About the MIDI Room

The MIDI room provides music files created by people online, from 1991-2000s. This page provides info on these files, and how to play them. For guidance on playing MDX files, scroll down here.

What's a MIDI?

MIDIs are sheet music for your computer, whereas modern music files like MP3 or FLAC are actual recordings. MIDI files are small (good for the early web) and contain useful music data, just like sheet music (which makes them good for musicians). The latter is their primary use today.

Why can't I play these files?

You may notice your browser doesn't like these files. If you save them, you may find you can't play them! If you're old enough, this may be confusing; for many years computers played MIDI files just fine.

Previously, computers would come with built-in MIDI instruments to play these files. They weren't ideal, but they worked! In the modern day, the humble MIDI is no longer the primary music format online, so computers no longer provide the instruments to play them. If you want to play a MIDI file, you'll need to provide the instruments yourself.

How do I play these files?

Simplest way to play MIDIs

Use this online MIDI player. Drag and drop your file of choice to hear it.

Playing MIDI files locally

To play the file locally, you will need to grab the instruments and a program that can use the instruments to play the MIDI back. You can use VLC - a great music player - and then follow this guide to hook up a "soundfont" to it, i.e., the instruments! This works on MacOS, Linux and Windows. For Android and iOS you should be able to use the free version of MIDI Voyager. VLC provide soundfonts in the tutorial, but you may wish to grab some alternatives!

This soundfont imitates the OPL3, a soundchip used in a variety of soundcards from the 90s. You may recognise it from Doom and many other PC games. A selection of soundfonts are available here, though many links are dead (they're FTP links). You can search up the filenames on Google and you should come up with a good result. The website also just has fantastic information.

Playing MIDIs authentically

In the 1980s-1990s, Japanese sound modules were evolving fast. Giants like Roland and Yamaha were making advanced systems, that could produce and play music with impressive instrument libraries; most Western machines weren't able to properly play these MIDIs back.

As Roland offers a monthly subscription to emulate their Sound Canvas series, all direct rips from their sound modules are taken down. Thankfully, mV. St. GIGA ripped data from indirect sources (like games) to produce the HiDef soundfont, which is 4GB in size (direct link) and contains "1,328 presets, 9,361 samples, ~1,493 Instruments, 2,600+ Preset Generators, and ~63,391 Instrument Generators". It emulates instruments and effects from popular modules like the Yamaha XG & Roland SC-88, and provides the best accuracy outside of using the original hardware.

Is this the classic experience? In Japan maybe (money providing); elsewhere, how a MIDI sounded was almost a dice roll! For an authentic experience, try listening to a MIDI using different soundfonts.

Sadly, most software (including VLC) cannot handle a 4GB soundfont. The creator advises you can use BassMIDI, or derivatives like Coolsoft VMS, LybMIDI, Cog (kode54 edition), Falcosoft's Midi Player, DeadBEEF, etc. On Linux, you can compile BassMIDI and use that (difficult, but doable).

The creator notes you can play this soundfont on Android and iOS using MIDI Voyager on iOS & Android (free), or MIDI Voyager Pro for Android; you can also import the soundfont via USB/SD card to listen on Droidsound, Cherry Midi, or Droidsound-E on the "ludicrous quality" setting - all Android only.

MDX files

MDX files were used in the Sharp X68000, a computer released in Japan in 1987. MIDIs weren't standardised yet, so MDX files were for the X68K specifically. MDX files sometimes come with PDX files, which contain samples. This is because the Sharp X68K had two soundcards internally - one for FM synthesis (for making beeps and boops!), and one for recorded sounds (like a voice clip).

Because MDX files can use samples, they're different to MIDIs. A MIDI file is small and only contains the "sheet music" data, while MDX files can bring extra "instruments" in their PDX file counterparts!

Simplest way to play MDX files

Drag and drop MDX files into web players here and here. These should support accompanying PDX files.

Playing MDX files locally

To play back MDX files, I've used this classic MDX player (Windows only). No soundfonts are needed for MDX files. The characters don't display well on a modern system, but it's got a lovely look and feel.

Limitations

This method of booting up soundfonts to imitate a soundcard is cool, but has limitations.

Sound modules were on the cutting edge of digital hardware - actual physical boards, with chips and connections. Both the logic inside of the chips AND their manufacturing produced bugs (some notorious ones including stuck notes). There were also natural limitations, like the limited number of simultaneous voices - think about how in Mario or Sonic, part of the music cuts out when you pick up an item.

These limitations aren't emulated when we use MIDI programs, though you may be able to emulate them through other means.

How are MIDIs playing on this site?

They aren't! I've recorded the sound, having chosen a specific soundfont, and encoded it into an MP3. :)

Why all this work?

I get a kick out of it! Also, some of these MIDIs are not preserved anywhere else. Some I found in pages full of mojibake, whilst others came from index listings on the Wayback Machine. Though some are preserved in Archive.org, searching for files on Archive.org requires using the API, which hasn't been updated since 2013 and barely works. (and how long do we have archive.org, anyway?) Plus - attribution for these MIDIs is scarce/often wrong (since people were just making their best guess).

The more effort I put into finding these MIDIs, the more cool stuff I see. I find myself sorting through old programs, files, guestbooks, and BBS boards, scrolling with a sincere sense of wonder. I just think it's great that the more you love something, the more it loves you right back.