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Roland Backs Down On MT-32 Emulator
canadacow writes "This is a follow up to the cease and desist letter the MT-32 project received (Original Story). Roland, unable to find documentationg establishing a copyright on the MT-32's ROM, has yielded to the project and allowed distribution of the emulator to continue. On my page www.artworxinn.com/alex I've again posted the emulator along with the legal developments as they happened after the receipt of the initial C&D letter. This development was largely due in part to the legal support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
Before you all get excited about this, note that this is not a win for OSS -- not really. Notice that no legality was established. Roland simply gave up because they have not been able to find their documentation establishing copyright.
Company Lawyer: "You're violating our copyrights! We order you to cease and desist distribution now, or face your utter doom through further legal action!"
Corporate underling, walking in, sullen looking...
Corporate Underling: "Uh, sir, we may have a problem, uh, here, sir. We can't find the copyright information, uh, on our rom, uh, sir..."
Company Lawyer's face suddenly shows his confusion, wonder, and amazement about having to completely retract his previous statement...
Company Lawyer: "Okay. We'll continue to allow you to distribute this time, but be warned, young project, that we'll meet again, Oh yes, we'll meet again!"
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
In a world where companies are always trying to squeeze every last marginal penny out of us "consumers", they usually want to do so by abandoning valid and proven technologies in order to force us to upgrade to the latest doo-hickey for the sake of upgrading. Musicians generally don't need "the lastest thing", much to the chagrin of big companies who are trying to get us to go digital. Tube guitar amps, transistor-based effects pedals, well designed classic style guitars from the 50/60's (Fender Stratocasters, Telecasters, Gibson Les Pauls, Martin acoustics), class A discrete mic preamps, pre-World War 2 German microphones, these items are still in use today and still built this way because quite simply, they work. Not to mention the quality factor. If companies had their way, they'd be making wood *veneer* electronics guitars a la IKEA instead of with solid ash/mahogany bodies. But oh, since it doesn't sound as good, they'll make up for it by putting in digital pickups and then running it through a mock tube circuit which really is just a little light show to trick the plebs. As a synthesizer player, I still like my old analog synths (Roland Jupiter, ARP 2600, Oberheim Matrix). Yet it's funny because these days, companies make these digital synths to emulate what was already done and call it "progress".
The sad thing is, this depends on so many technicalities, it is not likely there will be another "victory" like this for a long time to come, becuase the relevant laws have all been strengthened in the last 20 years. In the US, Copyright lasts (practically) forever now, with no registration or renewal requirements. Unless there is a major shift in the laws, there is nothing being produced today that will come this close to becoming public domain in 20-30 years.
So, while I'm glad the MT-32 emulation project can continue, I don't see much chance of any other more cheerful stories like this coming out.
A professional synthesizer module produced by Roland during the mid to late 1980s. It had 128 built-in samples, but could also store custom samples using LA synthesis based on the existing samples. It's most desired by fans of older computer games; many games, especially adventure games, prior to about 1992 were written specifically for the MT-32. Since no other devices (other than a few devices based on the MT-32, also by roland) can play MT-32 MIDIs properly, they're quite desirable especially to fans of Sierra and Lucasarts adventure games, as well as fans of the Ultima RPGs.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Since they couldn't find the copyright of the ROM, it seems it can be freely distributed.
It's not a keyboard, it's a sound-module. i.e. it's the part which generates the sounds but doesn't have any keys on it to play and is controlled by another MIDI device.
It was an important product in it's day since it was the first multi-timbral (hence MT) synth meaning it could play more than one instrument at a time (e.g. piano and trumpet). The 32 refers to the maximum simultanous voices of the device. Each instrument uses between 1 and 4 voices, so the actual polyphony was between 8 and 32 depending on the instruments you were using. If you had two MT32s you could daisy chain so overflow notes go to the second device.
As others have mentioned they were supported in various games, like the Sierra adventures. My personal fave was X-wing with the MT32 (music) + Soundblaster (effects) setting.
MT32s are pre-GM (General MIDI) so the instrument mappings are non-standard (luckily the drums are the same). Various MIDI devices will have a MT32 mapping mode, so MIDI files will sound about right but for the real effect you'd need the real device.
The tone generators were a hybrid of FM generation (i.e. sawtooth waveform etc.) plus a limited amount of sampled data.
I saw one of these things, in the beginning of the 90s, at a friend's house. It was really high end... and he used "Leisure Suit Larry" to demo it (!). Anyway, this MT-32 emulation effort will probably be interesting for running the golden DOS-era games (many abandoware, check Home of The Underdogs).
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.