Re-Creating Yamaha MU80 XG Sounds

[Stephen Case]

About 20 years ago, I created a series of projects (using Cakewalk Pro) which included both midi and audio. The midi tracks (which took many hours of work) were created using a soundfont-capable Soundblaster Audigy card, and a Yamaha MU80 synth module. In recent years I have been using Sonar (and then Cakewalk by Bandlab), but mainly for audio – I haven’t experimented too much with the midi aspects. I would now like to re-create some of the midi compositions. Generally speaking I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble – the sounds were mainly pianos and orchestral instruments. However there were one or two more exotic Yamaha XG sounds that were produced using the MU80 (examples being “Prologue” and “Odyssey”). I still have the MU80 (still working as far as I know) but I would like to find a way to re-create the same sounds using a software synth. Does anybody know of a way to do this?

[David Baay]

Any number of programmable soft synths (some free or dirt-cheap) may be able to emulate the MU80 sounds. If you have Dim Pro, Rapture or Z3ta from earlier installs of SONAR, you might start there. But, frankly, I wouldn't bother unless your intent is primarily to learn synth programming; I would just use the hardware.

[msmcleod]

This has the full XG soundset:

http://veg.by/en/projects/syxg50/

It's 32 bit, but works fine with either CbB's BitBridge or JBridge.

[Stephen Case]

9 hours ago, msmcleod said:

This has the full XG soundset:

http://veg.by/en/projects/syxg50/

It's 32 bit, but works fine with either CbB's BitBridge or JBridge.

Thanks for your helpful response - that sounds as if it's exactly what I'm looking for - I'll definitely give it a try.