Voyetra Sequencer Plus Visited Again

There are still folks out there who are trying to work with Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold software. This is for those who still use SP Gold for whatever reason. It's especially for those who have old .sng files and want to work with them.

I use SP Gold for working with the few original native SP Gold files I have been able to locate on old data tapes/CD's.

I've lost (hopefully misplaced) the instrument bank files I created to use with SP Gold. I created them to be able to use melodic mode on the OPL2 FM synth chip found on early sound cards.

The reason for using melodic mode is it gave me freedom to use any combination of nine melodic and/or percussive notes. Percussive mode allowed three percussive notes and six melodic ones.

The down side to using melodic mode was that I had to bastardize some melodic instruments to make them sound percussive. I did that by playing melodic "instruments" well above or below their normal range. This is the reason that many of my old game songs have strange sounding tuned drums when played back on wavetable sound cards and in some emulators. Wavetable sound cards used instrument samples, and the instruments would sound melodic even above or below their intended ranges. With the OPL 2, if you played "instruments" out of their range on it, you'd get some of the craziest sounds, including many percussive sounds.

You can still get SP Gold on the Turtle Beach site. That site has a wealth of info, drivers, whatever for SP Gold. SP Gold and drivers are here: seq_gold.zip

I don't think you need the drivers separately unless you're still running an older operating system/computer with a sound card. The basic drivers came with the SP Gold zip. That includes a MIDI simulator for sound cards and a General MIDI slave driver for FM Sound Cards (including the virtual one in DOSBox).

There's the manual and other great information available, too.

I use DOSBox to run SP Gold. Since I don't have the instrument bank files, I have not used it to actually play any of the songs. If you've used it with DOSBox and actually had it play in DOSBox, please comment with any suggestions you may have about getting it to work. DOSBox download is here.

DOSBox is great for running old games on "modern" operating systems. It also allows you to record the music from the games, raw MIDI commands and OPL commands. I cannot say enough good things about it's OPL2 soundcard emulation. It "understands" my bastardization of the melodic instruments!

Here's how I got DOSBox to run SPGold by default. This is for the latest version -- 0.74 running on a Windows 7 computer.

1. This assumes you have DOSBox installed in the default configuration.
2. It also assumes you have SP Gold installed at c:\VOYETRA.
3. Win Start button > All Programs > DOSBox-0.74 > Options > DOSBox 0.74 Options.
4. This should open dosbox-0.74.conf in Notepad (or your default text editor).
5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of this file. You'll see [autoexec]. If you already have something entered here, just comment what you added before, using # as on all the other commented lines. Add the following, starting on a new line:

mount c "c:\VOYETRA"
c:
seq.bat 

6. File > Save
7. Close Notepad.
8. Go to c:\VOYETRA.
9. Right click SEQ.BAT and select Edit. If it doesn't open in a text editor, select one to open it (Notepad).
10. Following the "safe, not sorry" rule, File > Save As ... > SEQoriginal.BAT.
11. Now File > Save As ... > SEQ.BAT so you'll be working on your edited file.
12. Copy and paste the following in the place of what's presently in SEQ.BAT:

echo off
C:
call driver
SpG %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
call driver /rem

13. File > Save
14. In the c:\VOYETRA window, right click DRIVER.BAT.
15. Select Edit.
16. "Safe, not sorry:" File > Save As ... > DRIVERoriginal.BAT.
17. File > Save As ... > DRIVER.BAT
18. Copy and paste the following in place of what's in the file:

echo off
if "%1" == "/rem" goto REMOVE
if "%1" == "/REM" goto REMOVE
VAPINUL.COM %1 %2 %3
SAPIFM1.COM /port:1 %1 %2 %3
goto OUT
:REMOVE
SAPIFM1.COM /port:1 /rem
VAPINUL.COM /rem
:OUT

Now, when you start DOSBox, you'll have SP Gold start "automatically."

You should note that you can still use DOSBox for games and such by quitting SP Gold (q q from the track view screen) and mounting your games directory to a new drive letter.

I hope this info helps someone.