Classical MIDI
Archive
For classical music lover. This site is arranged
according to composer's name. They also have a search engine.
The FileCity
MIDI File Archive New!
2275 Midi Files in 78 Megs, all arranged in different
categories.
Game
Music Home Page
Have you got brainwashed not enough? Well, I
love these game music anyway.
MIDI
Composer's Exchange
Getting tired of those Top 40 from CD, radio
and MIDI? Here are many original works for you to experience.
MIDI File
Central
A good collection of Pop MIDI files. From ABBA to ZZTop, most
comes with pictures of the artists, and there're rating for all the files.
Go for this site if you really love Pop music.
MIDI
LOUNGE
From Abba to Yes, Many links to MIDI files are
indexing from A to Z in this site.
MIDIA
- FTP Site
"Midia is
a SOFTWARE ONLY midi file player for Silicon Graphics Indigo and Indy machines."
This is the ftp site of its file archive. You can find some high
quality MIDI files compressed in .tar and .gz fromat. Make
sure you have a proper utility such as WinZip
to extract them.
The
Original MIDI Ring
Yet another Web Ring. Currently 186 sites
are in the Ring. Work hard and you may find some sites worthy enough
for your precious time. However, I really can't guarantte anything.
There are just too many sites in this Ring.
Ultra
MIDI
What do you really want? Quality or Quantity?
Despite there are thousands of files out there, very few of them are really
good for collection. There are not many files in this site, but the
webmaster did a good job in picking the good ones.
Vikram's
MIDI-Fest
A huge archive of MIDI files, 150 Megabytes of
files in 8 major categories! This site is surely impressive!
News Groups: alt.binaries.sounds.midi
You need to decode these MIDI files post or save
their binaries attachments. If you have Free
Agent and WinZip,
it would be a piece of cake. Now with ver 1.50 of MIDI Genie and
Free Agent together, you can obtain all the files and listen to them with
a breeze!
MIDI Farm
All sorts of information. Search engine
for MIDI files. Buy and Sell hardware and software. You will see
more after you visit this site.
MIDI WEB
One site with everything about MIDI, information
about software, hardware, programming, and a discussion forum to communicate
with other people.
Christopher
Franke MIDI Files & Sound Samples
The former member of Tangerine Dream and feature
composer for Babylon 5 music, definitely a master of electronic music.
All files are authorized samples from Sonic Images Records. What a miracle
:-)
MIDI
Composers' Ring
Exactly like all the Web Rings you've ever seen.
57 composers with 57 sites are waiting for you to explore their original
MIDI files. You can choose random jump or select sites directly from
the list.
Tom
Wagner's Music Library
His original music is excellent and the pages
are very interesting. Take a look at it, you won't feel disappointed.
Software Wavetable
Emulator
An alternative way to improve the quality of
MIDI sound with your FM soundcard if you really can't afford an upgrade
to a decent card. It causes more workload in CPU and can not reach
the performance level of a good wavetable card. However, it's still
much better than the plain FM music of original Soundblaster 16 or before.
Roland
Virtual Sound Canvas
The virtual version of true Sound Canvas in software.
VSC-88Me
for MMX PC, VSC-550W
for older PC. At the moment there is only a demo
version of VSC-550W, which stops working after every 50 seconds, you can
pause and then continue your player in this case.
Yamaha
Soft Synthesizer
Yahmah has two so-called 'soft syntheizer', S-XYG50
for MMX PC and S-YG20
for older PC. You can download trial versions of both.
Wingroove
It seems that this is the only one from an independent
shareware developer, whose name is Hiroki Nakayama. The effect is
quite good though. It also has a MIDI plyer included, but it is quite
primitive in comparison with MIDI Genie IMHO.
CombatSim:
Soundboards New!
Combat Simulations is dedicated entirely to military simulations and
related hardware. The focus of their review is about recent trend
in sound card industry - PCI sound cards. Specific reviews about
some new PCI cards are available.
Sounding
Board
A ZDNet review (April 98) of 6 PCI based sound
cards on the market. This is actually one section in their Getting
the Best Sound Out of Your Computer feature,
which contains almost everything that you can think of about MIDI and sound
with PC.
Sound
Off! A Gamer's Guide to Sound Cards
Maybe you're not a gamer, but this detailed review
(March 98) of 11 sound cards and some extra explanations for some jargons
is definitely worthy for you to take a look!
Sound
Card Dream - Sound Card Reviews in Game Spot
The foucus of Gamespot is certainly in games,
but they did review several sound cards that few pay attention to but still
very important, one of them is Roland
SCD-15, the only true sound canvas wave table duaghter card.
The
Shifting Soundscape
A review (December 97) for sound cards and speakers.
This review from PC Magazine Online contains incredible amount of indepth
information. It's a must see for anyone who's even slightly interested
in PC audio scene.
SC-88
Pro Real Audio Demos
Hear the MIDI sound of the best sound module
from Roland in Real Audio. The "Orchestra" sample is especially impressive.
No sound card can match its quality at the moment. This is the ultimate
goal for all you true audiophiles with golden ears.
Wavetable
Sound Card Test Drive
This site offers sample wav files of different
sound card in playing MIDI. Hearing is believing! Even the sample
collection is far from complete, it's still a great service to all people.
If you have a card which is not in this collection, you can contribute
your wav file sample too!
All these card manufactures claim they have applied
wavetable technology in their cards, however their prices and qualities
are very different, so check the information around (company lines,
specifications, reviews, newsgroup discussions) carefully before you make
the decision.
The new trend in soundcard now is PCI card. If you want
support for Direct Sound 3D, DLS
(Downloadable Sound), sound effect like reverb and chorus, and many other
features, just don't rush out to buy a new ISA card now. Trust
me, you need to check much more carefully before you proceed.
Creative Labs
No one can ignore this largest sound card maker
of the world.
Creative announced Sound
Blaster Live!, a breakthrough long have been
waited in their not much changing product lines. They are not alone
in applying new technologies though.
Diamond Multimedia
New!
When their major focus seems to be on 3D graphic
accelerator, their efforts in sound card has produced a winner - Monster
Sound MX200, this card has improved their weak point in wavetable quite
dramatically. When the original monster sound card is alreay very
suitable for gamers, this makes the card stands out even more.
Edirol
Product Line New!
Even you may never heard of Edirol, you may have
much more chances to know the name Roland. There're actually only
2 sound cards in this product page, but these 2 cards represents formal
presence of Roland Sound Canvas in desktop PC and notebook computer.
Since Sound Canvas is the defacto standard of music industry, these
two cards are worthy to check even they're a bit dated: SCD-15
and SCP-55.
If you ask for the best quality and cash is no problem for you, you can
also consider the MIDI sound module such as SC-88
Pro. Don't feel depressed if you're not living in North America,
there is a map links to their international subsidaries somewhere on one
page of the site. Just go ahead and find it!
Guillemot
International New!
Home Studio Pro 64 is almost the sound card of
the dream. It's for serious music maker really. For gamers
there is Game Theater 64. The only drawback of Guillemot's cards
is that they're only ISA based card for the moment. And some (must
be one with golden ears) think their GS/GM wavetable sound is a bit 'thin'.
Turtle
Beach
Product Catalog Cover Page
Their high-end cards are good enough for professionals.
Don't check their feature product - Multisound
Pinnacle, if you are not a serious musician or
audiophile. On the other hand, TB is not that successful in low-end
market after their merge with Voyetra. After
the setback (sort of) of Daytona PCI
and
Malibu Surround 64, TB
comes out with another PCI based soundcard
Montego
A3DXstream, which has recevid a much better response on the Web until
now.
Yamaha
- Sound Cards & Daughter Boards
This famous musical instrument maker is also
good in making wave table card, their card has the richest instruments
set and sound effects of XG standard. Their
stand alone card is SW60XG.
Yamaha announced two new cards: