Hi everyone.

As I know, there are several sound cards for MSX besides MSX-MUSIC, for example, MSX-AUDIO like Philips NMS-1205 and Moonsound of Sunrise.

How about the compatibility of those sound cards with MSX-MUSIC(FMPAC)? And how about sound quality if compatible?

And if it's used on MSX2+ or Turbo R which are already equipped with FMPAC, can I choose which one(FMPAC or MSX-AUDIO) to play music on the games or players?

I heard that MSX-AUDIO or Moonsound may be compatible with FMPAC, but I wonder if I can use them on games or playing music files in the compatible mode with FMPAC on MSX2+ or Turbo R.

MSX-AUDIO and MoonSound are not compatible with MSX-MUSIC, there is no 'compaible mode'. The MoonSound is somewhat compatible with the fm part of MSX-AUDIO... Not that it is of use to normal users... Programs that use msxaudio won't work automaically with moonsound.

msx music sounds somewhat 'fatter' compared the music module (dunno that about the msx audio), the msx music has 2 waveforms per operator, while the music module as only 1 (a sine).

msx music has dedicated drums, and tho something is possible with the music module (remember protracker from tyfoonsoft) again they're not as meaty as on the msx music.

The general opinion, back in the demoscene era, was that the music module was better than the msx music.. yet I've to hear musicmodule music that's actually better than microcabin's msx-music+psg combination.

In the World of MSX there isn't a wide choise of sound-carts like there is in the PC-now days.
there are only a few variations of carts which mostly use a yamaha soundchip called OPLx

so:

- PSG (programmable sound generator) 3 channel chip (standard msx issue)
- MSX-audio (Philips music module) contains an advanched OPL1 / OPL2 soundchip
and some sample ram
- MSX-music (fm pac / fm ship / fm-pak) contains an opll
- Moonsound contains OPL3 and OPL4 soundchip AND a wave table thingy

(any one wanna redraw my specs here?!)
anyway it's almost compatible, but the software that's running the the chips have to recognize them and use them since not all carts do use the same 'port' to read and write data to.

moslty used is OPL1 (MSX music) which was/is very populair on MSX systems.

well hope I didn't screw up, it's just to give'm a clue

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How about the compatibility of those sound cards with MSX-MUSIC(FMPAC)? And how about sound quality if compatible?

MoonSound is compatible with FM-part of MSX-AUDIO, but it is missing the ADPCM (samples) part. Ofcourse MoonSound's own PCM support is far superior
In order to use MoonSound as an MSX-AUDIO, you have to set a jumper on the circuit board, which exist especially for this purpose. It is even possible to use the MoonSound as a so-called 2nd MSX-AUDIO for use in programs like SME3.0.

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And if it's used on MSX2+ or Turbo R which are already equipped with FMPAC, can I choose which one(FMPAC or MSX-AUDIO) to play music on the games or players?

All Compile games (and some others) can play music on either MSX-MUSIC or MSX-AUDIO. In order to make those games play on MSX-AUDIO, you have to type "POKE -54,35" in BASIC before loading the game.
'Amateur' european products often support either MSX-AUDIO, MSX-MUSIC or both. Often one or the other can be disabled, but often they are used in unison. This is called 'MoonBlaster Stereo' (MSX-AUDIO on the left channel, MSX-MUSIC on the right).

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I heard that MSX-AUDIO or Moonsound may be compatible with FMPAC, but I wonder if I can use them on games or playing music files in the compatible mode with FMPAC on MSX2+ or Turbo R.

MSX-AUDIO and MoonSound are not directly compatible with MSX-MUSIC at all.
In fact, MSX-MUSIC has more advanced sounds than MSX-AUDIO, but 15 are fixed and you can only define one extra, while on MSX-AUDIO there is no such limitation.

MoonSound (OPL4 chip) is a direct descendant of MSX-AUDIO (OPL1 chip), while MSX-MUSIC (OPLL chip) was developed on a sidebranch. MoonSound does have the technical ability to produce the more advanced MSX-MUSIC sounds, but because they're not directly related software cannot automatically take advantage of this.

INdeed, like GuyveR mentions the MSX-Music doesn't consist out of an OPL1 but an OPLL
The last L means 'lite', and although it sounds very fat in most cases the OPL1 of the MSX-Audio will sound about as well. One of the major drawbacks of the OPLL is that you can use only one 'manually created' instrument at a time. All other instruments need to be the hardware defaults. Another downside is the lack of AM synthesis, which is largely used on Muziekmodule songs.

guys, aren't we going way ahead into tech.talk here?
(remember HCC's question)

Well I think I've answered his question, so now we can continue techtalk can't we?

The bottomline is: if you need MSX-MUSIC, you have to buy an MSX-MUSIC (FM-PAC, FM-PAK, FM-SHIP, etc.)

Maybe I'll create a MoonBlaster Stereo player for MoonSound once.. If it doesn't already exist that is... Just have to find out which of the OPL4 waveforms is identical to the OPLL's distorted sine.

I've done this before. But never published it (not even in one of our demos)
hell I wrote it not that long ago (ahum, like 5 years...)
Well, just support for OPL3 when MSX AUDIO wasn't present.
u know.
For MIDAS2.41 (f-kernel) I was bussy on some uniform audio routines for every available sound format and chip.
got it finished 80% but didn't find it interesting enough to continue. hell, I wasn't interested in MSX at all anymore around those dayz. a darn shame I know.

Also oracle does feature opl3, plug it in and hear for yourself.
it's only fm though.. but heck.

Playing only MSX-AUDIO FM on MoonSound doesn't require any program, as I said before.
What I'm talking about is translating the MSX-MUSIC registers to OPL4 format.

The MSX-AUDIO chip is an extention of the OPL1 chip specialy made for msx( it says so in the manual), that is why the adpcm sample stuff is not in Opl2 , Opl3 and Opl4. I think old adlib cards had a opl1 but later the opl2 (only changed the number of wave forms to 4)

Some more trivia: the old soundblaster cards had 2 opl2's for stereo, later replaced by 1 opl3.

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One of the major drawbacks of the OPLL is that you can use only one 'manually created' instrument at a time.

well, this limitation hasn't stopped Microcabin from producing really great music, isn't it..?
If I had to choose, for a game, between the music module with samples or the fmpac, preferably with psg, then I'd pick the latter.

Besides, with Oracle, you've plenty of 'hardware' instruments... thousends

fixed wolfs double post

in reply: Any instrument has its limitations. None of them make it impossible to create good music for it, but some of them make it a lot harder

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in reply: Any instrument has its limitations. None of them make it impossible to create good music for it, but some of them make it a lot harder

Now isn't that called a challenge?