development ones if it exists. As for the ROMs I'll see what I can find. Any plans to emulate the PLG cards or maybe even the earlier non-linux based Motifs? (Classic, ES, S80/90 Classic and ES)

[@Xeraser2]

I have a presumably working PLG150-PF, if there are non-destructive ways to dump the ROM I'll do it asap.

[@MESSDrivers]

@@Xeraser2 I'm compiling this list on the fly so it might not be exhaustive, but the Casio CZ-101 and CZ-1 are new, and the RZ-1 drum machine and PV-1000 synth also work. There's varying degrees of support for the Ensoniq ESQ-1, SQ-80, VFX-SD, SD-1, SQ-1, SQ-2, and KS32 (all of them will play notes over MIDI but the on-screen presentation needs work). Yamaha-wise the MU5 and MU50 work along with the TX-81Z, DX100, FB-01, the PSR-11, PSR-60, and PSR-70.

[@MESSDrivers]

@@Xeraser2 Anything dumps are available for is fair game. Unfortunately some obvious targets like the Korg M1 have the ROM inside the CPU and it can be fiddly/expensive to extract in that case (although non-destructive exploits for a lot of chips have slowly been discovered). dbwbp.com/index.php/9-misc/37-synth-eprom-dumps has lots of program ROMs but few wave ROMs (usually the program is a socketed EPROM that can be easily read, while the wave ROMs are soldered down which is not super difficult but definitely not the first thing you want to learn to de-solder on).

[@Marisueksu]

Kind of wild hearing actual XG playback in MAME emulation. What a time to be alive.

[@dexx2233]

That’s great progress 😲 amazing!!

[@jonsnow4372]

Any news on the VST version?

[@jodyjohnson265]

Where can I get the rom set?

[@MESSDrivers]

Anywhere with MAME sets. Google "MAME 0.264 ROMs" works, or just go to archive.org.

[@jodyjohnson265]

@@MESSDrivers I found it thanks for the resource that you provided!

[@Purpbatboi]

Is the clicking normal?

[@MESSDrivers]

It's not normal as far as I'm aware, but Olivier currently lacks good reference from a real MU50 (or ideally one modded with digital output).

[@Purpbatboi]

@@MESSDrivers I thought it was the emulator doing the clicking sounds, I was able to hook this to my DAW but there's too much clicking and note playback sounds strange

[@MESSDrivers]

@@Purpbatboi I realized my previous reply wasn't clear: there is known clicking in the emulation, you can hear it in this video. "Note playback sounds strange" is going to need a lot more detail to be something that can be fixed.

[@Purpbatboi]

@@MESSDrivers yeah I'll upload it to my channel soon But yea for normal midi playback it sounds fine but when hooked up to a DAW there's seems to be some issues with the note messages

[@Nico93]

this emulation has so much potential to get yamaha emulation flying once going

[@SuperFromND]

this is so cool dude :o is there any way to hook this up to something like reaper? would LOVE to be able to fool around with these modules without having to pump a midi file into it every time

[@MESSDrivers]

You can route live MIDI into it, but the latency is not great.

[@martinhernandez656]

❤taito the outer zone and tri attacker Tehkan au is next

[@NUKELEDGE]

Do you know the process of getting this to compile? I've followed the instructions for setting up compilation of the main MAME fork but it seems those instructions don't apply to these types of projects? For example, I've been trying to compile the fork that runs the Ensoniq VFX.

[@MESSDrivers]

I'm not familiar with how forks work, but all of these synths do run in regular MAME, just with fairly obnoxious latency if you're trying to play them live over MIDI.

[@NUKELEDGE]

@@MESSDriversI managed to figure out getting a lot of them to run, but some of them have issues that are not showcased in your videos. i.e. I did manage to get the Ensoniq VFX SD emulation to work, but no sound would output when I tried to play it. I noticed the floppy drive emulation was outputting noise. The same thing occured with the Ensoniq SD-1. Did you have to do anything special to get it to make sound in your demo of the SD-1?

[@MESSDrivers]

@@NUKELEDGE Those come up with the red "THIS DOES NOT WORK" for a reason, although there appears to have been a regression. I'll check it out.

[@NickHowesAstro]

I'd be very interested also in a compiled SD-1/VFX (I own a TS-10, but owned those two prior to this) @@MESSDrivers

[@piggosalternateaccount4917]

This is absolutely astonishing

[@lumiere_eleve]

Just noticed the "selection arrows" in the LCD were all shifted to one pixel left compared to real modules.

[@MESSDrivers]

The LCD is an SVG from, I believe, a scan of the service manual, so it should be easy to fix. I'll let Olivier know.

[@caddelworth]

😂Nice catch!

[@caddelworth]

@@MESSDrivers _Slightly_ off-topic, but I have a lot of XG MIDI files that use parts of XG which many people don't; like tweaking sounds and their envelopes, changing the levels of individual "drums" in a kit (the triangle is by default VERY quiet), etc. If you want some/all of those to properly check out the more obscure corners of your emulator, I'd be very happy to oblige!

[@MESSDrivers]

@@caddelworth Sounds useful! If you have them available someplace let me know.

[@caddelworth]

@@MESSDrivers Well, I could zip them up and send you a WeTransfer link, but to do so, I'd need to know an e-mail address for you (so WeTransfer can send you the link). It can however be a 'temporary' e-mail account you create for this specific purpose and then delete, IYSWIM? But yeah, I'd be happy to contribute sone of these files for your testing!