Wave Table Synthesis - Win Groove v.9E (shareware)

Legacy FM sound card synthesis uses mathematical algorithms to recreate the sound of each musical instrument. Unfortunately the result is that FM cannot accurately duplicate the sound of all 128 instruments used by MIDI music files.

WinGroove, a software synthesizer, can be installed as an add-on driver to your W31 system that will use stored WAV file samples (a 1meg+ file). These recorded instrument sounds are much closer to the proper sound of each instrument. This not only produces a better sound, you will hear what the original creator of the MIDI file intended (or closer to it).

WinGroove is one of the few software wave table synthesizers that is compatible with 16 bit W31 systems. WinGroove installs at approximately 2meg total with registration ($20) and documentation files that can later be removed making the install even smaller. This driver only affects MIDI music files and does not alter any of your other sound applications.

The recommended system speed is a Pentium/133mhz but my `486/66mhz using the v.9E of WinGroove will play 99% of all MIDI files reasonably well using the 22mhz sampling (max is 44mhz). I am using the newer WAV table samples from the v.A1 update file because the sound samples are a bit better for some of the instruments. The installed WinGroove wav table synthesis driver is compatible with the other software recommended on this page. The newer v.A1 install definitely requires a faster machine than my 66mhz `486.

WinGroove includes a MIDI player that can fit on one floppy disk with the wav table samples file and play MIDI music files using the wav table synth without installing WinGroove's driver. There is an option when doing the install to setup WinGroove as a standalone MIDI player and not install it's driver for use by your other MIDI applications.

NOTE: There are several variations of wav table synthesis. WinGroove is one of these, there are others. Systems with W9x installed can also use Timidity with the EAW (Eric Welsh) 30 meg set of GUS patch (sound) files. Certain MIDI files may not reproduce exactly as the originator has composed them but will be many times closer than FM sound synthesis.

Sequencing Editor/Player - Music Sculptor v1.7 (shareware)

Damaged/altered MIDI music files often sound terrible! Some may have been created using the inferior FM sound card and some have been resequenced less than sucessfully? These MIDI files can be fixed and even rearranged to be better than the original. Piano and guitar solos can be modified to become a band, by adding instruments, or even become an entire orchestra.

With Music Sculptor you are not required to read sheet music. Music Sculptor presents bars of music as blocks that can be moved, copied to a new location, or deleted. The volume, pitch, and tempo of each bar of music can be reset. Any of 128 instruments can be substituted for any other instrument. This is called resequencing. If you have an ear for music you will be able to resequence MIDI using Music Sculptor without the need to learn to read sheet music!

Keyboard entry of individual notes is also available but I've not found a way to mouse-click the keys fast enough nor determined how to enter chords. Fixing and/or improving MIDI files hasn't required that I do this but it might be convenient some day?

Notation Editor/Player - Note Worthy v1.5 (shareware)

If you wish to edit individual notes, NoteWorthy will present you with a display of sheet music and allow editing of each note, tempo, instrument, and all that a resequencing editor normally will do plus a good deal more.

MIDI files can be converted by NoteWorthy to it's proprietary format and written back out as MIDI or NWF files. MIDI files with all information compressed into one line can be separated by NoteWorthy into the easier to resequence multi-line format. NoteWorthy does have a keyboard for entry of notes or you can point and click each note into the sheet music display and then execute the sheet music using your sound card and drivers.

There are more technical sequencers but NoteWorthy is very complete.

MIDI Jukebox Player - vanBasco's v1.31 (freeware)

MIDI "Z"uke Box Player - MZB v1.119 (freeware)