DreamBlaster X2GS – A New MIDI Challenger?
Looking to give your system a MIDI boost? The DreamBlaster X2GS is a wavetable daughterboard that fits the Wave Blaster header present on many DOS-era sound cards.
The board itself is loaded with high quality instrument samples which it uses for MIDI playback, and it also has an officially licensed Roland GS soundbank – perfect for retro gaming and sounds very authentic versus 90s Roland synths like the SC-55, SC-88 etc.
Lastly it has an updatable soundbank – connect via USB and upload your own samples for custom MIDI playback.
Once it’s fitted, just configure your games to Sound Canvas, General MIDI or MPU-401 – the X2GS will spring to life and pipe beautiful MIDI music to your sound card’s audio output jack.
Specs from the official website:
DreamBlaster X2GS:
- Wave Blaster compatible soundcard featuring dual soundbank support
- Officially licensed, read-only 16MB Roland GS bank
- Updatable user bank (up to 48MB)
- Switch between X2GS bank and user bank using NRPN messages
Roland GS bank:
- Full GM/GS implementation
- 128 GM instruments
- 180 variation instruments
- More than 200 drum sounds in 15 drum sets + 1 SFX set
- All samples are in 16bit quality
- Official Dream/Roland License
Overall I’m really impressed with the X2GS. To my ear it sounds very close to original Roland Sound Canvas hardware – which means great audio for your DOS games!
To listen for yourself, find my full review on YouTube. Enjoy!
More MIDI articles
- PI-MIDI Review – Supercharge your mt32-pi - 04 Jun 2022
- DreamBlaster X2GS – A New MIDI Challenger? - 02 Oct 2021
- mt32-pi – Testing out New USB Serial Support - 25 Jul 2021
- Get the Best MS-DOS Audio With mt32-pi - 03 May 2021
- MiSTer AO486 Core Part 8 – Roland MT-32, Sound Canvas Audio via MidiLink - 28 Mar 2021
- Games With MIDI. The Atari ST Never Sounded So Good! - 19 Jun 2019
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