If the Amiga can do MT32 midi stuff in the Sierra games, etc
It didn't. Sierra converted the MT-32 tracks (real synth, 9 tracks, max. 32 voices) to sampled audio on 4 channels (also:4 tracks) which was "the Amiga way" (simplified).
It never synthesized anything, just played back samples sampled from the synthesizer.
There's a bit of interesting background you need to know in order to fully appreciate what MT32Emu does... It is wondeful. It is definitely not a sample player and essentially, if it were a bit more real time capable it would be a very usable software synthesizer (call it VSTi plugin if you will). Most MT32 emus always were dumb samplers (which was kinda the case for the amiga too...).
Gravis Ultrasound did the same, by the way: Each game had a different sample set you preloaded and yet it still did not sound 1:1 like an MT-32.
Not even Roland produced true MT-32 compatible sound cards later on (i.e. after the MT-32-based LAPC-1). Their SCC-1 had samples of the default MT-32 patches for MT-32 use. But that fails the moment a game starts modifying the patch.
There's a classical example of this: Ultima Underworld I. Already back in the late 90's a fellow I met said "MT-32 is crappy, cause on Ultima Underworld I, for example, when I walk it plays back the piano!". Did not, he was playing it on SCC-1 and assumed he was getting "the real audio" when in fact the sound designer for UW1 did a neat trick:
he took the Piano patch, kept the sample/synth layer for the hammer, but removed the layer for the string hit by that hammer! So the damped hammer sounded like footsteps! SCC-1 ignored the patch alterations and just played unaltered piano, so of course it sounded stupid.
Music often sounded OKayish (not same, but comprehensible...), but in most games soundeffects were... well... broken to put it mildly...
And Sierra was actually one of the worst and best. Worst, because many of their tracks did so many things to that wonderful little black synth there was no way to emulate it with samples. Best, because it sounded heavenly on the real thing - often so real you really were not sure whether it was real or just a synth.
The MT-32 has all it's sample data in one of the ROM files (lightly compressed, unless I recall wrong) and both of them are tiny - most of the actual sound came from what can pretty much be called an early (first?-) digital virtual analog synth.
No way in the netherworld would a Motorola 68000 emulate the DSP put into the MT-32!
Now, the Pandora could, I wager, and quite trivially too...
If Roland released the original algorithms they used in the 80's and those were converted to ARM assembly from whatever their custom DSP used
. It might not do much else at the same time though...
But as you probably guessed that "release" has not happened.
So even though the DSPs in the MT-32 are by now POS, without knowing exactly how they were programmed, getting a 1:1 sound out of your own algorithm is totally nontrivial.
Yet the MT32Emu project is trying to replicate the
exact sound of MT-32 and LAPC-1! And their philosophy seems quite simple: must sound same, CPU be darned.
Example: LAPC-1 has a reverb that sounds kind of digitallymuddyandbelowaverage. In MT32Emu, last I looked, they used an
impulse response reverb to simulate that. And a single impulse response reverb instance could pretty much bring, for example a Powerbook 1.6 GHz to it's knees... It is accurate, yes, but not
light. It is literally the equivalent of buying a Ferrari and hiring a driver for the said Ferrari to
tow a broken first batch WW beetle to it's destination, while you sit in that WW shouting "good times, mate, good times!".
The original algorithm Roland used is probably something beyond cheap in every aspect. The CPU used for the emulation if it really uses impulse responses is borderline ridiculous... But hey, on a Core i5, who notices?-)
Assuming they use the same philosophy on oscillators and filters... well, after compiling the mt32emu on the Pandora, trying an offline bounce of LSL theme .mid to audio and looking at the code I basically kind of stopped assuming Pyra would rid us of AdLib sounds...
So, on the Pandora, not going to happen without a serious rewrite of the mt32emu. And I very much doubt you can do that without altering the sound drastically - the mt32emu guys seem to know their business...
