Ju at 18:45, 25 January 2021

2021-01-25T18:45:17Z

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[[File:Sound canvas va linux dosbox.png|thumb]]
Sound Canvas VA is a proprietary plug-in for DAWs (digital audio workstation, software used in music production) developed by Roland. It's basically a MIDI synthesizer that should sound nearly identical to a real hardware Sound Canvas SC-55, SC-88, SC-88 Pro or SC-8820.
It costs around as much as the real hardware, but a free trial version is available that works for 10 minutes before it needs to be restarted.

What's nice about it is that you can run the plug-in standalone with the tiny tool Savihost in Wine, and have native DOSBox (or other programs) send MIDI data to it. That way you can achieve authentic Roland GM/GS sound in games.
==How-to==
<ol>
<li>Install Wine.</li>
<li>Setup Wine prefix like this: <pre>$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-soundcanvas WINEARCH=win32 winecfg</pre></li>
<li>Set Windows version in winecfg to Windows XP (if you don't there will be an avrt.dll error when you run the program)</li>
<li>Get winetricks and install mfc42.dll like this: <pre>$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-soundcanvas winetricks mfc42</pre></li>
<li>Run Sound Canvas VA's setup you downloaded from Roland's website and install it:<pre>$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-soundcanvas wine SOUND_Canvas_VA_Installer.exe</pre></li>
<li>Download the Savihost x86 version (savihostx86.zip) from [http://www.hermannseib.com/english/savihost.htm the author's website]</li>
<li>Extract the Savihost executable to ~/.wine-soundcanvas/drive_c/Program Files/Roland/Sound Canvas VA and rename it to the same base name as Roland's .dll file: Sound Canvas VA.exe</li>
<li>Run Savihost:<pre>$ WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-soundcanvas wine "c:/program files/roland/SOUND Canvas VA/SOUND Canvas VA.exe"</pre></li>
<li>In the menu go to Devices > Wave and setup like this:
{|class="wikitable"
!Option
!
|-
|Input port
|* No Wave *
|-
|Output port
|DS: Pulseaudio
|-
|Sample rate
|44100 (or 48000, going higher would be silly)
|-
|Buffer
|As low as you can go without getting stutter (to reduce latency), ie. 1050 samples
|}</li>
<li>In your DOSBox .conf file, setup MIDI (you can check the Midi Through Port-0 with ALSA's aconnect -l):<pre>[midi]
mpu401=uart
mididevice=alsa
midiconfig=14:0</pre></li>
<li>Launch your game's setup and configure it for GM/GS music. Run the game and enjoy.
</ol>
==Example launcher script==
You can launch DOSBox/Sound Canvas VA anyway you like, but I use a simple launcher script that I just slightly modify for each game.
<syntaxhighlight lang="shell" line='line'>
#!/bin/sh

if ! pgrep "SOUND Canvas VA.exe" > /dev/null
then
WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-soundcanvas wine "c:/program files/roland/SOUND Canvas VA/SOUND Canvas VA.exe" &
killscva=true
fi

ROOTDIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
cd "$ROOTDIR"/wineprefix/drive_c/GOG\ Games/"Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers"/DOSBOX
/usr/bin/dosbox -conf "$ROOTDIR"/gknight.conf -conf ../dosboxGK.conf -conf "$ROOTDIR"/../generic.conf -noconsole -c exit

if killscva==true; then killall "SOUND Canvas VA.exe"; fi
</syntaxhighlight>

[[Category:Free Software]]
[[Category:Gaming]]
[[Category:Audio]]
[[Category:MIDI]]

Sound Canvas VA and DOSBox under Linux - Revision history

Ju at 18:45, 25 January 2021