mt32-pi

Please note

It’s unlikely that there will be any further releases of mt32-pi.

I have endured a sustained campaign of abuse from members of the VOGONS forum, been labelled a “clout-chaser”, had threats sent to my personal email address, code been used in other projects without proper accreditation, my 3D print designs stolen and sold by faceless eBay/Etsy sellers, personal attacks made towards me when people don’t get their feature request… the list goes on and on.

There is only so much I can take.

My mental health has been in decline as a direct result of this behavior; the joy of working on this project has pretty much gone. There is nothing to be gained from putting time and hard work into it any more. There is no gratitude, no encouragement - just entitled behavior and grift.

To those who supported this project in the past, especially whilst I was a struggling student who needed all the uplift I could get, thank you sincerely.

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• A work-in-progress baremetal MIDI synthesizer for the Raspberry Pi 3 or above, based on Munt, FluidSynth and Circle.
• Turn your Raspberry Pi into a dedicated emulation of the famous multi-timbre sound module used by countless classic MS-DOS, PC-98 and Sharp X68000 games!
• Add your favorite SoundFonts to expand your synthesizer with General MIDI, Roland GS, or even Yamaha XG support for endless MIDI possibilities.
• Includes General MIDI and Roland GS support out of the box thanks to GeneralUser GS by S. Christian Collins.
• No operating system, no complex Linux audio configuration; just super-low latency audio.
• Easy to configure and ready to play from cold-boot in a matter of seconds.
• The perfect companion for your vintage PC or MiSTer FPGA setup.

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✔️ Project status

• Supports Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+, B, and B+, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, and CM4 series.
  • Pi 2 works, but only with concessions on playback quality.
  • Pi Zero (original) and Pi 1 are unfortunately too slow (even with an overclock) and unsupported.
• PWM headphone jack audio.
  • Quality is known to be poor (aliasing/distortion on quieter sounds).
  • It is not currently known whether this can be improved or not.
• I²S Hi-Fi DAC support.
  • This is the recommended audio output method for the best quality audio.
• MIDI input via USB, GPIO MIDI interfaces, or the serial port.
• Configuration file for selecting hardware options and fine tuning.
• LCD status screen support (for MT-32 SysEx messages and status information).
• Simple physical control surface using buttons and rotary encoder.
• MiSTer FPGA integration via user port.
• Network MIDI support via RTP-MIDI and raw UDP socket.
• Embedded FTP server for remote access to files.
• A user interface with menu system is planned.
• More advanced MIDI routing is planned.

✨ Quick-start guide

🆕 If you have a Linux computer or MiSTer FPGA device, you may wish to try the new interactive mt32-pi installer script.

Otherwise, for a manual installation:

1. Download the latest release from the Releases section.
   • If you are updating an old version, read the Updating mt32-pi wiki page for the correct procedure.
2. Extract contents to a blank FAT32-formatted SD card.
   • Read the SD card preparation wiki page for hints on formatting an SD card correctly (especially under Windows).
3. For MT-32 support, add your MT-32 or CM-32L ROM images to the roms directory - you have to provide these for copyright reasons.
   • You will need at least one control ROM and one PCM ROM.
   • For information on using multiple ROM sets and switching between them, see the MT-32 synthesis wiki page.
   • The file names or extensions don’t matter; mt32-pi will scan and detect their types automatically.
4. Optionally add your favorite SoundFonts to the soundfonts directory.
   • For information on using multiple SoundFonts and switching between them, see the SoundFont synthesis wiki page.
   • Again, file names/extensions don’t matter.
5. Edit the mt32-pi.cfg file to enable any optional hardware (Hi-Fi DAC, displays, buttons). Refer to the wiki to find supported hardware.
   • MiSTer users: Read the MiSTer setup section of the wiki for the recommended configuration, and ignore the following two steps.
6. Connect a USB MIDI interface or GPIO MIDI circuit to the Pi, and connect some speakers to the headphone jack.
7. Connect your vintage PC’s MIDI OUT to the Pi’s MIDI IN and (optionally) vice versa.

📚 Documentation

More detailed documentation for mt32-pi can now be found over at the mt32-pi wiki. Please read the wiki pages to learn about all of mt32-pi’s features and supported hardware, and consider helping us improve it!

❓ Help

Take a look at our FAQ page for answers to the most common questions about mt32-pi.

If you need some help with mt32-pi and the wiki doesn’t answer your questions, head over to the discussions area and feel free to start a topic.

⚠ Note: Please don’t use the Issues area to ask for help - Issues are intended for reproducible bug reports and feature requests. Thank you!

❤️ Contributing

This project is generally quite stable and very usable, but still considered by its author to be in early stages of development.

Hence, please DO NOT work on large features and open pull requests without prior discussion. There is a strong possibility that work-in-progress code for proposed features already exists, but may not yet be public, and your work will have to be rejected.

Trivial changes to the code that fix issues are always welcome, as are improvements to documentation, and hardware/software compatibility reports.

⚖️ License

This project’s source code is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

The mt32-pi logo was designed by and is © Dale Whinham. The terms of use for the logo are as follows:

• The logo MAY be used on open-source community hardware.
• The logo MAY be used to link back to this repository or for similar promotional purposes of a strictly non-commercial nature (e.g. blog posts, social media, YouTube videos).
• The logo MUST NOT be used on or for the marketing of closed-source or commercial hardware (e.g. case designs, PCBs), without express permission.
• The logo MUST NOT be used for any other commercial products or purposes without express permission.
• The shape and overall design of the logo MUST NOT be modified or distorted. You MAY change the colors if required.
• If in any doubt, please ask. Thank you.

🙌 Acknowledgments

• Many thanks go out to @rc55 and @nswaldman for their encouragement and testing! ❤️
• A huge thank you to everyone who has donated via Ko-fi, PayPal, or Amazon - your support means a lot! ❤️
• Special thanks to Edu Arana (Arananet), Porkchop Express (MiSTerAddons), @djhardrich, Nat (MiSTerFPGA.co.uk), Ricardo Saraiva (UltimateMiSTer.com), Serge Defever (Serdashop), and @opjose who have all generously donated hardware to the project.
• The Munt team for their incredible work reverse-engineering the Roland MT-32 and producing an excellent emulation and well-structured project.
• The FluidSynth team for their excellent and easily-portable SoundFont synthesizer project.
• S. Christian Collins for the excellent GeneralUser GS SoundFont and for kindly giving permission to include it in the project.
• The Circle and circle-stdlib projects for providing the best C++ baremetal framework for the Raspberry Pi.
• The inih project for a nice, lightweight config file parser.