Time for another software update! The new synthesizer code v2.0.0 that I introduced for the all-in-one hardware was a great improvement of what was there before, but it also contained some unfortunate bugs. The biggest issue being that it completely broke when putting OPL Studio in OPL2 only mode. This has now been fixed as well as v2.1.0 containing the long awaited support for pseudo 4-OP patches.

Pseudo 4-OP Patches

So what are pseudo 4-OP patches? They are like 4-OP patches, but using two 2-OP patches to produce a richer sound to emulate a 4-OP patch. Since we're emulating 4-OP patches it means that these kinds of instruments can be used both on OPL2 and OPL3 hardware. Back in the day this would be a great fit for example on older SoundBlaster cards or Adlib cards to enhance the audio. For example DOOM uses this trick with some of its instruments.

IMO after playing around with pseudo 4-OP patches for a while they may even sound better that regular 4-OP patches! especially when playing with the finetune for the second voice you can get some beautiful sounds.

Updated Patch Editor

Supporting Pseudo 4-OP patches introduces some additional parameters that need to be exposed through the patch editor. So it has been updated to add the controls for transpose and finetune of the second voice. Finetune is now also available on regular 2-OP and 4-OP patches, by the way.

There is now support for DMX instrument banks in the form of *.OP2 files, such as those used in DOOM, that include pseudo 4-OP instruments and the OPL Studio session files *.OPS also support pseudo 4-OP now.

The new software can be downloaded from the OPL Studio release page https://github.com/DhrBaksteen/OPLStudio/releases. 

And now back to those MIDI CC to synthesizer CC mappings!!